Esquire:

I was sitting in a casual seafood restaurant on the Eastern Shore of Virginia not long ago. It is a place well known for the quality of their crab and inshore fish. It was early on a quiet Sunday morning. The brunch hour approached and, more importantly, we were hungry. We were passing the Delmarva Peninsula at the time, an area I know well from my youth. My wife sat opposite me across a plain varnished pinewood table and my baby daughter sat in a high-seat next to me. Three tables of this roughly sixty-table restaurant were filled.

As we ate, looking over the beautiful waters at the Island House Restaurant in Wachapreague, I noticed over my wife’s shoulder the large man sitting in the table next to ours. It is not all that often that I notice people significantly larger than I am, but this guy qualified enough so that one could not help but look when he got up a few feet away. Going I know not where, I also noticed something else, the obvious presence of a concealed weapon at his hip, nominally, loosely “concealed” beneath his oversized T-shirt.

Really? A gun, at Sunday Brunch? Are you seriously that afraid of the 75-year-old farming couple, the only other people in the restaurant, who probably raised the daughter who babysat you 30 years ago? Or is it the middle-class transient family of three, with the baby, us, who frighten you? I mean, really, there were eight people in that restaurant at the time.

Then, over the next hour, as the 30 or-so retirees and perhaps 20 more obviously in for a post-Church-service special Sunday Brunch folks came in, I came to realize how absolutely delusional the fellow must be. What kind of idiot carries a gun in a family restaurant for family brunch? Well, that would be one of the folks influenced by the NRA-approved “Molon Labe” movement.

There we go with the collectivist attitude again – “influenced by the NRA-approved “Molon Labe” movement.”  It’s what collectivists think, i.e., that the NRA is the big bad boy to whom we all listen, the reality being much different (it’s most times hard to convince patriots to continue payments to the NRA in light of their sellouts and failures to address important matters like I-594.  I know I think about that every year when I renew my membership).

But on to Bateman.  You can read the rest, but I wouldn’t recommend it.  We know that he was sitting an eatery, that he believes that a “dude” who was too fat was sitting near him, and apparently he was obsessed by this man’s presence.  Bateman projects how this man must feel (delusional, and later he calls the man “paranoid”).  Bateman never learned Roberts Rules of Order, which require addressing facts rather than state of mind.  Bateman does not know the state of mind of this man, who does and doesn’t agree with any NRA-approved “movement,” or whether this man has ever been paranoid.

Now let me talk about myself.  After all, Bateman does that very well.  I hate to conceal a firearm.  I consider it to be obnoxious in the superlative degree.  In fact, I hate to carry anything on my body.  I don’t wear jewelry of any kind (rings, necklaces, or even watches).  I don’t even like to have car keys in my pocket.  I consider it to be an intrusion.

Furthermore, the knuckles on my right hand are so swollen from arthritis that I wouldn’t be able to get a ring on my fingers if I wanted to.  I am thankful to the Lord that my swollen finger joints don’t hinder my shooting, writing, or keyboard operation (since I make my living usually at a desk or out in a plant).  I have found about the only two ways I can conceal a firearm without annoyance.

The first (and preferred) is ankle carry with a small-ish, light weight handgun, and the second is IWB of a small, light weight handgun.  I do not conceal carry large frame handguns.  I do open carry from time to time, sometimes large frame handguns.  I open carry because I find concealed carry annoying (or have we already covered that?).  I also really, really don’t like sweating my weapon, especially in the summer.

The only way I can open carry is with a rigger’s belt or tactical belt.  I really, really hate my weapon and holster sagging and banging around on my body.  But I’ve already talked about my annoyance with things on my body.  This leads me to my final point.  I don’t carry because I think it’s fun, or cool, or because I’m paranoid.  I would rather not carry a weapon.  In fact, I don’t even wear a watch (or have I already said that?).

I carry a weapon in spite of the way I feel, not because of it.  I carry a weapon because of things I believe about my duty to be able to protect myself and my family because we are created in God’s image and He demands that I do my best to preserve life.  It’s a discipline I have had to develop.  And I do mean, discipline.

And so now that I’ve reiterated this for the umpteenth time, and now that I’ve spent so much time on how I feel about things, are you bored with all of this?  I hope so.  I’m bored, and it’s me I’m talking about.  I mean, I’m really, really bored with this post.  I don’t even care how I feel any more.

