Not to mention that the one guy is wearing his fourragère completely wrong, or that his gig line is comically bad, and the other guy has three Purple Hearts side by side, and on and on... I wonder if his Purple Heart "citations" read like this guy's?

Anyway, here are some of the awards and citations we came up with. I would suggest that posers use some of these, for it would really make the whole thing a lot more fun.

- Dual Congressional Medals of Honor from the Spanish-American War
- A citation for valor while serving in a SOAD unit during the American Revolution
- Letter of commendation from George Washington for the French and Indian Wars
- Silver Star for providing important aerial surveillance photographs from a U2 during the 3rd Crusade
- Legion of Merit for providing logistical assistance to the Huns as they marched on Rome
- Legion of Merit for leading the first "Out of Africa" migration
- Page 11 for eating the apple in the Garden of Eden
- Navy Cross for being the first sea creature to walk on land

Any other ideas?

Edit: Some good satire here.

I thought the first line was fairly clear -

I am getting really tired of searching for a quality firearm review to link to, only to come across regurgitated manufacturer specifications and photos under the title "Review."

- but I did not link to the particular "review" that set me off. Here it is. It's the #1 non-video Google result for "Sig P938 Review." The page title is "SIG SAUER P938 Review." It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a review.

Some people seem to have taken my article as an attack on the way they do actual firearm reviews - I don't really understand why. I mean, if your idea of a "review" is to do what that site did, and take the manufacturer's photo (even going so far as to put your logo on it), drop in the manufacturer specs, and then say "This looks cool, I am looking forward to touching it" - then yes, I was attacking your idea of a "review."

To the majority of the firearm blogosphere - and almost every link (to my earlier article) I've seen seems to fall into this category - I was not saying that my reviews were better than yours, I was not saying that you suck, I was not saying that your reviews are not reviews, and I was not saying that I am the final arbiter of what is or is not a review. If you use something, think about your experience with it, and then share your thoughts - that is, in my opinion, a review. It may be a thoughtful review, it may be a terrible review - but it is a review. What really matters is what you think of it. If you think it's a review, then call it a review.

To the insulted minority - I will say that if my comments about taking manufacturer information and calling it a review made you feel small inside, then you already know that you suck. My article was only the catalyst that made you realize how much you suck.

I have come to the conclusion that the reason for the "buycott" is simple, and not what we thought it was: we were trolled.

If you're not familiar with the term, the explanation won't take long. "Trolling" is the web equivalent of the fishing term - someone tosses controversial bait in the waters of the internet, waiting for a bite. In this case, the troll was the "national gun victims action council," or something like that. And we, as firearm owners, bit hard, pushing ourselves to spend money with Starbucks on the day that the "council" was organizing a boycott.

Why do I say we were trolled? Because this "council" is a farce and a bad joke. They have just over 250 Facebook fans after almost a year on the site (for comparison, 24,000+ people on Facebook said they were going to support Starbucks today). In addition, the anti-gun "fact sheet" they put forward regarding carry laws is hilariously bad. Without any supporting facts, it simply claims that people are at higher risk for "gun violence" when gun laws allow carry of firearms. Here's what it says, minus the MSPaint diagram:

Strong Gun Laws

You are at low risk if people are not legally allowed to carry guns at any of the places you go.

Unfortunately, the NRA wants to expand where guns can be carried and who can carry them in order to increase sales.

Weakening Gun Laws

You are at medium risk if people are legally allowed to carry guns in some of the places you go.

This is the current situation for most people, but it’s changing. The NRA has watered down laws, putting you at higher risk.

Weak Gun Laws

You are at high risk if people are allowed to carry guns everywhere you & your loved ones go.

Already, 49 states allow concealed guns, and 43 allow open carry. Laws are expanding unchecked, the NRA’s goal.

Here's the version I made. What do you think?

Strong Murder Laws

You are at low risk if people are not legally allowed to murder you at any of the places you go.

Weakening Murder Laws

You are at medium risk if people are legally allowed to murder you in some of the places you go.

Weak Murder Laws

You are at high risk if people are allowed to murder you everywhere you & your loved ones go.

If this is the best that the anti-gun types can come up with, we should just take our ball and go home. They've sent the JV team to the Super Bowl - and lost.

The takeaway is that Mr. Helinski sees himself as "real internet media," and looks down on those who he feels are not. He even goes so far as to suggest that gun bloggers with small audiences should not be allowed in the press room or to Media Day at the Range duing SHOT Show. He also complained about having to wait in line behind people who were taking video at Media Day with their cell phones.

