David Fellerath (courtesy washingtonpost.com)

“One morning in 2007, as she let the cat out before daybreak, the bride, Helen Hill, faced the scenario that gun nuts dream about. As she stepped outside early one morning, she came face-to-face with an intruder. She had time only to scream a warning to her husband and child. Then she was dead. Gun advocates will say that if she’d owned a gun, she would have survived. But in truth, the only way she possibly could have survived was to live in her own home with a gun on her hip, like a character in a Mad Max movie. To conjure such an image of this particular woman is obscene. Only a suspicious and hostile person would choose to live this way.” –  David Fellerath in I own guns. But I hate the NRA [via washingtonpost,com].

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101 COMMENTS

  1. “Suspicious and hostile”?
    Sorry. More like keeping the Boy Scouts motto in mind….
    “Be Prepared”.

    • I don’t think we are the ones who are “suspicious and hostile”. David clearly has the hostile box checked on his own emotional immaturity. Likely has the suspicious box checked too since his writing implies a deep distrust of anyone that thinks differently from him.

      In one word: PROJECTION!

        • A gun owner who refers to other gun owners as “gun nuts”. He’s clearly not one of us.

        • R man,

          Well I think just about everyone on TTAG is an ammosexual gun nut. I know I am. I trust and respect American gun nuts a whole lot more than angry, intolerant liberal progressive cowards.

          Also, I’m not sure what an ammosexual is.

        • 81 –

          Ammosexuals never shoot blanks.

          And ‘lil Emerson is your proof of that…

          🙂

        • “One of us”. You mean insane ammosexual gun freaks whose politics are in line with most white supremacists? In that case the gentleman should be fortunate that he’s not like some of you oddballs.

          • It seems your politics align with those of the world’s deadliest tyrants. How does that tarnish your image?
            You really should get some help with your dyslexia, Dog.

      • I read this guys article as an example of extreme disquiet. This is one very unhappy dude. Liberalism ain’t working for him, he likes guns, likes hunting, and is trying to reconcile that reality with a political ideology that is increasingly in conflict with his lifestyle. This is a guy who really hates the fact that we’re right and he’s not. Not sorry for him at all.

    • Call me “suspicious and hostile” then. I’m not going to get blindsided like she did however.

    • I often dream if getting agressive cancer and dying when I pay my health and life insurance premiums.

      If you prepare for bad things it’s because you long for them happen. Everyone knows that, what are you, new?

      • that’s why ants and squirrels and bees and birds and everything in nature prepares for winter , because they want it to come , everybody knows that . DUH

  4. I understand the need for vigilance, but can we have a positive QoTD sometime? The last dozen or so have been ad hominem attacks from anti-gun articles. It kinda sucks to have every day’s first post quoted from people who hate us.

    • Yesterday’s features one of our own.

      But, I like to see the hate first thing in the morning. Reminds me that we are still in a fight.

      • Maybe Robert can put together a “FUDD identity kit” which would help those who’ve grown weary of the fight to get their minds right. Perhaps it would alleviate some of the whining.

  5. The only way this woman would have survived was if she had been carrying a gun in the home.

    But, carrying a gun in the home is stupid and paranoid.

    This is what happens when you start with an ideology and then gather fact. Instead of the other way around.

    • Spot on observation.

      That’s the way our institutes of higher learning condition students to write papers. I’ve assisted many students on their writing projects and overwhelmingly they tend to write drafts of what they want to say and then go looking for citations that fit their preconceptions. Sometimes they must hammer and twist the resource material to seemingly support the thesis. That’s intellectually dishonest and lazy. Eventually, it becomes part of their everyday thought process to the point that it serves as internal validation. It’s the psychological equivalent of a self-citation.

    • Let’s be realistic though. In an ambush the first guy buys it. Want to survive an ambush? Be the second guy … or the fifth.

  6. I don’t dream or wish that on anyone, especially me. I pray I never have to face that. But, since I home carry, I will take care of business if need be.

