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“The Wall Street Journal reports that interest in guns among retirees is booming. In just the last five years, more old people are buying guns, training with guns….” Good news, right? Not if you’re among the insufferable douchebags who write for Gawker. You know, the online publication that now owes Hulk Hogan $140 million in punitive and compensatory damages? Yeah, that one. Anyway, among what passes for content for Nick Denton’s sneering, bottom-dwelling denizens is laughing at old people who choose to avail themselves of their Second Amendment rights . . .

To Hamilton Nolan, seasoned citizens are just a bunch of incompetent feebs.

When you’re old you’re slow as hell and decades of muscle erosion have made you weak. Pretty much any healthy young person can beat you up. Is a gun gonna even things out? Nope. In order for that gun to work you have to pull it out and aim it in a moment of crisis. While you’re fumbling to do that, all slow, a young person is just pushing you on the ground. And taking your gun out of your feeble hands.

Leave the guns to the young nuts, oldie.

And it won’t surprise you to learn that Nolan’s unfamiliar with Colt’s famous maxim either.

I’ll lay 5-1 odds that any street criminal can kick you in the knee and chuckle as you roll around on the ground, grasping for the gun you dropped, as they rifle through your purse and then steal your gun, too. That gun you bought will end up in a pawn shop before you ever get to blow a hole in one of these disrespectful young menaces.

Besides, oldsters should just shut up and make it their business to stay out of trouble.

And where are you going anyhow that’s so scary? The grocery? Those teens may be delinquents but they probably aren’t a stickup gang. Please return that Beretta to the nice gun dealer before you mistake a stray rap lyric for a death threat and put a bullet in some poor C student cutting class.

Because as everyone knows, nothing bad ever happens in places where gramps and granny are likely to go. Places like grocery stores. Or Target. Or gas stations. Or a hospital. Why would an older person — or anyone else, come to think of it — decide that armed self defense is a rational option?

Older people are one of the last demographics — along with “hillbillies,” white people, the overweight, and those who practice Judeo-Christian religions — about whom it’s still socially acceptable for condescending twits like Nolan to make fun without the social media pitchfork mafia piling on and hounding them out of a job. So they’re easy marks, which doesn’t make it right. Or accurate, for that matter.

No doubt some superannuated individuals on whom Nolan trains his snark hose have, in fact, lost something off their fastball. They may no longer have the dexterity or eyesight they used to. Which means…precisely nothing.

The great thing about the Bill of Rights — the Second Amendment included — is that they’re all individual rights. So while some Americans with a little snow on the roof may not be able to reliably wield a mohaska the way they used to, the Constitution says they all still can. That even includes those who want nothing more than to walk home in peace. People for whom, contra Nolan, failing to take their medication isn’t necessarily the greatest threat they need to worry about.

That inconvenient fact will no doubt disappoint the Hamilton Nolans of the world. That’s a shame, isn’t it?

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110 COMMENTS

  2. Cripes. My Dad and Father In Law are both retired and around 75. My Dad still hikes, skis and plays racket sports. He’s not a gun owner but he knows how to shoot and is competent and steady with a gun. My F-i-L owns guns, and he still hunts moose and helps to drag the carcass out of the woods. He’s a very steady shot, but damage to his hands from working on metal in the cold makes it very hard for him to rack a semi-auto pistol. Since he only had daughters, he’s pretty happy that his daughter and I are continuing the family tradition of shooting.

    They both have the experience and judgment that many younger people lack. I’d trust either at my back with a gun any day (though give me F-i-L a revolver just in case).

      • No kidding.

        They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words, you only need one of them for that guy.

        Fvckwit.

    • Apparently he’s “…Gawker’s longest tenured (and best) writer…”

      Makes you wonder how they don’t owe more people $140 mil with those impeccable credentials.

      • Off topic. NYC2AZ was that your comment on the latest AFT video. Sweet link DG. This is their best?

