By John Boch

The news has come fast and furious these last few days and if you’ve been listen to the mainstream media, you would think armageddon is upon us. A couple of U.S. Senators who were formerly fair-weather pro-gun senators have come out saying it’s time for action on guns. Stores have stopped selling America’s favorite rifle. Television networkes have cancelled gun-related shows. And, shockingly, politicians are trying to make hay with gun bans. It’s been a constant drumbeat of doom and gloom, aggressively fed and watered by gun grabbers who were on the ropes just a few days ago . . .

The tragic deaths of those at the school in Connecticut hurt us all as if we’d taken a punch to the gut. What happened to those innocent children, struck down by an evil man-child on powerful psychotropic medication, is a nightmare none of us should have to endure. The adults who were lost, some selflessly shielding the children in their care with their own bodies, were good people showing tremendous bravery under fire.

It is in our very nature as Americans to work to figure out what happened, to do what we can to prevent something like this from happening again.

People bring their own biases to that task. Some blame the tool that was used, in this case a firearm, ignoring that even greater atrocities have taken place with other tools used for evil. Others blame the make-believe protection afforded by meaningless signage proclaiming the area “gun free.” Some blame the side-effects of the mood-altering medication, while some seem to believe that having Aspberger’s Syndrome means the individual was a soul-less time bomb. Video games, parenting, teasing in school, loss of a prized pet or whether his daddy spanked him as a child may all be components of the evil in the mind of the perpetrator.

None of us need a PhD to understand the killer was an utterly evil man, devoid of decency, compassion or love.

The vast majority of those whose knee-jerk reaction is to blame the gun don’t understand how firearms work and what they are and are not capable of. We all know it — lots of people fear guns – often because they know nothing about them or only what they’ve read about them when they’ve been used in the commission of crime.

Just as people blamed witches for their misfortune in Medieval times, today some people blame guns. “If only we could ban the handguns,” some say.  They ignore the fact that criminals don’t obey laws.

“If guns were banned, we wouldn’t have all these murders!” They ignore history. How many times weapons have been banned throughout history, yet innocents have always been slaughtered by evil people.

Today, even after last Friday’s events, most Americans still support the right to keep and bear arms. Most support the right of Americans to use and own America’s favorite rifle to protect and defend their families and for recreation and sport. An overwhelming number of Americans recognize the right to own handguns for personal defense – defense against monsters just like the one in Connecticut.

Now a great many Americans are voting with their wallets, buying up guns and ammunition like they are going out of style. While some stores have practiced appeasement to the anti-gun charlatans, most dealers have seen near-record sales in the last few days. Store shelves are literally being sold bare.

While some public figures seek to curry favor with those advocating gun bans and restrictions, there are plenty others calling for calm and urging real, pro-self defense measures to combat the violence.

Emotions are high right now.  It’s part of the coping process for grief. We all briefly denied such a terrible thing could happen when we first heard of it last Friday.

Then came the the anger. We vent that anger in different ways. We were all angry at the murderer. Some are angry at the tools he used to commit the atrocity. Some called for the murder of NRA members and their supporters in social media. Others called us and offered up a piece of their mind.

Obviously NRA members didn’t commit this atrocity, nor did we facilitate it in any way.  But that’s how some people have coped with their grief.

Bargaining is the next step in the process and it’s already begun. This is where some people, in their time of grief, will offer well-meaning proposals to limit civil rights with regard to guns, magazines, etc. Again, it’s part of the coping process. “If we can just to X, this won’t have to happen again,” they believe.

Thankfully for freedom’s sake, legislators are on Christmas break until the first or second week of January in most places. Think of this as a much-needed “cooling off” period.

A week from now, maybe two at most, the depression stage will have set in. The final stage of the healing process will then begin. Sure, it’s depressing that these innocents were killed by an evil man, but folks will recognize that evil people are out there. They always will be. And yes, senseless violence is sad. They will eventually accept that it’s a terrible but unavoidable part of life.

You can’t get rid of lunatics any more than you can purge the world of cockroaches, flies or mosquitoes.

Emotions that are inflamed today will calm tomorrow with the passage of time.  Attitudes will return to near normal, something akin to where we were at in the days before Sandy Hook was burned into our psyches. Tomorrow’s headlines will replace Connecticut in conversations and the media.

