The New York Times has just published an interesting story about Dick Metcalf, who was banished from all things pro-gun for writing an editorial that suggested that we should handle gun issues with reason. At least he must have known that he was likely to create a firestorm with such comments, so maybe it’s OK with him that it turned out that way.
But the case of Jerry Tsai who was editor and the principle writer for a new very slick gun lifestyle magazine titled Recoil, is in many ways more interesting. Tsai wrote several very long detailed articles praising and glorifying extreme weaponry in issue #4 that came out before Newtown in August 2012. Buried in a nine page article celebrating a German submachine gun designed to make assault rifles look like baby toys and sold only to law enforcement he said:
Like we mentioned before, the MP7A1 is unavailable to civilians and for good reason. We all know that’s technology no civvies should ever get to lay their hands on. This is a purpose-built weapon with no sporting applications to speak of. It is made to put down scumbags, and that’s it.
Tsai must have been shocked at the explosive reaction. His apology had no effect, the magazine almost folded. For an example of the reaction see the ACR Forum thread calling him a f***ing idiot. If you don’t know how second amendment zealots think you won’t know what the worst part of the quote is. It’s that if you think that it matters whether a weapon has sporting applications then you’ve already sold out the second amendment. They think “not be infringed” means no rules at all; I think that “well regulated militia” means that the guns stay in the militia armory unless the militia commander orders them to come out.
It’s hard to find Issue #4 of Recoil. It’s down from Recoil’s website. It has an interesting article also by Jerry Tsai on the Kel-Tec KSG tactical shotgun. It has double magazine tubes for twice the amount of ammunition and the barrel runs all the way back into the stock allowing it to only be 26.1 inches long and still not be a federally regulated “sawed off” shotgun. It’s the shotgun version of the extra aggressive assault pistol. The shotgun that George Zimmerman recently got back from the police is a Kel-Tec KSG. Jerry begins the article: “It’s not a far stretch to say that Kel-Tec’s newest offering came straight off the set of one of the Alien movies or even the upcoming remake of RoboCop.”
So the community of hard core gun defenders will brook no compromise. It’s not possible to work out a reasonable policy with them. In the long run that means they will have no input to the solution that evolves; but the long run may be very long.