20 February 2007

Jim Zumbo thoughts

We avoided talking about the Jim Zumbo meltdown over the weekend. Others were doing it well and we were most lazy.

-quick re-cap for my non-gun nut readers: Jim Zumbo, longtime writer for Outdoor Life, went off half-cocked and stated he saw no hunting-related use for, and thus no reason for anyone to own AR-15 style firearms. He referred to this entire family of rifles as "terrorist rifles." -

This is one of the amazing things about the internet.

We first heard about it via Tamara.

Word got out quickly among the gun people, and within 48 hours, Mr. Zumbo had issued an apology, been disowned by several sponsors (including Remington, which is kinda like being disowned by the GM of the firearms world), and Outdoor Life has pulled him off the 'net.

We occasionally hear talk of how blogging, and the internet, has impacted politics (think Trent Lott). It's interesting to see it impact commerce, too.

Oh - an aside - Zumbo did screw the pooch and deserved the resulting beatdown. But the reasons for that are complicated and the discussion will require footnotes, so we'll talk about that another time.