By John Boch

David Fellerath has hit the big-time in recent days, with the Washington Post publishing his missive brimming with hate.

His piece attacks things the great majority of real Americans in flyover country hold dear: gun ownership for self-defense and a whole lot more.  His screed is fraught with hate and misdirection, but what else would one expect from the Washington Post and the mainstream media?

Who is David Fellerath and why should anyone care what he thinks?  That’s a good compound question.  He’s quite “creative” in his self-descriptions.

In the Washington Post, he is cited as “is a freelance writer, hunter and community organizer.”

Running that through the universal translator, does that mean he’s basically unemployed?

But wait, he writes about movies for an independent weekly out of North Carolina.  He embellishes that to be a “culture editor” for said weekly at another site.  He also writes about sports and sports politics.  No, not for Sports Illustrated, but for a Duke soccer forum and that same independent weekly.

He’s very creative in more than his self-descriptions.  He submitted an ominous selfie (see below) to the Washington Post, while posting much more mainstream, bordering on metrosexual photos of himself in other places.  It surely seems he tailors the photo to his stories.

In submitting that picture with his op-ed, does David Fellerath think he’s burnishing his credentials to attack gun owners, gun ownership and the NRA?  You know, it’s the well-worn cliche of “I’m a gun owner so I can talk about how guns are terrible!”

Or does he merely expose his prejudice towards gun owners for the world to see by suggesting that he’s an “average gun owner” in terms of appearance?

Here he is from Flickr and Facebook (times two).

How poorly done was his hatepiece?

Fasten your seatbelts.  It’s quite a ride:

I own guns. But I hate the NRA.

(Washington Times) – Some time after I bought my first gun, I got a robocall from the National Rifle Association, asking me to join. After the customary “Please stay on the line…” from a pleasant but earnest voice, I recoiled from the barkings of an angry-sounding man.

Okay…  Is there like a template for hacks to attack guns, gun ownership and gun owners.  They so often begin with some form of “I am a gun owner…”

…The caller continued with his insinuations of an imminent United Nations plot against America, but before I could be handed off to a live operator, I hung up the phone.

I was amused, and then insulted, that someone would think I was dumb enough to fall for such a pitch. But the sad truth is that there are enough people willing to open their checkbooks to make such a noxious fundraising appeal worthwhile.

The NRA claims to have five million dues-paying members (though there’s some reason to believe this figure is inflated).

So, NRA members are all dumb, falling for such a pitch.  Clever writing there, Mr. Fellerath.

…The NRA does not represent all gun owners, and it certainly doesn’t represent me.

David Fellerath should try out for the position of Captain Obvious since he needs full-time employment.  No, the NRA doesn’t represent all gun owners.  Frankly, NRA members are by and large decent and honorable – concepts alien to David Fellerath.  It’s no surprise that he’s not a member.

…My guns are long guns, intended for hunting and skeet shooting. Relatively few crimes are committed with hunting weapons, which are designed to shoot animals, not humans. (In fact, knives are more commonly used to commit murder than long guns.) Meanwhile, the death toll from handguns is staggering, especially when we remember that the majority of gun deaths are suicides.

His guns are long guns.  Reading between the lines:  “I don’t want to ban your hunting and skeet shooting guns.  Not just yet anyway.  But those other guns, especially handguns?  They have to go – if for your own safety if nothing else.”  After all, nobody could kill themselves with a rope if they really wanted to end it all.  Or commit suicide by cop.

…Last Feb. 10 in Chapel Hill, N.C., 15 miles from my home in Durham, three young Americans of Middle Eastern descent were murdered by a home invader. The killer was their neighbor, notorious and feared around the apartment complex for flashing his perfectly legal concealed handgun. Without his weapon, he would have been an angry but perhaps harmless, crank. With it, he snuffed out three lives in a matter of seconds.

That man was a fringe leftist who loved the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Freedom from Religion Foundation.  He was a leftist lunatic, not a gun-owning, church-going NRA member.  He was likely philosophically a whole lot closer to the Washington Post’s contributor than the people this Fellerath fella loves to hate upon.

Handgun apologists see nothing wrong with this killer possessing both a gun and a carry permit, because he had no prior record.

So we should consider everyone a potential mass murderer?  What happened to innocent until proven guilty?  That silly, antiquated Constitution!

The gun didn’t shoot itself.

No kidding, Sherlock.  This wanna-be scribe blames everything – handguns, the NRA, politicians, and everything else except the bad (liberal) man with evil in his empty heart.

The NRA and its adherents want us to bristle with alertness to danger, keeping a loaded gun within reach at all times. But where is the concern for people who want to live without fear of guns entering their lives?

Bristle with alertness to danger?  Seems reasonable and prudent to be on guard against things, and to avoid them, does it not?  Why though should we have concern for people who have irrational fear of inanimate objects?  What’s next?  Should we ban airliners because some people are afraid of flying?  Should be do away with long bridges?  Should be ban basements because they are dark and are home to things like noisy furnaces and water heaters that immature people are scared of?

From there, he goes into story-telling mode.  It’s a sweet story that melts leftist hearts.. at first.

In the mid-1990s, I went to New Orleans for the wedding celebration of a charismatic young couple committed to filmmaking and music, community health care, veganism and spreading joy everywhere they went.

Emphasis added.  In other words, they were sheep.  Ready to be fleeced and/or taken to slaughter.  Whoops, I’m getting ahead of his story-telling.

I knew them only slightly, but I was there as a guest of a close mutual friend. It was a joyous, slightly unhinged all-night affair with costumes, music and a parade that ended at  the banks of the Mississippi. It was unforgettable for the right reasons, and it’s unforgettable for a horrific reason.

One morning in 2007, as she let the cat out before daybreak, the bride, Helen Hill, faced the scenario that gun nuts dream about. As she stepped outside early one morning, she came face-to-face with an intruder. She had time only to scream a warning to her husband and child. Then she was dead.

“A scenario gun nuts dream about”?  First of all, nice pejorative.  Two can play that game, Mr. Unemployed Neckbeard.  Secondly, no gun owners I know dream about such a horrific attack.  We fear such an attack.

Gun advocates will say that if she’d owned a gun, she would have survived.

…But in truth, the only way she possibly could have survived was to live in her own home with a gun on her hip, like a character in a Mad Max movie. To conjure such an image of this particular woman is obscene. Only a suspicious and hostile person would choose to live this way.

Yes, because maintaining situational awareness and being proactive about one’s own safety is obscene.  “Only a suspicious and hostile person would choose to live this way.”  Or a reasonable and prudent person who doesn’t want to be the victim of avoidable violent crime.  If Mrs. Hill had been less concerned with her commitment to filmmaking, music, community health care, veganism and all the rest of that poppycock, and instead spent some time to learn and practice reasonable and prudent steps to ensure her own safety, maybe she wouldn’t have ended up as a bloody corpse in her own home.  But alas, she chose poorly.  And with decisions come consequences.

There’s a whole lot more sewage in the WashPo piece, but it’s not worth my time to fisk it further, nor is it worth your time to read more.

Suffice it to say, it’s just another in a long line of opinion pieces long on fears and emotions and short on facts.  He hates you, me and everyone else who advocates for the cause of freedom and liberty.  He’s ignorant to history.  David Fellerath is utterly illiterate to the past and is doomed to repeat it if he gets his way.