Comments

1. On March 18, 2018 at 9:26 pm, Joe Huffman said:

   I’m open to suggestions. What is the best path out of this mess?

2. On March 18, 2018 at 9:45 pm, Herschel Smith said:

   Thanks Joe. America has lost its moral foundations, the church is weak, and TV, Hollywood, sports and decadence have replaced hard work, calculus, physics, worship and moral constitution. A half century of teaching moral relativism has taken its toll.

   https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/11/how-amorality-thrives-on-college-campuses/

   I’m not certain there is any solution, per se, not without much more trouble. I do not believe that acquiescence in any form will accomplish anything good. Even David French, who supposedly believes that the second amendment is there for amelioration of tyranny, says this.

   https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/nra-gun-violence-restraining-order-support-good-move/

   Read carefully. In order to save the second amendment, he wants to sacrifice some of it, or compromise. Compromise is precisely what’s gotten us where we are.

   The only realistic chance we have now of any short term political solution is a stronger and uncompromising presence, where absolutely no new gun law is our motto. Long term, I see no solution without an awakening and/or civil war.

3. On March 18, 2018 at 9:56 pm, Ned said:

   Big surprise, Google is apparently in on this social engineering as well. http://voxday.blogspot.com/2018/03/big-social-reeducation.html

4. On March 18, 2018 at 11:08 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

   John Robb’s excellent article leaves untouched the central question at the heart of the new social media effort to delegitimize firearm ownership and possession, namely who are the individuals driving it?

   The powers-that-be have obviously gone to great lengths to remain in the shadows, but a massive effort of this kind doesn’t just spring into being overnight; someone has to fund it, someone has to generate all of the content and then get it posted, and so on. Who are these people? Not the underlings, but the top dogs, the ones issuing the orders and writing the checks?

   Those who have planned this have also gone to great lengths to make the movement seem spontaneous and organic, but anyone with even a hint of discernment knows that is not at all the case.

   There’s been a great deal of planning, coordinated effort and behind the scenes work to make this happen. Again, the fact that this new social network phenomenon has come into being – and the manner in which it did so – suggests some strategies for countering it. Those strategies should begin with their primary effort as the unmasking of the powerful movers-and-shakers behind the movement.

   The deep-state and its allies know a thing or two about plausible deniability, but it should be possible to clear away the smoke and mirrors and get at what’s behind them. These cockroaches hate the light; all the more reason to shine it upon them. Light really is the best disinfectant.

5. On March 18, 2018 at 11:18 pm, Herschel Smith said:

   @Georgiaboy61,

   I have no doubt that in some fashion it’s funded, but it’s so viral that this may also involve hive and swarm behavior, a subject I’ve touched on before, but swarm theory is complicated and needs to be discussed further. Maybe I’ll do just that.

6. On March 18, 2018 at 11:47 pm, Angus Mcthag said:

   “Gun owners all need to “come out of the closet” and make it clear we are normal people. We do not have blood on our hands from the school shootings”

   The reply will be, “Get back in your closet, Faggot!”

   Then what?

   The LGBT community, when they came out and had pride parades, had the support of the people with all the media channels.

   We gun owners are the new faggots and thus the scapegoated other.

   The other has no legitimate voice. WHAT NOW?

7. On March 19, 2018 at 1:11 am, Sebastian said:

   It’s not about placating the controllers… you’ll never convince them. It’s about driving culture, and not playing into the worst caricatures our political enemies promote about us.

   Thanks Joe. America has lost its moral foundations, the church is weak, and TV, Hollywood, sports and decadence have replaced hard work, calculus, physics, worship and moral constitution. A half century of teaching moral relativism has taken its toll.

   I actually agree with you, but your solution is to double down on failure. You want to lecture from on high. That is your style. It pervades everything you write. I’m confused, you see. I am delusional. This is the kind of thing you always write. You are full of yourself. This is your conceit, and I shall leave you with it.

8. On March 19, 2018 at 1:27 am, Sebastian said:

   There’s been a great deal of planning, coordinated effort and behind the scenes work to make this happen. Again, the fact that this new social network phenomenon has come into being – and the manner in which it did so – suggests some strategies for countering it. Those strategies should begin with their primary effort as the unmasking of the powerful movers-and-shakers behind the movement.

