A cursory search on the Internet will turn up articles spouting off about how the training done by military veterans and experienced law enforcement officers is far superior to that done by armed citizens. To quote one of the more inflammatory articles (No, I won’t give him the honour of a link). “Do you honestly think that the 300-pound ‘Instructor’ with ketchup & mustard stains on his shirt knows anything about shooting under stress or how to enter a room when he himself can’t fit through a normal doorway without turning sideways?”  Yeah, nice to see you supporting the armed citiz ..read more

Anyone who’s ever debated guns from the pro-Second Amendment side of things is familiar with the phrase “have a conversation about guns.” What this usually means is that those of us who believe in the individual right to keep and bear arms will be harangued for hours (if not days) on end about how nobody needs a gun and we’re more likely to have an negligent discharge than a defensive gun use and why the idea of a government turning on its citizens is just silly. And besides, why do you need an AR-15, anyways? Noticeable missing from this “conversation” was any conversing. Rather, it’s usually ..read more

The people behind the wackdoodle Area15 immersive experience are creating a “John Wick Experience” in Vegas. Guests will step through the doors of the Las Vegas Continental and into the fantastical world of the billion-plus grossing franchise movies, where they will navigate a high stakes adventure as well as visit a themed bar and retail shop open to the general public. Cool. This is another step in normalizing Gun Culture 2.0 in American society. 40 years ago, no one freaked out over a copy of Field and Stream or Outdoor Life in the doctor’s office because Gun Culture 1.0 (hunting, et ..read more

One of the more interesting things to come out of SHOT Show 2024 was the continuing interest in revolvers and thermal vision and the resurgence of lever-action rifles.  New AR-pattern rifles were few and far between at this year’s show. Daniel Defense was talking about their re-release of the Hudson H9, and most others were more interested in talking about their new suppressor and precision rifles rather than anything with a bolt-carrier group. Which makes a certain amount of sense. The post-AWB surge of interest in AR-15s has been over for at least five years (even COVID couldn’t bring i ..read more

I’m into double digit SHOT Shows (which pales in comparison to some people), but I’ve attended it as low-level media, mid-level buyer and now higher-level media, so I have a fairly broad experience with this event. It’s tempting to think of SHOT as just another gun show, where the point of things is to hang out and look at cool guns and snarf up some swag from the dealers, errr, vendors. This is not the case. It’s an INDUSTRY show, not a local gun show. It’s fun, but it’s also serious business, where millions of dollars of deals will be made. Some tips for surviving your first time there. If ..read more

Just like the author of this article, Neal Stephenson’s “The Diamond Age” has been a big influence on my vision of the future, as was Stephenson’s earlier novel, “Snow Crash” and the works of William S. Gibson.  And also like the author, I agree 100% that we are entering another huge shift in our government, society and culture. The previous shifts have been: The Agricultural Revolution: Efficient farms meant the king could tax his subjects and expand his kingdom. Other kings felt the same. Wars ensued. The Printing Press: Information and moral guidance was no longer the exclusive domain ..read more

Should open carry be legal? Of course it should. It’s useful in lots of different ways, and banning it is a restriction on the right to keep and bear arms, and that’s a bad thing. But should you do it? *thoughtful pause* The problem is that many people assume that  just the display of a gun will do the dirty work of keeping them safe from attack, because they assume that a bad guy has the same attitude towards guns that they themselves do.  But bad guys think about guns differently than you or I think about them, and that’s a problem for open carry.  To a bad guy, that “I DON’T ..read more

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for January 2016. Donald Trump was inaugurated as President, which torched off (literally) weeks of protest. Then came the 2017 Charlottesville attack, the riots in Kenosha and Minneapolis and January 6th. Add it all up, and it’s pretty clear that the Overton window for expressive violence is wide open at this point. Our population, as a whole, is more willing to express their frustration on the streets right now than any time since the early 70’s. And to make things even worse, we have an election coming up and we have Israeli’s defensive actions in Gaza, whic ..read more

Dr. David Yamane has a new video out where he talks about the flaws in a new book on the AR-15. Give it watch right now… For awhile now, I’ve had a half-formed idea rattling around inside the copious amounts of empty space inside my head that one of the reasons why the AR-15 in particular is anathema to a certain element of society is it’s “unnatural,” industrial appearance. Rousseau’s ideas of the unspoiled primitive man are an essential part of post-60’s liberalism, and the AR-15, with it’s 100% manufactured appearance and industrial simplicity, upsets people who think that “natural” is bet ..read more

Open Source Defense breaks down the steps to make something that once was forbidden and illegal into something normal. They list four steps: Forbidden, Aberrant, Accepted, Unnoticed. The move from the second to third step caught my eye:   “Aberrant→Accepted: this requires first and foremost that gun owners be smart. This is the transition that people fail to make because they allow themselves to be guided by what feels good instead of what delivers results. See more on this in “OSD 65: Diving headfirst through the Overton window” and “OSD 176: Don’t force people to have an opinion ..read more