    • Thanks for the link. It provided a lot of insight into the kid.

      You see, he’s from DC. And getting a carry permit in DC is generally impossible unless you have the right connections. Generally, by the time you have connections, you are old (youth being wasted on the young). So, if you can get the old disarmed, you leave everybody* disarmed. And thus you accomplish this kid’s DC dream.

      *except criminals

      • “And getting a carry permit in DC is generally impossible unless you have the right connections. ”

        The Washington Time’s Emily Miller did a series of articles on getting a gun in DC.

        Last year, she applied for a DC carry permit.

        “I have only received preliminary approval. To get the permit, I have to take 18 hours of classes with an instructor certified by the police within 45 days. I’m taking the class, but my decision whether or not to carry a gun in public is a personal one and will remain private.

        No one could legally carry a gun in D.C. a year ago. Today, there are 16 of us who may exercise our Second Amendment right to bear arms.”

        16 out of how many millions of people in DC?

      • No one gets DC permit. Congresspersons just get deputized a Deputy U.S. Marshals. Who do you think controls the Marshal’s budget???

    • I was prepared for the photo, but my near coffee-snorting experience came when, after reading of his alleged love of boxing, he mentions that it (of course) needs some “common sense reform.”

    • I hope that photo winds up on the desks of all of his prospective employers, once Gawker goes under.

    • His interview says that writing is his only marketable skill. After reading his stuff, I guess really he has no marketable skills

  4. The old, slow, weak, and feeble are exactly the people that need guns the most. a 20 year old thug doesn’t need a gun to hurt you, you need a gun to stop him.

  6. OH STOP IT!!! I’m laughing so hard my spine curve is cracking. Wanna play baddie with the geriatric klan…bring it.

  8. Armed old people are dangerous… to thugs and criminals. My dad is 85, and I’d still put money on him even in an unfair fight. He still shoots better than my brother and I!

  9. Let’s see what the Hulkster has to say –

    I train all the time and the weird thing is I’m in the gym with people between 20 and 25 years old and I look in the mirror and I look better than they do and they are young kids – either they haven’t trained hard enough or they aren’t serious enough.- Hulk Hogan

  10. Gawker is a pimple on the ass of the rotting corpse that is the media. Present company excepted, of course.

    They’re not worth the time.

  12. Old Dudes = Biggest bunch of cheaters ever invented.

    Those old dragons would have their guns out before you ever approached. Why? Experience, wisdom, and very little to lose as they have already lived long lives (and crap ton of sympathy for being old that the old are very aware of). Old crazy WWII grandpa can pull out a pistol at moments that are less than appropriate and suffer far less than young dudes (even less if grandpa is a grandma) The young keep demonstrating their hubris and stubborn old dudes will have guns if they want them. As one really old cantankerous guy once said:

    From my cold dead hands . . .

  14. Define old, back in HS when I volunteered at my VA, there were plenty of WWII vets who could open a can of whoop ass at a given’s notice.

  15. Cripes I know plenty of old timers that could toss this smarmy pencil-neck around the room. People like him are what happens when self-importance and being “oh so cool guy” become valued more than having respect for others. I’ll also take this time to remind everyone that Gran Torino was one of the greatest movies of recent memory.

  16. The whole article is just insulting to seniors, which shouldn’t surprise me from a millennial run news source where everybody seems to think they will “never be THAT old.”

    • Having had a look at that guy, and observed his attitude, there’s a good chance he won’t be!

  17. “When you’re old you’re slow as hell and decades of muscle erosion have made you weak.”

    Somebody’s never been outside a city to the places where people do manual labor on a daily basis as a simple fact of life.

    My grandpa is 90 years old, he’s still out felling trees and splitting wood. The man is made of iron. I’d like to see how ‘weak’ this jackwagon thinks my grandad is.