  7. WAPO, and any media really, will go to any length to find someone that will spew hate and vile garbage on millions of gun people.

    Someone should do a test, get ahold of the Washington post tell them you are a gun owner but you hate the NRA. See how long it takes to get a guest article..

  8. Sigh. Look closely at this frauds beard, you can see the ghost of the douchey goatee he was wearing last week. He describes himself as “freelance writer, hunter, and community organizer.” Because those things go together (rolleyes). He all but admits he took up hunting (at 37) to gain “street cred” in this debate. I think I will shave my actually manly beard down to a handlebar moustachio and get into the railroad business. MY TOPHAT WILL MAKE ME AN EXPERT!!!

    • Damn, I don’t hunt, so I guess my credibility is shot. Decades of firearms experience all for naught.

        • No thanks. Calling yourself a douche won’t make me like you any better. You are a pretty poor gynecologist, apparently. Everyone knows a douche goes in the other cavity.

  9. “…the only way she possibly could have survived was to live in her own home with a gun on her hip… [o]nly a suspicious and hostile person would choose to live this way.”

    I think I would rather be seen as suspicious and hostile than dead. The argument, or whatever it is you’d call it, that he is making here makes no sense.

  10. Ridiculous assertion. Nothing in life is certain. Even if she had a gun on her hip, she may not have gotten the bad guy before he got her. Does that mean she shouldn’t have a gun for self defense? Absolutely not! It’s baffling why anti gunners think that one case of a gun owner failing to defend themselves proves that nobody can ever defend themselves successfully. But of course logic has never been their strong suit.

    • Meanwhile, there are reams of documented successful DGUs, and the likes of Watts, Bloomberg, and Geraldo Rivera adamantly claim… literally… that it “NEVER HAPPENS.”

    • My thought as well. A gun would not necessarily have saved her. But although the article does not delve into the the question, one apparently saved her family.

  11. the message here seems to be, “i would rather be dead than live in a world where i need to carry a gun all the time.”

    ok.

    so, go be dead; you have my permission.

  12. I think what he is doing is called “othering”, it is often a precursor to violence.

  13. Next weekend, my sleepy little town is going to be overrun with tourists from Chicago who go around rattling doorknobs hoping one will open (last year, they timed it with the fireworks). It’s the reason I started my 870 project. Am I being paranoid? A little. But this is a thing that happens. I’m not going to rely on them being drunk and lazy every year. I’m not going to Biden through the back door, I’m not going to hunt anyone down, and I hope I never have to pull the trigger at all, but I’m not going to get caught with my pants down.

  14. 642 on me as I eat breakfast. Mad Max? I’ll take an Interceptor. Suspicious? Cautious. Hostile? Only when my kids are slow to get dressed and ready for breakfast. I wonder if the author of this wears a seat belt or owns a fire extinguisher.

  15. From the Washinton Post article/propaganda piece

    “By David Fellerath June 29
    David Fellerath is a freelance writer, hunter and community organizer.”

    I bet little Davy operates operationaly.

    • Mr. Fellerath loses all credibility in his claim of being a real hunter and gun guy when he describes himself as a “community organizer.” That’s nothing but code for totalitarian government statist, collectivist, and victicrat.

  16. first: home carry
    Second: lights outside your door
    third: cats kill a stupid number of rodents, birds, and small reptiles for fun, if you want a cat fine have a house cat. I don’t want to have swarms of flies because your cats that i didn’t run over ate all the barn swallows and lizards.

    • You run over cats? Sounds like you are a bigger vermin than the ones the cats keep away from my house.
      Insects are easy to control.

      • He’s saying it’s easy to run over cats when people let them out of the house and they wander around the neighborhood unsupervised. If people did that with their dogs, there would probable be flattened dogs everywhere.

        • I have a cat, but its an indoor animal. I’m not for wantonly harming anything or anyone so no i don’t run over cats for sport.