   Anyone with five figures of funding and some decent social media creds can strike up a viral campaign if they have some idea of what they are doing. There is no “behind the scenes” here. This is as transparent as can be. Mike Bloomberg’s money can hire some smart people who have a lot of savvy on how to run these kinds of campaigns. Obama’s people, who are all still out there, aren’t pikers at it either. There have always been people out there who are receptive to the gun control message, but who haven’t really committed to it. What you’re seeing is very effective targeting of those people (which social media allows you to do without having to spend significant money) to bring them from passive allies to active ones. Most of my social media “friends” (who sometimes are real friends) who have flipped hard have kids the same age as those killed in Parkland. Social media allows you to target those people very specifically, and they were very successfully targeted from what I’ve seen.

   The right is playing catch-up in this world. Our big advantage as pro-gun people is we have a lot more organic grassroots energy, if it can be channeled and focused to effect.

9. On March 19, 2018 at 5:20 am, Pat Hines said:

   From WRSA, comments on this very subject. I like it, my wife liked it.

   “Aesop | March 17, 2018 at 15:17 |

   “Yeah, because what you really want to do in a society is make 150M gun owners with 600M-1B guns and 1T rounds of ammo for them ostracized pariahs, with nothing to lose, no job, no life, and no prospects, and sit there on top of the shit heap with the other monkeys as Lords of the Flies, with nothing to protect you but an entitled smirk.

   Because that will turn out so well for you and the other shitlords.

   And on Day Two, the population of the US is 150M people smaller, employment is 100%, we have to import white English-speaking people from the oppressed lands in the Anglosphere like the UK, Oz, and SAfrica to fill the positions, but every state has a 98% red-state majority, and driver’s licenses come with a CCW and a new gun, at age 16.

   Help, help, I’m being oppressed.

   Keep on telling gun owners they’re terrorists, and see what happens when they decide if they’re going to be hanged as a thief, they may as well steal.”

10. On March 19, 2018 at 9:11 am, Fred said:

    While I’m not anxious for war, 100 mil gun owners with nothing to lose will make it go rather quickly so that’s a plus. And since the head republican is a gun controller and his national and state apparatus is falling into line, the number of viable targets in that regard just doubled, so that’s handy. The .mil isn’t yet full on SJW retarded and there aren’t enough muz here (yet) so the left still doesn’t have it’s army. Of course the police will enforce the law but like the flood of Katrina, a flood of millions of gun owners suggesting they take the week off will probably be sufficient. They’re going to make this too easy.

    What we need is millions of armed men and women and their children to take to the streets in protest over gun control. Don’t try to counter them in there battle space, take the battle space we know we can win, armed formations (or even gaggles). Go on offense. If the NRA (Sebastian, are you listening?) was really grass roots there would be a million FL gun owners at the governors mansion right now demanded the heinous new confiscate first, due process later law be rescinded. Maybe this approach could avert war, or at least get it started in our lifetime.

    Additionally, whomever could organize a mass armed nationwide protest would break the monopoly of the national for profit ‘gun rights’ groups.

    But what do I know?

    Ps. The exchanges say they are bringing back STANDARD CAPACITY magazines. Apparently they had stopped selling some or all ammo too. My nephew was none too happy that he had to buy tax mark up ammo off base as well, none to happy indeed.

11. On March 19, 2018 at 11:51 am, Herschel Smith said:

    @Sebastian,

    “I actually agree with you, but your solution is to double down on failure. You want to lecture from on high. That is your style. It pervades everything you write. I’m confused, you see. I am delusional. This is the kind of thing you always write. You are full of yourself. This is your conceit, and I shall leave you with it.”

    Well, you can think that way if you want. I’m smarter than you. I’m conceited. I want to lecture from on high. Etc., etc. Or, you can be a thinking man and see through the fog of your own reaction to something deeper.

    You could actually have thought about this and come to a different conclusion. You didn’t read the Washington Times article I linked, did you? Did you? You just reacted.

    You could actually have tried to burrow to the root differences between us. You see, you believe that it makes sense to appeal to the great middle. A viral campaign can be struck up at literally nothing. Make the masses feel better about us, compromise where it helps, and everything will be better. Make enough gun owners out there and then there will be more people who understand us.

    It’s tantalizing. I see the appeal. The problem is that, the way I see it, that “great middle” doesn’t exist. You’re chasing a phantom, a ghost. Of those who do not understand you or I, those folks would watch on TV in relative horror, or amusement, or befuddlement, at a SWAT team in 2022 come to confiscate our weapons, us perish because we wouldn’t give them up, and it would dominate the local news for one two minute segment for one night.

    Then that “great middle” would shrug and ask themselves, “Who am I to judge?” The state decreed, all hail the power of the state because they keep my children safe for me when I go to soccer games.

