The following piece on the current attack on gun publications is as an intro from the summer 2018 issue of Ballistic Magazine.
On the cover of this magazine is an American hero who has fought for our rights in the most dangerous places on earth and watched many friends and colleagues die in this pursuit. John “Tig” Tiegen believes in our Second Amendment and understands that this country was built on the right to bear arms and the right to defend ourselves. Tig is the type of person who would never back down from a fight. And thank goodness. With the recent headlines related to mass shootings, it’s become clear that our government can’t always protect us.
If laws were enforced and people had done their jobs, perhaps we wouldn’t be mourning the 43 people killed at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, last summer, and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in February. Both suspected murderers were on the FBI’s radar.
The Texas killer was prohibited from possessing firearms due to a domestic violence conviction in a court-martial, but the Air Force failed to record the conviction. (He was stopped from fleeing by a private citizen, Stephen Willeford, who shot him with, you guessed it, an AR-15.) And the deputy on duty in Parkland failed to protect those kids.
No matter. The anti-gun backlash and politicization was swift and often misguided. And now you, our readers, will suffer. A small number of retailers have decided to remove some gun magazines. No, not high-capacity magazines, but print gun publications. Ballistic included. And not just Ballistic—every gun magazine that might include an “assault rifle.”
The Statistics
So let’s be clear: Our company, Athlon Outdoors, creates a lot of content related to firearms. We take our responsibility seriously, and we pride ourselves on being informers and educators in every subject we cover. We never glorify gun violence, and like you, revile criminal activity and demand that authorities enforce current laws.
But to some, that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that while firearms sales have skyrocketed over the past 25 years, violent crime has plummeted in an almost perfectly inverse trend line. It doesn’t matter that every year, Americans used their own guns to defend themselves from crime more than 67,740 times on average (this is the most liberal version I could find—the NRA puts this number at 2.5 million). In other words, every day people use their guns to defend themselves against violent or property crimes 185 times.
While mass shootings garner a lot of attention, rifles were used in 478 murders in 2016, according to the latest FBI statistics. This includes all rifles: levers, bolt actions, single-shots—not just AR-style rifles. We don’t want to trivialize this number, but in relative terms, it’s small. In that same timespan, cigarette smoking accounted for 480,000 deaths. Prescription drugs: 22,134. Alcohol: more than 33,000. And knives accounted for 1,604 murders (more than triple rifles).
Our Gun Publications
The pen may be mightier than the sword, but a magazine never killed anybody. Understanding that our valued readers might experience some difficulties finding our magazines, we’ve put together great subscription prices for Ballistic, Survivor’s Edge, Tactical Life, Combat Handguns, Guns of the Old West, plus new bundle packages for other titles like AR Rifleman, Black Guns, Concealed Carry Handguns, Personal Defense World and more.
You can have all your favorite titles sent right to your mailbox while taking away retail censorship power. Check out our subscription specials online at OutdoorGroupStore.com.
For other great content you can’t find in the magazines, we have our family of websites:
This article is from the summer 2018 issue of Ballistic Magazine. To subscribe or purchase individual copies, please visit OutdoorGroupStore.com.
