Hey guys, today I want to promote a new book from an author because he’s getting hosed by Amazon. Apparently the company which has made billions off of books and TV shows with guns on the cover thinks this cover is inciting violence.
Gray War: A Pallas Group Solutions Thriller (Brave New Disorder)
https://amzn.to/3wRnsVZ
Indy authors get a lot of freedom, but the downside is that they survive on the whims of a giant soulless megacorporation which makes automated decisions that may or may not ever have a thinking human actually examine.
So when that system screws up, the best thing we can do is still boost the author, tell our friends, and most importantly BUY THEIR BOOKS. Plus Peter, is a great author (and all around good dude), so please check it out and share it with any of your friends who are looking for a good action thriller.
We talked about it on this podcast, with me, Peter Nealen, Mike Kupari, Jason Anspach, Nick Cole, and Coop LoPresto (as well as a bunch of other interesting stuff)
This is my Official Response to the Official Complaint filed by Madison Matricula Roberts about how I’m a terrible mean bad person for responding to the angry mob (of about half a dozen people) who think I have no business being invited as the Guest of Honor at your event. I’ll leave the original complaint from Madison in italics. My responses will be in bold.
After I send this to you, I’m also going to post all my stuff publicly as I usually do in situations like this, because sunlight is the best disinfectant. I will also be very blunt in my response and include some backstory which Madison conveniently leaves out, unlike my haters who prefer vague insinuations and pretending that each of these events occurs in a vacuum.
MarsCon Con Chair and Staff:
I would like to alert you to Larry Correia’s violation of the MarsCon Harassment Policy and Code of Conduct as written and as I interpret it.
Yeah, I bet that “interpretation” bit is gonna be a real kicker, ain’t it?
I am requesting it to be reviewed via this official channel outlined in the policy.
Cool. Me too.
I will also demonstrate that Madison knew exactly what she was doing, and despite her claims to the contrary, she was attempting to stir up outrage in order to get me disinvited. Because she and her friends have done it before and will probably continue to do so in the future to other authors as long as cons keep folding and giving them what they want.
Madison portrays herself as a victim. She is not. She is an accuser. We have the right to face our accusers.
Let us begin.
Harassment:
Mr. Correia has not treated me with “common courtesy” as referenced in the Harassment policy, becoming hostile immediately in response to my criticism of the Con Chair’s choice to promote him as a Guest of Honor.
I’d invite everyone in the audience to read the whole thing and judge for themselves. Also, pay attention to the time stamps because Facebook threading gets wonky. What it looks like to me is the ConChair announced I was the GoH, and all of the initial posts were from people excited and happy about that.
Then along comes Madison. To say that I am “not appropriate”, given the “tone” and “inclusiveness” of MarsCon.
Hmmm… Those seem like loaded terms. Exactly what kind of people are bad for “inclusiveness”?
If you are not inclusive, then clearly you are exclusive. But who am I excluding exactly?
As you’ll see, Madison and her friends love to toss out loaded terms which are in common colloquial use today for sexists, racists, homophobes, anti-Semitics, bigots, etc. but the clever ones never actually come right out and say it. They gleefully dance up to the line on harassment policies to annoy their targets, hoping to goad their targets into an angry response so that they can then cry about civility and “tone”.
However, as we’ll see later, some of these people are really bad at dancing, trip over that line, and accidentally show the kind of people they really are.
Then several more people showed up to say that they found my presence appropriate and they liked my tone. (honestly, it is because my tone is aligned with the half of America which is sick and tired of of this endless partisan hack weaponized cancel culture nonsense, but I’ll get back to that).
As people are defending my character to her, and testifying that I am inclusive, and giving real life examples of me being cool with everybody at the many other events I’ve attended, Madison says “I just think it’s important that we’re able to speak about plain opinions on the record publicly.”
But as we’ll see, Madison means she and her friends are able to speak their opinions in public. When me and my fans do it we are uncivil and rude. They can say whatever they want about me, that’s cool, but if I ask for evidence of their allegations that’s harassment.