    • Well sure – Batman here thinks that “old” people are like him, sitting around playing video games and pushing pixels around on a monitor. Although most of my current job involves writing reports at home from behind a keyboard, at 62 my job still requires that I go out in the field from time to time and hoist around 50-90 lb. bags of cement and drilling mud. I wouldn’t be surprised that his muscles ARE eroded from decades of sitting on his ass.

  19. Hell I’m 78! I maybe a little slow. I have a pacemaker and died once and came back. I’ll be damed If they will take my guns from me. Just bought 2 new 9mm pistols for my self and my wife. END OF STORY!!!

  20. A 65 year old man plugged two gawker types in Philly as they beat him and his wife. They stopped hitting them and are lucky be alive.

  21. What he said has no basis in reality. ‘Old people’ grew up back when shit was hard. While we wre running out of the WWII vet demographic, guys who fought in Vietnam are getting up there. Nuff said.

  22. I know plenty of guys in they’re 60’s That would literally rip this guy in half. Know of couple of 70’s guys who would do the same. Without the firearms, this dumbass would get his dumbass handed to him.

  23. Ha! Don’t count us out. I’m going to start shooting as soon as I clear leather. I won’t have anything humorous to say like they do in the movies.

    The world is an amazing zoo of doofuses who write stuff to get folks riled-up.

  24. Ha!
    If I tell my 84 year old dad or 91 year old mom what this shtup wrote, they’ll hop in a car, hunt him down, and beat him within an inch of his life.
    One of my hunting buddies is 74, and he can out hike the snake river hills better than the lot of us. (And he does it while shooting flying birds)

  25. Have fun getting out from that $140000000 deal . AS a rapidly ageing dude I am MORE dangerous than that young punk. Because I won’t get in a tussle-I’ll just shoot you. And deal with the fallout. Sadly I got HIT by a truck(really I drifted into him) today while riding a bike. Bloody knee,contusions,scrapes but no broker bones. Oddly my bike had no damage. All that powerlifting I used to do thickened the hell out of my bones. Like Hulk-todays youts are girls compared to lots of old guys…and I just saw 2 reports of thugs beating old folks last hour on the Chiraq nooze.

    • Weight training has more benefits for old folks than MD’s are willing to admit.

        • I don’t doubt for a minute that it hurt like hell. But you’re here, alive and able to write about it. Many people your age without your physical conditioning might not be.

      • A great book on the subject of weight training (especially for older people) is:

        Muscle Up: How Strength Training Beats Obesity, Cancer, and Heart Disease, and Why Everyone Should Do It. by P. D. Mangan

        Excellent resource.

      • The best thing you can do to keep up bone strength is to keep putting them under load and shock.

        The worst thing the elderly can do is to become sedentary, your bones will get very brittle.

    • Sorry to hear bout your accident, but hey the bike wasnt hurt. Lol first thing yah looked at right. Fck me look at my ride.

      • Thanks for the good wishes! I could have been killed but the (other) old guy wasn’t driving fast. Just me being stupid and not paying attention. Worst bike spill in 50 years(when an azzwhole hit me in traffic and didn’t stop). That was in the 1960’s. Good times…

  26. Lots of old folks are attacked int heir homes–because of old people have drugs, and youts want them. Don’t have to worry about your draw time when you are at home. “Old” lady in my town shot a tweeker who just wouldn’t give up trying to break into her home. He isn’t needing to steal anymore.

  28. Another pouty lipped metro sexual that is full of his own self image. It’s not accurate, but he won’t know that until a man slaps it out of him.

    • That is kind of what I thought. That punk needs a smack down, and he needs one from somebody over 65.

  29. The incident in Tulsa which you published last year where a 90 year old woman who was LEGALLY BLIND fending off a home invasion comes to mind.

  30. Well, I’m going to take a contrary view here. Old feeble, dimwitted, practically senile geriatrics have no business fiddling around with 2nd Amendment rights.

    So get them the Hell out of Congress!

