New Year’s Resolutions often revolve around personal vices. Quit smoking, quit drinking, make your sex life less dangerous. They key here is reasonable expectations. My resolutions in this regard were to make love to only the cleanest and sweetest woman, drink only the finest adult beverages, and smoke only choice tobacco. It’s working so far, which obviously proves that I’m right. J

Another resolution was to put up with less BS, and it’s relevant here because I’ve applied it to the blog you are now reading. In the years I’ve been doing the Backwoods Home firearms blog, the record will show that of 6,417 comments posted here by readers at the time I write this, I approved an even 6400.  (This doesn’t count deletion of spam that made it through the spam filter.)

Of the 17 that were not approved for posting over these years, some came from the posters’ own requests: “Mas, can you delete that, I posted to soon,” or something like that. There were a few for rabid racist ranting, and one or two messages were deleted because they viciously attacked others who had posted comments. (I’m the guy who writes the blog, and if you want to attack me, well, I’m fair game. Ad hominem attacks on others who post here? NO!)

One post deletion was for a filthy-mouthed dude who threatened me and others, and babbled about scenarios he claimed to have experienced that were only one step away from alien abduction anal probe stories in credibility. He was also the only person I’ve ever banned from commenting on this blog.

Until now.

The first full weekend of 2012, I was on the road shooting a couple of pistol matches. I fired up the laptop in the car with the air card, and found a spate of posts by someone who has been haunting this blog since the infestation of cop-haters that occurred here in April of 2011, after I posted about positive feelings toward armed citizens by the master police officers who were teaching at the annual conference of the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association. This kid – he seems to be in early adolescence, and hasn’t contradicted me on that in his many postings – has for several months regurgitated cop-hating propaganda, often without a sense of time or place since he would introduce it into discussion threads such as memorial times for American servicemen who have given their lives for this country. I tried to explain things to him, and tell him where he could learn the reality. So did others. It fell on deaf ears.

His latest diatribes were the worst yet, comparing American police to assorted genocidal death camp executioners, and implying that anyone who had a permit to carry a pistol was a collaborator in un-Constitutional activities. Reading that crap, on the anniversary of the Tucson shooting, I decided that this blog was no longer going to allow the rantings of someone so out of touch with reality that he made me wonder…”Next Jared Laughner?”

So…so long, “sofa.”  I hope you find the help and the understanding you need. It was offered to you here, but you didn’t accept it.  I can’t inflict your out-of-touch-with-reality BS on those who read this blog any longer.

The record will show that anti-gunners and others are welcome to speak here. I trust the other readers, and myself, to handle anything they can bring up. Less than one ban a year? I can live with that. It shows that the vast majority who post comments here are thinking, rational human beings.

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I was gonna make this entry about the many more people this year than last, who have given or received the gift of self-protection and protection of others, but my old friend Dave Workman beat me to it, here: http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-seattle/wi-experience-should-be-wake-up-call-to-wa-senators .

Dave also shares another amusing observation, here: http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-seattle/ccw-rush-surprises-media-elite-authorities-except-for-one-al-mayor-perhaps

Be sure to check the links on both.

Gun purchases are up hugely this Christmas season, all over the country. My last class of the year was last weekend, in Wisconsin, the most recent state to get shall-issue concealed carry. Tens of thousands of people have flooded the authorities with applications for concealed carry permits. I expect that this will save lives as soon as this coming year, if not before 2011 runs its course.

The firearm is a symbol of responsibility, a tool of rural living, and sometimes-needed safety/rescue equipment wherever you live.

If you’ve given such a gift of safety and recognition of responsibility – or received one – feel free to share the experience here.

From this end, best wishes for a safe, happy, and renewing holiday weekend.

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OMG…you’ve about run out of time for mail order, ain’tcha?

Not to worry…there’s still time for “someone” to buy “something suitable.”

AMMO: Food. Fuel. Ammunition.  There are basic needs to be considered here.  Ammunition comes in rectangular boxes that are easy to wrap. You live in some benighted place like Illinois, where those who buy gifts for shooters need firearms owners’ ID cards? Heck, get a gift certificate at the local Ammo Emporium.  Which brings us to…

GIFT CERTIFICATES: It’s a loser’s game for guys to buy guns for gals, or anyone to buy guns for anyone else for that matter, unless the “gifter” absolutely KNOWS what the “giftee” wants. Our job is not to make decisions for them: it’s to make sure they get something they WANT.

The gift certificate at the local gun shop fulfills this beautifully.  They may get more ammo cheaper at the Monster Mart, but a gift cert from the local gun shop gives more than just purchasing power.  It introduces the new shooter to EXPERT ADVICE FROM SPECIALISTS, which is an intangible value that’s generally worth far more than the dollar value of the gift cert.  If it’s Christmas Eve and all the gun shops are closed, THEN I’ll go to the 24-hour WalMart and get ‘em a gift certificate. (And, if they’re not into shooting as much as I hope they are, well, they can buy underwear or food or gasoline or some other generic needs with it.) But if the present is at least in part about sharing the values of what has been called the Gun Culture, get the gift certificate from someplace that can give the recipient good advice.  Ammunition and other consumable goods are transient. Good advice is timeless, and that’s what they’ll get at the specialty store, such as a gun shop.

Make the present mean something. A gift of something that can protect the recipient says, “I care about you, and I want you to be safe.” Some people I love will see that when they open what I left for them under their Christmas tree.

May it be so for you, on whichever side of the gift you may be.

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