One of my fans chimed in and said “Found a CHORF.” Apparently from the ensuing pearl clutching this was the greatest personal attack which has ever occurred in the history of online communications, and for the next few days this particular post got brought up a whole lot as an example of why Larry Correia and his fans are dangerous barbarians who should be shunned from society.
Keeping in mind I’m not even the one who said that, CHORF is from here https://bradrtorgersen.blog/2015/03/31/chorf-its-a-word-now/ because in 2015, back when all the fans with the wrong politics were getting run out of WorldCon, people needed something to differentiate the cancel culture social justice warrior contingent from the old school SMOFs. “Cliquish, Holier-than-thou, Obnoxious, Reactionary, Fanatics” Because calling the perpetually offended, political lockstep, group who were always trying to get everyone who disagreed with them deplatformed, Smofs was insulting to the old school fans who just wanted to run cons and have a good time. So Chorf because internet shorthand for the angry social justice contingent of fandom which was continually complaining about “tone” while trying to boot out everyone who dared disagree with them.
Gee whiz. I can’t possibly imagine why this one dude would call Madison that (especially when we get to the part where she’s done this before to other authors at other cons). How rude of him. But anyways.
Madison then repeatedly claims she’s not trying to get me disinvited. Oh no. She’s only using the exact same tactics and even verbiage which got me and other authors disinvited from other events, programs, and anthologies, etc.
This is one incident of many for me, some attempted, some successful, but always from the same type of angry complainer, using the exact same narrative template. Vague insinuations of how I make people “unsafe” or how I violated some arbitrary rules of “tone” (the Origins one it turned out my sin was defending another con from vague and baseless allegations of racism, because in the process even though that complainer turned out to be the son of a literal billionaire, I had “exercised my white privilege over him” and my disagreeing with his lies and distortions was “being incredibly rude to a person of color” and so on. Are you starting to sense a pattern?)
But oh no. This can’t be that. Surely Madison is pure as the driven snow and there is no way that she could possibly have ulterior motives.
I believe that incident used the exact same template. Some vague insinuations of danger, mumble something about inclusion, and a group of totally innocent concerned citizens show up to be outraged until the con chair folds or the author gives up in disgust.
And lo and behold, what does Madison do next in our GoH announcement post? She innocently expresses her concerns about MarsCon’s security and diversity policies. Huh? Are you saying me and my fans are the kind of people who have an issue with diversity? (normal people call those bigots) Why would you need beefed up security? Oh, unspecified reasons. It is probably best to just leave those to the imagination.
About now is when I show up.
You can read through my response to her and check to see if I had any name calling or personal attacks with my initial response. Decide for yourselves. My patience wore thin in the next one, but I’ll link to that when we get there.
He then used my request that harassment, code of conduct, weapons, and diversity policies at the con be updated/reviewed and easy to find as evidence that I was insinuating that he personally was “racist, sexist” and made people feel unsafe.
Well no kidding.
He has continued with those accusations even after my repeated clarification in the thread
That’s because you clarified NOTHING.
Madison isn’t coming out and saying we’re dangerous hatemongers, just that the con had better beef up its security to protect everyone from all the dangerous hatemongers who will show up because Larry Correia is there, but she’s totally not calling anybody dangerous hatemongers. Oh and we need a solid diversity policy to stop all those racist homophobes who will be there because of Larry Correia, but she’s totally not insinuating anything about Larry or his fans by that.
And during all this, even though Madison was good at dancing up to the line but not overtly crossing over, that didn’t stop several people on her side from flopping over the line, talking about my dangerous hateful fans, but as usual the perpetually offended complainer acts as if nothing else ever happened before or during this. It was just me being a big meanie for no reason.
and my personal conversation with the Con Chair, in which he said Mr. Correia apologized for “goading” me.
I’d like to goad you people into actually telling the truth about your motives.
I reiterated that the “tone” I was referring to was the combative tone that Mr. Correia (and many of his supporters, for whom I will make separate complaints) exhibited in the thread using assumptions, hostility, insults, and direct tagging me demanding further explanation–even in unrelated comments on other threads (see attached PDFs for marked instances).
