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Canadian media hatchet job
From the Montreal Gazette comes this piece, about a group of licensed competitive shooters (obviously a suspicious if not bloodthirsty lot!):
"The shooting rampage at Dawson College last month refocused the gun-control debate."....
"You'd never know it to look at them. In regular life, the Sunday shooters are just normal people with normal jobs....." [Zombies. They're all around you, but you can't tell it]
"Though professing a message of vigilance and safety, they collect gun paraphernalia, troll the Internet looking for gun websites and wear T-shirts logo'd with the provocative names of gun manufacturers and organizations. One of them is called Canadian GunNutz, and its emblem is a beaver holding an assault rifle."
"....they feel part of a misunderstood fraternity." (No ____?)
"The targets themselves are of two types: special octagonal cardboard targets about the size of a human torso, and thick steel targets called poppers, shaped in the rough size of a child..."
"But to an outsider, the match does seem to mimic something all too real: the modus operandi of a madman on a murder spree."
After all, weren't gunmen like Kimveer Gill just as brazen and agile as these shooters aim to be in competition? Didn't Gill fire his semi-automatics while out in the open and on the move? And didn't he aim to hit his targets?"
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Look out Canada! This is the same approach that was taken in the UK to "stamp out the gun culture."
What I would like to know is If these reporters think shooters are sooo dangerious why are they trying to piss us off?
Think about it. They only report like this on SAFE groups that they KNOW will not do anything to them.
'the modus operandi of a madman on a murder spree' Sorry but the madman don't practice like USPSA/IPSC people do. They are WAY to slow. Most of us old farts would beat them.
And again you really want to piss us off?
My letter to the Montreal Gazette, which of course will never see print...
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Guns: A question of control
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 19:40:25 -0400
From: Bruce Mills
To: Editor - Montreal Gazette [email protected], [email protected]
I know that the Montreal Gazette is virulently anti-gun, so I suppose gun owners should be grateful for at least making the attempt to appear to be "balanced" with your article "Guns: A question of control". And yet, I'm not.
Heinrich's usage of "amateurs" and "hobbyists" throughout are only as thinly veiled insults; it isn't much of a stretch to mentally add in the word "rank" before amateur, while hobbyist is dismissive, not too far away from "geek" or "nerd". I guess we should be thankful he never resorted to using the term "gun lover".
Personally, I don't see anything "provocative" about wearing gun product logos, any more than sporting team, sportswear, or beer brand logos. I suppose that is all in the mind of the the beholder. And comparing the sizes of the targets to a human torso, or the size of a child, and likening the movements of the participants in this sport to the actions of the Dawson College shooter only show Heinrich's complete lack of understanding of responsible gun owners.
But the most galling and egregious part of his article is when he asks a law abiding gun owner, who can only be considered a "boy scout" and model citizen, what he would do if the police pulled him over while he had his guns in the car - as if he was expected to pull out his "gat" and start blasting away like Jimmy Cagney, yelling "you'll never take me alive, copper!".
If this article is supposed to present a "balance" to the others in this series, it any wonder that gun owners complain about anti-gun bias in the media?
Yep, us USPSA/IPSC guys are all a bunch of mass murderer wanabees. You should see the guys that I usually squad with ..... caucasian loners with a chip on the shoulder ... er except for the black fellow who happens to be a successful attorney .... er except for the aircraft maintenance worker .... er except for me, an Hispanic executive with a telecom company ... come to think of it, the only caucasian loner is the cop. He's a shifty one. I've seen him sneak up a on targets (seriously - funniest thing I've ever seen).