I love your terms about the “vulture press” and “vulture pundits.”  Tell folks here what you mean by that.

They get that name because there is this awful contingent in media who waits, perched, until whenever there is any sort of tragic or horrific event, they swoop in to feed. They delight in suffering and bloodshed. The more the better. They wait for when emotions are hot and people aren’t thinking to push for the dumbest, most illogical power grabs, because they know that’s the only time a sufficient mass of people are going to be illogical enough to fall for their scams. I’ve got a whole chapter going over how they operate, their usual tricks and scams, and the best ways to deal with them.  

I forget who originally said it, but after a shooting, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I feel like that approach used to be more effective than it is now. But they’re also selective about what shootings count. When gang members shoot black people in poor neighborhoods, there’s no outrage, and if you point it out, you’re somehow racist.

Absolutely. They live and die by their narrative. Anything that doesn’t fit the narrative gets ignored or swept under the rug. I go into America’s crime stats. They love to portray America as a nation with this crazy violent crime problem. Not really. America is a fairly peaceful nation with a handful of zip codes where it is murder city. Then the gun grabbers attack everybody who criticizes their insane ideas as racist, while their policies inordinately harm the demographics they are supposedly championing. It is a sick con game. …

For years the advice to gun owners was to keep their heads down as antigun forces went after them. Do you think that has changed?

I think it is in the process of changing. Some parts of the gun culture are sick and tired of the Perhaps If We Are Nice They Will Go Away defense. This is the portion that has been fighting and making gains for gun rights around the country. These are the organizations that are actively looking for lawsuits to file. These are the people who open their mouths and take newbies to the range. Thankfully the old fuddy, self-righteous, guns for me but not for thee contingent are dying off. 

What should gun-rights activists be working on?

I have a list of suggestions in the book for various laws we can push for at the local, state, and federal level, but far more importantly than the legislative battle is the cultural one. We need to be reaching out to our friends, families, neighbors, and community, spreading the word. Take people shooting. Help get them trained. Gun ownership exploded in 2020. Sales were off the charts. People saw cities on fire and the cops saying don’t bother calling 911 because we can’t come, you’re on your own, good luck, so they bought record numbers of guns. And it wasn’t my people standing in long lines to pay scalpers prices. We’ve already got ours. It was new people, first time buyers, and when you look at the demographics, not at all how the gun banners would present it as something for old white guys.

The best thing all of us can do is keep fighting this culture war, and if you aren’t, I hope this book can help you get started.

— Glenn Reynolds in Gun Wars: An Interview with Larry Correia

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

76 COMMENTS

  1. Fudds are alive & sick. They’re banning your semiautomatic shottie and your single shot bolt rifle too. NRA won’t help you🙄

    • Unfortunately, there are quite a few of those Fudds in law enforcement. A few of my LEO friends are starting to spout “weapons of war” statements and how ARs need to be banned because of “domestic terrorism”. The DoJ and DHS are being smug for a reason.

      • “domestic terrorism”

        Ah yes. Have you noticed how the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys are public enemy number one? This is happening while corporate (capitalist lol)-sponsored BLM and “just an idea” antifa are running around the country attacking police and even the feds (and have been for years). Propaganda works.

      • It makes sense and is in line with other LEO attitudes. There is nothing to gain from breaking up “cultural mutual combat.” The cops just get injured, blamed and hated.

        Going after OFWG’s is easy. Most will bend over backwards to comply, apologize for putting the poor officers out and a few nights of perp walking grandpas from Augusta, ME on the TV will temporarily relieve all the “defund the police” pressures.

        Just like any other employee at any other job they’ll take the path of least resistance/effort and rationalize it anyway they have to but, rest assured, once they retire they’ll go around talking about how wrong what they did was.

      • I’m pretty sure the point of the Second Amendment was so that an adequate amount of “domestic terrorism” could be brought to bear by the people in the event the government went to anti-Constitution tyranny.

        As for the opening paragraph statement:
        Never let a good crisis go to waste. During a crisis the people will demand government do things the people would never allow otherwise. If you do not have a crisis, create one. – Saul Alinsky (paraphrased)

      • I rather doubt this to be the case.