    What you don’t get is that the way people see guns is part and parcel of the way they see everything else, an integral part of their world and life view. It’s not a value judgment separated from all other value judgments in life.

    That cultural war has been in the main lost half a century or more ago. Again, read the Washington Times article. It doesn’t surprise me one bit. It may surprise you though. If we had a practice of sacrificing all men named “Sebastian” before the harvest to ensure riches, most people in America would now say, “Who are we to judge?”

    You preach to that great middle, or at least to our own to encourage them to appeal to that great middle. I preach to the choir in order to assure them, encourage them, communicate my own thoughts, and bolster them to take the actions we need to take. Some of those actions might involve making other gun owners. Others might involve politics.

    But eventually, some of those actions might involve decisions of life and death – our own deaths.

    So again, you can react the way you did, or you can look deeper and be a thinking man and try to understand the differences between us. You don’t have to agree with me, nor I you. But what you could have done is attempt to understand.

    What you in fact did was name calling. And to charge me with “doubling down on failure” is laughable in the superlative. So when has anyone – from the NRA to any gun owner – actually taken my view and acted on it?

    I cannot go two weeks within the gun owning community without having to address another venomous, snarling post about the stupidity of open carriers, which brings up yet another example of the differences I see.

    http://www.captainsjournal.com/2018/02/04/opposition-to-open-carry-is-about-shaming-gun-owners/

    I response to shaming gun owners, I say the opposite. Someone who appeals to that great middle might say something like “don’t do it if it makes people feel uncomfortable.”

    Making people “comfortable” with us is partly what got us here.

12. On March 19, 2018 at 12:58 pm, Bill Robbins said:

    This post about weaponized social networks is thoughtful, intellectually engaging, and stimulates discussion of possible responses and solutions.

    Here’s an idea: We need to re-invent the NRA. The NRA has become part of the “captured” legislative and regulatory framework. The NRA thrives WITHIN the established legislative/regulatory system. Social networks thrive OUTSIDE the legislative/regulatory system. The upper echelons of the NRA are beholden to the status quo, that is to say, the existing public framework for discussion, debate and lawmaking about gun control. The NRA needs to be re-invented as a dynamic, constantly evolving, rapidly and organically re-configuring social network. Over the years, the incumbent NRA leadership has done fine work, but the nature of the battle space has changed and NRA needs a new, younger, socially adept leadership.

    The NRA membership also needs to look itself in the mirror. A lot of us come the world before the internet, before online social networks, and before the gun-control battlespace became an all-encompassing insurgency, rather than a traditional battlefield. The NRA is still waging a conventional war of massed ground troops, when what the NRA really needs is to re-configure itself as a vast swarm of special operators.

    Anyone else out there want to take-up this idea with me? I think it can be done, in a way that is entirely respectful of the traditional NRA leadership and the traditional membership. Times change. The battlespace changes. We need to adapt.

13. On March 19, 2018 at 1:26 pm, Herschel Smith said:

    @Sebastian,

    I had failed to mention another response I wanted to make. You said … “Anyone with five figures of funding and some decent social media creds can strike up a viral campaign.” Let me be as clear, determined and absolute as I can be.

    *NO YOU CAN’T*

    Get yourself some money and see if you can get politicians to kowtow and students to walk out for a campaign that goes like this: “It’s fun to kill puppies.”

    Let me know how that goes.

    That’s one thing I’ve tried to convince my readers – this has little to nothing to do with Bloomberg, Soros or even Rothschild money. This goes far beyond that.

    So I had promised not to do what I’m about to do, but I’ll break my promise. It’s in vogue for generals and colonels and Lt. Col’s who want to pad their CV with scholarly papers about “Swarm Theory” in insurgency / COIN. They publish a number of places like the SWJ or indy publications.

    To a man, they try to look scholarly, and they end up looking stupid. They think that because something happens (e.g., an explosion) and insurgents show up to shoot en mass and then scatter when Opfor shows up, that must be a swarm.

    Um … no.

    They think that because they don’t raise bees or understand swarm theory. If a bee senses that as they successively build higher and higher the hive has become to small, they’ll send out scouts, who will try to locate new hive locations. Those bees will come back and perform “waggle dances” to communicate the results of their scouting. If the answer is positive, bees will TOGETHER go to the new location along with him. That’s a swarm. The only thing a bee keeper can do to stop this is make the hive bigger and bigger as the colony grows.

