Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post Writers Group has penned an interesting essay. Titled, “Help a card-carrying liberal win an AK-47,” it shows the sort of hateful rhetoric we gunnies have come to expect from the self-styled tolerant, inclusive, liberal elite. Refreshingly, Gene’s perfectly honest about his liberalism and states up front that he would like to repeal the Second Amendment (he’s apparently unaware that the Bill of Rights protects our rights, it doesn’t grant them, so repealing the Second Amendment would do nothing but precipitate a civil war). He magnanimously admits that the Second was once useful, but then goes on to say…

Things are different now. Today, most private weapons are owned by a class of rural hobbyists known as “gun enthusiasts,” a term newspapers came up with to avoid saying “paranoiacs in bib overalls.” These are the sort of people who advertise on armslist.com, my favorite website in the whole world since yesterday, when I learned that it is giving away an AK-47, with mounted bayonet, to the person who brings the most new traffic to its site.

Paranoiacs in bib overalls? Makes me wonder if Gene has John Valby (NSFW) songs for his ringtone? Probably not, though, because it seems he reserves his real prejudice and disdain for us “rural hobbyists.” I’m guessing that the closest Gene ever comes to a wild animals is when he clicks past The Discovery Channel, otherwise he’d know that once you move away from the core cities you can find yourself facing unfriendly, hungry animals. To say nothing of the damage a rampaging bull or pissed off horse can do to a person.

But why would Gene want an AK? He explains:

Now, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking: Why would a genuine recidivist liberal want to own a gas-operated assault rifle that fires projectiles engineered to tumble and fragment in flesh, producing maximum tissue damage; a weapon that is the favourite of Mexican drug cartels and international terrorist organizations; the very weapon found in Osama bin Laden’s bedroom? The answer is that if I win, I will have the gun professionally converted into a plowshare, which I will then donate to an Amish village.

I guess Gene’s a little confused about the difference between an assault rifle and an assault weapon (not surprising since the terminology was picked precisely for that reason). The first is a select-fire military weapon that sells for between ten and fifteen thousand dollars and the second is a made-up term to describe semi-auto scary black guns with certain cosmetic features that sell for between four hundred and a thousand bucks. And while the AK may be the “favourite” of cartels and terrorists, it’s also the army standard issue weapon for more than 70 different countries.

Finally, Gene obviously is familiar with neither plowing nor AKs. Otherwise he would know that A) the mild steel of the AK’s stamped receiver would not stand up to a single furrow and B) you’ll need a lot more than a single AK to make a plowshare. But hey, what use are facts when there are people to insult and silly political/social statements to be made?

Plus, by familiarizing yourself with this site, you will learn not to judge people too harshly: Gun enthusiasts are not without other interests. It’s not all about guns, guns, guns with them. It’s also about blackjacks, “spring-assisted stilettos,” flamethrowers, firearms concealment vests, and, I swear, grenade launchers. One guy in Oklahoma is selling two homemade cannons that fire bowling balls.

I dunno, paranoiacs in bib overalls sounds like a pretty harsh judgment to me, but then I’m not a card-carrying liberal. Anyway, I couldn’t find any blackjacks, grenades, grenade launchers or flamethrowers, and only a half-dozen switchblades, but there is a guy selling his black powder bowling ball cannons! And I want one.

I’m not sure exactly what Gene’s really saying here, though. It seems to me that he’s pointing out that we bibbed paranoiacs have wide ranging tastes and interests, including ballistics, knife collecting, concealment clothing and engineering. At least I would want to run through some serious calculations before I shot a bowling ball out of a cannon I’d made. He also doesn’t mention the fact that every ad has a header urging people: Report illegal firearms activity to 1-800-ATF-GUNS or your local police department.

Now, you might be wondering why they’d co-operate with a card-carrying liberal who was going to make fun of them. The answer is that I never told them exactly what kind of column I wrote, and I’m betting they didn’t look it up. They’ll be figuring it out right about now, when they’re getting a whole passel of clicks from Democrats with advanced degrees.