        Old yes, by his own admission. But IIRC, his opinion about the AR (which he owns at least one of) is “you can have it, bullets first” which is pretty much the polar opposite of a FUDD who would say “Take their AR, just let me keep my Remmy 700 and my Python, pretty please!”.

  3. Priorities
    1. Reform the GOP into a real party for the people. Focus on primaries.
    2. Flip purples states to red – Solid red states will offer a bit of a buffer against an oppressive federal government. You’ll never get a chance at a strong national legislative agenda until this happens.
    3. Strengthen red states (Blue states are lost-sorry Cali)
    4. Stock the courts with real Constitutional judges
    5. Work on election integrity (constantly)
    6. Now you can focus on a real legislative agenda for the people

  4. RE: “Then the gun grabbers attack everybody who criticizes their insane ideas as racist,”

    Well that’s the pot calling the kettle black because you cannot get more racist than Gun Control. It is the last remaining deranged agenda left from the days its sidekicks racism, slavery, lynching, etc. ran rampant. And like slavery Gun Control needs to be abolished.

    It is a sickening sight seeing the 1968 Gun Control Act on the books…and just as sickening are the morons who see it and have no clue as to what they are looking at…like the poop for brains chauvinist catco.

    • DebbieW we just cant let Panthers have gunms, if they get gunms theyll shoot baboons. Pretty soon we’d have a baboon shortage.
      Panthers are independent, baboons not so much. The more baboons the better. Plus baboons play follow the leader real well, that’s a good thing if your the Baboon King.
      So Nope, no gunms for panthers.

  5. said it before and I’ll say it again it is the last two generations faults we are where we’re at when it comes to gun control caving in and giving in and saying but hunting when it has nothing to do with hunting our rights have been solidified in the bill of rights and nothing is going to change that

    • Look who’s been in charge of this country. The Silent Generation and the Boomers screwed us over, and left a mess behind for everyone else to clean up. Their fault, as a generation, was trusting their elected officials to do the right thing. Their was a dip in trust after JFK, but the propaganda machine kicked in and disparaged people as conspiracy theorists. What’s old is new again. People finally realize their dear leaders are flat out evil.

      • JFK… when the government publicly investigated themselves and “found no wrong doin” lmfao.

        • Ned Pepper,
          Like it or not, that’s who has been in charge, and who has done most of the voting putting said people in charge (older people are much more likely to vote). I’m talking about the generations as a whole. Don’t take it personally.

        • Own it, bro.
          The Boomers and young silents have been in control for longer than any other cohort in history. They got into government young and stay in well through their 80s.
          They’ve been solidly dominant for over 30 years now.

  6. I’m surprised there’s still fudds out there who don’t realize gun grabbers would prevent you from owning even fortress rods if they could get away with it.

  7. “Dancing in the blood of innocents” is the phrase that comes to mind when discussing anti gun activists.

  8. Six More Classified Documents Discovered At Biden House > https://www.zerohedge.com/political/six-more-classified-documents-discovered-bidens-house

    First group found, from the White House it was “Yep, that’s it. That’s all of them. Promise.”

    Second group found, from the White House it was “Whopsie, sorry, yep, that’s it. That’s all of them. Promise.”

    Now another batch found, from the White House its .

    And where is the legally required visitor log? It was suppose to be turned over to the national archives when he left office as vice president, not there.

    • And how many did they hide or destroy before the personal lawyers were allowed to “search” for them? Those personal lawyers are allowed to handle classified information, but the President of the US (Trump) isn’t. Yeah, okay. It amazes me how many people fall for the propaganda.

    • We already know this is perfectly fine from a position of privilege. First Hillary, then Trump, now Biden. Nothing will happen.

      • The difference is:
        1. They allowed Hillary’s and the Puppet’s lawyers to intervene and clean up the scene before the DOJ looked at it. They never went for a warrant.
        2. Unlike Hillary and the Puppet, Trump never actually mishandled anything. They’ll try to pivot to obstruction or something else, just like they did with the Russia farce.
        3. Trump has plenty of privilege, but he doesn’t have Democrat privilege. The bureaucratic state and the media hate him, hence the never ending witch hunts.