  17. He BEGINS with the [to the haters, anyway] obvious conclusion that a decent woman carrying a gun at home would be “obscene,” rather than making any sane argument as to WHY it would be obscene. The antis never seem to get that the exception does not disprove the rule, and that not a soul on our side ever claims having a gun with you is any guarantee that the bad guy will never get the drop on you and shoot you first. It’s simply about putting the odds more in your favor than “helpless”. A gun MAY not work, but it’s a darn lot better than “at their mercy.” This just in from the late reporting precincts: Bad guys ain’t got none.

    • A friend asked why I 100% home carry, a few weeks back, and I responded “Why not?” Stopped him cold.

    • He did not say obscene in general, but obscene for this artsy-fartsy filmmaking (and obviously ) liberal woman.

  18. I went to WaPo to see the original article and read the comments…but I really couldn’t read the comments because every few seconds another one scrolled in. I wasn’t surprised at the number of comments (over 3500 when I checked), but I WAS surprised at number of the pro-2A comments! Seems like there are other people like me, who intentionally state our pro-2A arguments even in the face of our opponent’s ignorance and stupidity.

  19. Carrying inside the home is not a crazy idea nor is it akin to Mad Max. if you carry inside the home it makes you more comfortable when you carry outside as well. It still may not have saved this woman but it has saved many people in similar situations. the anti-gun organizations use a lot of propaganda that causes people to hate the NRA, hate firearms, and believe that carrying a firearm or wanting to be protected is crazy.

  20. I’ll just leave this here, a post elsewhere yesterday from a friend of mine in Texas.

    The last two days we have had home invasion robbery attempts while the families were home. One in Odessa and one in Midland. Police don’t know if the same suspect is involved in both. Family minding their own business at home. Somebody kicks in the front door. In both cases the homeowners fired shots at the scumbag. In the one this afternoon in Midland the scumbag returned fire. This sort of crime is becoming increasingly common and not just here, either. This is why I am armed when awake inside my home.

  21. I think the point of armed self-defense is not that you’re somehow protected from all possible threats. Having a fire extinguisher doesn’t mean your house can’t burn down. Being armed means you have a chance. You can improve that chance at survival by making sure you have access to that protection at all times, improve it more by keeping your home well lit, improve it more by regular training, but even with all of that, bad people could find a way to surprise a well trained, well armed home defender. It can happen. But I’d rather exercise my natural right to self-defense than to never have that chance to begin with, and every person with a sense of personal accountability and a grain of realism is going to subscribe to the same philosophy.

  24. “the scenario that gun nuts dream about”

    Sure, man. And I wear a seat belt because I dream about getting T-boned at the next intersection.

    Mind-boggling.

  25. Gun control cannot fail, it can only BE failed, eh? I can’t help but stand in awe of the mental gymnastics the peasant disarmament lobby puts itself through in order to claim, every time an unarmed person gets killed, that having a gun wouldn’t have helped, and every time they’re massacred en masse, that an armed defender would have made things worse. All of this is done to distract from the fact that, at the end of the day, what you have is a bunch of unarmed people who were killed.

  26. I just read every single comment looking for someone that took offense to the term “gun nuts”. No one did, so I will. This guy has issues. One day that selfie in the woods will be all over the news after he is wanted for a gun crime. Selfies are stupid anywhere but why does it seem that crazies always have these “loner in the woods” pictures?

  27. Saw this “gun owner” yesterday on yahoo-what do we call so-called hunters who hate the NRA? Also didn’t want to register to comment with so many anti idiot comments. As we get a July 4th ISIS murder and mayhem alert-how hard would it be for scum who WANT to die during firework? Stay vigilant my friends-we live in an evil world…

  28. I carry at home. I do not expect to find a psychopath in the driveway but copperheads are pretty common. Moreover, when you wake a copperhead from his nap he is usually pissed off, striking at my pets and myself. I think you are an idiot if you are not prepared for a real threat that occurs every couple years. What do I know? I am not a critical thinker. I just keep tools on hand to deal with common problems.

