Maybe this has no place in a site like this but I couldn't stand by. This hits on a couple points...
Say what? Perhaps if you had limited your diatribe to "a couple of points," then the average reader might be able to comprehend what you are getting at, other than a great dislike for the current 800 pound gorillia of gun writing. Your critique may have more words than McIntosh's article, the Letter to the Editor, and McIntosh's response combined.
Perhaps if you download your scholarship to a Word file, cogitate and revise, re-write it 20 times, have it proofed and edited, and then submit it to a magazine, you will get some sense of the dificulty of seeing one's name in print other than on a Forum such as this. McIntosh's name sells magazines and books, but also makes him somewhat of a target for quibblers and malcontents...and, to be fair, he cannot be right 100% of the time.
I recall an article he wrote about the "superiority" of a 28-gauge for pheasants..of all things! Of course there was a complaing subscriber in the "Letters to the Editor" of the next
SSM issue. Don't you get a kick out of a letter-writer getting so overwrought that he finishes up with, "Cancel my subscription forthwith!" In this case, McIntosh's response to the naysayer was that he had killed more than 250 pheasants the prior year with his 28-bore thus his expertise proved his original point. Or from my view, he admitted to having shot 250 pen-raised game-farm "chickens." After all, states have seasons and limits, and no combination of traveling to diffeent venues could account for so many wild birds.
So my point is, lighten up; pronouncements in magazines are not Holy Writ. Several years ago my article--"Why Parker?--in the
DGJ attracted naysayers like a lightening rod. Dan even gave someone the full last page to attack point by point, which points were mostly his unsupported opinions and, where "factual," were just plain wrong. My nose was a little out of joint that Dan didn't give me an opportunity to show the error of the letter-writer's ways, but to what end? The pissing contest would have been unending. As it was, the letter-writer called me and bought a book. And as it is now, "Why Parker?, slighty rewritten (to avoid the sharp angle), is the first chapter, story line, and theme of my new book.
If I had my druthers, magazines would omit the critical letters to the editor and only print corrections, if truely significent errors were made. Why
SSM would put Mike in a defensive position is problemaical. Consider this:
SSM pays Mike for his words of wisdom. If every reader with nothing in his brief case but a peanut butter sandwich gets a free shot at the big guy, then his answer to his editor, if required, should be, "He's just plain wrong," and thus nothing appears in print. Or if the reader's point is well taken, the editor should simply correct the glitch in the next issue, as is done in newspapers, and let the complainers ply their trade on the Internet. EDM