While I agree that the gaggle of people at Media Day wasn't conducive to easily testing some of the firearms that were available, the manner in which Mr. Helinski chose to express his opinions was rather unprofessional. He also - either out of ignorance or a willful twisting of the facts - states that GunsAmerica's compete.com rankings, showing over 1 million unique visitors per month, are an indication of how serious a media professional he is, and how seriously his blog should be taken. My blog, for comparison, has about 6,000 unique visitors per month.

There are several ironic factors regarding this issue that I will discuss in no particular order.

- First, people using cell phones to take video on Media Day.
A friend of mine's boyfriend is a professional cinematographer; that is, he shoots major motion pictures with video cameras that price out in the five figure range and above. He was taking video of her shooting a pistol on Media Day with an iPhone 4S, and I don't think it was because he didn't love her enough to use a "real camera." His qualifications and experience far exceed whoever GunsAmerica had running their expensive video camera. I'll take experience over equipment any day.

- Second, segregating "real media" from "small-time bloggers."
I don't want to give the impression that this post is just sour grapes - that I'm jealous of the size of his blog, and I feel intimidated by it. This is for two reasons. Number one, as I told several people at SHOT, my blog is small, and I like it that way. Not many people read it, but the people that do are polite, educated, and professional. I'd like to keep it that way. Number two, my blog ranks higher in search engines than the GunsAmerica blog, and so does practically every other gun blog in existence.

OpenSiteExplorer says that the GunsAmerica blog Page Authority (on a scale of 0-100, how well search engines rank sites based on a lot of things, but mostly the quality of their content and how many people link to that site) is 31; VuurwapenBlog is 44. Guns and Ammo Magazine's online site is 41.

Mr. Helinski would like us to look at the root domain - gunsamerica.com - and their Page Authority is 54. Impressive, no doubt, until you realize that Gunbroker's is 61. GearScout, the official Military Times blog that I wrote for during SHOT, has a Page Authority of 72. I was unable to find a firearms-related blog that had a lower Page Authority than the Guns America blog.

- Third, their social media presence is weak. Their blog has no Facebook page. The official GunsAmerica Facebook page has 5,000 fans, ten times as many as my blog, but the GunsAmerica root domain has 200 times as many unique visitors per month as my blog. Not very impressive, from a ratio standpoint. Also, how far has not using cell phone cameras gotten them on YouTube? I have three times as many YouTube subscribers as the GunsAmerica blog, and I consider myself to be very small potatoes on YouTube.

- Fourth, his comments on bloggers who recently created blogs and "installed wordpress" just to get in to Media Day are especially ironic, given that his blog came into existence just three months before SHOT 2011, and he is using an off-the-shelf WordPress theme (I am too, but I won't hold it against anyone else for doing so, with the exception of this example). Despite his claims of "15 years of hard work," the GunsAmerica blog has only been in existence since October of 2010.

If we were to use Mr. Helinski's own criteria for judging whether or not a blogger should be allowed in to Media Day or enter the press room, he certainly should not have been admitted to those events for SHOT 2011, and the result of that might be that he wouldn't have been allowed to attend Media Day 2012 either.

There was a kernel of truth inside the rotten fruit of his statements, but the poor expression of his opinion has clouded the issue. In fact, he's prevented a serious discussion of whether or not Media Day had too many attendees, choosing to focus attention on himself and his own "achievements" instead.

Mr. Helinski is right in suggesting that quality content will rise to the top regardless of adversity. Given the big name writers, corporate backing, and expensive equipment used to create GunsAmerica blog content - the dismal performance of his blog can only mean that the quality of his content is not strong enough to stand on its own merits.

... And women, please stop being the willing pawns of retards with guns and video cameras.

There are a lot of idiots in the world. I don't think any country has a monopoly on them, but the (nonexistent) law of averages says the United States has to have quite a few. Unfortunately, as there is no checkbox on an ATF form 4473 that asks whether or not the purchaser of the firearm is an idiot, these people have free access to firearms.

Of course, other amendments to the Constitution afford them access to video cameras and the Internet, meaning that they are free to share their idiocy with the world.

Sometimes idiots just post videos of themselves doing dumb things with firearms, but other times they enlist their friends. Because idiocy is not limited to one gender, and because idiots are like magnets and tend to attract one another, sometimes we see women doing dumb things with firearms on YouTube.