  29. Apparently the purpose of David’s article was to illustrate his capacity for allowing emotion to reign at the expense of reason, and his capabilities in the realm of logical fallacy. I don’t see the need to be overtly hostile unless provocation makes it necessary, but you are an unmitigated fool if you’re not suspicious of everyone coming to your door that you do not know. David chooses to ignore or dismiss the everyday object lessons provided by our non-linear universe. I think David is fearful, and doesn’t know why.

  30. So we have finally found the almost mythical guy that we have all spoken about that “Feels” that it’s better for a woman to be found raped and dead in the alley (home) than to have her standing over the dead rapist with a holstered gun on her hip explaining to the police that she was in fear for her life and would like to speak to a lawyer.

    After all, she would be paranoid to have a gun for such an eventuality.

    • Or, keep them outdoors and let them hunt. God gave them fur and claws for a reason.

    • The cat was the problem because it wasn’t a dog. If it had been a dog, it would have alerted her to the presence of an intruder outside the door, and she never would have opened it. Didn’t even have to be a big dog–just a noisy one. (I have a couple of them, and although I swear I will never have another yapper like them, they are useful early warning devices.)

      Which is another aspect of this story I don’t understand. Sure I home carry, most of the time, but I NEVER open the door before I look outside first, armed or not. Why didn’t this woman? One infers that intruder was standing right there, and she should have seen him.

  32. Murtaugh: What do you do, sleep with that thing under your pillow?
    Riggs: I would if I slept.

    Eagle Scout: Be Prepared.

  34. This liberal white man is a great example of the current progressives gun owner. Gun for him and not for you. Even the example he uses are perverted. Three legal immigrants are threaten over time by a thug, who shoots them latter. A legal immigrant can legally buy a gun for self defense. But he does not support honest immigrants with firearms?

    I think he is a racist. Is seems he does not want dark skinned people to have guns. I will assume he also does not want innocent black people in Chicago to have a gun to defend the children with. A mother with a inexpensive Hi Point rifle did quite well against four home invaders with guns in Detroit. The soft bigotry of low expectations fits him very well.

    David Fellerath is white racist progressive pig who would deny freedom to dark skinned people be cause it makes him feel comfortable. They don’t need guns only his white racist superior @ss hole does.

  35. I’m puzzled as to why this guy is freaked out about home carry. Shouldn’t it be a person’s right to choose?
    As far as the NRA robot call about the UN Arms Trade Treaty, the treaty’s acceptance by our president is a real possibility.

    • Which by its terms applies only to international trade of arms to war zones, not to domestic gun policy, as a member of the State Department so cogently pointed out to UN members pressing for a federal change in gun policy. And further, whether Obama signs it or not matters not at all, since it does not become law unless ratified by the Senate. As you know or should know, the Senate long ago declared that it would do no such thing.

  37. Two things: As noted above, he’s just another damned Fudd. #2: interestingly, he didn’t say the bride was killed with a gunshot, which leads me to believe she was not. If she had been, he would have made that argument: If we could keep guns out of the hands of folks like the killer, she wouldn’t have needed a gun. So again, as he notes, her only chance would have been to have her gun with her, and “controlling” guns wouldn’t have helped her, in either case. So his conclusion: let’s “control” guns. Once again–they really are that stupid. Not to mention hateful.

    • The purpose of this particular segue was not to demonstrate that gun control is good, but instead that the NRA is full of paranoid OFWGs. In fact, that is the primary thrust of the article–that the NRA does not actually represent the majority of gun owners and that its lobbying power is overrated. It is not a gun control article per se, it is an anti-NRA article, because of course (so he says without any evidence) most gun owners support some form of gun control. Which he then admits wouldn’t have worked anyway, but it is still a good thing because the majority supports it.
      Yeah yeah I know, an illogical hate screed.

  38. “that gun nuts dream about”
    Only in your dreams chode (exception given to the “wish a mofo would guy”), most of us arent doing this for the opposite reason, but I imagine this lady’s husband would have preferred if she was armed that morning since we cant ask her personally.

