Brian G. Mattson's Blog

In December of 2021 I was privileged to give my annual address to the CCL Annual Symposium held in San Francisco, California. Click the link below for the viewable and downloadable PDF version of my prepared remarks.

Because of Me: Christian Persecution in the 21st Century West

To Whom it May Concern,

RE: ATF 2021R-08, “Factoring Criteria for Firearms With Attached ‘Stabilizing Braces.’”

I am an American citizen enthusiastic about the Bill of Rights, including the 2nd Amendment. As a citizen I must first register my objection to the rule-making process itself: namely, concerned citizens are at an inherent disadvantage having to provide public comment directly to the governmental agency seeking to make them felons by their proposed rule. This conflict of interest or power disparity will inherently distort the true levels of opposition to the proposed rule, given that a vast number of gun owners and enthusiasts will be reluctant to “signal” themselves as out of compliance with the proposed rule. It is, nevertheless, my civic duty to comment.

I have grave concerns about BATFE’s newly proposed rule (Docket Number ATF 2021R-08) regarding “stabilizing pistol braces.” Allow me to summarize them, and then more fully explain each in turn.

1. AR-15 “pistol” variants clearly fall within the definition of “common use” under District of Columbia v. Heller.

2. AR-15 pistol variants are not “especially dangerous and/or unusual weapons.”

3. ATF’s claims about the public benefit of this rule are simply mistaken.

4. The proposed rule’s “Options for Affected Persons” are ineffective and unduly burdensome on law-abiding citizens.

5. ATF’s proposed rule is prima facie ineffective unless the component itself (the “stabilizing brace”) is regulated as an NFA item, thus making it more difficult to obtain; however, ATF admits that “The GCA and NFA regulate ‘firearms’ and, with limited exceptions, do not regulate individual components.” 

Explanation:

(1) District of Columbia v. Heller clearly upheld a citizen’s right to keep and bear firearms in common use. The Bureau’s own background summary reveals that at minimum 3 million “stabilizing braces” are in circulation, and this is almost certainly an underestimation. SB Tactical, the most popular manufacturer of stabilizing braces, claims to have manufactured 3 million braces alone. The addition of other popular manufacturers would significantly revise the number upward. 

Moreover, in ATF’s OMB Accounting Statement, they claim that the rule would affect “1.4 million purchasers of AR pistols.” That number is obviously incomplete. It may refer to purchasers of fully built, retail purchases of AR pistols, but leaves out the millions of gun enthusiasts who purchased a stabilizing brace to incorporate into other gun platforms.

The sheer numbers of these weapons leaves no doubt that AR pistol variants are very much in “common use.” Anyone familiar with the firearms industry knows that they are in common use. The very fact that ATF has proposed this rule demonstrates that they know these weapons are in common use. What is uncommon is criminal use. (More on that under [3] below.) For now, under Heller, these weapons are not “unusual” or “rare” in any sense of those terms, and should therefore be free from burdensome governmental infringement.

(2) The Bureau states that the NFA was passed to regulate “gangster” type weapons, which were viewed as “especially dangerous and unusual.” It is not a self-evident fact that AR-15s of any type are “especially dangerous.” What is self-evident is that they are not unusual. The Bureau is well-aware that a typical AR-15 caliber is significantly smaller than most hunting ammunition, a fact that by itself refutes the notion of “especially dangerous.” One might counter that muzzle velocities of AR weapons (often exceeding 3,000 feet per second) renders a weapon “especially dangerous,” but that raises an insoluble problem. ATF is ostensibly concerned about shorter barrel lengths; yet shorter barrel lengths reduce muzzle velocity and effective firing range, thus making them less, not more, dangerous. It is simply not cogent as a matter of logic and law why Congress and Federal agencies wish to make the less dangerous weapon subject to burdensome regulations; it directly contradicts the stated purpose of the NFA, which they admit regulates “especially dangerous and unusual” weapons.