  11. Just like the coverage of the 5 cops that killed that guy, probably resisting like a mfer, and they beat him to death. Why no coverage? All black. 5 black cops did it to 1 black male. Of course, no footage yet so it’s all speculation, but the “communities” are outraged that someone could resist enough to be beat to death, so riots ensue anyways.

    Little to no media coverage because they don’t benefit from anything about the story. No votes to be manipulated from it, no racist agenda, no anti gun rhetoric. Just tyrants doing tyrant shit, and thugs doing thug shit.

  12. His language vis a vis the “swooping” is an interesting intersection with a completely unrelated book I’ve been reading, but that’s an aside into archetypes that’s too long and too heretical for this space.

    Digressing from that,

    “…but far more importantly than the legislative battle is the cultural one. We need to be reaching out to our friends, families, neighbors, and community, spreading the word.” is exactly right.

    You want to fight the Lefties? The absolute best way is to take back what they’ve captured and the easiest way for normal people to assist in that effort is to mentor and tutor kids to break them out of the *cough* “currently fashionable mindset” *cough* being shoved down their throats by schools and then send them back to those schools to ask *uncomfortable* questions which the dipshits running the place can’t answer.

    The reactions these midwits will have, quite publicly in the classroom/principle’s office/school board meeting, will show the rest of the kids/adults that the person in the front of the room has no idea WTAF they’re talking about and, IRL, is an asshole. Just like that, their credibility goes down the drain with the vast majority and you’re half-way to /solved.

    Use the manipulative tactics of the Left against them. They really hate that. Especially because it works. Remember, manipulation of the other for the benefit of the other is called “education” in the truest sense. It’s only evil when you do it specifically and only for your own benefit, which is what the people currently in charge are doing on various levels.

    The problem with doing this is that, intellectually (and maybe spiritually depending on your own views), you’ll have to adopt a military attitude of being comfortable being uncomfortable. Because the actual truth, in many cases, is rather uncomfortable even for supposedly steely eyed *adults* and pushing toward the truth may result in unexpected detours into places you didn’t expect, probably didn’t even know existed and don’t particularly like at first.

    If you go far enough down the path of actual truth in terms of Western thought, morality and practice (the basis of things like the 1A and 2A) you’re going to find yourself in places that many Conservatives will find, uh, shall we say “noncanonical”. Not because they’re actually a departure from the canon but because most modern people have never heard of a lot of it and some of it, initially, is very uncomfortable because it would seem to be antithetical to the well-worn mental roads many are used to walking.

    • Into to intermediate reading list? Also nothing like researching performers for drag queen story hour figuring out which ones are sex offenders and getting the county sheriff involved.

      • On the one hand I find the “drag queen story hour” thing to be a sideshow and therefore an annoyance at best. Especially when you examine who brings their kids to such things in the first place (those kids are fucked already).

        That said, there ain’t nothing wrong with calling a pedo a pedo and pointing it out to responsive, responsible, effective LE.

        The first sentence you’ve placed here contains a typo that makes it hard for me to interpret on limited sleep. Are you asking me for an intermediate reading list or offering me one?

        • Dragg_queen goes to moderation. You have to call it out or people think it’s okay, and it spreads faster than it already is. Schools are now inviting them in, sometimes for very inappropriate after hour alphabet clubs. Some are taking kids on field trips to see them. It isn’t just the children of crazy women worshiping Progressivism that are being exposed to this poison.

    • strych9,

      I think the first and much larger hurdle that we have to clear before we can adopt your strategy is cowardice.

      The ultra-far Left Progressive True Believer agenda came formally to my children’s school district. There was an upcoming school board meeting which should have been downright riotous. (My township is so conservative that Democrats don’t even bother to run for township offices.) I knew that I would have to attend that school board meeting and oppose the Progressive garbage coming our way. I also petitioned several residents that I knew were very conservative. They were so afraid of blowback if they opposed the Progressive agenda that they would not even provide a brief written statement for me to read on their behalf.

      Until we overcome the massive cowardice in the conservative ranks, I don’t see how we stand much of a chance of influencing culture.

      • *bites fingers to avoid making an unnecessarily inflammatory comment*

        This is why I tend to point people towards tutoring/mentoring. Keeps the adult at arms length and, hey, Kids say the Darndest Things, right?

