What you have started is very good. My concerns are what our identity will become, in one sense what we do not need is to be seen as limited to any particular political group, but a community that can reach across party lines to a fully inclusive of all gun owners regardless of their political affiliation. The press would love to say we are simply a sub set of one political party rather than fully committed constitutional support community encompassing all gun owners. Great work.
The reputation of the Second Press and how others will view our membership is an important point. Thanks for bringing attention to it. I want us to be regarded as well-informed, dedicated to being reasonable, and not prone to rant. I agree that the press would love to discredit us as demagogues and political hacks. Within the context of the Second Press, we should restrain ourselves from serving political parties. Any service to a political party within the context of the Second Press should be as an unavoidable consequence, and not as a prescription, of maintaining constitutional support.
Totally agree, James Ketler. I know I'm referred to as a "Trumpster" just because I support 2A. I have met a few Democrats (definitely not liberals) who are 2A supporters. We agreed that, although we do not see eye to eye on politics, we do agree hand-n-hand that our Constitution and the Amendments MUST be preserved at all costs. At the end of the day, we are Americans first and foremost, and we should all want to preserve this amazing country and it's values. End of story.
Devil Dog, I think what you have started here is a great thing. Starting out it is going to seem a little bit like preaching to the choir,, any movement has to have a solid base and foundation to build upon. My personal opinion is that this is moving in the right direction for success and mission accomplishment for the mission given. I look forward to The Second Press articles and the Langley Outdoors videos daily! I cannot wait to see where this goes/grows into. Semper Fi, and keep up the great work.
Thanks! It’s a tough row to hoe given the divide we are facing in the Union right now. Even the new gun owners don’t look at the 2A as a right, or some of the ones I’ve met anyway. I think that’s the target market we need to approach in order to educate them on their rights and if we allow it, then that right to own a weapon can be taken away.
Braden, I had not commented on how 2nd Press would reach others. I have been hoping that there would be a launch similar to what you just told us. I believe that there will need to be significant marketing of the website outside the 2A communities. We will want independent journalists to be able to use the articles in building their stories.
But, some of the articles so far have presented statements that I found questionable. It was small things like claiming all knives in New Zealand were banned. They aren't all banned. Many are banned. When these articles face the critique of the left, small errors will be used to discredit entire articles and the entire website. The writers should have a chance to make these small adjustments before the article goes public.
Those of us who signed up are committed to protecting the 2nd amendment. We may be considered a review board if we will take the mission seriously. If we read critically as content editors rather than for entertainment or confirmation of our beliefs, we may find many of those minor errors in the articles. Every paper, letter, or report that I produced in my career was proofed by at least 2 people before it was sent. Almost all of my emails were as well. If you believe our reviews would help, please call for us to begin that critical review.
Yes sir my brother, my question was answered. Thankyou for your efforts as well as the efforts of all here. I will continue to spread these messages as far and wide as I can.
Even if you hear the preaching to the choir remark. Well I the same article is information that was not being preached. I look at the effort of the making of the writing of articles and some historical and current facts. The way the writers are doing this is easy to critique, but try to do research and find a way to make a good case. I'm impressed thank you for the great information, insight and effor. 🇺🇸💪😎
I'd like continuous analysis of the FBI Annual Crime Statistics for the current year and comparisons going back over each years stats. The Left doesn't like there own stats but they need to have it constantly thrown in their face. Keep up the good work!
Hey Braden, thanks so much for all of this information and your goals. I honestly don't actually think that you and your writers have been "preaching to the choir!" Even the choir enjoys learning a new song, now and again. Or practicing it for the first time in forever. I can't be certain of course, but in 35 articles, surely everyone of us has learned something new!
Maybe multiple things, eh? Or we've been given an opportunity to review and bolster facts we are somewhat familiar with, and moreso now. I for one, most definitely have! You've drawn in a lot of comments on this thread. A lot of good thoughts and advice.
Hopefully, many will be doable, maybe others would be somewhat difficult to proceed with, at least at this juncture. Regardless, keep on keep'n on, Buddy! You recognize that reaching the uninformed is an absolute necessity. We all appreciate that you and your writers will.
Hey Braden. At the moment, the Second Press doesn't do anything that the ordinary press hasn't been doing since time immemorial. Which is to report on current events, and then let all the reporting and useful commentary disappear down the memory hole. 35 articles so far is a great start, but these articles are just like a pile of bricks. And it's gonna take more than just a load of cement to build a 2A castle. It takes project planning and a building effort involving a lot of "cement." (By the way, I don't want to "bury the lead," but I think I need to lay an explanatory foundation before I finally answer how all of this leads to bringing in more people and lifeblood into the movement. I promise to get to that.)