(3) The Bureau’s claims about the public benefit of this proposed rule are mistaken. The OMB Accounting statement asserts that the rule: “Prevents manufacturers and individuals from circumventing the requirements of the NFA.” But the rule does not prohibit the manufacture of pistol stabilizing braces; nor does it subject such braces to NFA regulation. The rule, in other words, does nothing to make the production of AR pistols more difficult. Therefore, it “prevents” nothing; all it does it put ink on some paper. This may, by definition, prevent a law-abiding citizen from utilizing a pistol stabilizing brace; but in the incredibly rare event of a criminal using such a weapon, it is unlikely that a person bent on violence will be deterred by the proposed rule. 

Secondly, the OMB statement asserts that the rule “Enhances public safety by reducing the criminal use of such firearms, which are easily concealable from the public and first responders.” Given the observation in the foregoing paragraph, this is simply mistaken. It does nothing to “reduce the criminal use of such firearms.” It is still perfectly legal to buy an AR pistol variant without a stabilizing brace, and perfectly legal to buy a stabilizing brace. Nothing has been proposed that would actually reduce the (newly) criminal activity of putting the two together. Furthermore, the notion that an AR-15 pistol variant is “easily concealable” is ridiculous. It is not. This is why such weapons are rarely used in crime, and the weapon of choice in the vast majority of crimes is a handgun. The Bureau is well-aware of this fact. 

The Bureau raises two examples of AR-15 pistol variants being used in “mass shootings.” First, these events are irrelevant unless the Bureau can establish that the pistol brace involved in those shootings somehow made the weapon more dangerous than a handgun or a 16-inch rifle would have been in those circumstances. ATF should not be allowed to simply assert this as a fact. Second, the fact that the Bureau appeals to two incidents is quite revelatory. Recall for a moment the Bureau’s own (certainly low) numbers: 3 million pistol braces; 1.4 million purchasers of AR pistol variants. Millions of people “keep and bear” AR pistol variants and there are two examples of criminal use? This would suggest to me that there is no acute public health crisis to precipitate the intrusive infringement of the proposed rule.

(4) The proposed rule makes law-abiding citizens retroactive felons. There is no “grandfather” arrangement proposed. This is intolerable as a matter of law; no citizen, having engaged in good faith to legally purchase a firearm should be retroactively rendered a felon by fiat. Moreover, the proposed “Options for Affected Persons” has zero chance of success. Leaving aside the paternalistic language (“we want to help you with compliance”) and options seemingly drafted in such a way as to infuriate the populace (e.g., “destroy the firearm”), the Bureau will quickly find itself, should the rule go forward, tasked with actively seeking out millions of citizens who refuse to comply. As the Bureau is likely aware, a scheme in New Jersey to “buy back” standard-capacity magazines netted the state zero magazines. If gun-owning citizens refused to part with their magazines, the likelihood of them parting with their AR-15s is even less. 

(5) Finally, the Bureau is clearly frustrated in its task of enforcing the requirements of the NFA, and complains that the firearms industry is “circumventing” the NFA with the use of stabilizing braces. I understand their frustration. However, the problem is not the industry; the problem is the NFA itself and the statutory limitations it places on the ATF. The Bureau admits that the NFA does not give jurisdiction to regulate (most) individual firearm components—they cannot prohibit the manufacture of a stabilizing brace or effectively prohibit someone from utilizing one on their personal weapon. Rather ironically, the proposed rule represents ATF attempting to circumvent their own statutory limitations.

In sum, AR-15 pistol variants are in common use; they are not “especially dangerous or unusual”; there is no acute public health interest in regulating them under the NFA; law-abiding citizens of this country should never be retroactively declared felons by fiat; and as a simple matter of fact, the rule faces very little possibility of actual compliance. It is thus impractical and an example of bad public policy. 

I strongly oppose the proposed rule, and encourage the Bureau to lobby Congress to abolish the real source of this longstanding institutional problem: the National Firearms Act of 1934.