        But more than that, it’s a manipulative tactic stolen right from Alinsky. You’re undermining the wokester’s credibility on their own home turf. Boy, oh boy, do they fuckin’ hate that. Their public anger only further undermines them.

        Rule, like #8, of debate: Whoever loses their temper first has already lost.

        • The Left love hiding behind the shield of children. Thunberg, Hogg, etc. They always try to use people that are “off limits” so you can’t counter them. That’s why they used a Gold Star parent to attack Trump. Trump countered anyway because he didn’t recognize their rules.

        • You always want to try to bypass that.

          Much was made of the fact that Shannon Watts was a PR person and not a “housewife who just hates gun violence”.

          The problem with all of that was that none of the people pointing this out actually understand PR, how it works, why it works or how it’s been designed. Hell, most don’t know that the term “Public Relations” comes from Edward Bernays who used the term specifically because the real term was “dirty” after WWI.

          That word is “propaganda”. His book by that name is fascinating. His use of Freudian psychology for manipulation purposes will be melded with Pavlovian tactics after WII. Everyone breathing today has been under the influence of such manipulation since 1945 (or less, if they’re younger).

          https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Edward-Bernays/dp/0970312598/ref=sr_1_3?crid=GI6B53YE0DYR&keywords=edward+bernays&qid=1674448060&sprefix=edward+bernay,aps,147&sr=8-3

    • And one other thing strych9,

      A disturbingly large number of people are horrifically uninformed. And many aspects of the Progressive agenda are so far beyond the pale that those uninformed people refuse to believe that any significant number of people or a significant movement would actually be seriously pursuing such nonsense. And as best as I can tell, it is true disbelief rather than not wanting to face the truth. I have no idea how we overcome that.

      • Statistically speaking, these are the people we call “independents” in politics.

        They’re not independent because they’re informed and dislike both parties. They’re independent because it allows them to live in ignorance of the things they don’t want to pay attention to.

    • “The absolute best way is to take back what they’ve captured and the easiest way for normal people to assist in that effort is to mentor and tutor kids to break them out of the *cough* “currently fashionable mindset” *cough* being shoved down their throats by schools and then send them back to those schools to ask *uncomfortable* questions which the dipshits running the place can’t answer.”

      It’s already failing on them. They’ve had a hard lock on primary public education for 30+ years, and still can’t get more than half of the kids to think like they do.

      The harder you try and ram a thought into a kid, the harder they push back.

      And as I’ve extensively commented on in the past to you and the others here in TTAG, their refusal to keep Hollywood in line is a main driver of why guns are more popular than ever with the kids, and they can’t wait to leave home and play COD and then buy some of those guns for themselves. There’s a pushback building against the worst of what they want, and they seem oblivious to it, at their peril… 🙂

      • You clearly aren’t up on how the “kids these days” work.

        “Rebellion” today is just tuning out everything. Which is why I spend inordinate amounts of time teaching 18 to 20-somethings the intricacies of high level shit like y=mx+b or the rules for sigfigs.

        Schools just pass kids to keep the funding. The kids know this and simply ignore everything.

        This has considerable implications going forward because these people won’t know how to do sweet-fuck-all that makes them money to buy the guns and OFWGs are gonna keep talking shit about “Mommy’s basement” until they all croak. FUDDs will wreck the whole thing if you let them.

        And that’s how the Left starts the tip-o-the-wedge for divide and conquer.

        Just consider that pretty much everyone reactive. As all Malthusians know.

        Just because the specific source acts as a troll for our trolls (the second one in parenthesis will let you view the page without being a member):

        https://www.theepochtimes.com/school-system-failing-and-is-no-longer-there-to-educate-says-teacher_4996680.html

        (https://www.theepochtimes.com/school-system-failing-and-is-no-longer-there-to-educate-says-teacher_4996680.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge&src_src=partner&src_cmp=ZeroHedge)

        • And makes them more dependent upon the Benevolent Overlords, er…Friendly Neighborhood Big Government.