You know Gene, I doubt the site managers care about your column making fun of us since, unlike certain card-carrying liberals I could name, most gunnies really are tolerant and inclusive. But good luck in the contest anyway.

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39 COMMENTS

  1. With the curious nature of some people, and after they read his article mentioning armslist.com, he may just win the AK-47 semi-auto.

    Do what you want with your new rifle Mr. Weingarten… just don’t tell me what to do with mine.

  2. I’m sure he types his column from the safety of a gated community in NVA while MSNBC runs in the background, his fluffy slippers tapping on the floor to folk music, while the Sunday NYT sits on his desk.
    Why would he need to be armed indeed. What a nice life he must have.

    • He needs that cutsey little comfort zone violated just once and he’ll be whining for more protection when he can have it for a few hundred bucks.

  4. “Plus, you might have to form citizen militias to repel invading British troops, which was not as hard as it sounds because they marched 12 abreast and played drums and fifes to let you know where they were”

    There may be some (real) men that may want a word with him after this.

    • Given that General Washington spent most of the Revolutionary War avoiding those kinds of battles, it might have been a trifle more difficult than he thinks. Ask Napoleon how much he enjoyed facing those British infantrymen. Oh, that’s right, liberals are professionals at avoiding inconvenient history. Or, really, history period.

    • Plenty of gravestones around Philadelphia from that war would prove Gene wrong. He needs a white glove across his face. It’s offensive as hell to read he thinks the Revolutionary War was somehow easy to fight.

  5. He forgot spud guns in his snarky little enthusiast weapons list.

    Perhaps Gene could be a guest writer on friend of the forum mikeb302000’s blog. A match made in heaven. Equaled only by the match of the barrel in my PXT1445GR S. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

  6. Mr. Weingarten appears to be another of those “enlightened” liberals who would cut their own tongue out before uttering the “n” word and would defend gays and other minorities without hesitation. But he seems perfectly comfortable in being condescendingly prejudiced and blindly bigoted toward gun owners. Worse yet, he fails to see the blatant hypocrisy and intellectual cowardice in his attitudes. A pretty sad spokesperson for the so-called intellectual elite.

  7. … from Democrats with advanced degrees

    Thank you, Your Grace, for bestowing from your ivory tower that morsel of self-absorbed condescending and gratuitous sanctimonious arrogance. ;->

  8. Weingarten’s smug condescension does more damage to the anti-gun cause than anything we could write here. You have to wonder how shocked -SHOCKED!- Wiengarten would be if he found out that there are “Democrats with advanced degrees” who own guns, too. In fact, I’d be willing to bet money that at least one person in Weingarten’s circle of freinds, family or acquaintances owns a gun.
    How do you think that person is going to react when he/she reads Gene’s snarky little article?

  9. He even says ” Democrats with advanced degrees.”! The audacity to think that he’s better than anyone who disagrees with him! Such elitism has no place in free society.

    Mr. Weingarten, you can do what you want with your guns, just dont think you can tell me what to do with mine.

  10. Most gunnies are tolerant and inclusive — but I’m not. That guy’s an @$$hole. Repeal the First Amendment. It was important a long time ago, but now it’s just abused by lightweights like Gene Whinegarten.

    • Ralph’s right. Even on this site most gunnies are not tolerant and inclusive. Imagine out there in the real world. Imagine the folks depicted in Winter’s Bone. They’re more representative of gun owners than you guys are, which means Gene may have had a point about the bib overalls.

  11. um guys Gene Weingarten is a satirist/humorist he hasn’t written a serious article in well the 10 years i have read the Washington post. how do you take an article as being serious when it starts with:

    “As you probably know, I am an unapologetic liberal. My name appears on the U.S. National Liberal Registry; when moving into a new neighbourhood, I have to go door to door and sheepishly inform people that one of my kind is living in their midst.”