So that’s the message, Bateman.  No one cares how you feel.  Just keep it to yourself until you get bored with yourself.  You will.  I do.  We all do.  If you want to be taken seriously, talk about what you believe, and why.  So for instance, if you were to assert something like, “it is impossible for anyone to be assaulted in America,” then we can debate that and offer up contrary evidence.  If you were to assert something like, “no one has ever successfully defended their family from assault,” then likewise we can have open and robust debate because that assertion has substance.  Or if you wish, you can talk about how we shouldn’t be allowed to be armed even though God expects us to protect and provide for our families.  And then we can debate it.

But if you want to continue to wax on about your feelings, we just can’t take you seriously.  And don’t call him dude.  He has a name.  Go up to him, tell him you think he’s fat rather than telling us.  Tell him you think he’s paranoid.  Remember his name.  At least it would show you have some guts.

Prior:

Robert Bateman tag

Esquire:

What is not working, as Secretary Hagel formulated it, is America’s gun culture. All of these mass shootings took place with privately owned weapons purchased without any sort of serious screening or taken from their rightful owners — a mother or a father, by theft or murder. In essence, you can be a complete and total nutcase and acquire a gun pretty easily …

here is where I think it is time to make my first realistic suggestion on this topic. I already tried polemics, and that got mostly nowhere. So what I put forward is a practical suggestion stemming from my time in the States last month.

Last month I was traveling, in part with my wife and daughter, and I began to notice something. There were a lot more concealed weapons there than I remember seeing before. Four times in the space of just a few days I noticed men carrying pistols under their shirts, in restaurants, stores, and even in a children’s play area of a shopping mall. This craze, which seems new to me because I have been serving overseas for so long, is taking place not just on the streets or in bars, but in family restaurants and places where we all shop. So that is a part of the solution.

What we need to do is make owning guns impractical for everyone. The simple solution for this is not a new law or judicial ruling. It is “voting” with our wallets.

I started to do it last week when I was in a nice seafood restaurant that had food that was so good I was thinking of writing it up and also telling my friends about the place. As an out-of-the-way joint, they could certainly use the free publicity, though they certainly pulled in their share of locals for a blustery Sunday morning. Then I saw the guns.

Nope, not going to do it, I decided on the spot. And I am also not going to bring my kids or my wife in there ever again until they decide that guns are not allowed in their restaurant. And that, friends, is the solution.

I’m not sure what Bateman means when he says “complete and total nutcase.”  Nutcases have had guns before, witness Bateman himself.  But as Bateman knows full well, he is being a prejudiced bigot by defining mental health issues as revolving around propensity to violence when so many mental health professionals know better and have said so.

But this isn’t the point that should have grabbed your attention.  Notice that he began with the killing at Fort Hood, and ended with advocating that people use their purchase power to keep guns away from restaurants.  But only law abiding people would honor a law which stipulates that they not carry in an establishment, and so Bateman has targeted people who would willingly not carry in order to punish law-breakers like the Fort Hood shooter.

Bateman’s gun control isn’t about stopping shootings or reduction of crime.  It’s about his collectivist political beliefs, and he knows it.  And just to top it off, he is a liar and knows it.  He doesn’t really want making the ownership of guns impractical for everyone.  He wants the state to have plenty of them.  He just wants it to be impractical for you and me.

Prior:

Response To Robert Bateman Concerning Guns

The Iraqis, Their Weapons And Gun Control

First in dealing with this subject, a bit of background is in order for my readers who were not around for my military coverage and commentary.  My son Daniel was in the 2/6 Marines and conducted a combat tour of Iraq in 2007 to Fallujah.  At this time, the foreign fighters were retreating from Ramadi due to robust Marine Corps (and other) operations there combined with the so-called tribal awakening.  Fallujah was a bad place, and the baddest of the fighters had ensconced themselves there.

The people were so aligned with the insurgents that upon the initial patrols by the Marine Corps, the Marines found themselves to be surrounded by the children of the city, carrying black balloons, the balloons being used to assist the insurgents to sight mortar fire.  As I said, it was a bad, bad place.  The people were willing to send their children out to assist the insurgents.  My son was a SAW gunner, and in addition to patrols and other city-wide operations, he shot insurgents crossing the Euphrates river attempting to enter Fallujah.

Robert Bateman isn’t limited to one idiotic article (indeed, he has written a multitude of them) – he has penned yet another one.

