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On January 5th, I posted about the firing of Dick Metcalf for writing an article in Guns & Ammo suggesting that it is time for some reasonable limits on guns.  For expressing his opinion as a respected journalist, he lost his job.  Even though the firing of a respected journalist is worrisome, the fact that a magazine would abdicate their journalistic responsibility and refuse to take a stand for fair discourse is really scary.  How many other magazines are letting their advertisers have the final say over their content?  Now, the NY Times has published letters to the editor responding to the Metcalf story.  I have copied the first one, but there are others you can read by clicking on the link.  

To the Editor:

Re “Banished for Questioning the Gospel of Guns” (front page, Jan. 5):

I read Dick Metcalf’s column, “Let’s Talk Limits,” in Guns & Ammo magazine and found nothing to cause the extreme overreaction that has come his way.

A more constructive response would have been a well-reasoned rebuttal, but that’s the whole point here. What I find disturbing is that this is no longer a conversation between dissenting sides.

As a responsible gun owner, I have never seen so many of these activists claim that the government wants to take away their guns. Registration is not confiscation. Limiting certain types of guns to law enforcement and military use is common sense. Gun restrictions have been part of American law since the 1800s.

This tyranny of the gun is being driven by a vocal few, aided by publications that abdicate their journalistic responsibility to weapons manufacturers and refuse to take a stand for fear of loss of revenue.

The issue is not the gun but the owner. Even the most rabid gun enthusiast has to have nagging doubts about a gun in the hands of an unstable person. Clearly, the conversation about sensible gun laws will resume only when gun manufacturers take the lead and support the proper use and responsible ownership of their products.

MARTIN J. PERRY
Massapequa, N.Y., Jan. 6, 2014

More letters

This is the Country We Live In, Folks

I realize that InterMedia Outdoors, the company that publishes Guns & Ammo and co-produced Dick Metcalf's TV show, can censor anything they wish.  They have the right to determine what appears in their magazine.  But, in this case, it appears that the editors are not the ones determining the content for their readers, it is the gun lobby.  It's hard to believe that this is the country we live in.  A country espousing democracy, free speech, divergent opinions, and the right to express one's own opinion.  Dick Metcalf was simply trying to "work across the aisle" as we want our Congress members to do, and try to come to some sort of rational compromise on the issue of guns in America.  For that, he got fired.   

"The byline of Dick Metcalf, one of the country’s pre-eminent gun journalists, has gone missing. It has been removed from Guns & Ammo magazine, where his widely-read column once ran on the back page. He no longer stars on a popular television show about firearms. Gun companies have stopped flying him around the world and sending him the latest weapons to review.

In late October, Mr. Metcalf wrote a column that the magazine titled “Let’s Talk Limits,” which debated gun laws. “The fact is,” wrote Mr. Metcalf, who has taught history at Cornell and Yale, “all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.”

In the column that led to his dismissal, he said that too many gun owners believed that the constitution prohibits any regulation of firearms. He noted that all rights are regulated, like freedom of speech. “You cannot falsely and deliberately shout, ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater,” he wrote.

“The question is, when does regulation become infringement?” he continued. Mr. Metcalf ended the column arguing that requiring 16 hours of training to qualify for a concealed carry license was not an infringement."

Read entire article

What Country Am I Living In?

Above image was taken from Google Images, but appeared in the December, 2013 issue of Guns & Ammo.

Hard to know how many people read about this in the paper, or heard about it on the news, but I was appalled when I read this story.  I understand that the magazine Guns & Ammo is owned by InterMedia Outdoors and they have control over what's published in their publications.  But firing employees like Dick Metcalf and Jim Bequette because of suggesting that there may be some common ground for gun advocates and gun control proponents is unconscionable.  Is this the old Russia where no dissident speech can be tolerated?

Dick Metcalf is an example to all Americans.  Stand up for what you believe.  Put your job on the line when you are faced with an issue so important that, literally, lives are at stake.  Hey!  Maybe elect Dick Metcalf to Congress!

Here's Joe Nocera's blog post about the Guns & Ammo-gate.