    “Most gun owners are not members of the NRA. Letting the organization pretend otherwise hurts the millions of gun owners who support some form of gun control.”
    I was treated to this gem of a tagline after clicking on the picture above.
    So this guy in the picture, is he the WaPo version of that douche nozzle Mike “the gun guy”?

  40. I’d file this under avoiding stupid people doing stupid things in stupid places. Especially, don’t be that stupid person, yourself.

    This was a well educated hippy dippy couple. They met at Harvard, he’s a doctor. They moved to New Orleans to open a clinic for the poor, where they lived with their pot bellied pig, handing out vegetarian hot dogs to friends and strangers in a crime ridden neighborhood.

    After Katrina flooded everything of theirs, they spent the next year in exile in South Carolina. The husband had a change of bleeding heart and saw it as a blessing on disguise, as an opportunity to get away from the violent crime and desperation that is New Orleans. The wife convinced him to move back, so she could make a a movie about a deceased New Orleans dressmaker.

    The night of the invasion, she was fighting the intruder and shouting for the husband to call 911. Instead, the husband picked up their child and ran to hide in the bathroom. She was murdered with a gunshot to the neck. The husband, who at one point was considered a suspect, was shot in the hand. The husband has since remarried and relocated to California. There are no active leads in the case.

    • “handing out vegetarian hot dogs to friends and strangers in a crime ridden neighborhood.”
      Vegan hotdogs have been known to kill by themselves 😉

      Well you answered my question about the husband, had to do some google fu after reading it, apparently he got shot 2-3 times or so it says. Either way, pretty sad situation, particularly that the child witnessed it, but these seem like folks who would have abhorred armed self defense.

    • Thanks for the background. Guess I was wrong about her being shot. OTOH, guess Davy’s version of events is something of a lie anyway, if she had time to tussle with the intruder and call hubby to call 911, maybe hubby had time to retrieve a gun if they had had one. Which maybe explains why Davy wasn’t too anxious to go into the actual details of her death.

      • I didn’t catch how old the child was, so I’m not sure what all he saw or might remember. I’ve read multiple accountsvof this, today and contemporaneously, and they seem to vary a little. Some say she was attacked outside, perhaps by whomever had just committed a burglary several doors down. Others say the the attacker surprised her inside her bedroom.

        Any version may be shaded by the husband’s interests in recounting events. So I can’t be sure what exactly happened here. She wouldn’t be any more dead had she been armed, though she may well have survived had she been. I like those odds.

  41. They call jackwagons like that Fudds. Country club gun owners and others of that type. Always have a loaded firearm in your home. Of course, if there are children around, ensure that it is secure on your person, or in a place that is quickly accessible but secure like a biometric safe. Guns in this context are like fire extinguishers, you don’t have it because you expect a fire, but just in case there is one.

  42. Dog advocates will say that if she’d owned a large dog, she would have survived.
    “One morning in 2007, as she let Collie-Shepherd dog out before daybreak, the bride, Helen Hill, faced the scenario that dog nuts dream about. As she stepped outside early one morning, she came face-to-face with an intruder which was mauled by the Collie Shepherd.

  43. He’s a hunter, eh? I wonder if anyone has ever asked him why he thinks he needs to own a bolt-action sniper rifle, a weapon of war, like what was used in Iraq to shoot people from great distances (because I saw it happen in the movies). Why would he want to own a weapon capable of shooting students from the length of a football field? What is he paranoid of that he needs to own something like that? When the 2nd amendment was written, hunters only used bows and muskets. Those should be good enough.

    Ok. I know that’s bull. But it’s easily the natural progression that a gun control advocates could make in the future. Just as they do with semi-auto rifles today. Something for the hunters who are lethargic when it comes to gun-control who thinks it’s no big deal. Rather, it’s only a matter of time, if the gun-control side gets it’s way.

  44. “Helen Hill, faced the scenario that gun nuts dream about.”

    So writes the slimy bastard.

  45. “millions of gun owners who support some form of gun control.”?

    An obvious exaggerated lie.