Way back in 2007, I personally invited Wayne LaPierre, the director of the National Rifle Association, to live in Baghdad. I had been there, less than 24 months earlier, and I thought LaPierre might appreciate the opportunity to live in a society which lived up to his standards. Surprisingly, he never took this offer up, nor did he ever visit the troops in Iraq, or Afghanistan for that matter, which is, well, normal for him. He likes his guns, but he is really not cool with being surrounded by them, like he would have been, had he ever visited our troops in Baghdad, or Helmand, or Kabul…or basically anywhere.

In Iraq, every single household (with a male that is) may have one assault rifle. This seems to be Mr. Wayne LaPierre’s ideal. And interestingly, we have a country (a couple, actually) where his vision exists. Iraq and Afghanistan.

This article isn’t really about Wayne LaPierre so much as it’s about Bateman’s false presuppositions.  So I talked with Daniel today and he gives me the following assessment.

Bateman is a dumb ass.  The insurgency in Fallujah ended because we locked down the city and made it to where the people had to deal with it or live in utter isolation from everyone else and with no means of transportation, with two ways into and out of the city.

Lt. Col. William F. Mullen (now Col. Mullen) was the unmitigated sovereign of the city.  Nothing happened without his approval.  The Iraqis may have had a right to automobiles too, but we took them away.  If Mullen had wanted to confiscate AK-47s from the folk we could have done that.  The chain of command in Baghdad left us alone, and we did what we wanted to do.

Every family had a fully functional, fully automatic AK-47.  It wasn’t a problem.  I was never shot at except by the insurgents, and mainly the foreign fighters – bad people from Syria, Egypt, Iran, blacks from Africa, and some fighters with slanted eyes from the Far East.  I looked in the face of every man I killed, and some of them had slanted eyes and were of Far Eastern descent.

We did confiscate some weapons caches, but only the ones hidden by the insurgents when the people gave us the intel.  The AK-47s were used by some of the people to fight the insurgents, but they weren’t used on us.  We were fighting the insurgents, and mainly foreign fighters.  We were not afraid of the AK-47s owned by the families.  The families helped us shut down the insurgency when we made it clear that they had to do that.

Now, it may be that this experience doesn’t apply to Baghdad, but that’s the point, isn’t it?  Guns are just machines, and can be used for good or ill.  Because Bateman cannot control people like he wishes (as the good social planner we wants to be, given that the Army has turned into a cadre of fruitcakes and social “scientists” – I use the word sarcastically), he wants to control their machines.

But this doesn’t work either.  The foreign fighters brought their own weapons with them.  The families would have been left utterly defenseless without their own AK-47s, which is the way Bateman wants us left.  Bateman wants us defenseless because that’s what the state wants.  The concern to them isn’t our own protection – it is the protection of the state from it’s people.

So that summarizes a brief conversation with my son.  Much more could be said, but I’ll leave it there.  Oh, and to Mr. Bateman, Daniel thinks you’re a dumb ass.  Or did I mention that already?

By way of preliminaries, I had promised to craft more detailed response to Mr. Bateman, but the context of the promise is this comment.

When my son Daniel was in the USMC (part of which was a combat tour) I followed the Small Wars Journal and associated writers so that I could monitor the silliness. It was an exercise in self serving navel gazing and pedantry. Bateman was among those who spent time on those pages writing worthless garbage for others to ingest. I’ve seen his stuff before.

Bateman wants very badly to be more handsome, younger, more important and smarter than he really is. And he wants people to pay attention. Thus, when he would write and it seemed that no one was paying attention, he would then seed it with something really, really outlandish and ridiculous so that people would pay attention to him.

He isn’t so much an ideologue as he is an attention hound who wants everyone to look at him even if you find him grotesque. Rather than a stooge, he is like a misbehaving child who throws tantrums in front of important people.

Rehearsing the subject which initially brought about this charge, Robert Bateman penned a piece in Esquire in which he bolstered his credentials as a collectivist.  Basing his diatribe on a recent shooting over a college football game, he outlines his plans for gun control.  Here are some excerpts from his commentary.

My entire adult life has been dedicated to the deliberate management of violence. There are no two ways around that fact. My job, at the end of the day, is about killing. I orchestrate violence.

I am not proud of that fact. Indeed, I am often torn-up by the realization that not only is this my job, but that I am really good at my job. But my profession is about directed violence on behalf of the nation. What is happening inside our country is random and disgusting, and living here in England I am at a complete loss as to how to explain this at all. In 2011 the number of gun deaths in the United States was 10.3 per 100,000 citizens. In 2010 that statistic in the UK was 0.25. And do not even try to tell me that the British are not as inclined to violence or that their culture is so different from ours that this difference makes sense. I can say nothing when my British officers ask me about these things, because it is the law.