    Or, if one bee senses danger, he can communicate this to other bees who will act similarly to him. This all happens through chemicals. It’s not random, and it doesn’t just happen for no reason.

    It happens because the bees are programmed to behave in certain ways under certain circumstances. It’s part of their makeup.

    When Dr. Greg Bahnsen debated Gordon Stein on “Does God Exist,” Stein asked him for evidence. Bahnsen responded, “I have evidence (he gave some), but I don’t trot that out outside of a context in which it makes sense.” Or in other words, Bahnsen debated Stein’s world and life view, all of it, for context. Stein’s entire interpretation of life was a part of his world view.

    So it is with the students and the soccer moms. John Dewey treated students as a Tabula Rasa, and his project has been successful. It isn’t that secularist moral relativism is everywhere. It literally holds the day. There is nothing taught except that. Students are responding the way they are because that’s who they are now.

    It isn’t just about a campaign on a social network. It’s a SIGNAL that the students UNDERSTAND. Social campaigns about killing puppies won’t work no matter how much money is invested in it. A social campaign for increased state power is a signal they understand because they’ve been taught to seek cradle to grave security from the state.

    @Bill,

    Yes.

14. On March 19, 2018 at 3:41 pm, Bill Robbins said:

    @Herschel:

    What your wrote about the origins of the current anti-gun social network activity is true, and is characteristic of so-called insurgencies and swarming activity. An insurgency arises because the “signal” for a call-to-action (or call to swarm) has been encoded in the DNA, whether that be the literal biological DNA, or the figurative cultural DNA. Today’s kids (from elementary school through high school) and young adults (college, fairly recent graduate) have been programmed at the cultural level, not only through the educational system, but also through mass media and entertainment, to respond to signal words, such as “social justice” and “gun control.”

    The words “gun control” bring-out the insurgency/swarm behavior, displayed either through public demonstrations or virtually, through social networks. Conversely, the words “gun control” are also a “call to arms” (figuratively speaking; let’s keep it that way) for people favorably disposed to gun rights, as encoded in America’s cultural DNA–notably, Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and, specifically, the 2nd Amendment. Well, guess what? America’s cultural DNA is now a lot more diverse than it used to be. Thus, today’s Americans respond to the signal of “gun control” differently.

    So…what to do abou the NRA? Evolve! If not through natural selection (traditional American values), than through more modern methods, including online social networking, alternative media channels, and targeted, rapid-response activism (that’s where the notion of spec ops comes into play). The incumbent NRA leadership is built to fight the gun-control equivalent of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The NRA is still geared to the lae 20th-Century communications equivalent of heavy firepower: Direct mail campaigns, TV advertisements and fundraisers. The problem is, these tactics do not work against communications insurgencies! Today, the NRA needs to be fast-moving, with an ability to direct overwhelming firepower where it’s needed–in the moment. The NRA also needs forces that are dispersed and rapidly deployable. The NRA needs more online channels. More sub-networks. More fire teams. The NRA also needs more overwatch and better coordination. The NRA cannot allow NRA forces in-the-field to be out-maneuvred, ambushed, out-gunned or sabotaged. The NRA needs to control the location and the tempo of the fight.

    Have you seen NRA’s 2018 Board of Directors Ballot? Where are the young people? Where are the social networking trailblazers and the internet geeks? Where are the early-career up-and-comers? The new-tech entrepreneurs? The cutting-edge cultural figures? Nowhere to be found!

    Who else is pushing for change, so that we can survive? Who are the effective bloggers? The “counter-establishment” gun-rights activists? The “in the know” web leaders and media people? The helpful (i.e. admired, not self-interested) public figures and celebrities who can represent the NRA to the next generation?

    How can these people get together as problem-solvers, force-multipliers, organizers, and doers to respond to the NRA’s most pressing challenges? This is a real-time issue. We need more action, now. If it means getting on a plane, heck, I will get on a plane. I’m just one guy, but, there are a lot of us out there who believe they have some insight into what’s going on out there, and are motivated to effect positive change. I will note that positive change need not over-turn or disrespect the traditions that have always been the NRA’s strenghts.

15. On March 19, 2018 at 3:56 pm, Fred said:

    The NRA membership are like a slow-witted child playing with a broken toy. All the grown-ups see that the toy doesn’t work. All the way from ‘Take the guns first’ Trump and Lapierre down to Darnell in the projects who knows better than to fill out a 4473, everybody knows that you are being played little a fiddle. You’ve been had.