Respectfully submitted,

Brian Mattson

Over at The Gospel Coalition, I’ve written a review of an incredibly helpful book.

Check it out here!

How could those two things possibly relate, you ask? Click here to find the new issue of the Journal of Christian Legal Thought, scroll down to page 17, and you’ll find out.

The essay is entitled, “Victimhood Is Not a Virtue,” in which I explore what, exactly, happened when singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson released the stunning video below. Enjoy!

Now available exclusively at Amazon in both Kindle and Paperback formats, A Smith River Journal. This little story is a labor of love. A rafting trip through a remote Montana canyon sets the stage for reflections on faith, fatherhood, and friendship. Hop on over and order a copy! I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Those who have followed my "career," such as it is, for the last decade have surely noticed that I do not often engage in the heated theological debates of the day. There are reasons for this beyond lethargy or timidity.

I grew up and was nurtured in the Reformed tradition, where theological sparring is a spectator sport. I participated in the games, honed my wicked tongue (which was all-too-often genuinely wicked), and vanquished many foes. 

I burned out.

It seemed to me (and still does) that the debates du jour formed an endless cycle of largely profitless disputation. Everything was a hill to die on, and yet we never seemed to die. No one ever "won," yet we forgot one debate and moved on to another seamlessly. It was six-day creationism, Mosaic recapitulation, the efficacy of baptism and the "Federal Vision," the "New Perspective on Paul," and on and on it went. None of these matters are unimportant; but the Reformed amplifier dial has only one setting: ELEVEN.

So I turned the amplifier off.

Why, then, did I just publish a polemical essay in The Calvinist International responding to David Bentley Hart's doctrine of the (non)resurrection of the flesh?

It was just over week ago. I had read Hart's fascinating and dizzying article (regardless of his content, he is supremely talented), and thought that maybe somebody should write a response. It was one of those fleeting thoughts that quickly dissolves into "somebody else will do it." I'm busy. I'm traveling this week.

On Tuesday I attended a funeral. 

As I sat there with tears in my eyes looking at the handsome wooden box wherein the remains of my friend lay—after a rapid and sudden decline—a Christian brother so universally beloved the church building was bursting its capacity, the fire was rekindled. And it burned white hot.

This is not self-indulgent intellectual tiddlywinks. This is not a "hill to die on that isn't really." There is a man dead. And a very smug theologian of world renown has just proclaimed that the flesh and bones in that box will remain there forever. 

It is a lie. A wicked one. It is a direct contradiction not only of the Word of God, but of the universal testimony of the church that has declared from ancient times, "I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." 

This is why Christians build boxes for our flesh and bones. 

This is why we plant them in the ground.

This is why we face them toward the East where the sun rises.

Because someday the Son will rise. 

This one is worth ELEVEN. This is a hill worth dying on. The goodness of our Creator and the scope of his redeeming love for his creation is not a fleeting matter, to be discarded next week for another silly controversy. This debate is perennial. It is necessary. And failure on this hill is not an option.

They say one can be too curious. Don't go around poking your nose into things. Don't wonder about things above your pay grade. Stay in your lane. Do your job. Punch the clock. Do what is expected.

I suppose there is a time and place where each of these sentiments is wise and true. Somebody else's business is usually their business, and the Bible does warn against being busybodies. It also warns against trying to crawl into the mysterious mind of God. He's revealed more than we can grasp as it is. It's plenty, and it's quite enough.

Our problem in the world is not that we are too curious. It is that we aren't nearly curious enough. Essays abound lamenting that our society is full of mindless drones, with the constant, warm, illuminated backlight of our iPhones reflecting off our faces. I am by no means the first to notice that while the Internet has put all known information in the world at our fingertips, we are far less wise and intelligent than earlier generations. What does it profit a man to gain access to all knowledge, only to become a person without substance—a virtual person?

iPhones are a really great invention. So is streaming video. Video games take my breath away with the universes they open to the imagination. But they are a virtual reality that seems to have captured our attention far more than reality itself. Reality is a revelation of God, stunning in its beauty, diversity, wonder, color, texture, and sound. How much do we really notice?