To be sure, a lot of the women we see firing extremely powerful weapons without adequate training or preparation were tricked into it by a boyfriend or husband who wanted to get a few cheap laughs. Sometimes, though, they really should know better. It's not as if they were hit over the head and dragged in front of the camera, then forced to shoot a weapon that they couldn't handle (they are generally hit on the head immediately after they fire the weapon). Intuition should be giving them clues that something just isn't right - but this is quite often ignored.

I think it's important to stress the fact that guys are behind the vast majority of these videos, but the women involved are not doing a single thing to stop them. Perhaps I'm delving into issues of human nature and psychology that I do not fully understand, but I really don't have patience for either involved party here.

I guess I do have a little more sympathy for the women who trust a man to make the right decision for them in an area in which the women have no practical experience, however. I have taken a number of women shooting who have said that the only previous time they had shot a firearm, their father/uncle/brother/ex-boyfriend took them to the range and had them shoot either a magnum revolver, a magnum rifle, or a large shotgun. The results, as one might expect, were not sunshine and rainbows.

On the other hand, when I was very young, my father took me shooting in an effort to show me how powerful firearms were, and to deter me from seeing them as toys - as he puts it, to "scare me away" from firearms. I shot a 357 Magnum revolver, a break open double-barreled 12gauge, and an Enfield in 303 British. None of these are light recoiling weapons, especially at the age of four or five (my father held his hands over mine as "I" shot so as to prevent accident or injury). In the long run, this was the beginning of my peculiar interest in firearms, which, of course, continues to this day.

To the guys out there, do you really think that what you are doing will be beneficial to anyone or anything except your ego?

To the women out there, do you really think that firing this big gun, on camera, while wearing a bikini will make him love you more (I can't think of any other reason why women participate in this crap)?

Working for a brief period of time in a gun store convinced me that idiots should not own firearms, but common sense, practicality, and the Bill of Rights dictate that idiots have the same rights as non-idiots. Of course, as long as we, the lesser idiotic peoples of the world, continue to vote with our fingers and click on videos of scantily clad women shooting big guns, more idiots will be encouraged to seek out their 15 million views of fame.

Here's a horrible video I made about it earlier this year.

While the personnel at these ranges are extremely safety-conscious, and I don't want to give any other impression, they are unlikely to "get in your business" unless you give them a reason to. In addition, the range rules relate to safety and not damaging range property - basic stuff I would expect to find at any range.

I'm in California at the moment, and wow, do these people have it bad. After slogging through traffic for over two hours, I made it to the "Oak Tree Gun Club," which offers an impressive array of facilities, including a restaurant (My grilled ham and cheese sandwich was excellent). The name is not hypothetical - the setting was idyllic.

The shotgun ranges were quite large, and microphones at each firing station enabled shooters to say "Pull" to a machine which would then launch clays for them. Fancy! While the pistol ranges were more basic, there were a variety of steel targets that entertained me for several hours as I waited for some friends to slog their way through traffic.

There was a large selection of rental firearms - one of the largest I've seen outside a place like Scottsdale Gun Club - although one of the two firearms I examined was in need of some qualified gunsmithing, and the other was well on its way to that same point.

So, what was so bad about this range? It sounds pretty good, right?

Before I go any further, I should say that my interactions with range personnel (Rangemaster and RSOs) were as follows:

- Being reminded by the rangemaster to not shoot at the closest row of steel targets with rimfire, when I had not done so even once in nearly an hour of continuous shooting on that range.
- Being politely reminded to slide my eye pro down onto my face. I truly appreciated this, because I like my eyes, and want to keep them.
- Being told (also politely) that I couldn't fire "any more" steel cased ammo. I had yet to fire any, but I did have a box of steel cased .45 with a few rounds left in it that I had intended to shoot at some point. I did read the range rules carefully, but failed to understand that the "no steel case" rule did not only apply to the steel target pistol range.

I generally avoid breaking range rules, even if I don't like them, but especially when I'm the guest of someone who I like and respect and is a regular patron of the "gun club."

I want to point out these interactions so as not to give the impression that I was reprimanded, cajoled, yelled at, etc. for some gross safety violation, and that this post is just sour grapes. Also, I want to highlight the fact that almost all of the personnel who were out and about on the range were polite and professional.

I did, however, witness a few questionable actions, have issues with some rules, and safety concerns about their firearms and ammunition.