  12. What a joke. This type of diatribe is embarassing – insert any stereotype other than “poor white people” and this guy would be getting fired.

    I’m probably pretty far left of most of the posters here, but I’ll take a thinking conservative over a knee jerk liberal any day. Being a critical thinker requires an open mind. Relying on stereotypes to advance an argument is as lazy as it gets and demonstrates a real lack of capacity for meaningful discourse. Further, suggesting that attaining an advanced degree makes your opinion more valid is just insulting.

    • +1. Add to that most of the people I know with their “advanced degrees” from institutes of higher learning still can’t figure out the difference between there, their, and they’re in the emails they send out.

  13. dan,Claiming the mantle of “satirist” or “humorist” is sadly typical of second-rate hacks like Weingarten who spew their own personal pathologies and prejudices, whose idea of a “being witty” is to throw spoiled second-grader tantrums.And then when their targets react with ire to the juvenile, venomous spewings, these B-minus, self-styled intellectuals sneer and snark that “hey, it’s a J-O-K-E” and condescendingly shake their heads at the “rubes” and “hicks” who don’t appreciate high-level satire and humor.Folks like Weingarten are the adult version of the wimpy school-yard punks who are intimidated by the bigger, stronger kids. These wimpy punks try to get back at the bigger stronger kids by shouting insults at them, but only from the safety of a quickly moving bus.Weingarten is stale chewing gum on the soles of the shoes of really talented satirists, like P.J. O’Rourke.

    • or Roy maybe its you who is the one with the thin skin the article starts with “As you probably know, I am an unapologetic liberal. My name appears on the U.S. National Liberal Registry; when moving into a new neighbourhood, I have to go door to door and sheepishly inform people that one of my kind is living in their midst.”

      that shows clearly He IS NOT BEING SERIOUS AND THAT YOU SHOULD NOT TAKE THIS ARTICLE SERIOUSLY.

      yes the article satirizes his standpoint along with our stand point but there are some things that are patently absurd about sites like ArmsList.

  14. According to Wikipedia:

    “Weingarten attended the Bronx High School of Science and New York University; at NYU he ‘majored in psychology, but only because it was the easiest major’; he ‘spent all [his] time as editor of the daily newspaper, and then dropped out with three credits to go.’

    Impressive. Makes me feel like such an underachiever for only graduating ‘cum laude’ from law school.

    It’s funny how liberals always want to characterize gun owners as “paranoiacs in bib overalls.” It’s particularly entertaining since the guys that make these kind of comments are always the dick-less metrosexual “sheeple” types who could not defend themselves in a fight if their life depended on it. I’m convinced that these “men” only make ignorant statements like this because they think it will help them get laid by those nasty liberal hairly-legged uptight hippie women they court.

  15. Instead of having the AK “professionally” converted into a plowshare, he should allow the Amish to do their own blacksmithing on the evil symbol of terrorist and/or patriots.

    • Actually, I’m sure that Amish blacksmiths would consider their work very professional.

      And he’s making the error of thinking the Amish are gun-fearing pacifists. While not being particularly aggressive, the Amish do appreciate a good firearm, for hunting and defense. I don’t know if the modern semi-automatic rifle would appeal to them, but it’s not like they’re electric or anything like that.

    • Carlos is correct. I grew up in an Amish area. Those of us who share this experience know what “road apples” are. The Amish share a bunch of good traits which include appreciation for a good rifle. The Amish communities I have known have been owners and users of both long guns and hand guns. The last thing they would do is to pound a rifle into a plow shear.

      By the way, it may surprise you to know that many Amish have their homes wired for electricity to make them better suited for resale. They just don’t connect the home to the grid nor do they use a generator.

  16. This guy is just another elite Fascist who wants a dictatorship for the USA. After the 2A is trashed, watch the Constitution go down with it.

