I started writing about guns and gun violence on May 31, 2013, and since that data I have posted 1,849 columns on my website. I have also self-published 16 books on guns and will shortly publish a very detailed, academic book about guns with Nova Science Press. The open-source, academic aggregator SSRN carries 11 of my academic papers, and I have been profiled both in The New York Times and The New Yorker Magazine – my complete credits can be found here, along with a description of my activities as a gun dealer, manufacturer, importer, trainer and owner-user of guns over the past sixty-six years.

              Why am I patting myself on the back? Because I am in the process of making a very big change in the scope and direction of my gun activities and my gun research, so I want everyone who follows this blog to understand how and why this reorientation came about.

              It has come about because over the nine years that I have been writing about guns, the gun-control communities have developed and now promote narratives about guns and gun violence which increasingly bear little, if any connection to the millions of guns found in the millions of American homes or how these millions of guns are used or misused.

              Here’s the gun-control narrative which I find most troublesome: We can reduce the awful levels of gun violence by passing laws which primarily control the behavior of individuals who legally own guns, such laws based on the idea that gun owners need to behave in safer ways with their guns, or what is often referred to as ‘gun sense’ or ‘responsible’ use of guns.

              The gun-control community, or the gun violence prevention (GVP) community as they like to call themselves, believe they can use their narrative to define some ‘middle ground’ with gun owners that will both reduce gun violence and at the same time respect gun ‘rights.’ Known as the ‘consensus’ approach, this strategy is endorsed not only by all the gun-control advocacy groups, but by the medical and public health communities as well.

              Why do these well-meaning groups think they can find some ‘consensus’ with gun owners when they don’t know anything about guns or why people own guns?

When someone goes out and buys a Glock or a Sig, they are buying a product designed only for the purpose of committing violence, okay? And the World Health Organization doesn’t differentiate between ‘good’ violence and ‘bad’ violence. So, if you’re going to build ‘consensus’ by talking to people who have decided that they are prepared to commit a very violent act, don’t you at least first have to understand why they hold such a crazy idea?

What do we get from the gun-control community when it comes to explaining why a majority of Americans believe that their home will be safer if it contains a product whose sole purpose is to be used to commit an act of extreme violence? You get surveys whose authors think they have learned something when they tell you that an increasing percentage of gun owners are buying guns for self-defense. Boy, that explains everything, right?

It might explain something if the only way to defend yourself was to walk around with a gun. How about calling the cops? How about backing off from someone who’s threatening you? How about don’t get into an argument with someone in a bar and then ‘take it outside?’ How about? How about? How about?

To go beyond the how abouts, I have published a little manual which gives non-gun owners an opportunity to engage in a reality-based discussion about gun violence by first learning and practicing the rudiments of defending yourself with a gun.

Don’t worry. You can learn the proper techniques, practice them, and perfect them without buying, owning, or using a gun. In fact, as far as I can tell, the training described in this brief booklet is the very first gun-training course which is designed to be learned and studied without requiring access to a gun.

Along with this booklet, I also have a website which contains detailed content on how to buy the proper self-defense gun, how and where to get trained properly, some of the legal issues which need to be considered when thinking about carrying a self-defense gun; in other words, the basic issues which need to be considered by everyone who wants to protect themselves with armed force.

Finally, there’s a Facebook group that allows you to contribute some dialog to this effort as well as connecting with other individuals who have become interested in practicing armed, self-defense. If we get enough members to join the Facebook group, we’ll open a forum on the website as well.

So, here’s your opportunity to replace the hot air with the knowledge and skills that will make it very difficult for any gun owner to talk about guns with you and think that you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Isn’t it time to build a response to gun violence based on at least some degree of knowledge held by everyone about guns?