I believe the investigation they’re doing is between reported gun deaths and the actual police numbers. That there a lot of gun deaths which never make the news in any way, shape or form (i.e. that it’s underreported).
Yeah I looked a third time and I think they’re looking for good numbers on suicides or maybe justifiable homicide, assuming the FBI doesn’t track it with hard numbers like they do for murders. Fair enough. Gun advocates always complain about un- or under-reported self-defense cases, so it’s a struggle for both sides. I’ve never hung my hat on the statistics so I’m pretty neutral on the whole thing.
Flowers
2949
If you want an online presence, you need a youtube presence. You should split it between cheeky and real human interest. You are selling something you feel people fear for no good reason which you feel saves lives. You should give away a box of ammunition to everyone who sends you a verifiable (police report and all) justified self defense story that you post on your website and youtube channel. At the end of every video, the face of the store congratulates them, expresses sympathy, and shows the box they are getting, which goes to the firearm they used. Then you say, for the rest of you, it’s fifteen percent off the rest of the week. Or something like that. Either they film themselves or you read their letter. You’re a company that believes in self defense, so it is not wrong for you to tell people.
For cheekiness, you should have flashdeals based on things that happened on certain days in history and hint about it on twitter. Siege of Stalingrad? Special. June 30th? European dating day, it’s 30 odd 6 on special. Clint Eastwood’s Birthday?
I would stay away from licensing a name from a controversial property. The internet is not all young folks, a lot of guys tend to be conservative, and you don’t want to worry about what happens in GTA6 affecting your sales. Also, you don’t want to have to be cutting a check to Rockstar Games for the next fifty years when thirty five of those years have passed with no new GTA games.
Cheaperthandiirt suggests poor quality but good prices, you want a name that definitively states that your products are reliable. These are training, match, and life and death scenarios in addition to hunting and routine target practice, so maybe pick a term associated with that like Countback. Otherwise go with a standard large corporation word but not a word name, like; Allistics, Calibore, Smartridge.
You should give away a box of ammunition to everyone who sends you a verifiable (police report and all) justified self defense story that you post on your website and youtube channel.
I wouldn’t want to celebrate shooting someone, even in self defense. Telling my story would be one thing, but to profit from it? That strikes me as unseemly.
Flowers
2951
You have to give away something at first to get people to tell people about the program and thus the website. Otherwise not many people are going to bother writing the letters or making the videos or submitting the proof.
And most marketing is unseemly. Beer doesn’t really make you sexy and thin, most fat free products have more calories and bad ingredients than things with fat, and the only time politicians wear flannel is when they want to trick you.
It’s not dishonest, and people need to talk about their experiences in having to defend themselves with people who recognize the importance of such an event. If you have to give someone a box of ammunition to open up, better to box the ammo than your emotions.
Flowers
2952
Also, another mentally ill person took a semiautomatic rifle to kill innocent people today.
I am only going to say this a hundred times after this. The problem with mass shooters in our society is a mental health issue. While easy access to high powered firearms that are easy to use with large magazines contributes to the death toll in each incident, resolving that issue would only reduce the casualties per incident, not the overall number of incidents. In order to reduce or eliminate the number of incidents, we need to overhaul our mental health system to provide more services, more oversight, and more support to the mentally ill. It does not make sense to me to take away the freedoms of three hundred million law abiding citizens because men in their mid 20s with histories of mental illness slip through the ever widening cracks of such a poorly run system. The government has no moral right or legal authority to force lazy solutions onto the American people when they infringe on core human rights.
Flowers
2953
If we did more to spot and treat and support the mentally ill, not only would the innocent victims in each massacre still be alive, the very sick, very troubled men responsible for pulling the triggers would never have become killers. That, to me, is worth it.
Some of my clients are individuals who have been detained under Chapter 51 as a danger to themselves or others due to mental illness. Often they have been living on the streets or in filthy apartments for weeks, evading social workers and eating rotting food. Their parents are beside themselves. When the individuals regain some sanity most agree on the record in court that should they be found in such a condition again, they should be forcibly administered psychotropic medication even if it against their wishes at that later time. People do not like being mentally ill. For many it is a source of shame. For many, if they manage to evade treatment for a sufficient length of time, their delusions will become permanent, such that they persist even in the face of psychotropic medication that remedies the other aspects of their condition.
I have my fair share of serious objections to the way that many of my clients are treated, especially when it comes to the off label use of psychotropics in children, and the head in the sand attitude of psychiatrists towards the horrendously deleterious side effects of drugs like Risperdal and Prozac. I think better living for the mentally ill is not possible purely through chemistry and failing to help people manage their environments, diets, activities, when they clearly need and deserve such help is to treat human beings like they are as disposable or interchangeable as the drugs they take.
I don’t want a door prize for shooting someone. It undermines the gravity of the event, and it looks appalling tacky.
I wouldn’t buy ammo from a shop that offered such inducements.
I’m with Flowers. Should definitely provide rewards for kills, maybe an extra bonus if the kill was made with ammo provably bought from your store in the first place. That’s just good marketing.
Is there a bb code for timeout? I can’t tell if y’all are being serious or not.
mdowdle
2957
That, in itself, probably tells you all you need to know about America and guns.
Beer doesn’t really make you sexy and thin…
You sir, are the destroyer of dreams.
There are some strange undercurrents in our gun culture. The whole home defense machismo thing just creeps me out. I’ve actually used a shotgun during a home invasion and it’s nothing I would ever want to celebrate.
Speaking of home defence and shotguns:
See, this is why you can’t (shouldn’t?) have nice things. Extra black comedy gold in the attorney claiming the shooting was justified, and the shooter claiming it was accidental.
RichVR
2962
And so you just drop this here and no story? Did you shoot? Or just show the weapon? Lives saved? Come on man.
The intruder was unarmed - he saw my shotgun and ran for it, dropping everything he had stolen.
He was no threat at that point. I followed him to the front porch and watched him as he sprinted down the street.
I just saw a story on the LA Times page about Zimmerman’s arrest titled “Police find 5 guns, large ammo stash in George Zimmerman’s home.” The details: the “large ammo stash” is “over 100 rounds of ammunition.”
Jebus cripes, I’m tired of that one. Anyone who shoots recreationally will run through 100 rounds in a couple of range visits. I swear, reporters who don’t know weapons seem to imagine no one ever uses their firearms, so you shouldn’t have more than what will fit into one magazine.
Do they report a 10 pound bag of flour as a “large stash of flour” as well?
Yeah, that’s a very uninformed metric. I have a couple of boxes of 9 mm ammo, and that takes me halfway to a “large stash” by the story’s definition. If I also owned a gun and ammo with a different caliber, I’d instantly go over the limit. That reporter is either clueless or engaging in deliberate sensationalism, and so is their editor.
I saw the same headline on Google News. This misunderstanding always puts a genuine smile on my face. Not a scornful smirk I reserve for ignorant FUD, but actual amusement. It’s so adorable.