But just so we are all clear on this, let me spell it out for the rest of you. During the American Civil War, a topic about which I know a little bit, we had a system of state militias. They formed the basis of the army that saved the United States. For most of the first year, and well into the second, many of the units raised by the states were created entirely or in part from militia units that predated the war. But even when partially “regulated,” militias are sloppy things.

Which is why, in 1903 Congress passed the Militia Act. Friends, if you have not read it I’ll just tell you: As of 1903, the “militia” has been known as the National Guard.

Bateman then turns attention to his proposals.

The only guns permitted will be the following:

a. Smoothbore or Rifled muzzle-loading blackpowder muskets. No 7-11 in history has ever been held up with one of these.

b. Double-barrel breech-loading shotguns. Hunting with these is valid.

c. Bolt-action rifles with a magazine capacity no greater than five rounds. Like I said, hunting is valid. But if you cannot bring down a defenseless deer in under five rounds, then you have no fking reason to be holding a killing tool in the first place.

2. We will pry your gun from your cold, dead, fingers. That is because I am willing to wait until you die, hopefully of natural causes. Guns, except for the three approved categories, cannot be inherited. When you die your weapons must be turned into the local police department, which will then destroy them. (Weapons of historical significance will be de-milled, but may be preserved.)

[ … ]

4. We will submit a new tax on ammunition. In the first two years it will be 400 percent of the current retail cost of that type of ammunition. (Exemptions for the ammo used by the approved weapons.) Thereafter it will increase by 20 percent per year.

You’ve seen enough to get the picture.  A number of technical responses may be offered to Bateman.  For example, Bob Owens has a takedown of the notion that well-regulated means under government control.  Directing his instruction at Bateman, David Codrea remarks:

As for who is protected by the Second Amendment, it’s the people, just like it says. Alexander Hamilton addressed “well regulated” in The Federalist No. 29, conceding “To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss…Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped…”

There are other responses across the web.  But mostly they are aimed at the content of Bateman’s commentary, which is good analysis technique, but there is more to understanding Mr. Bateman and why he wrote this diatribe.

Several years ago I frequented the pages of the Small Wars Journal.  I linked them often and was linked by editors.  Mostly what undergirded my advocacy was a concern over my son and his colleagues in the U.S. Marine Corps.  The 2/6 infantry was soon to deploy to Fallujah, and I took a great interest in studying how the Marines did things, where they were going, and in watching the progress of the Battalion.

It was a hard time and I spent many hours awake (while other men were asleep), waiting at my door in the dark for that Marine Corps officer and Chaplain (who never came).  It was also a rich time in some ways.  I had shot guns my whole life, but I had not purchased an AR-15 until then and Daniel taught me to shoot the way the Marines taught him to shoot, i.e., what some might call aggressive, plates-forward stance.  It came naturally to me.  Still, the hard and bitter times were far weightier than any good times from it.

During this misadventure, I was unfortunately introduced to Mr. Bateman on the pages of the Small Wars Journal blog.  I invite you to study his prose.  Don’t take my word for what I have said and am about to say.  Read until you simply cannot stand it any more.  He is a scholar, and warrior, and he is good at what he does, and he is great at what he does, and he laments the evil, and he advises and counsels the best, and everyone listens to him, and he knows virtually everything.  If you don’t believe me, just listen to him tell you that himself.

Bateman can only go so long without the attention he so richly deserves, though.  When things get a bit quiet and he wants to shore up his credentials once again, he starts fights with men of notoriety so that they will respond and give him the press he’s after.  The fight between him and Victor Davis Hanson (see here, here, and here) eventually bored Hanson, it appears, and anyway Bateman was highly over-matched.

Bateman goes into a fury over fairly well established facts like the idea that the Western way of war is different.  I’ve commented in a pedestrian way on that same issue, but again, I am under the impression that this is fairly well established.  Either way, Bateman got the attention he wanted, and he was eventually reduced to personal attacks and name calling, with commenters telling him he was acting like a juvenile.

It doesn’t stop there.  At Zero Anthropology (and I make no claims to a knowledge of what this site advocates or the subject of the disagreement), one author had finally had enough of Bateman, and responded this way.  First, Bateman’s comment, and then the response.

