Here come the Rambos...

Well judging by a few of the e-mails that I got today, and comments that I declined to publish, I'd say that the angry militia fringe has once again found this humble blog and taken offense with something that I posted. (Real buncha First Amendment swells, ain't they? NOT!)

The uproar this time appears centered around my post suggesting that people who flock to the Civilian Marksmanship Program just to glom onto cheap ammo and guns to squirrel away are somehow less deserving of it than the actual program participants and match shooters that it was intended for. Of course, like the potheads from Boulder that I offended last week, almost all of the feedback I'm getting contains obscenity or a personal insult of some kind, along with the usual label of "elitist" and dire predictions about how, when the time comes and the government turns on us all, I'll probably be siding with the government. I'm also being called a traitor for not standing with other gun owners.

Excuse me? I hate to tell my critics, but you guys are the lunatic fringe and you're out of step with the rest of us--the vast majority of Americans who own guns for hunting, self-defense, competition or basic recreational shooting. Most of us don't buy into your conspiracy theories about how "the government"--every single elected official and bureaucrat--is all secretly planning a big swoop in which they suspend the Constitution, take all the guns away from everyone, and do all sorts of other bad things. In case you haven't noticed, this government--made up of regular people just like anyone else here--can't agree on even the most mundane matters on any given day. How could they possibly all conspire to topple America as we know it AND keep it a secret when they can't stop anything else even remotely confidential from leaking out? Wake up, whacks...take the tinfoil hats off and calm down.

Now what's truly pathetic is that in a nation where so many people claim to care about the Right to Keep and Bear Arms--and I'm one of those--more than 95% of gun owners don't even bother belonging to the National Rifle Association--the only group that actually stands up for gun rights and the shooting sports and which has the power to make a difference. I belong to the NRA for that reason. I'm betting that few if any of the screamers calling me names do. Nah. They're too busy typing in internet forums telling each other how the NRA is a bunch of sell-outs because it doesn't win every single fight. And they can't give the NRA $35.00 because they need to buy another gun or more ammo, not to shoot it but to hide it for the day when the black helicopters land and take the rest of their stuff. They worry so much about losing their gun rights but they won't do a damned thing today to help those of us who are working to prevent it from happening.

So if my criticism comes from people like that, I say "good". These aren't my allies or anyone that I want around me, good times or bad. I value the company of most of America's shooting community because by and large, gun owners are among the most responsible and law-abiding demographic in our society and most are just good, solid American folks. But these crazies that infest the gun forums on the internet? The ones who don't want to help the rest of us pull the wagon but instead sit around planning for the day when they can rise up and take the wagon under the guise of fighting some sort of domestic tyranny? Screw 'em. They're just a small bunch of bitter no-life-having sad sacks who talk the talk but don't do much else. I'm much happier to be a member of the sane majority of the pro-gun community, the one made up of everyday people, of police officers, veterans, hunters, target shooters, recreational plinkers and people serious about their self-defense. And it's those people--the ones that do belong to the NRA and/or the CMP--that are keeping America free every day while the Walter Mitty types fantasize about a day when they can stand up and fight the rest of us and actually be taken seriously for once in their pathetic lives.

It just galls me to think that the regular decent people who shoot the Garand matches and youth shooting events, either at the Nationals or at the local gun clubs, will face a day when the cheap ammunition for training runs out because it all got bought up by a bunch of squirrels who just hoarded it all up in their basements or sold it at the gun shows for a profit.

Funny...You'd think with two wars going on right now, all those internet big-talkers who want to fight someone so bad would have enlisted years ago.

Oh that's right. The military has weight limits and psychological examinations. Oh well...


Edited to add: At least one critic has pointed out that I own a Browning Model 1919A4 .30 machine gun. I do and I'm rather proud of it, hence it's appearance on this blog from time to time. However they also assert that my gripe is that I want to buy CMP ammo for the Browning, and nothing could be farther from the truth.
That beautiful gun subsists on the large stocks of foreign surplus from places like Taiwan and Turkey, countries thoughtful enough to put it on Browning links before eventually surplusing it off. I bought a lot of that when it was cheap...far cheaper than even CMP ammo. It also gets reloads, lots of reloads, fresh off my press. But it doesn't get any of that CMP ammo that I've purchased over the years. Nope. That stuff's for my Garands and Springfields, and they may shoot a little slower than the Browning but between practice and matches, they get out to the range a lot more than it does.