I've been thinking about curiosity because this year my eldest daughter is attending school for the first time in her life, at age 15. After homeschooling through the first eight grades, we decided she needed the opportunities our local high school can offer her.

I confess to being a bit worried about it at first. Let me make this crystal clear: we are not the model homeschooling family. We are shockingly laissez faire, and often just incompetent. Oh, how many times have we thrown up our hands and exclaimed, "Let's just send them to school!" My kids are lazy, like most kids. They often lack discipline, motivation, and initiative. (I'm listening to Senator Ben Sasse's book, The Vanishing American Adult, and every page convicts me to my core.) Really, the kids are just mimicking their parents.

Did we teach our daughter enough? Then, thinking back, I wonder: did we teach her anything? What, exactly, did we do? Yes, she worked her way through some math textbooks, did a few classes in a local homeschool co-op. She did have a science tutor. But it seems like there are whole subjects that got treated lightly, if they got treated at all.

And then... okay, I'm being modest when I say this: she's thriving. I mean, thriving. She's had zero trouble, even with honors classes. Now, maybe that says more about the quality of public education in our community than our great schooling, but I don't actually think those are the relevant factors. I think there are two things that have made all the difference (so far).*

* That is a very big "so far." This sort of post is something I write with fear and trepidation. I don't believe in "jinxes," but there is something true in not "putting God to the test." There is no pat-myself-on-the-back pride going on here; just honest observations in the present moment.

1. She has not been institutionalized to hate school. I know we often rightly shrug off the complaints of kids. They have, shall we say, a vested interest in being unenthusiastic about learning? Because learning is hard. I moonlighted at a church youth group last year and asked the kids every week how school was going. 99% of them groaned and complained and said they hated school. Maybe we shouldn't write that off as kids just being contrarians. Maybe they, you know, hate school. And maybe, just maybe, the actual thing we call school has something to do with that. Years and years of time-consuming conformity in the entirely otherworldly petri dish where the only people you interact with are people your own age. Maybe there's something wrong with that kind of system, do you think? At any rate, my daughter's classmates are in their ninth year of this alternate reality; she's in her first. She hasn't been institutionalized to hate it. Yet.

2. Far more important, I believe, is that while our formal education perhaps fell short in some respects, she had an indispensable informal education. What she informally learned was to live a life of curiosity. 

This is why, looking back, I cannot really remember what, if anything, we happened to teach our daughter: because her real education—being curious about the world—was something ingrained in her way of life. It wasn't a "curriculum." A "class." There were no quizzes or tests. There was just a life of being curious, and a life of delighting in the amazing contributions and gifts of others. A life of books, music, literature, films, drama, poetry, theology, baseball, and much, much more. Dad reading aloud The Lord of the Rings trilogy and all seven Harry Potter novels (and talking endlessly together about the genius, beauty, plot, and characters of both). It was not a "program." For us, immersing ourselves in these things, talking and laughing about these things at the dinner table every single night is a way of life.

So she grew up being curious. To love discovering new things. That's all school is to her. A day divided into different "periods" in which she gets to learn new things about this incredible cosmos we inhabit. You cannot successfully tell kids to be curious. They have to be curious. Sure, occasionally someone in their teenage years has a "spark," a moment of time when a thirst for learning overwhelms them. Those are the moments school teachers are always searching for like they're searching for the Holy Grail. But it's fairly rare. Wouldn't it be better to grow up a curious person? 

Kids are naturally curious. How and why are we educating them out of it?

We are still works in progress, of course. I've got more kids to raise, and I'm sure I'm making our mundane day-to-day life sound much more romantic than it actually is. Trust me, there are lots of off days. But here's the thing: sometimes—maybe even often, in fact—it is romantic. Moments that delight the soul and spark our feeling and curiosity and imagination. 