    Please tell me which biased poll helped you arrive at that number.

    Most Gun-owners know that the US constitution 2nd Amendment says that the People’s right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

    It does not say the States right to keep and bear arms.

    It does not say the militia’s right to keep and bear arms.

    It says the People’s right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

    Infringing includes any

    licensing schemes,
    waiting periods, and
    mandatory background checks

    ARE ALL UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

    this includes the fact that the Federal Postal Regulations says that you can’t even have a firearm in your vehicle while in a Post Office parking lot.

    If a state wants to implement them, that may be another issue.

    I am for the restoration of State sovereignty and letting the
    people of each state decide.

    To be honest, I don’t know if the “incorporation” of the 2nd Amendment as defined by 14th Amendment applies to State laws and constitutions in this matter.

    Furthermore, the NRA did at one time support Background Checks.

    If they support Background Checks today in any way, I can say that the NRA does not
    speak for me.

    • I’m not so sure that we need the 14th to use the 2nd to prohibit state restrictions

      The Constitution is the highest law of the land, the law that governs how other laws are made and how our governing bodies are structured, function, and interract.

      It is also a contract between member states. So every state in the union has agreed that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” in order to be included in the union in the first place. The first explicitly states it’s restriction applies to congress, but we’ve never needed the 14th for the 4th amendment to apply to state or city law enforcement. We’ve never needed the 14th to prevent self incrimination by an individual being investigated, accused, or tried by a state or city government. The same goes for the 6th, 7th, and 8th. The 3d so far has only been seen as relevent at the federal level, however it’s prohibition is against “soldiers” and would ostensibly apply to any law enforcement officer who’s role has been changed to fit the definition of a soldier and it too is one of the terms agreed to by each state in order to be a member of the union.

      • The 1st should not apply to the states because of the stipulation applying it to Congress specifically, but for the 2nd and others the supremacy clause eliminates any need for incorporation silliness.

  46. “I chose to trudge into the woods before dawn, often in freezing temperatures, to keep a silent vigil in the trees as the morning light begins to filter through the branches. I rarely see a deer. Such a contemplative, frequently fruitless endeavor isn’t for everyone, but it suits me.“

    The same could be said of his writing.

  47. I think what he’s trying to convey, albeit poorly, is that it’s ‘obscene’ that we live in a society that often requires a young woman to carry a gun on their person in their home. Problem is, this is the way human society has been since our time began. It’s this way every place on Earth were humans live in proximity to one another. The idea that there is a rampant problem of people who legally own firearms running around killing people is a straw man argument they use to explain away this truth. It’s the only way they can make a cogent argument for more restrictions. If they admit that the majority of gun crimes are committed by people who are already barred from owning firearms, then their push for more “common sense’ laws infringing ownership has no teeth.

  48. Suspicious and hostile? Sure, wanna make something of it? I’m feeling rather attacked at the moment…

  50. No gun nut would ever claim that having a gun is a guarantee, it is and can only be one more last resort. But the stats show that gun ownership is a net positive for society.

  52. I dream of using my gun at the range.

    I dread the possibility of ever using it in defense.

  53. We will all be in disbelief when Dianna Kennedy and the Supremes destroy the meaning of the second Amendment and begin the confiscation of our self defense tools . One bite at a time . I think when that happens I’ll change into a girl , marry another girl , get her pregnant , wait eight and a half months and ask her the get an abortion . change back to a boy , go on welfare for reasons of insanity , smoke some medical pot and then some recreational pot , burn a flag and go to bed . Good night America .

    • I forgot to say good night Utah and the whole NSA team , we sure love you guys here in WV . You boys and girls see the new toys I just got , Cool stuff huh ? Come on down and get em while they’re hot . I’ll show you how they work before I get all buzzed up on my medical weed and watery eyed from my flag burning and while I’m still trying to figure out if I’m a pretty girl on the town or a big tuff athlete you might be able to convince me that they are dangerous and they might attack me when I open the safe . I’m so friggen confused . Is this dear Abby ?

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