Every pro-2A argument that could be made, has been made.* But down the memory hole it has gone, never to be seen or used again, even though these cogent arguments exist in repositories such as libraries and the ancient recesses of the Internet. There are enough academic papers, credible journalistic investigations, and scholarly examinations of history, researched and written in the last century alone, to sink a tuna boat. But this treasure trove of literature is effectively out of reach because no one has a comprehensive map that describes the "anatomy" of this information, and where it is. Nor is there any index that pinpoints which data within this literary anatomy, is particularly useful to combat each particular anti-2A argument and the specific rhetoric crafted by our foes.
Without a cognitive map of the information which is buried in a repository, new generations of patriots won't even know that it exists, and so they will have to repeat the effort of rebuilding the counter-arguments at great personal expense. Which is what is happening right now. This is tremendously inefficient. And, without an index that guides patriotic minds to the sole specific data that is useful to contradict the opposition's particular arguments, our "winning arguments" are always late, and end up trailing far behind the opposition's dismissive attacks on reason, on history, on the right to self-defense, and on sacred American values. Because the opposition can launch attacks effortlessly, and thus in overwhelming quantity, which, despite being deeply flawed in their reasoning, is obviously persuasive and convincing to millions of fellow Americans, unless their arguments are crushed immediately. But delay in readiness to obliterate the opposition's arguments is ruinous. Without ready-made counter-arguments by us that tower in rhetorical skill, logical power, and deliver greater weight in reason and veracity of numerous facts, our opponents are able to blithely declare intellectual victory, and just move on to wreak more social and political damage. But the Second Press can change all that!
The content of the Second Press should be curated so that it can be accessed quickly and used decisively. I like to think of the entire bulk of pro-2A literature as being an intellectual war chest. But our academic and scholarly war chest is not organized and curated well enough that it can be used readily and conveniently leveraged by your average 2A proponent unless they are already well-trained and immersed in academia and politics. The Second Press could be the first to overcome this hurdle.
I wish I was plugged into academia and politics, but like most people, the daily chore of survival, and the necessity to work in a profession outside of academia and politics leave me little time or energy to participate 100% in this epic battle for human rights and the American political creed. So make it easy for me. For all of us!
It is not enough to have a repository. Every article needs to be mapped inside the canon of pro-2A literature. For example, does the article address statistics or recount historical fact? Does it argue a point according to prudentialism, or Constitutional Originalism? Does the article feature demographic information, or behavioral science? And how does it stand in relation to the whole body of pro-2A literature? We need this mental map so that we can see the grand mosaic of logic and facts that are on our side, and make it easy to find the superlative arguments that have already been formulated by brilliant by hundreds of 2A scholars who preceded us.
Additionally, every idea in every article needs to be indexed against a mirror index of the oppositions arguments, reasons, logic, psychology and rhetoric. That way, when the opposition launches a seemingly new anti-2A assault, no matter how they have couched their argument, or cleverly concealed it, anyone of us can recognize it for what it is (probably the same bad argument wrapped in some new deception) and be able to use the Second Press as handy tool to assemble a devastating counter-argument quickly and easily. That way we don't give the opposition any room to breathe. I am sick and tired of being on the defensive. I propose the Second Press make it possible to suffocate the opposition's ability to argue without suffering an immediately excoriating correction.
Because, in order for us to be trusted and believed, we have to keep track of the original sources such as historical data, the congressional record, various laws or regulations, and innumerable pre-Internet news stories to name but a fraction of evidence that =should be, and needs to be= at our fingertips. Our opposition can just talk out of their butts without any reality check whatsoever. We don't have that luxury. We have to be better equipped. But to be so well equipped is expensive and exhausting. Especially when the opposition has launched 5 more attacks before you have even had a chance to respond expertly, without ranting, to the first.
I propose that if you make the map of pro-2A literature public, with an associated index of point and counterpoint, that doing so will attract the lifeblood the Second Press needs. You have energized the 2A nation. Congratulations! Now it needs you to enable it to fight. Fix the war chest. Make it a tool that any of us can use for winning the argument.