You can stifle curiosity, and I think an overemphasis on formal and programmatic education can sometimes do just that. But you can also feed it real food. You can, along with your kids, absorb the great wide world God has made. Each and every calorie of knowledge and wisdom, truth, beauty, and goodness is turned into the muscle of character. Curiosity makes us people of substance. People of weightiness. Or perhaps better is the biblical term for that concept: people of glory.

Carl Trueman is a man I deeply admire, and I've long considered it a blessing to call him a friend. In addition to being my professor during my seminary days, he is a fellow University of Aberdeen alumnus; in fact, he is largely responsible for my own sojourn there.

I was delighted when last year Princeton University appointed him the William E. Simon Visiting Fellow in Religion and Public Life, where he is taking a year to study and write a new book on the rough topic of "Christianity and its discontents." I can think of no one better suited to the task. Trueman is brilliant, engaging, and articulate in both the spoken and written word. I have always dreaded the idea that he would ever write a negative review of something I've written, because he is the world's single-most devastating book reviewer. I await the results of his year at Princeton with great anticipation.

Last week he gave a sneak peek at an event hosted by Reformed Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. (I will embed the videos below). With typical Trueman verve, he titled his two lectures, Acknowledging the Unacknowledged Legislators: From William Wordsworth to Kim Kardashian, and True Life Among the Death Works: Christians and Contemporary Identity Culture. In these lectures he lays bare the roots of our current cultural dysfunction around the issues of identity and sexuality, and you will find no more compelling (if pessimistic) diagnoses, from anyone, anywhere. 

In the second lecture he offers his solution(s), of sorts. All of what he says is worth hearing and considering, and I can issue a hearty “Amen” to most of it. I tasted a dash of James Davison Hunter's "faithful presence," along with a splash of Rod Dreher's "Benedict Option." And (the reason I am writing this) I heard a fairly firm resistance to any sort of Neo-Calvinist "transformationalism," (although, we'll see, he walked this back a bit during the Q&A). Having just published a tiny book on recent Reformed "Two Kingdoms Theology," and as a card-carrying Neo-Calvinist, this portion of his remarks were of particular interest to me.

There are discordant threads running through this second lecture that beg for some resolution.

On the one hand, he rightly says that contemporary culture is an

anti-culture, not just a bad idea that can be exposed as such and then replaced by a good idea on the basis of an agreed common discourse in the public square. As the anti-culture embraces all of life, so our response must be equally comprehensive” (italics added).

Later he emphasizes that there is to be no dichotomy whatsoever between Christian faith and practice: “The key to the church's culture is that truth and action go together.” Our foundational commitments are to shape our every activity.

The church has largely failed, he judges, by accommodating rather than resisting ideas like the therapeutic definition of “self” and the wholesale erosion of marriage—things he calls “Death Works,” transgressive acts designed to overthrow the values of the established culture. We have, in other words, allowed the anti-culture of the “City of Man” to dictate ethics in the City of God.

He closes the lecture with a passionate appeal for the church to engage the deep questions of anthropology, identity, the significance of the body, complementarity, etc., over against the anti-culture of our age. That is, in other words, to proclaim the Lordship of Jesus Christ over these crucial topics of our day in a thorough and wholehearted way.

So far: 

Christianity is to be equally comprehensive as the anti-culture opposing it. Our orthodoxy demands orthopraxy in all areas of life. The church must openly resist the values of the opposing anti-culture. The church must wrestle with and proclaim an alternative anthropology.

On the other hand, in the middle of all this there is a curious twenty minutes spent arguing that the Christian church has little, if any, role to play in influencing and transforming the wider culture. It is hard to say how sharply he wishes to draw the line between the church and the world because he uses language of degree rather than principle: As in, 

[The church] is not the means by which God infiltrates the wider culture. She is not foremost a means of transforming, let alone redeeming, the culture. Rather, the church is first and foremost a culture in and of herself. 