  17. So dan, if I started out a piece with a statement like “I am card-carrying member of the National Organization of Hairy, Gun-toting Hillbillies,” which obviously shows I’m not being serious, I could get away with then saying that “men who enjoy Weingarten columns like to dance naked in front of body-length mirrors to Culture Club’s Greatest Hits while slathering their nether regions with Nair and moaning “Oh Gene, Oh Gene, Oh Gene, baby.”

    Because, hey, like my opening statement shows I’m not serious?It’s like a joke or something, okay? You know……satire?

    • yes it would imply satire if you used the whole bit about having to sheepishly introduce yourself as a “Hairy, Gun-toting Hillbillies.”

      it sets the tone for the entire article first off your starting out with a situation that is fictional and absurd at the same time, this denotes that the rest of the story is just that ABSURD and FICTIONAL.

  18. “One guy in Oklahoma is selling two homemade cannons that fire bowling balls.”

    OOOH, I want one! Actually, these are probably bowling ball MORTARS, since you need a really heavy, thick tube to shoot a bowling ball sized projectile (12-16lbs) from a cannon or howitzer. South Bend Replicas (SBR) makes full size 12-pounder cannon and howitzer tubes, but they will set you back several thousand dollars and weigh around a ton.

    A bowling ball mortar, on the other hand, can be made of stout steel pipe with a good welded base and a reinforcing band, and only weighs 100-200 pounds. This is because a cannon or howitzer must use a much larger charge of black powder (flatter trajectory) than a mortar (very high trajectory). My small SBR Coehorn Mortar will shoot an 8-oz juice can full of cement about 300 yards with a charge of 250-300 grains of black powder (that’s NOT smokeless, for you non-artillerists). [STANDARD WARNING FOR THE TERMINALLY CLUELESS: Don’t try this without trained adult supervision.]

    Of course, it is ridiulous to expect a poorly educated WaPo liberal news flack to understand the subtle difference between a cannon and a mortar.

    • Over in that Washington, they can barely get handguns, so it’s I’m not surprised that the finer points of artillery aren’t exactly common knowledge.

      So… I have to ask… Are you guys planning for an invasion of Pullman or something? Because you can totally have it if you want. We’re not using it.

      • See, and I would have guessed the mortars were for an invasion of British Columbia.

        And as an Okie I think we would be better off holding onto those mortars. You never know when you need to loob something back into Texas… Maybe we can take them down to the Cotton Bowl next year.

  19. Here go again report picking out semi auto Ak 47 . Report with out clue how evil they are how evil oweners of them are. Where I live in Phoenix, Arizona where bad thing keep on happen people get shot with handguns not evil looking semi auto Ak47 becuase real hard conceal 47 walk round with on streets Phoenix. It out right amzase me reports in liberal do not know what makes assault rifle differnt than assault weapon even shoot them in ass with one other.

  20. Having a degree from a post-secondary school doesn’t necessarily make you an intellectual but it usually means you’re educated. This guy don’t know shit. Tumbling bullets?

    • No kidding. Wait until he finds out that the 5.56x45mm projectiles break at the cannelure and fragment. A war crime, I tell you!

      From the looks of the guy, he probably thinks “temporary stretch cavity” has to do with overeating at the holidays.

  21. Okay, I just have to say this: If this article is not satire, this guy’s an asshole. But isn’t it doing the same thing calling him ‘an elitist liberal, who watches MSNBC, etc.’ Isn’t that the same kind of judgement he is showing. Being liberal doesn’t mean you hate guns, or are not a snobbish prick any more than liking a gun makes you a paranoid, religious fanatic, right-wing prick. If you want to call him out, fine, point out that he is the type of liberal that you hate-but don’t generalize liberals or you are no better than him honestly. I have seen plenty of snobbish liberals and fanatical violent republicans, but I also no a lot more decent, honest people on both sides of the political isle. So yeah, a lot of liberals want to regulate guns and their are a lot of conservatives that are religious fanatics but let us not get carried away demonizing the other side, K?

    -A somewhat liberal athiest who likes guns and has Christian friends that I respect as good people

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