How Not To Write Rot and Evil

_By David E. Petzal
_
Having contributed to the rumor mill (in the name of fun and games), I enjoy bulls**t as much as the next person, and it depresses me to see the fine art of creating nonsense brought low. One of the worst examples of this is an active e-mail with the dramatic heading “IS THIS TRUE?????” that puts forth the following:

“For the last several years a company called ‘The Freedom Group’ has been buying up American gun and ammunition manufacturers.

“Some of the companies are:

“Bushmaster, Martin, DPMS, Dakota Arms, L.C. Smith, Parker, AAC, Barnes Bullets, EOTAC, INTC.”

The writer is in trouble immediately, because the first rule of writing bulls**t is, get your facts right. You want people to believe you. And whoever wrote this misspelled Marlin and was unaware that EOTAC makes clothing, not guns.

Then comes:

“Some people worry that Freedom Group is going to control most of the firearms companies in the United States. Of course if you control the manufacturers you can decide not to sell to civilians, or you can raise the prices to ridiculous levels, or can make the supply of guns and ammo scarce…all sorts of log jams. What a perfect way to control American guns.”

First, who are “some people?” The writer of this screed and his dog? The NRA? Michelle Bachmann? Who?

If you want to control most of the companies that make something, you have to get clearance from, I believe, the Federal Trade Commission, whose job it is to prevent monopolies, and if anyone tried to corral all the gun production in the U.S., we would hear about it.

Of the companies mentioned here (the ones that actually make guns) all but Remington and Marlin turn out small numbers of firearms, and are an odd choice to start the Great Gun Choke Off. Of course, this may be part of the plot–you start small and work up to Ruger and Smith & Wesson.

As for this being a perfect way to choke off guns and ammo, I can’t think of a more ineffectual one. If you’re looking for a much better, more efficient method, elect Barrack Hussein Obama to a second term where he will have nothing to lose. Then you’ll see some logjams.

“If you do some digging you’ll see ‘The Freedom Group’ is owned by a Wall Street investment company called ‘Cerberus Capital Management’…Investor George Soros owns Cerberus.”

I did some digging, and found that the Freedom Group is indeed owned by Cerberus, but that Cerberus is headed by one Stephen Feinberg, who is a shooter, and that George Soros is nowhere listed on the company’s roster of officers, as is required by law. (Freedom Group, by the way, is run by George Kollitedes, whom I know personally, and who is a hardcore hunter and shooter.) No mention of Cerberus is made on Soros’ website. I have no doubt that Soros is an evil liberal anti-gun pro-Clinton one-world billionaire troublemaker, but he does not have a hand in Cerberus.

“Please pass this on to all your freedom loving friends. This needs to come out and quickly. Why have we not heard about this on the mainstream media? I think this would be Big news. The absence of big media coverage on this important subject should be Big news to you too.”

The reasons you haven’t heard about it on the mainstream media are: If this were an actual conspiracy to put a logjam in the gun biz, the mainstream media would keep it quiet so the infernal work could proceed without freedom-loving Americans putting up a great howl. What is more likely is that, even in its debilitated state, the mass media know bullsh**t when they smell it, and are unwilling to lose what little credibility they have by publishing nonsense like this.

Of course, if this e-mail is a joke, then I apologize for not getting it. But the writer should do what I do and come clean. I, and all freedom-loving Americans deserve no less.