Bateman:

Well, at least I now know that you, at least, see what I type. That evidence, at least, now exists for your readers. As does the fact that you ban free speech on your site. Since your readers now see that you openly posted, “This is from the man who is now claiming that I “silenced” him and tried to avoid him challenging my ideas. Of course, he is saying that in private, because he has been banned from this blog and has sent four more messages nonetheless (not included in the list above).”

Well Max, I really could not contrive a confession of oppression of free speech or discourse any more clearly than the way you just laid it out for your readers. Well played son. Well played indeed. “He claimed I ’silenced’ him” and “he has been banned” are wonderfully juxtaposed.

“OPEN” Anthropology.

Regards Max. And I apologize for the future. Not really my fault. But I am sorry nonetheless.

Bob

Response:

You apologize for the future. It was worth approving your message just so that others can see the veiled threat.

It is OPEN Anthropology…just no longer open to you, and your kind. You had your say, and became repetitive, and rather obnoxious, especially as you turned some of your comments on this blog into ad hominem attacks toward someone (me) who had been very analytical, even handed, calm, and reasonable with you. But then the military wolf in sheep’s clothing is all ready to pounce, eh Bob?

Remember, you have a right to free speech. But not on this blog: it is a privilege, and you abused it.

To the notion that Bateman has been “silenced” on that blog, the author lists 32 comments from Bateman approved by the editors.  The straw that broke the camel’s back was this comment:

…your apparent lack of eductation (sic) on military affairs and international relations. But then, of course, you are a minor teacher without a single published monograph, so I suppose you have to try and make your academic mark somewhere, eh? Anything for tenure.

The final remarks by the author are telling:

Not only is it ad hominem, it is a basic lie. Mission accomplished, Bob, you live up to the values of your institution. An academic, you are not, not even a good poser and pretender.

Well, Bob, you wanted attention, now you got it. You have all of our attention now, with your very own post on this blog, all about you. Is this what you wanted?

Why yes, that’s exactly what Bob wanted.  He got his attention, and you spent your time responding to this narcissist.  Perhaps I’m doing the same thing, but if enough people understand who Bateman really is, then my ordeal will have been worth it.

Bob’s outlandish, exaggerated, extremist prose is his hallmark.  It helps with the attention.  Consider:

My entree was, “I think that Robert E. Lee, as a traitor and betrayer of his solemn oath before God and the Constitution, was a much greater terrorist than Osama Bin Ladin… after all, Lee killed many more Americans than Bin Ladin, and almost destroyed the United States. What do you think?”

Yeah, I flunked “Subtle 101” in High School. Oh well. Like I said, I was not in a good place.

But the fact is that there was nothing that any of these men, and they were all men, could say in honest denial to my assertion. They sputtered and growled, spouted and shouted, but not once did it end well for them on any level. You see, if they were “unreconstructed rebels,” well then I was something almost none of them had ever experienced, an “unreconstructed Yankee.”

So that you understand him, he spells it out for you.  He is not just a narcissist, he is a narcissist with an agenda (oops, that may not be so good for a dispassionate “historian,” no?).  And his collectivist tendencies are usually obvious by the folks he hangs with.  For instance, a search of “Bateman” at CNAS (the center that advises Obama on foreign policy) turns up some attention there too.

Now based on the discussion above, consider his recommendation to end ownership of weapons at death.  Does anyone really think that this could ever obtain in America?  Men who have spent $20,000, or $30,000 or $40,000 or more on guns, scopes, optics and ammunition, and who have taught their sons to use those weapons for self defense and bonded by hunting game with those guns, are expected to turn over those weapons to the government to be cut up with a torch rather than turn them over to their sons as a heritage!

Does Bateman know what he is proposing for the armed forces and police of America in the coming years under such a protocol?  Of course he does.  And the irony is that he claims to loath violence.  Does Bateman know that it would take a violation of Posse Comitatus to even try to pull something like this off, breaking the law of the land?  Of course he does.  And does he know that tens or hundreds of thousands of men would perish as a result of his proposals?

Yes.  And thus has Bateman shored up his progressive credentials one more time, and gotten the attention he so desperately wants, all at the same time.  In the future, pay no attention to Mr. Bateman.  He’s a publicity hound and attention seeker, and uses inflammatory and exaggerated rhetoric to evoke responses.  The internet calls this a “troll.”  It’s just that he’s a troll with credentials – and he’s an expert on everything.  If you don’t believe it, just ask him.

WRSA

David Codrea

Kurt Hofmann

Mike Vanderboegh