Hosea 4:6

I try not to enter comment threads under my articles because I've had my say and it's the readers' turn to have theirs. That said, I do see some reactions to my Clint Eastwood story (and under my Facebook post) that I'm going to address.

Some say they don't believe me. As "proof" they offer fake Twitter account posts and memes that have no basis in anything documented that he ever said. The preponderance of people who will swallow falsehoods because they saw something that satisfied their confirmation bias is disturbing. That it comes from "our side," when the ability to sort the wheat from the chaff is available at our fingertips -- with just a bit of curiosity and effort -- is appalling.  It really does speak to how easily people can be swayed by sources they are predisposed to believe, whether there is any real basis for assigning credibility or not, and how easily information that has been researched and validated can be derailed and redirected by introducing straw-men and outright bullshit.

A tangential discussion in one thread actually got into not mistaking Judge Judy, who is a Bloomberg supporter, with Judge Jeanine, who is a Fox News commentator. I bring that up because it provides a perfect example of how what is real can be replaced by what is calculated image. Pirro, if you're not enamored by the trappings of her being a designated "conservative" and care to do some minimal checking, is not what most gun owners encourage themselves to believe she is -- by a long shot.

It's personally frustrating because it can take an effort to dig out the truth but then it just dies in the echo chamber because no one cares enough to spread it, and what propagates instead is the deception. And I'm talking much, much more than silly celebrity stuff.

Back to Eastwood: A longtime trusted industry colleague who saw my piece just sent me a link to Breitbart's article by John Nolte, lest anyone still need more convincing. Or they could just check a news feed. My friend also sent me some insider "intel":

“The best thing we could do is
just get Mike Bloomberg in there.”

Clint Eastwood fooled American patriotic conservatives for decades just like Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and dozens of others. He made a movie of propaganda glorifying murdering communist Nelson Mandela for goodness sakes! However, Eastwood has been a huge gun collector all his life, there is a photo of him at the NSSF show (SHOT Show) in 1962 posing next to the then new Colt AR-15. In the photo attached, he posed for it when he picked up his Weaver Arms Nighthawk (UZI-like) carbine in the early/mid-1980s. (I knew Mr. Weaver and he told me in person about the time when he took this photo of Eastwood in his office in California when he came to pick up the gun *) And a well-known NFA dealer told me years ago about when he sold Eastwood's trust or estate in Idaho a 1921 Thompson submachine gun that Eastwood wanted. Now he backs a communist who wants to ban all guns???? He's another fake from communist Hollywood.

*The current source of this photo states that it was taken in the offices of Combat Arms magazine but this source was also initially confused as to what kind of gun it was (because of the Thompson-style front grip). Bob Weaver publicly, and often, showed this photo, and as recent as 2014 when he was trying to sell the rights and plans to make the Nighthawk carbine.

Or, I guess, you could just go with something that's repeated in comments on the internet, so it must be true.