  31. What I see here from Mr. Nolan’s writing is that there is a lot of disrespect and disdain for the elderly. You will also note in the comments the rest of the audience is also in that some frame of mind. This isn’t about gun control it’s about the lack of respect for your follow person. He doesn’t care about anyone else but himself, he is deep in thought that he is better than the “senile and old feeble” population in this country. Sad really for him. This country and its freedom was built on old men and women. Mr. Nolan, when you are old and feeble (your turn will come!! Trust me I can read the future!!), and you get your ass knocked down cause a 20 year old thug wants your gold plated fleshlight and dildo, please read your article to help save your life.

  34. The picture of this asswipe suggests psycho behind the Batman mask. Perhaps someone should find this metrosexual’s home address and give it to one of the thousands of gangstas in the DC area, report that drugs and cash are in the house, and that it is a gun free zone. We can see how smug he is after they break in on him, and break his face when they find he has no money, and the drugs are all soft.

    • Me too. The first thing that came to mind when I saw that picture was BatBoy, the S.O.B. who shot up the Colorado Theater showing the THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. Then I read the article and it confirmed by belief.

  36. The average age in my gun club is mid-sixties. Don’t threaten these guys with violence. They can and will defend themselves.

    Where does Nick Denton live? I stay out of the bad parts of town, that is, the places where you are likely to catch a stray round during a drive by shooting. Nevertheless, of the places I go at least once a week, only two haven’t been the scene of an armed robbery. They are the stable where my wife and I board a couple of horses and the public library. Every gas station / convenience store we have ever patronized regularly has been robbed with one exception. That station had no convenience store and stayed open during daylight hours weekdays, until noon on Saturday and was closed on Sunday. It is now out of business. The grocery store we have patronized for almost 40 years has been robbed. So has the nearest branch of the post office. Many months ago, TTAG referenced an opinion piece from a woman who claimed to have been frightened by someone she suspected was carrying concealed in a bookstore. She wondered why anyone would need a gun there. A week later, a woman much like her was robbed at gunpoint in the parking lot outside the local Barnes and Noble.

  37. My father is 60 years old and I would lay 10-1 odds that he is bigger, stronger and faster as well as more nimble/quick with a gun than the schlong at gawker will ever be in his prime. I will literally put a large sum of money on that.

  39. I turn 70 this year. Why not bring your smartass young, strong, quick self on up here and see if you can beat 1000 fps.

  40. Nick Denton apparently hasn’t heard of Jerry Miculek. Numerically he’s no spring chicken, but that “oldie” will have six rounds very center-mass on an assailant before that guy even has a chance to close the distance. Especially today with modern medical treatment, old does not equate feeble.

  41. Hell, I’m still rehabbing my shattered knee, but I’d love to see someone knock me down and take Mr Glock. I could use the entertainment!
    Michael B

  42. Im 63, still do martial arts, got my a$$ kicked last time, busted my shoulder n had a gash over my eye, just aint as fast as I used to be, kid I was fighting was 25 . He says ” man whats it take to put this ole man down.” Had a shooting match with group couple months ago, beat all the kids, would a won the trophy but eyes wasnt good nuff on the rifle course ( we do walking fire on pop up targets) . My moms 84 , I just bought her an AR because, well, ” America just isnt safe no more.” she says, “its cute and lighter then it looks, oh it is loud though. Now how does Ty (her grandson) do that bump fire thing, I wanna do that.”

  44. My father is 72 years old and still one of the toughest men I know. I’d be willing to bet good money that he could take captain douche nozzle apart without ever drawing his teeny NAA 22mag revolver.

  45. Surprised Gawker isn’t telling handicapped people, like those in a wheelchair or only have one arm, the same stuff they’re saying about old people.