Sure, the Bradys and the ICHV people will try to fan the flames and remain relevant while continuing to dance in the drying blood of innocent victims. But in the end, two or three months from now, they’ll be back to their fallback mode of obfuscating the truth and demagoguing the issue of gun rights. Their shrill voices, few and far between, will rely on crass and craven stunts to capture the media’s attention as their financial resources continue to wither.

Overall, unlike the Brady Campaign, we’re in good shape.

We’re coming off two favorable landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions and a third Appellate Court case here in Illinois striking down Illinois’ prohibition on the right to carry outside the home. We’ve got pro-gun majorities in both the Illinois House and particularly the Senate.

Federally, we’ve got a majorities in both the House and Senate. A slew of Democrats in the U.S. Senate are up for re-election in 2014 and many of them are highly vulnerable.  Those who were marginally pro-gun in the past, can be reminded of their vulnerability if they get squishy on us.

Some companies that have practiced appeasement are already feeling the wrath of gun owners. A software company has walked back a proposal – with profuse apologies – to have a one-day gun sales moratorium by federally licensed gun dealers using their software later in January. Cheaper Than Dirt is rolling back some ridiculous price increases, but retains their moratorium on mail-order gun sales. We’ll see how long that lasts – or how long they do. Their social media “likes” are plummeting like a lead balloon as gun owners and now former customers react.

As gun owners, we have to be patient and calm as we gently push back against the idiocy coming out of the mouths of folks like Obama, Bloomberg and a government that shipped weapons to Mexican drug cartels and is selling F-16s to the Muslim Brotherhood attempts to restrict our gun rights.

The NRA will release their proposals at Friday’s press conference. Rest assured gun banners have sat up and taken notice.  They’re running scared as the mama bear has awoken from her respectful time of silence following this national tragedy in Connecticut. You can almost guess that one of the proposals will be to curtail the make-believe protection gun-free zones have for innocent people and allow good guys the ability to carry for deterrence and defense. Gun-free zones are indeed lunatic magnets and we need to do away with them. Every last public shooting since 1955, save one, has occurred in a gun-free zone.

The most important factor we as gun owners have in our favor is that our position is not fueled by emotions, but by logic and reason.

So take a deep breath, be calm and stand steadfast. Turn off the mainstream media and savor life. Get involved and become more active in the never-ending battle we have to protect our Constitutional rights. And don’t forget to live life.

John Boch is president of Guns Save Life

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36 COMMENTS

    • Counting to 10000, cutting back on coffee, well sortta…

      Is it just me or does anyone else feel like they got kicked in the gut since last Friday. I wake up and night and check on my kids sleeping.. Hug them tighter than I did before…
      It doesn’t change my views on guns, but let me tell you it made me love my kids and remember bad things can happen to even those that don’t deserve it.

  2. Soothing words. Now look at the “inter-agency” group Biden is going to lead. Listen to Feinstein tell us that she has been working on this legislation for over a year. Watch the media drone on about public opinion finally moving towards gun control. Done? OK, please explain again why I shouldn’t feel like a sheep discussing the dinner menu with two wolves…

  3. Amen!! I wish we could take 500 or a 1000 gun owners to Washington and present our side of the case, and our arguments based on common sense and logic to the Congress, Senate, President Obama and the Anti’s(don’t really care if we convince or convert all the Anti’s bit even one or two would help), and be allowed to argue for and present our case.
    I know it will probably never happen but it would be nice!!

    • If you want to do that, write a pro-gun senator or congressman. They may take you up on that offer. If they do, just remember to be calm, collected, and prudent so you don’t get discredited.

      • Unfortunately I have written al my local reps and state level politicians, both Dem and Repub and all I have gotten back are form letters saying thank you for your interest in this matter and we will contact you as soon as possible. Phone calls pretty much same.
        Still trying tho!!
        The Million Man March needs To be done again but this time as the Millions of Men and Women Gun Owners March!!

    • Yeah, just don’t bring your guns with you or it will be more a mass arrest than a mass protest, that is of course unless you have one of those rare carry permits in DC.

      • Yea I thought of that, and then started seeing death threats on my Facebook page and on twitter and a couple of other social media sites and thought to myself “if we did do this we would all need some type of protection from the Anti’s, don’t really trust the police to do it in Washington DC so would be up to us. Question is how to do it legally??!!
        If we carried illegally then we are no better than the ones we are fighting and just adds fuel to their fires against us!!!

  4. Nicely written, Dan. I agree.

    Getting a law – especially a controversial law (and you can bet your ass this one is controversial) is not easy even when your party controls both houses of Congress. Obama’s Health Care law took months. Unless there’s another mass shooting in January or February, the liklihood of Obama/Feinstein’s “Wish list” bill getting through the house is extremely low.