OP-ED COLUMNIST

When a Gun Advocate Dissents

By JOE NOCERA

Published: November 8, 2013 in NY Times

It’s not as if Dick Metcalf was some kind of gun control fanatic.

On the contrary, he’s a gun guy through and through, such an unyielding defender of the Second Amendment that last year he led the charge to push through a law giving the residents of Pike County, Ill., where he lives, the right to carry concealed guns without a permit. He called the practice “constitutional carry” rather than “concealed carry.”

In the early 1980s, he and a handful of friends started a successful gun club, called the Pike Adams Sportsmen’s Alliance, which is located on Metcalf’s farm in Barry, Ill. A few years later, he played an important role in lobbying for the federal Firearm Owners Protection Act, which loosened many of the gun restrictions that had become law after the assassination of Robert Kennedy. A friend of his told me that Metcalf had even written some of the language in the bill.

Mostly, though, Metcalf, 67, was known as a writer for magazines owned by InterMedia Outdoors, a publisher of gun periodicals that include the industry bible, Guns & Ammo. He did videos on subjects like “Guns for Family Home Defense” and wrote articles with headlines like“Smith & Wesson’s 12 Most Important Guns.”

It is perfectly understandable, then, that the gun world might be a little taken aback by Metcalf’s opinion piece in the December issue of Guns & Ammo calling for some modest gun regulation. “I firmly believe that all U.S. citizens have a right to keep and bear arms,” he wrote, “but I do not believe that they have a right to use them irresponsibly.” The article went on to call for mandatory training for gun owners. That’s all. Such limited regulation, he argued, did not constitute an infringement on anyone’s constitutional rights.

When people like me read an article like that, it seems momentarily possible that gun advocates and gun control advocates might be able to find some common ground. Much in the way that many gun control activists have come to accept the legitimacy of the Second Amendment — something that hasn’t always been the case — here was a man on the other side of the divide saying that some sensible regulation didn’t necessarily lead down a “slippery slope” to confiscation. If we are ever to have a sane gun policy, we desperately need people from both camps to meet somewhere in the middle.

But when people like me see the reaction from gun advocates to Metcalf’s tame proposal, it all seems hopeless again. Robert Farago, who maintains a blog called The Truth About Guns, started the ball rolling by linking to — and denouncing — Metcalf’s “diatribe.” He went on to describe the article as a “bone-headed, uninformed, patently obvious misinterpretation of the Second Amendment.” Other bloggers piled on. On the Guns & Ammo Facebook page, subscribers demanded Metcalf’s head, even as they canceled their subscriptions.

Finally, according to a blog post Metcalf wrote, two major gun manufacturers told InterMedia Outdoors that they would pull all their advertising if something wasn’t done. That’s all it took. Within 24 hours, Metcalf was permanently banned from the company’s publications. And the longtime editor of Guns & Ammo, Jim Bequette, who was planning to retire at the end of the year, was pushed out as well.

Before departing, however, Bequette wrote a groveling apology, which ran on the magazine’s website. He described his decision to publish Metcalf’s article as “a mistake” and took pains to remind readers that Guns & Ammo had always been the hardest of hard-liners. “It is no accident that when others in the gun culture counseled compromise in the past, hard-core thinkers...found a place and a voice in these pages,” he wrote. With that, capitulation was complete.

If you want to understand why so few gun owners are willing to stand up to the National Rifle Association, even though the majority disagree with the N.R.A.’s most extreme positions, here was a vivid example. Straying from the party line leads to vilification and condemnation that would give anybody pause.

My guess is that Dick Metcalf always knew what he was in for — all the more reason writing his article took guts. In the aftermath, he was the only one who could still hold his head up high. On a blog called The Outdoor Wire, he wrote a lengthy response to his critics. He didn’t back down one iota. Describing himself as “disappointed” at the reaction to his article, he added, “If a respected editor can be forced to resign and a controversial writer’s voice be shut down by a one-sided social-media and Internet outcry, virtually overnight, simply because they dared to open a discussion or ask questions about a politically sensitive issue...then I fear for the future of our industry, and for our Cause.”

Maybe there’s hope yet.