The first sentence is simply wrong, and the rest depends a great deal on what he means by that “foremost.” I readily grant his major point: the church is a culture in and of herself. But what does that have to do with his first sentence? 

It is a simple non-sequitur to conclude from “The church is a distinguishable culture” that therefore “The church does not influence or transform the dominant anti-culture.” 

Trueman invokes Augustine’s two cities, and suddenly gives the impression that these two realms do not actually intersect, but rather run on parallel tracks: indeed, on his reading, now the church is something quite less comprehensive than the anti-culture opposing it:

Or to use Augustine's favorite terminology: she is the City of God, alive and well in the midst of the City of Man, witnessing to and waiting for the establishment of the New Jerusalem at the end of time. Here and now, Christians are members of both cities. Most of us have mortgages, bank loans, etc.; we are deeply embedded in the City of Man, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that. It is part of life in a fallen world. 

Well, now. Am I to understand by this that Christian identity (our orthodoxy) has nothing to say about the orthopraxy of finance, mortgages, or economic obligations? Are those aspects of the City of Man suddenly in some kind of neutral zone or No Man’s Land and are not themselves influenced by the very anti-culture Trueman is just now railing against? Wouldn’t Trueman condemn, in no uncertain terms, the frighteningly popular practice of “strategic default” (i.e., walking away from a mortgage you can pay just because you owe more than it’s worth) that plunged the world into economic catastrophe a decade ago, and which is itself a prime example of the new autonomous sense of “self” he’s decrying? I daresay he would.

So on the one hand, says Trueman, our response to the anti-culture must be equally comprehensive; on the other hand, there are just certain things Trueman doesn’t want the church to talk about. That is a lacuna that must be addressed. 

And I get it. I don’t think the church should be issuing dogmas on speed limits or the pay rates of public employees, or the “biblical” extent of individual carbon footprints, and lots of other things. I have written on this topic for the Journal of Christian Legal Thought here (p.17ff). My point is that I believe those sorts of questions are pragmatic, wisdom-oriented ones, not some hard-and-fast principle, which is always what Two Kingdoms advocates try to make it (This is a church topic; that is a “City of Man” topic, as if there were a divinely-revealed flowchart somewhere). The lines are not hard and fast; they are blurry and permeable, based on a whole host of contextual and historical factors.

Trueman himself, for over two hours, argues passionately and persuasively that the church must engage the transgender moment. Why? On what grounds? Because in our current context it is critical that the church do so. And guess what? In the 1850s it was critical that the church engage the slavery moment. In the 1930s it was critical that the church engage the Nazi moment. And in those times, too, the church had voices saying “It isn’t the church’s job.” Who draws these lines, and why?

As I mentioned, in the Q&A Trueman walked back his anti-transformationalism a good bit. He landed on the fact that he isn’t a “macro” transformationalist. After all, "if Abraham Kuyper couldn’t do it, nobody can do it." To that I say: Carl Trueman is in no position to say who God will use or when and where. Plenty of people told William Wilberforce, “Give up. It cannot be done,” and, "this isn't the church's job." On the other hand, Trueman's “micro” transformationalism is precisely mine: the church shapes and forms God’s people who, in turn, transform their own surroundings. But to do this requires the church to form and shape in a way that is, to use his phrase, “equally comprehensive” as the anti-culture we inhabit Monday through Saturday.

This impulse to rope off certain areas as “outside the church’s job” is convenient and understandable, and sometimes even wise; but as a principle it is not well-grounded at all. This was made manifest in the final question of the Q&A on the topic of capitalism. I sympathize with his lament about churches being coopted into “crazy politics” right and left. I really do. But to say that addressing something like capitalism or free markets “isn’t the church’s job” cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny. Were his church in South Africa, which just passed a law confiscating wide swaths of land and property from a class of people solely on the basis of their skin color, I daresay he’d have something to say to his congregants about economic property rights and injustice.

