Last week I received an email from an internet ad agency asking if I would allow one of their clients to post some ads on my website. I told the internet marketer to send me the URL and I would list it for free.

              I’m happy to help any small business out with a free listing on my website, as long as it isn’t that bunch of scam artists and so-called physicians who own an outfit called Stop the Bleed. Any physician involved with that bunch should hang their heads in shame. Otherwise, I’m just about open to advertising by anyone who wants to promote something on my site.

              This particular company, whose logo and link will shortly appear on mikethegunguy.com is an outfit called Tactical Gear Hut, which contains some pretty good reviews of various kinds of ‘tactical gear,’ which is a catch-all category for accessory items that shooters and gun-nut enthusiasts might like to buy. 

              In the olden days, when someone walked into my gun shop to buy a handgun, I might also get them to buy a holster and a box of shells. The leather and ammo would add $30 or so to the sale. If they bought rifle or a shotgun, I might also add a box of ammunition to the order and on occasion a cheap piece of cloth to wrap around the gun – another $30 added to their tab. I rarely sold scopes because my shop’s in an Eastern state where a long-range shot during hunting season might be 50 or 60 yards.

              That was the olden days. Now welcome to the new days, in particular, welcome to the ‘tactical’ days thanks to the appearance and popularity of the AR, which happens not to be an acronym for ‘assault rifle,’ but was the designation for the gun designed by Gene Stoner and first manufactured by Armalite (as in ‘Armalite Rifle), a gun company which has gone in and out of business more times than I can count.

              Of course, once the gun-grabbing contingent led by our friend Dianne Feinstein got their hands on this product and limited its use in California, a law which then morphed into the 1994 Clinton assault rifle ban, how anyone then talked about this product became the acid-test for their views on guns. If you are pro-gun, you believe that everyone should keep an assault rifle around; if not, not.

              The problem that the gun industry faced by using the term ‘assault rifle’ is that it cuts both ways. Because again and again whenever someone went into a school or a movie theater and shot up the place, he used an AR, which was then described as a ‘mass assault.’ Which is exactly what it was.

              So, the industry came up with a new way to market these products, by replacing the word ‘assault’ with the word ‘tactical.’ After all, tactical guys are the good guys. We send them out on those high-risk missions to kill Bin Laden, we expect them to protect us against all kinds of threats.

              Meanwhile, I’m sitting here in my living room and around my house there are 15 acres of trees. Maybe what I need to do today is go out and select a spot in my woods where I can put up a stand to give me and my AR the necessary cover for when I have to defend myself and my family from a terrorist attack. And maybe I also need to go to the Tactical Gear Hut website and pony up five hundred bucks to get my hands on a tactical scope. After all, what’s a tactical rifle worth if I don’t have the optics required to get the job done?

              Know why the United States is the richest country on Planet Earth? Because it’s the only country where any law-abiding citizen can go out and blow a couple of thousand bucks on some equipment that will never be needed for anything at all.