Such a tool would also serve a second purpose as a pro-2A catechism. Just about every public school, university, government agency, and public corporation, especially high-tech giants in Silicon Valley, is dominated by 2A enemies, who teach others to be 2A enemies. Consequently, every student, government and white-collar employee is soaking in anti-2A thought and rhetoric. So many people are being baptized and raised by institutions that are hostile to 2A philosophy. We, on the other hand, are left to rely on YouTube and gun shows as our only "organic" institutions to showcase an alternative education. We don't have anywhere near educational influence that our opponents have in these institutions so we need to create our own.
In order to pass the blessing of the Second Amendment onto future generations, we have to convince future generations that the Second Amendment is a blessing. If they regard it as a blessing they will want to fight for it. For this reason, the Second Press should serve as a catechism too. And if the Second Press arms the next generation with the academic and scholarly tools to win arguments, then they will fight for the Second Amendment.
So, finally, I propose you publish a map of the Second Amendment, its complete anatomy. Supported by a taxonomy of arguments on both sides, with a minimum 1:1 correspondence so that no argument against 2A goes unopposed. In other words, we have to classify and catalogue all the anti-2A arguments too, and the manner in which they are argued. Additionally, an index so that every pro-2A argument and fact is easily retrieved and each reference documented back to its original source. You can keep access to the data behind the paywall. Most scholarship is trapped behind paywalls now. Second Press could become the LexisNexis of 2A scholarship.
This means that going forward, every articles needs to be submitted with notes, sources, cross-references, bibliographic data and so forth. Otherwise, Second Press articles will become untethered from present day contagiousness and slip past the event-horizon of the memory hole, only to be brought back to relevance by some future heroic effort to exhume the brilliance of so much past effort.
Personally, I hope the Second Press develops into a catechismic public library where everything is free, but like Wikipedia, earns donations and wins philanthropic support by curating a superlative literary repository, and on top of that, an excellent indexing and search application that makes it easier for ordinary people to operate at scholarly levels that match or exceed current academic performance. In other words, a platform for crowd sourcing academic excellence for the sake of passing on the blessing of the Second Amendment.
*Every anti-2A argument that can be made has already been made. There is nothing new under the sun.
What you have started is very good. My concerns are what our identity will become, in one sense what we do not need is to be seen as limited to any particular political group, but a community that can reach across party lines to a fully inclusive of all gun owners regardless of their political affiliation. The press would love to say we are simply a sub set of one political party rather than fully committed constitutional support community encompassing all gun owners. Great work.
The reputation of the Second Press and how others will view our membership is an important point. Thanks for bringing attention to it. I want us to be regarded as well-informed, dedicated to being reasonable, and not prone to rant. I agree that the press would love to discredit us as demagogues and political hacks. Within the context of the Second Press, we should restrain ourselves from serving political parties. Any service to a political party within the context of the Second Press should be as an unavoidable consequence, and not as a prescription, of maintaining constitutional support.
Totally agree, James Ketler. I know I'm referred to as a "Trumpster" just because I support 2A. I have met a few Democrats (definitely not liberals) who are 2A supporters. We agreed that, although we do not see eye to eye on politics, we do agree hand-n-hand that our Constitution and the Amendments MUST be preserved at all costs. At the end of the day, we are Americans first and foremost, and we should all want to preserve this amazing country and it's values. End of story.
Devil Dog, I think what you have started here is a great thing. Starting out it is going to seem a little bit like preaching to the choir,, any movement has to have a solid base and foundation to build upon. My personal opinion is that this is moving in the right direction for success and mission accomplishment for the mission given. I look forward to The Second Press articles and the Langley Outdoors videos daily! I cannot wait to see where this goes/grows into. Semper Fi, and keep up the great work.
Thanks! It’s a tough row to hoe given the divide we are facing in the Union right now. Even the new gun owners don’t look at the 2A as a right, or some of the ones I’ve met anyway. I think that’s the target market we need to approach in order to educate them on their rights and if we allow it, then that right to own a weapon can be taken away.
Braden, I had not commented on how 2nd Press would reach others. I have been hoping that there would be a launch similar to what you just told us. I believe that there will need to be significant marketing of the website outside the 2A communities. We will want independent journalists to be able to use the articles in building their stories.
But, some of the articles so far have presented statements that I found questionable. It was small things like claiming all knives in New Zealand were banned. They aren't all banned. Many are banned. When these articles face the critique of the left, small errors will be used to discredit entire articles and the entire website. The writers should have a chance to make these small adjustments before the article goes public.