    Oh, they’ll demagogue. They’ll rant and rave, they’ll cal out their supporters to call gun owners every name in the book (though it’s not like we haven’t heard those before.) They’ll jump up and down and hold their breath until they turn blue in the face. We’ll see some more defections from the pro-gun side (though they’re more likely to be reps who were squishy on the 2nd amendment in the first place) but in the end, enough congressional reps who come from pro-gun districts will stand fast simply because it’s in their selfish political interest to do so.

    The result will either be a bill that dies in committee or a tepid, watered down bill with the most minimal of restrictions (as I said before, mail order ammo is probably the most vulnerable because it is subject to executive regulation. I would say the same about importation of firearms and ammo – Clinton stopped importation of ammo and firearms from China and Obama could certainly do the same with regards to ammo or certain firearms without Congress’s permission.)

    So yes, we all need to take a deep breath. I know 12/21 is just around the corner but it’s not the end of the world, even for gun owners. Not even close.

    • Sorry for the incorrect salutation, John, I thought Dan Zimmerman wrote this. In any case, good article.

  5. Your facts and logic are sound, but we certainly don’t control the narrative. The 5th column MSM controls the narrative and this fits with their plans.

    As logical and soothing it is to read your take on this, you are preaching to the choir. I hope we can seize the narrative, but as we’ve just seen on Nov. 6th, the other side controls the narrative and they decide what facts are even part of the conversation.

  7. Let me also add that you are going to see LOTS of stories in the coming weeks about how there is a “major shift in public opinion” or that “thousands of gun owners are now changing their minds about gun control” or that “the Newtown shooting has changed the gun control landscape forever” and similar such pablum.

    You have to remember that the news media is not neutral. They have an agenda, and they have no qualms about using their soapbox to push it. They want you, the gun owner, to believe that “all is lost” and that the best you can hope for is a compromise that lets you keep some of your guns.

    But it’s bullshit. If anything, gun owning Americans will dig in their heels and demand that their representatives hold firm. Not all will, but I believe enough of them will to weather this political storm.

    Gun banners have a very bad habit of overplaying their hand. It’s as if they only have one speed, maximum. Every time something like this happens they jump up on their podiums and start screaming for the most invasive laws they can think of. When they don’t get what they want, they resort to name calling and bloody shirt waving until the majority of the people just get tired of it.

    • The anti crowd do have one thing going for them on this particular push: The support of an administration that 1) doesn’t respect constitutional limits on it’s authority (or at least is pushing those limits very hard), and 2) has so far almost completely gotten away with flaunting constitutional limits. I am not nearly as worried about what will come out of the legislative branch as what will go around it. One comfort is that recent supreme court decisions offer us a great deal of protection, at least for now. Keep your fingers crossed that none of the reasonable justices step down in the next four years.

    • Even if the majority of people don’t value the second amendment any more because the Constitution was set up to protect the minority from the majority.

  8. All I can say is that we cannot be playing just defense. We need to go on offense as well, particularly with respect to idiotic gun free zones. We must meet outrage with outrage, because low information people respond to passion more than to facts and logic.

    It’s time for the NRA and others to start telling human stories with human faces about how guns save lives. Stats can’t compete with pictures of little murdered kids. We need faces of people who were SAVED by guns, even the evil black rifle. The examples are out there. We need to get them out into the public consciousness.

    • I agree whole heartedly. We must get some emotion going on our side as well. Three outstanding examples off the top of my head are the 18 year old mother and her infant in rural Oklahoma in January 2012, the concealed carry license holder who was raped on a Nevada university campus just 100 yards of so from the campus police station (she went to class without her pistol because the university was a “gun free zone” — this is an example of a person that would have been armed otherwise), and Suzanna Hupp of the Luby’s cafe massacre (she would have been armed as well but left her handgun in her car according to Texas law at the time).

  9. You hit that one out of the park. /// One thought & hopefully a lucid one, how about treating bullet proof vests like silencers. We know these cowards don’t want to die in pain & they to a person are all using them. An unregistered silencer is a 20 year max sentence I believe, a vest could be too. Lawfull mentally balanced people can still own them. Build a vest? Go to jail for 20 years. Dry up the vest supply, get CC holders in schools & I think we can put a real dent in this, Randy

    • Bulletproof vests are a non-issue. Most of what the media reports as bulletproof are simply load-bearing or tactical vests. They always lead with bulletproof when reporting, until (and sometimes after) they find out differently.

