OSD 297: You can’t fake gun knowledge
Last week a candidate for U.S. Senate was teased for holding a photo op at a shooting range…
… where a reporter was hit by shrapnel from the steel targets:
People seized on that and started picking the scene apart:
Shooting steel way too close
Eye pro on top of the head, not pro’ing anything
Long-distance scope for short-range shooting
Poor shooting stance
Tannerite on the shooting table ready to catch a ricochet. Although in fairness the Tannerite doesn’t look to have been mixed, so it was probably inert.
The details about the politician and his stance on guns don’t really matter for our purposes. Transient dunks aren’t the interesting thing. The real takeaway is that before social media, if you wanted to prove your gun bona fides you could just do a photo op or release a statement. You wouldn’t be tested. But in the modern era, if you want to prove you know what you’re talking about, you have to … actually prove it. If there are mistakes, the internet will catch them.
That is new, and it’s great news. It means we’ll succeed by focusing on spreading facts, and it’ll keep getting harder for centralized information sources to lead people astray.
Some good previous reading on this:
This week’s links
“Can we be a little less judgmental?”
Tactical Professor on how to be effective with newbies. Always focus on effectiveness, and ignore the internet choir.
Data privacy of warranty cards
A report on how warranty card contact info was used for political outreach to mobilize pro-gun voters. The story is a good illustration of how norms around data privacy have changed with the rise of social media.
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It doesn’t take a lot of education to be responsible with guns. I only started shooting recently and I was horrified with what they were doing. I can’t fathom how anyone with high school level physics knowledge would think it was a good idea.