Those of us who signed up are committed to protecting the 2nd amendment. We may be considered a review board if we will take the mission seriously. If we read critically as content editors rather than for entertainment or confirmation of our beliefs, we may find many of those minor errors in the articles. Every paper, letter, or report that I produced in my career was proofed by at least 2 people before it was sent. Almost all of my emails were as well. If you believe our reviews would help, please call for us to begin that critical review.
Thanks for considering,
Billy
I trust that Brandon will take this as constructive criticism. Because it is.
That's the way it was intended. I'm behind him in this mission. I hope the rest of us will also take this as a mandate for us to read critically.
Yes sir my brother, my question was answered. Thankyou for your efforts as well as the efforts of all here. I will continue to spread these messages as far and wide as I can.
Even if you hear the preaching to the choir remark. Well I the same article is information that was not being preached. I look at the effort of the making of the writing of articles and some historical and current facts. The way the writers are doing this is easy to critique, but try to do research and find a way to make a good case. I'm impressed thank you for the great information, insight and effor. 🇺🇸💪😎
I'd like continuous analysis of the FBI Annual Crime Statistics for the current year and comparisons going back over each years stats. The Left doesn't like there own stats but they need to have it constantly thrown in their face. Keep up the good work!
Hey Braden, thanks so much for all of this information and your goals. I honestly don't actually think that you and your writers have been "preaching to the choir!" Even the choir enjoys learning a new song, now and again. Or practicing it for the first time in forever. I can't be certain of course, but in 35 articles, surely everyone of us has learned something new!
Maybe multiple things, eh? Or we've been given an opportunity to review and bolster facts we are somewhat familiar with, and moreso now. I for one, most definitely have! You've drawn in a lot of comments on this thread. A lot of good thoughts and advice.
Hopefully, many will be doable, maybe others would be somewhat difficult to proceed with, at least at this juncture. Regardless, keep on keep'n on, Buddy! You recognize that reaching the uninformed is an absolute necessity. We all appreciate that you and your writers will.
Hey Braden. At the moment, the Second Press doesn't do anything that the ordinary press hasn't been doing since time immemorial. Which is to report on current events, and then let all the reporting and useful commentary disappear down the memory hole. 35 articles so far is a great start, but these articles are just like a pile of bricks. And it's gonna take more than just a load of cement to build a 2A castle. It takes project planning and a building effort involving a lot of "cement." (By the way, I don't want to "bury the lead," but I think I need to lay an explanatory foundation before I finally answer how all of this leads to bringing in more people and lifeblood into the movement. I promise to get to that.)
Every pro-2A argument that could be made, has been made.* But down the memory hole it has gone, never to be seen or used again, even though these cogent arguments exist in repositories such as libraries and the ancient recesses of the Internet. There are enough academic papers, credible journalistic investigations, and scholarly examinations of history, researched and written in the last century alone, to sink a tuna boat. But this treasure trove of literature is effectively out of reach because no one has a comprehensive map that describes the "anatomy" of this information, and where it is. Nor is there any index that pinpoints which data within this literary anatomy, is particularly useful to combat each particular anti-2A argument and the specific rhetoric crafted by our foes.
Without a cognitive map of the information which is buried in a repository, new generations of patriots won't even know that it exists, and so they will have to repeat the effort of rebuilding the counter-arguments at great personal expense. Which is what is happening right now. This is tremendously inefficient. And, without an index that guides patriotic minds to the sole specific data that is useful to contradict the opposition's particular arguments, our "winning arguments" are always late, and end up trailing far behind the opposition's dismissive attacks on reason, on history, on the right to self-defense, and on sacred American values. Because the opposition can launch attacks effortlessly, and thus in overwhelming quantity, which, despite being deeply flawed in their reasoning, is obviously persuasive and convincing to millions of fellow Americans, unless their arguments are crushed immediately. But delay in readiness to obliterate the opposition's arguments is ruinous. Without ready-made counter-arguments by us that tower in rhetorical skill, logical power, and deliver greater weight in reason and veracity of numerous facts, our opponents are able to blithely declare intellectual victory, and just move on to wreak more social and political damage. But the Second Press can change all that!
The content of the Second Press should be curated so that it can be accessed quickly and used decisively. I like to think of the entire bulk of pro-2A literature as being an intellectual war chest. But our academic and scholarly war chest is not organized and curated well enough that it can be used readily and conveniently leveraged by your average 2A proponent unless they are already well-trained and immersed in academia and politics. The Second Press could be the first to overcome this hurdle.