I will close this (don't get me wrong: overwhelmingly appreciative and friendly) critique with this: Trueman grounded his seemingly sharp dichotomy between church and world in the doctrines of God and of Christ. I quote:

This point is grounded in the Christian doctrine of God. He is the creator of all things, both the first creation of the world and the new creation that is the church.

Yes. And a robust Christian engagement with culture, the kind Trueman has just given us in two hours of lecture, rests on the understanding that one of these two “creations” shines light into, illumines, and transforms the darkness of the (now-fallen) other. He himself is a dynamic living, breathing, and talking confirmation of that fact. And, thus, he is a talking contradiction of his anti-transformationalist alter ego. 

It is also grounded in the Christian doctrine of Christ. He is the head of the new creation, the church.

Yes. Let’s see how Colossians 1 finishes that thought: “And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” 

Carl Trueman has just powerfully argued for two hours that Jesus Christ is Lord of human identity, sex, gender, marriage, relationships, and much more. 

He claims to not like the Kuyperian approach to Christianity and culture, but he seems well on his way to “every square inch.”

If you've been here before, you're now noticing the new website design.

I've put off a redesign for many years for what turned out to be silly reasons. I'm not a web designer and the very idea seemed too complicated and time consuming. I have, of course, noticed the evolution of web pages, with their big, bold cover photographs and cool scrolling features, but didn't see how to make that usable for a word-centric (rather than photo-centric) website.

Then I noticed Keanu Reeves advertising Squarespace during the Super Bowl. I realized I hadn't checked in with Squarespace for a very, very long time.* Perhaps they've got new web design tools and templates? So I checked it out. 

* FYI: I have been a Squarespace subscriber from way back when the company was essentially ONE guy in his New York Apartment. I love entrepreneurs and success stories!

It turns out Squarespace has been very busy improving their product over the years, and my entire web redesign, including that big, bold photograph and cool scrolling, did not fill an entire afternoon, much less the days and days I anticipated.

To say that I'm a satisfied customer would be a huge understatement. The improvement is so vast that I actually feel inspired to, well, write more content. I'm busy writing books, but I hope to drop some more blog posts at a regular rate!

There's very little that's worse than post-shooting social media. Our national breakdown into competing tribes is a sickening sight to behold. Ugliest of all is the constant accusation, flying both directions, that "People that don't agree with my *policy* ideas hate children and have blood on their hands." It's wicked nonsense, and it has to stop if any progress is to be made.

People misguided on the efficacy or desirability of policy objectives do not "hate children." Nor is there "blood on their hands." Let us have a reasoned conversation. Because this is how much of the debate looks right now:

You want the Federal government to "DO SOMETHING!" That "something" is getting rid of all firearms and making sure nobody evil (or, perhaps, just nobody) ever gets one. It doesn't seem to matter that this same government has lost its 30-year "War on Drugs," and after decades our streets are still filled with deadly narcotics. You think, nevertheless, that this is a practical idea. And if you signal your support of this (unworkable) idea, it means you LOVE children.

I want to arm and train school personnel. From my point of view, providing protection at the local brick-and-mortar level has the decided advantage of actually doing something to keep our kids safe, either as a pure deterrent or (God forbid) actual armed defense. But advocating this (workable) idea, apparently, means that I HATE children.

Take a deep breath, think, and don't assume people's motives. I don't question that gun control advocates love kids; of course they do. Let's have the same charity on the other side. And I plead with you: can't we, at the very least, forge a bipartisan commitment to make sure that no brick-and-mortar school facility is a "soft," defenseless target full of innocents? I daresay the fact that that is what we have done, as a matter of policy, ought to fill us ALL with the shame of blood-guilt. Our "gun free" school policy, no matter how well-intentioned, is a sin of omission. We are failing to live up to the demands of the 6th Commandment.

If you will agree to this modest proposal, perhaps some trust and goodwill can be built when we move on to exploring possible practical solutions to the supply side of the problem.