  10. I called around this morning, and discovered that it is too late to engage in panic buying. So now I’m going to pretend that I am one of the cooler heads that didn’t panic. 😉

    • I did my panic buying weeks ago so will pretend the same… Except for this Daniel Defense upper I happened to find yesterday and liberated from the LGS…

  11. I’m with you guys 120%. People are blind to the facts when it comes to this. I was working the other day like normal trying to make a living and my job makes me travel in all areas and I was robbed and held at gunpoint and feared for my life I would have had my gun with me but I feared the Chicago police and their strict laws but why is it fair that the criminals have guns but us law biding citizens can’t? Those criminals were never caught so we still have guns on the street and they still live another to Robb and kill.. Wake up people

  12. May I suggest a counter-strike. Constitutional rights (e.g., 1st) and non-rights (e.g., healthcare) are supported by the government through taxation and public funding. It is time the 2A receives the same and equal support. I suggest that every able-bodied and -minded citizen receive financial support for the purchase of a handgun, shotgun, rifle *and* a “common-sense” quantity of ammunition. This will support every citizens’ right to hunt and to self-defense which most of the anti-gunners have already conceded.

    Put the anti-gunners in defense mode and watch their brains implode. Let them argue that recognized rights should not be supported by the public when other rights, real and imaginary, are supported.

  14. Funny, the headline of this post is exactly what I said to myself as I backed off from educating fools on Facebook last night. It helped me stop short of posting a few things I KNOW I would have regretted this morning.

  19. I don’t understand why so many people rush out to buy guns and ammo following these mass shootings. They do nothing but feed the image of gun owners being paranoid. It’s not like any sort of ban will happen any time soon.

    • You know what, I hope you are right. Who knows, if we engage the media, lobby our representatives, and, frankly, engage with our fellow citizens, we may still prevail on the federal level. And, as has been mentioned, the 2A has been bolstered by a line of cases as of late. In addition, its not 1990. Many, many, people own modern sporting rifles, from AR clones to AK variants and everything with a trigger in between. So, there is that at least.

      Unfortunately, none of the above applies to me, because I live in CT. On Monday, I had the pleasure of hearing Governor Malloy in a press conference, just a few days after the Sandy Hook incident, and hours after the first two children were laid to rest, go from being barely comprehensible with grief to a barely coherent rage, claiming now was time right time to ban assault weapons.

      I do not doubt his grief, but to take advantage of the situation to push his gun control agenda was also disgusting and classless; and it made me feel even worse than I already did over the senseless slaughter, and the equally senseless response from the media and our political leaders. I believe in the 2A for the myriad reasons that have been articulated by RF and TTAG commentators here in the past days, but, god help me, I could feel it all just slipping away as I sat there by the radio listening to Malloy.

      Now, on the national level maybe emotions will cool, the NRA will go to work, and we’ll have a chance to get our views heard. However, the CT legislature meets the second week of January. Now, I live in a state where the legislature and Malloy eliminated the death penalty, despite 65% of the state was in favor of it, because they wanted to. The democrats control the legislature, the judicial branch, and the executive branch, and they keep getting voted in despite the fact that: 1) we are a billion of dollars in debt; 2) just took out a line of credit to the tune of $550 million to meet obligations; 3) companies have to be bribed to stay ; and 4) taxes keep rising. Let’s see, what else? Oh yeah, while Malloy denies it, we’re bankrupt and taxes will need to be raised again.

      The worst part? It’s not like no one knows about it. We have several articulate local radio hosts (including a former governor) who broadcast on a 50 thousand watt flamethrower of an am radio station. They elucidate the issues CT faces every single day, and its all just a turn of the dial away, but NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING, changes. But, much like mental illness, most who reside in this benighted and pestilent crap hole of this state choose to ignore it. Anyway, a little off topic, but, really, what are the odds I’ll be able to buy, say, a 20 round mag and/or semi-auto mag fed rifle in CT in a few months? About the same chance, I’d wage, I would have of meeting a gun toting Israeli super model at the Mall.

      Anyway, I hope that illuminates the issue for you, at least as far as it concerns those of us here in CT. At the very least, you no know how I justified ordering a couple of 20 round SGM Saiga .223 mags today (30 rounders were sold out), despite being unemployed and broke, and risking the wrath of Mrs. TZ.

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