16. On March 19, 2018 at 5:41 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

    @ Hershel, pardon the digression, but what you are describing is what biologists call stigmergic behavior.

    Stigmergy may be defined as:

    “Ant paths built from pheromone traces. Stigmergy is a consensus social network mechanism of indirect coordination, through the environment, between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent.”

    For a long time, biologists were stumped by how ants, which have tiny brains, could act in such a coordinated, specialized, highly-evolved manner, until it finally occurred to them that the ant colony itself is the organism – specifically, the “super organism,” whereas the individual ants are its constituent parts.

    Individual ants, via chemical messengers, coordinate their actions, react the stimuli in the environment such as food or threats, signal one another and so on. The network formed by ants functions not unlike a highly-distributed neural network or nervous system. with individual ants acting like individual neurons or other highly-specialized cells.

    Swarming behavior, flocking behavior and similar phenomena are all the rage now, since it is believed that such distributed intelligence systems represent the future of warfare, in particular where UAVs and other autonomous or partially-autonomous systems (whether air, land or sea-based) are concerned.

    If the subject interests you, consider reading the novel “Kill Decision” by Daniel Saurez. It is not only a highly-entertaining high-tech thriller in the mold of the best works of the late Michael Crichton, but an astute survey of the present-day state of these convergent technologies – and a well-informed speculation about the near-term future and how it might unfold in light of them.

    Without getting into the details, these technologies, when they mature completely in the coming years, will fundamentally transform the conduct of warfare in ways that are paradigm-changing.

    Indeed, the future is already here in many respects. Consumer drones are already available at sporting goods stores; how long do you think it will take some kid in his basement or garage to repurpose it for mischievous – or even malevolent – ends? And if tech that sophisticated is available to the average Joe or Jane Sixpack, one can only imagine what the boys down at DARPA have developed.

17. On March 19, 2018 at 5:49 pm, Mack said:

    Interesting how Kroger has capitulated to the Hoplophobic Mob Rule hysteria.

    Years ago, I started describing ‘Assault Weapons’ as “Porno-Guns” because that really describes what’s happening.

    The Progressives covet the power of becoming the new Moral Majority and are using social media as a force-multiplier.

    Even the term ‘guns’ is misleading; misdirection even.

    The object of their ire is Arms, meaning WEAPONS.

    Unless ‘Weapons’ owners start using that term only, the tactical advantage of misdirection will continue.

18. On March 19, 2018 at 8:04 pm, Doug said:

    The horrible conclusion is that they want us GONE.

    To defend ourselves from this we may well have to kill them – LOTS of them.

    Are we capable of such mass killing – to defend ourselves?

    Or will we go quietly, screaming into the great abyss?

19. On March 19, 2018 at 9:40 pm, Herschel Smith said:

    @Bill @Georgiaboy,

    Hmm … [Herschel looks over his glasses with suspicion] … you guys act like you’ve thought about this a bit.

    Say, you weren’t with me as readers when I covered this sort of thing when I discussed COIN and argued with folks at SWJ, were you?

20. On March 19, 2018 at 11:35 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

    Re: “The horrible conclusion is that they want us GONE. To defend ourselves from this we may well have to kill them – LOTS of them. Are we capable of such mass killing – to defend ourselves? Or will we go quietly, screaming into the great abyss?”

    Your horrified conclusion is quite correct: down through history, would-be tyrants and tyrannical governments have always sought to disarm their subject populations first, before carrying out their plans of mass murder, liquidation, revolution, whatever they may be. Kenneth Royce, known to his readers as “Boston” of “Boston’s Gun Bible,” notes that “gun-control laws” are more-accurately termed “victim disarmament laws,” for their is their actual intention – to disarm their intended victims.

21. On March 20, 2018 at 9:27 am, Herschel Smith said:

    @Bill,

    “What your wrote about the origins of the current anti-gun social network activity is true, and is characteristic of so-called insurgencies and swarming activity. An insurgency arises because the “signal” for a call-to-action (or call to swarm) has been encoded in the DNA, whether that be the literal biological DNA, or the figurative cultural DNA. Today’s kids (from elementary school through high school) and young adults (college, fairly recent graduate) have been programmed at the cultural level, not only through the educational system, but also through mass media and entertainment, to respond to signal words, such as “social justice” and “gun control.”

    Which is why they didn’t appeal to middle aged white men, or even soccer moms married to middle aged white men.

    The “SIGNALS” went out to their “workers” and “soldiers,” the children whom they control via the public school system. They appealed to those who understood the signals, not to those who would be puzzled by it.

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