Category: Well I thought it was funny!
A young lady in NYC decided to write a diary. Being a young lady what she wrote in her diary she considered to be private. It was her thoughts, her fears, her wants. It was for her.
Unfortunately, her brother was an uncultured clod and when he discovered her diary in a public area, knowing it was private, decided to read it. We can guess about how the brother handled such private disclosures.
The young lady realized that she needed some what to secure her diary from prying eyes. The idea of wrapping it in chains probably didn’t appeal to her. Like wise, it is unlikely she was able to get a high level wizard to spell lock it.
She found a small portable safe at a second hand store and bought it for cheap. She then proceeded to lock her personal items in the lock box to keep her private stuff private.
Her parents being meddling AWFLs couldn’t handle that so her father showed the lock box to a friend. The friend identified it as a “gun safe!” Exclamation marks in the original article.
Once the parents heard the word “gun” they had a mental break. They demanded that she get rid of the gun safe. They can’t have anything associated with a gun in the house. They young lady refused.
The parents aren’t worried about the gun safe holding a gun because the young lady is anti-gun but “GUN SAFE!” in the house is unacceptable.
Being unable to deal with their daughter refusing to give in to their crazed demands, the mother wrote to New York Times Social Q page for help.
There Philip Galanes comes to their rescue.
…Acknowledge your daughter’s valid distress and ask her to help you solve your problem with the gun safe in light of your shared philosophy about guns. Let her stash the diary elsewhere while you remove the safe, then negotiate a security system for her that wasn’t built for weapons.
More important, use this opportunity that’s fallen into your lap to talk with your children about guns. …
— Philip Galanes, New York Times: How Do We Get Rid of Our Teenage Daughter’s Gun Safe?
Yep, this editor of the NYT agrees with the parents that a gun safe is to awful to have in the home. Instead, the daughter should give up the good security she currently has for her diary and instead trust her parents to provide a “security system … that wasn’t built for weapons.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
Is there an outreach program for parents like this? Heck, is there outreach programs for people that aren’t this far off their rockers?
Categories
Ah Monday!
Categories
Lawyers
Wife Suzi and I were chatting the other day about someone in the industry who got a new job. She said, “Nah, he won’t make it, he’s not a Gunist.” I paused, thinking, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that word, but it’s a good one.”
“So,” I said, “what’s a Gunist?” Suzi has been around our industry for quite some time. I was curious to know what insight she had on the matter.
“Oh, you know, someone like you. Somebody who’s lived it, breathed it, grew up with it, reads those boring books you read about old English guns, proof marks, all that reloading stuff, works on guns in the garage for hours at a time, you know — gun stuff. If I need to know something about guns, I ask you and you just about always know at least something about it. He’s not like that and doesn’t understand who we are, or how we think. Just because he can sell refrigerators, doesn’t mean he can work in our industry selling gun stuff.”
And it dawned on me, she was right.
In the “old” days, say, 20 or 30 years ago, the vast majority of executive level types in the biz were gun guys, or as Suzi says, “Gunists.” They had grown up shooting, hunting, collecting and more than likely, working in our industry. They understood their customers — because they were their customers. Fast-forward 20 or 30 years and in today’s “corporatized” companies, there is a tendency to think, “Well, if they can sell widgets, or tractors or used cars, they can sell guns.” But almost always it ends up not to be the case at all. There are exceptions, but not many.
The really bad thing is some of those who get brought into our industry have tended to bounce from company to company, wrecking havoc, getting fired, getting golden handshakes, only to turn up again in some executive position. It’s like, once you get a union card, you can get a job no matter what. “Hey, he was the VP of marketing there, so he could be the VP of marketing here,” sort of thinking. Not.
If you’re a “Gunist” and reading this now, you are probably aware of some pretty silly new products that have been introduced over the past 10 years or so. After a jaunt to SHOT Show, I have often come away thinking, “Did anyone who was an actual shooter even look at that product before they introduced it?” And the scary thing, is sometimes I find out that actually, no … nobody who was an actual shooter had looked at it before the VP of Sales (formerly a VP of sales at Enron or something and a definite non-shooter) simply ordered it launched and their Madison Ave. marketing firm did it. Then we usually witness what we call “the big silence” as people don’t buy whatever “it” is.
Of course, then that VP ends up at some other unsuspecting company and does the same thing. Repeat ad-nauseam. All of which is fine if all I’m going to do is complain about it. So let’s not just complain and wring our hands and repeat woe-is-me chants. What can we do about it?
Actually, it’s easy. Make yourself known. If (fill in the blank here) company announces, introduces or tries to sell you on a product that’s stupid — tell them. Pick up the phone, drop them an e-mail, fill out the survey, whatever it takes. Just say, “Hey, I don’t mean to be ugly, but that new digital/hi-tech/battery-powered/operator-based/polymer/CR123/lavender-laser/Kydex-wrapped widget, is … um … stupid. Don’t waste your money on it, because I won’t waste my money on it either. And besides, you shoulda’ asked a Gunist before you did it in the first place.”
Of course, some of those marketing disasters have served to make our industry interesting at times. I’ve still never actually seen a magazine for a Bren Ten 10mm auto. Can you say “Rogak P-18” auto pistol? Even the term “Short Magnum” may go the way of the Do-Do bird. And just because you can make it out of polymer, doesn’t mean you actually should. Well, at least then it could be recycled into those little booze bottles you get on airplanes.
So let’s cross our Gunist fingers and hope the industry looks harder for executives who know the difference between a .22 Hornet and a .22 LR, have some 1950s Gun Digests laying around that are well-thumbed, and are really sorry they can’t make the meeting on Wednesday because it’s dove season opener. Please?
1. “He had delusions of adequacy ” Walter Kerr
2. “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”- Winston Churchill
3. “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. – Clarence Darrow
4. “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”-William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
5. “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
6. “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas
7. “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain
8. “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” – Oscar Wilde
9. “I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.” -George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
10. “Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.” – Winston Churchill, in response
11. “I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here” – Stephen Bishop
12. “He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright
13. “I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb
14. “He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” – Samuel Johnson
15. “He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. – Paul Keating
16. “He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” – Forrest Tucker
17. “Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” – Mark Twain
18. “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” – Mae West
19. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde
20. “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.” – Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
21. “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder
22. “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I’m afraid this wasn’t it.” – Groucho Marx
23. The exchange between Winston Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, “If you were my husband I’d give you poison.” He said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”
24. “He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” – Abraham Lincoln
25. “There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” — Jack E. Leonard
26. “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” — Thomas Brackett Reed
27. “He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.” — James Reston (about Richard Nixon) —Robert L Truesdell