I do have a way of kicking over hornet's nests

I was looking at my sitemeter yesterday and I noticed that I was getting a few hits from a website that I had never heard of. So, being the curious sort I went over and saw that it was something called The Gun Zone Forum of the American Backyard Forum.

The Gun Zone is apparently moderated by gunwriter Charles Petty. The reason I was getting hits is that there was an ongoing discussion (read it here) about the vile internal locks which Smith and Wesson has chosen to defile their otherwise excellent revolvers (and their not so excellent automatics) with.

It seems that one of the forum participants had come across the blog post I wrote a little more than a year ago on that very topic, which you can read here.

In that post I discussed the article in the The July/August, 2006 issue of American Handgunner by Charles E Petty in which Mr. Petty attempted to debunk the idea of lock failures being a realistic problem with the S&W handguns. While one person tried to imply that I was factually wrong about the gun locks (without offering any actual evidence - because I am right and he knows it) most of the comment centered on this statement from my blog post:

Now the first thing you need to understand is this. If you look up "gunwriter” in a thesaurus you will find synonyms like “whore”, “liar”, “paid advertising flack” and so on. In other words gun magazines exist to sell advertising to companies that make firearms, firearms accessories, and other products that gun owners are likely to buy. The articles which take up space between the ads serve the function of promoting the products which are advertised in the magazine.

Even Dean Speir chimed in, leaving this comment on my original post:

Interesting entry… could've written much of it m'self… except for the invidious comments about Charlie Petty.

I know him, you don't. It's very easy to sit back and play the cynic about that sort of thing but if you've honed your critical thinking skills, meaningful information can be garnered from virtually any gunzine article.

The difference between me 'n' Charlie is that for the most part he has learned to say things "safely." I never have… which is why what I used to write for the gunzines I now do, completely unfettered, on the Internet.

Lotta ho's in the gunzine game; Charlie ain't one of'em.

It is natural to want to defend your friends when they are attacked and I give Mr. Speir credit for stepping up. I also agree with him when he says this, "if you've honed your critical thinking skills, meaningful information can be garnered from virtually any gunzine article."

I remember an article in one of the gun magazines about the new S&W 1911 in which the author noted that the gold insert in the front sight fell out and all the screws started backing out and all the pins began drifting out after just a small amount of firing. The writer's conclusion was the usual "this is a great gun, I'll be adding this one to my collection" drivel but anyone who cared to read between the lines got the message that the S&W 1911 was a piece of crap.

I leave it to my readers to decide if this sort of playing peekaboo with the truth is honorable and ethical or if it comes closer to "whore", "liar" and "paid advertising flack". Perhaps it is one of those "you say tomato; I say tomahto" things.

But looking back on Charles Petty's American Handgunner article I'll say this. There could have been an attempt on his part to convey a warning about lock failures on the S&W revolvers embedded in his ostensible debunking of the lock failure issue. I base that conclusion on this reasoning.

Mr. Petty based his conclusion that the lock failure issue was a non-problem on a conversation with a Smith and Wesson employee, someone who could be fired for publicly disclosing a potentially serious problem with a Smith and Wesson product, and a trip to the range with a few handguns in which he shot a few cylinders of ammunition per gun.

Based on Dean Speir's vouching for Charles Petty's character and honesty I'll now admit that the American Handgunner article could have been an attempt to actually lend credence to the lock failure issue by denying it with "evidence" so outrageous and over-the-top stupid that only a John Edwards voter (or a chimpanzee) would have believed it.

I want to close by stating that I don't feel any ill will toward Mr. Petty. He has his bills to pay and he does it, at least in part, by writing for publication in gun magazines and the price of writing in gun magazines is keeping the advertisers happy. I'm sure that he doesn't really enjoy some of the things he is required to do to stay employed (just like I'm sure that most of the authors who are under contract to Bane Publishing don't like having to ghostwrite John Ringo's novels for him, but that's a post for another day), but as the maggot said to the king of France, "we live not as we wish to, but as we can". [That last sounds more profound when you say it in French]