  46. Last weekend my 85 year old father was on the range with us and decided he liked the AK out of all the guns he shot. He has trouble racking the slide on a small pistol but is deadly out to 50 yards with any revolver. He can also hit any can you toss out in front of him before it hits the ground 10 for 10 times with his 38 snubbie. Thats something he’s always been able to do that I haven’t come close to being able to do in 45 years of trying. He may not be as strong of fast as he used to be but any scumbag would be lucky if they were still alive if he ever has to defend himself.

  47. Consider the source. The Gawker is for want to be stalkers. Completely void of any proprietary or self respect; it is the Hustler of celebrity Mag’s. Nolan said he might not publish a 4 year old being raped, but anything else is in play. My guess is Nolan dosen’t want seniors to have guns because he fears they are more likely to take him out if they catch filming through their families’ bathroom window.

  49. These Gawker clowns should come out one of my clubs IDPA or USPSA matches in St Louis… I’m 33 and there are retirees that seriously tear shit up every month. I wouldn’t want to go toe to toe with any of them.

  51. Wow. If some Gawker drone had written that LGBT people are are too limp-wristed to control a firearm or a powerful automobile we all know how the spin would have been delivered. In my neck of the Left Coast, most LGBT people are very pro gun control but some of these people are waking up to the fact that as potential victims of assault that a firearm will keep them safer than PoPo.

  53. When you’re old you’re slow as hell and decades of muscle erosion have made you weak. Pretty much any healthy young person can beat you up. Is a gun gonna even things out? Nope. In order for that gun to work you have to pull it out and aim it in a moment of crisis. While you’re fumbling to do that, all slow, a young person is just pushing you on the ground. And taking your gun out of your feeble hands.

    Leave the guns to the young nuts, oldie.
    Gee,,,,any young people who work for Gawker want to prove up on that?
    The Gawker young ones can take on AARP age people who are armed. See how that works out.

  54. What an age-ist sh1tlord. Also, another chairborne commando who thinks he knows exactly how all fights will go down.

  55. If dueling was a legal and morally acceptable thing, I would put this age discriminating bastard up against any of the older guys at my range.

  56. I do hope that Lifehacker, io9 and maybe Jalopnik survive as independent entities after Gawker is sued out of existence. The rest can burn for the hot garbage it is. That being said, I hope this will be one fewer liberal lecturing us on why he thinks guns are bad.

  58. Yuk it up, pal, just don’t expect to crash on any of our couches when Gawker goes Chapter 7.

  59. Even were I anti-gun, I would want to punch this guy in the face. The way he speaks of old people is unbelievable. It sounds like a stereotyped punk in a poorly written film, insulting old people as feeble.

    Frankly, anyone who doesn’t show at least basic human respect for their elders is scum.

  60. I’m 70, disabled and almost deaf. I have no doubt that I can successfully defend myself… again.

    Doesn’t take weight lifting or martial arts to pull a five pound trigger…

  62. Given that the AARP is practically a voting block for the Democratic Party I don’t think you will hear much about it from them. 🙁

  63. I’ll be 64 in June. I’ve got arthritis, high blood pressure and I beat the caner monster four years ago. I did a tour in Nam. I’ve hunted deer all of my life and worked as a reserve deputy for the last 25 years. I’ll admit that I can’t mix it up physically with the young guys like l used to but I remember the words of my old captain and mentor who said “I’m too old to fight and too slow to run but I can still shoot” That was from an old timer who carried a model 19 Smith until he retired in 2004 at age 76. He shot 100% in every qual and was faster with that old wheel gun than I was with my 4006 automatic. Don’t mess with old people

  64. Well, it seems the anti’s can only argue from caricatures, exaggerations and slander, in terms of groups.

    – Gunny folk are mouth-breathing, tacticool, wanna-be ninjas. Or family abusers. Or trailer-dwelling, dentally-impaired, irresponsible rednecks, too stupid to keep their kids away from the guns (stacked in their cribs.) Or insurrectionists. Or whatever the calumny is this week. So, no guns for them.