First, the rangemaster. He would constantly interrupt conversations between people at the range, ostensibly to correct behavior or to remind them of the rules, when in fact no violations of the rules had been made or were apparent. This occurred to the point of annoyance. It also seemed to occur most often when groups including one or more women were speaking to one another.

Second, the rules. They were legion, but the ones that irked me most include a ban on steel-cased ammo and that picking up your own brass was against range rules.

My brass is my property. I paid for it, and I intend to keep it. For the purposes of yesterday's trip, I was willing to sacrifice any brass I fired. However, this alone would prevent me from ever returning.

In an ironic twist, the "pro shop" sold, among other things, reloading supplies and components. Exactly what am I supposed to reload with? Factory new brass? I didn't see used brass for sale, but that would be hilarious. Oh, boy! I get to pay for my own brass TWICE!

Banning steel cased ammo, regardless of bullet construction, is just plain silly. I do suppose that it would be a pain for them to sort out the steel cases, since they're keeping everything that's fired on the range. However, that would make these mutually correcting issues - fix one, and the other goes away.

Finally, their firearms and ammunition. I'm well aware that rental firearms see heavy use - and abuse - and cannot be kept in like-new condition. However, it's not a stretch to imagine that they would be kept in serviceable condition. Also, the store-brand reloaded ammunition they sell - which is, by the way, priced the same as brand new ammunition anywhere else - was made to no standards whatsoever.

Fully half of the .357 Magnum rounds I tried would not seat in any chamber of the rental S&W 686+. The ammunition components were clearly selected for the lowest possible production cost. Powder charges varied significantly. I don't mind being required to shoot range-bought ammo in range-owned firearms, but I do not like being sold poor quality, unsafe ammunition. Given their hyper-vigilance regarding safety, I found this very odd.

The range personnel behind the counter were responsive to these issues, and, like the vast majority of personnel outside, friendly, polite, and professional. Although I think the locals have it bad, they hold a different opinion. The range was busy all day, and they're clearly not going to be hurting without my presence and money.

However, I won't be going back at any point in the future, and I can't wait to get back to "my" range.

Fast forward to this year, where Sig's big contract with the Dutch police for the P250 was pretty much the only thing the company had to crow about. Frankly, I was surprised that the P250 had won anything. Now, it turns out that my suspicions weren't misplaced. The Dutch have rejected the P250 for unspecified issues that would place police officers in danger. To put it mildly, they don't seem happy with Sig or the P250:

On the basis of the results of these tests I no longer find it responsible to continue with this pistol. There is no longer enough confidence in the quality of the pistol, nor in the capacity of the manufacturer to improve the quality or safeguard it. All this brings a risk to the safety of police officers on the street.

Sig wins again.

Every new firearm that's been announced for the last few years - heck, probably more - has been presented to the consumer as if it is nothing short of revolutionary - in fact, that word is often used to describe the new product of the month. Almost invariably, though, this "revolutionary" firearm is simply an amalgamation of previous designs packaged in a new shell with a fancy name.

The Nano does not change any games, despite Beretta's claims to the contrary. Its major design feature, the removable frame insert, is very similar to what we saw a few years ago in the Sig P250, which is in fact licensed from Steyr in the case of the P250 (Kudos to Steyr for being the originator of this design, even if nothing has really come of it). Even if being able to change grip sizes without changing serial numbers is mildly interesting, Sig has discovered that people prefer their handguns actually function before they think about whether or not they would like to have two grip sizes or change between different calibers.

In the long gun market, we have items like the Benelli Vinci, described as, you guessed it, a "revolution" in shotgun technology. It's basically the Benelli operating system in an easier-to-manufacture package, with the side benefit of it being more suitable for rapid disassembly. Its most promising technology is the concept of a quick-change tubular magazine that could be manufactured in several lengths, but Benelli isn't interested in selling this to civilians.

The silver lining for me is that products like the P250 and the Vinci haven't done very well on the market. Unfortunately, at least in the case of the P250, this has more to do with a complete lack of reliability than the fact that the weapon wasn't worth buying in the first place.

It's my opinion - worth what you paid for it - that twenty-year-old - or perhaps even older - specimens of these companies' firearms are more reliable, durable, and useful than their newer designs. Sig P228, anyone? Benelli M1 Super 90?

I don't know when we can expect to see true innovation, with the potential for market success, from a firearm manufacturer, but I don't think it will come from any of the companies that seem to currently be led around by the nose by their P.T. Barnum-like marketing folks. We need another Browning, another Stoner, another Glock. Not another Beretta Nano.