I wish I was plugged into academia and politics, but like most people, the daily chore of survival, and the necessity to work in a profession outside of academia and politics leave me little time or energy to participate 100% in this epic battle for human rights and the American political creed. So make it easy for me. For all of us!
It is not enough to have a repository. Every article needs to be mapped inside the canon of pro-2A literature. For example, does the article address statistics or recount historical fact? Does it argue a point according to prudentialism, or Constitutional Originalism? Does the article feature demographic information, or behavioral science? And how does it stand in relation to the whole body of pro-2A literature? We need this mental map so that we can see the grand mosaic of logic and facts that are on our side, and make it easy to find the superlative arguments that have already been formulated by brilliant by hundreds of 2A scholars who preceded us.
Additionally, every idea in every article needs to be indexed against a mirror index of the oppositions arguments, reasons, logic, psychology and rhetoric. That way, when the opposition launches a seemingly new anti-2A assault, no matter how they have couched their argument, or cleverly concealed it, anyone of us can recognize it for what it is (probably the same bad argument wrapped in some new deception) and be able to use the Second Press as handy tool to assemble a devastating counter-argument quickly and easily. That way we don't give the opposition any room to breathe. I am sick and tired of being on the defensive. I propose the Second Press make it possible to suffocate the opposition's ability to argue without suffering an immediately excoriating correction.
Because, in order for us to be trusted and believed, we have to keep track of the original sources such as historical data, the congressional record, various laws or regulations, and innumerable pre-Internet news stories to name but a fraction of evidence that =should be, and needs to be= at our fingertips. Our opposition can just talk out of their butts without any reality check whatsoever. We don't have that luxury. We have to be better equipped. But to be so well equipped is expensive and exhausting. Especially when the opposition has launched 5 more attacks before you have even had a chance to respond expertly, without ranting, to the first.
I propose that if you make the map of pro-2A literature public, with an associated index of point and counterpoint, that doing so will attract the lifeblood the Second Press needs. You have energized the 2A nation. Congratulations! Now it needs you to enable it to fight. Fix the war chest. Make it a tool that any of us can use for winning the argument.
Such a tool would also serve a second purpose as a pro-2A catechism. Just about every public school, university, government agency, and public corporation, especially high-tech giants in Silicon Valley, is dominated by 2A enemies, who teach others to be 2A enemies. Consequently, every student, government and white-collar employee is soaking in anti-2A thought and rhetoric. So many people are being baptized and raised by institutions that are hostile to 2A philosophy. We, on the other hand, are left to rely on YouTube and gun shows as our only "organic" institutions to showcase an alternative education. We don't have anywhere near educational influence that our opponents have in these institutions so we need to create our own.
In order to pass the blessing of the Second Amendment onto future generations, we have to convince future generations that the Second Amendment is a blessing. If they regard it as a blessing they will want to fight for it. For this reason, the Second Press should serve as a catechism too. And if the Second Press arms the next generation with the academic and scholarly tools to win arguments, then they will fight for the Second Amendment.
So, finally, I propose you publish a map of the Second Amendment, its complete anatomy. Supported by a taxonomy of arguments on both sides, with a minimum 1:1 correspondence so that no argument against 2A goes unopposed. In other words, we have to classify and catalogue all the anti-2A arguments too, and the manner in which they are argued. Additionally, an index so that every pro-2A argument and fact is easily retrieved and each reference documented back to its original source. You can keep access to the data behind the paywall. Most scholarship is trapped behind paywalls now. Second Press could become the LexisNexis of 2A scholarship.
This means that going forward, every articles needs to be submitted with notes, sources, cross-references, bibliographic data and so forth. Otherwise, Second Press articles will become untethered from present day contagiousness and slip past the event-horizon of the memory hole, only to be brought back to relevance by some future heroic effort to exhume the brilliance of so much past effort.
Personally, I hope the Second Press develops into a catechismic public library where everything is free, but like Wikipedia, earns donations and wins philanthropic support by curating a superlative literary repository, and on top of that, an excellent indexing and search application that makes it easier for ordinary people to operate at scholarly levels that match or exceed current academic performance. In other words, a platform for crowd sourcing academic excellence for the sake of passing on the blessing of the Second Amendment.
*Every anti-2A argument that can be made has already been made. There is nothing new under the sun.