    – So now, older gunny folk are feeble, judgment-impaired, slug-slow walking victim bots. So, no guns for them.

    They really don’t seem to like people who are different from them in any way. Live places they don’t. Have jobs they don’t. Of a different age. Can we put this sneering snottiness front and center in every political discussion until the election? Really, you want to be the elected champion of this kind of clique, you ought to own it: “There’s a bunch of people who don’t like you at all, and their candidate is .”

    Not to generalize and insult as a group, I have found Gawker opinion writers to be clueless, and snide. Given the stunning lack of judgment it takes, anyone willing to publish on Gawker under their own name should never be permitted to own a gun … or vote.

    It’s mostly projection. They you’re stupid and feeble because they are. They think you can’t and won’t do yourself any good unless you have all the advantages, because they can’t win unless they have all the cards, and often not even then.

    /Old Folks Rule
    Contributing to the chorus of “old folks rule”, older folks have also been around some. As the kids these days say, “They’ve seen some – er – stuff.” Seeing the elephant changes you.

    Gawker-gummy-bear there is showing off the limits of his padded little world, among his other failures. Getting beat on? You know, for a big chunk of the older demographic, that’s not top-10 in the stuff they’ve dealt with. People who have seen their parts in pieces, listened for the beep of the heart monitor to make sure they’re still alive, lived with the pains of age for longer or shorter times will probably have their (feeble) wits about them, beating or no.

    Casual, thuggish beatings are often not terribly skillful. Grab someone wrong, and strength or no, you are putting yourself in harms way pretty thoroughly.

    That old fart who’s been through some stuff will gouge nails into your eyes, bean you with a fry pan, or, frankly, do some kind of damage with whatever’s near to hand. It doesn’t take the manly muscles of a Gawker keyboard jockey to bring some pain, especially when the knucklehead has conveniently brought themself into reach. The thing is, the olds will do something because 1) they don’t quit, and 2) being broken won’t stop them, and 3) the pain won’t faze them.

    Really, Gawker-baby seems to imaging himself, older, weaker, slower, under attack, which would, indeed, be pretty pathetic.

  65. Why is this, pencil neck, monkey fucking, dick less wonder, still breathing?
    How in Darwin’s name has this sack of shit survived this long?
    I hope his parents were good enough to have drowned themselves,
    when they realized what they had done, to the human race!
    This fuck wad is the poster boy for eugenics laws!!!
    Wait till my Grandma gets a hold of his silly ass!!
    I apologize for being so timid in expressing my opinion of Hamilton Nolan
    I am afraid my timidity is a result of my Liberal arts degree and a hitch in the Corps

  67. So in everyone’s best interest, let’s make all the geezers content for their lives and property with good old melee combat.

  68. Another brainless bum out to show the world how much he knows! Guess all us old geezer Vets are helpless and feeble, and slow etc, etc! Grandma was only 91 when she retired early two punks with a 12ga. and pinned another with a pitch fork! Good thing my Uncles were gone or they would have fed them to the Hogs! city boys picking on old retired folk! Hooagh! only easy day was yesterday! I’ll admit my shooting time’s have dropped 3/10ths of a second slower on the draw and I can only hold 7 out of 10 in the heart zone, with a rifle can only get MOA at 600, I’m not as nimble a I once was, I keep dropping my knife in practice and can only throw 20 or so knives before my arms get sore! tomahawks throw even less! can only do so much in Judo Class, in Karate class can only power through 1 brick, yes I have a Gun (.45 old and slow & heavy) my folder is always handy and then the Slung Shot as backup! I also have an Aluminum walking stick with a sharpened point for walking on Ice! Yup I’M in the old and Feeble Generation, the one thing this punk doesn’t give a thought about is the fact, I don’t have time to waste so I’m not going to Hesitate helping you to the happy hunting ground, no remorse over ending your life, well maybe a little bit for wasting my time!

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