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An editor from Guns & Ammo resigned from the publication and fired the author of an editorial advocating for regulation on gun ownership after reader outcry. The two will hereafter be expressing their First Amendment rights non-professionally.
The editorial doesn't appear to be online, except in a scanned version from the group The Truth About Guns. The author, Dick Metcalf, explores the language of the Second Amendment — "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" — in his argument that some limits can and should be applied to owning guns. The limit he advocates is perhaps the most demure imaginable: mandatory training for gun ownership. Other amendments have restrictions, he notes — the ability to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, prohibitions against human sacrifice in religious worship.
Dick, your a dick and dumbass. Guns and Ammo Editor Supports Gun Control in Editorial Feature for December Issue – http://t.co/1552mIi21Q
— Matt Burkett (@burkettvideo) November 7, 2013
But it didn't go over well. Readers flooded unrelated Facebook stories, and a search on Twitter for Metcalf's name shows a number of angry response like the one at right. At the conservative blog Breitbart, which helped whip the issue into a lather, the editorial is described as "missing the point," since owning a gun, unlike driving a car, is a "natural right." "oldwhiteguy" comments on that article: "everything I have read today shows that the country and the freedom it used to stand for is gone."
In its walkback, Guns & Ammo editor Jim Bequette, who moved up his transition out of his position, offers his abject apology. "In publishing Metcalf’s column," Bequette says he was untrue" to the magazine's tradition of advocacy for gun rights. "[A]nd for that I apologize. His views do not represent mine — nor, most important, Guns & Ammo’s. It is very clear to me that they don’t reflect the views of our readership either."