      • quote: They’ve had a hard lock on primary public education for 30+ years,

        Try “for q hudredyears”.It was back in the 1920’s the commies infesed Hollywood and the film industry, with equal attention to the education industry. John Dewey was one of the ringleaders, and they all set out to control the narrative within twenty or thirty years from then. They’ve pretty well kept to their original schedule. Tjeir first goal with education was to make primary schooling universally mandated and government controled. They absolutely went berko over the rebellious home school thing…. and worked hard to make it illegal wherever they could. In spite of these efforts, every state now has some provision to accommodate or allow home education. SOme states mandate that even the parents must hve college education to be “qualified’ to educate their own children, most states have minimal requirements. this was quite the battle maybe thirty years ago. I know personally some of the main leads in the fight to make/keep home education legal.
        They also determined to use the silver screen to corrupt the moral values and standards of our culture, and have they ever succeeded in THAT goal. They have managed to normalise every manner of sexual perversion, the dismantling of marriage and children as normal and desirable, family stability, the whole welfare mother getting paid to crank out more babies as long as no male ‘father figure” resided in the house long term. They’ve also done a bangup job in corroding the church and bringing in all manner of perversion into leadership. Had a female homosexual “bishop” been suggested an hundred years ago thse churches woud hve gone broke froackof members/support decades ago. But they thrive and prosper.

    • They have something much better than the schools: social media and the net in general. That’s where the kids are picking things up these days.

      • Schools and social media form two halves of a wheel. Removing half of it makes the other half useless.

        Read up on the experiences of the “detransitioned” and how they were manipulated into “transness” in the first place. It’s a cycle. It can be broken pretty easily if you pull off half the spokes.

        Kids today are not very much different than for many thousands of previous generations of human children. The tech has created perverse incentives and operationalized manipulative tactics on a new level, that’s it.

        What remains are kids looking for the approval of others, especially their elders and those they perceive to have legit authority. You can easily be that person. Jeremy Stafford wrote an article on this back in 2016 called “New Year’s Resolution: Time for Mentoring” as part of a series of articles he did on unfucking todays kids and young adults.

        • I do recall one detransition story where the child was originally given the idea in school by a teacher. Then she immediately used the internet to tragically find her answers.

        • Most of those stories start either on the web or with a teacher. Then go to whichever didn’t start it.

          They are then “affirmed” by “guidance counselors” and “administrators” who add the student to a “protected class” status and the cycle begins anew. The kid gets affirmation and gains power and a certain type of social status previously unattainable. And as everyone who’s an [actual] adult knows, many kids are not good at determining the difference between good attention and bad attention, they simply desire attention.

          Web -> Teacher -> Counselor -> Web -> Repeat
          or
          Teacher -> Web -> Counselor -> Web -> Repeat

          You, personally, can’t do much about the web and that creates 1A questions and other ethical dilemmas that we’ve yet to hash out anyway. You can do something about the teachers, admins and counselors via school boards.

          You can give the kids a healthy, positive and nurturing environment via mentoring and tutoring. A refuge, if nothing else, as it were.

          Chains, weak links and whatnot. Break those fuckers.

          When this whole thing *started* I remember watching my parents house while they were out of town for a prolonged period of time and reading an op-ed in, of all places, The Santa Fe New Mexican where a child psychologist explained all of this in terms almost identical to Jordan Peterson (like, maybe it’s mainstream psychology?) that kids explore different identities as part of finding out who they are. They play as the other sex, animals, superheros, fantasy creatures etc and 99%+ figure it out just fine, a few end up gay for reasons sorta clouded in unknown neurobiology and the rest just forget about it as they grow up.

          Inserting drugs, surgery and psychological manipulation into this for the purpose of preventing that natural cycle in children is, for lack of a better term, evil.

          And that sort of behavior from teachers and admins is not shocking when you look at the incentive structures schools have promoted since the late 1980’s, teachers/admins are pretty much selected for narcissism and sociopathy.

          You want people who tend to get significant personal pleasure from manipulating others? Well, schools basically recruit them on that basis. Then give them zero real oversight from parents/guardians and they’re going to play a self-aggrandizing game of seeing how far they can push other people via manipulation.

        • Per the study:
          They define regret rate as those who applied for lawfully reversing their sex. The patients weren’t polled on whether they regretted it. The regret rate was higher among those that underwent “treatment” at a younger age, which was mid twenties in this study. Some people were denied sex transition applications.

          This isn’t really a window into what is going on in the US right now. The overall number was too small, the age group was higher, and some people were even denied. One could doctor shop in the US until they got a yes. The expert class is pushing for prepubescent sex changes. California passed a trans sanctuary bill so out-of-state children could get medical “treatment” without their parents’ permission. This is pure insanity. If those children ever come to their senses and decide they no longer want this, they may be unable to have children. They will always be permanently altered if they had surgery or took sex hormones. Anyone supporting this is evil.

          Per the study, the male to female (MF) change rate was consistently higher than the female to male change rate. The study author thought this was due to better healthcare access for males (though this was never explained). The MF reverse application (regret) rate was also higher. I scanned the study, so I may have missed it, but I didn’t see commentary on why they thought the MF regret rate was higher. I think it’s important to examine. I also think they missed the mark on their application rate analysis. Why does someone do this to begin with? They think it will make their life better in some way. Why are more men seeking to make their life better through this than women? I understand this will go against everything Progressives believe in, but stick with me here. Could it possibly be that men aren’t as happy with their life? Some believe this is the answer because they were sold a lie. Obviously it didn’t help since men also had a higher regret rate.

    • You’re correct about showing kids the cooler alternative. I get my grandkids out to the farm, they ride around on 4-wheelers, fish, hunt, scout, shoot guns, frog gigging, ride around on the tractors, just kick it in the woods, they are hooked. WAY better than staring at their phones and ipads, videogames, (anti)socials. No comparison. Actually DOING shit instead of watching somebody else do it wins every time, given the chance.
      Before you know it, I have ’em doing actual work for me.

  14. The left is trying to take away all of the right’s talking points. “If you don’t agree with me, you do not get to speak.” I’ve seen recently that they are even attempting to co-opt Martin Luther King, Jr., who was not only in favor of gun rights, he was a registered Republican. The statement was that a Republican quoting King is a racist. I’m like, Say What?

    • Having a logical argument that supports your position is white privilege and racist so quit oppressing bipoclgbtqrty you evil cishit…….I think I have the newspeak translator working.

      • “Having a logical argument that supports your position is white privilege…”

        Along with showing up for work on time…

    • “The left is trying to take away all of the right’s talking points.”

      There’s something else interesting percolating in the background. I’ve recently read businesses are asking applicants not to state where they got their education for fear it might bias their selections. If that takes off, it makes an expensive Ivy League education effectively worthless, great news for the kids going to the second and third tier schools…

  15. Here in the People’s Republic of Oregon, the Elmer Fudd defense has been enshrined in judicial precedent. Yamhill County Judge Ladd Wiles (also known as “Amanda S Marshall ‘s cuckold,” Google it) gave my marijuana bootlegging tenant a free pass for shooting at my son with a 12 gauge shotgun because it wasn’t a politically incorrect “assault rifle.”. Judge Wiles refused to take judicial notice of the legal reality that the cultivation and trafficking of marijuana remains a Federal felony as well as the ballistic reality that a 12 gauge shotgun is a deadly weapon. My tenants ‘ scum sucking whore of an attorney, who is a descendant of Jacob Silverman who is one of the most notorious murderers in Oregon history, continues to argue that his alcoholic, DUII convicted, possibly drug addicted client isn’t a threat to my family because he only loads his shotgun with “harmless buckshot” when he shoots at my family. Not even the tacticoolfools who post on this forum seem to understand that buckshot retains enough velocity to penetratrate a human skull at a range of about a quarter mile. Slugs can be lethal out to about a mile or even greater for saboted slugs. Few understand that the limiting factor on effective shotgun range is usually shot pattern dispersion or lack of accurate sights. I can recite a number of horrific massacres such as the Columbine High School massacre, the Washington Navy Yard massacre, the Capitol Gazette Newsroom massacre, and the Sante Fe Texas High School massacre where shotguns were the primary weapon. If the idea ever occurs to some psychopath to load up a shotgun with double ought buckshot then open fire on a crowd from about a hundred yards away, the carnage will make the national headlines.

  18. Don’t imagine that the people trying to strip us of our weapons are mostly private citizens with refutable opinions. Our foes are power-seekers and power-wielders who dislike the barrier to their hegemony that an armed populace represents. While Correia is probably correct about the demographic trend, in a nation of over 300 million there will always be enough anti-gun fanatics to populate the news media and the 535 places in Congress.

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