I love how these arbitrary rules of civility work.
Madison and company can basically say “I’m not saying Larry Correia and his fans are racist hatemongers, just that we need to protect the women and minorities from all the terrible racist hatemongers who will be there because of Larry Correia.”
When you respond to this kind of character assassination, that’s “combative”. You are “polarizing”. If you don’t like being lumped in with Nazis or the KKK and demand evidence that’s “fanning the flames of division.” All while the people on their side continually post inflammatory nonsense, any response from any of my fans, ranging from mushy to hard, don’t matter, it’s all declared inappropriate.
They can malign us and that’s fine. If we respond at all, regardless of how we do it, they don’t like your tone. You sound angry. How uncivil. So rude.
Only my people have seen all that before. It doesn’t work on them anymore.
In compliance with the Harassment Policy and requests from the Con Chair in the threads themselves, I refrained from engaging further with Mr. Correia in that forum, though I offered to continue the discussion with him in another public forum or via private contact.
Madison offered to continue the discussion in private after the public shaming event didn’t work out the way she hoped. Normally five or six complainers can post enough to look like an angry mob and get a Con Chair to cave and banish the “problematic” guest, only in this case me and my fans showed up to actually defend ourselves from the dumb and baseless accusations.
I’d like to note that in neither of these threads was any actual evidence ever presented to show how me or my fans make anyone from any minority group “unsafe. In fact, quite the opposite, as my fans from various diverse backgrounds came forward to call Madison and her ilk out on their slander, offering plenty of real life examples that I’m none of the vile things they routinely accuse me of.
Instead, they just shifted gears to crying about my rudeness in responding to their baseless accusations. How dare I?
After that, Mr. Correia continued to tag me personally in the same MarsCon forum, even after a warning from the Con Chair.
I tagged you asking for evidence. You accused me of being the worst kind of person. No evidence was forthcoming. You claimed to want a public discussion, except it appears you only wanted that as long as it remained a lop sided dog pile.
The Con Chair asked for no personal insults, which I passed onto my righteously angry fans (yeah, it is funny how constantly being accused of things you aren’t makes people mad). I never saw any “warning” from the Con Chair about my asking you to present evidence of the things you were accusing me of.
This evening, Mr. Correia also included my name on a reposted comment to his followers on his author page.
Yep. You and your friends weren’t just insulting me. You were insulting them too, so I figured they’d like to know. You make a public accusation I’m assuming you want a public reaction.
While Mr. Correia has every right to use my public comments in this way, I believe he has already demonstrated in the MarsCon forum his willingness to allow his fans to continue his vitriol and harassment on his behalf (see attached).
Oh I don’t need their help, but you and your buddies maligned them too, so fair is fair. So yeah, let’s talk about the vitriol and harassment of the third parties in this discussion, because I seem to note your entire complaint makes it sound as if you were acting all alone while me and my cruel fans victimized you.
I notice you talk about how cruel and mean my fans are, where out of several hundred comments over two threads somebody said Chorf, but you left out some other context, like how you had some helpers, (I’m gonna paraphrase because I don’t feel life scanning through 600 comments to find these, and frankly I listen to so much tired bullshit from you people that I can’t remember most of your names and you all run together, but the links are there for people to read for themselves) like for example:
The woman who got upset that the guest was a straight white male, and how dare the con invite a gun owner. Ironically despite the great many vague references to racism and sexism from your side, the only outright bigotry displayed was from her. When some of my people called this woman a bigot, your side tried to spin that as a “personal attack”. Oh hell no, that was literally the dictionary definition of the word Bigot.
The guy who danced up to the line trying to insinuate I was some kind of Nazi, referring to some incident I’m not familiar with in MarsCon’s past where the bad guy in some LARP wore a swastika, and how having me there was “repeating this mistake”. Ironically when I pointed out who my grandmother’s Polish ancestors were, then tagged in another author who is a devout practicing Jew, who has known me well for many years, to testify if he’s ever seen an iota of antisemitism from me, that attacker bailed.
Or the guy who repeatedly lied about my past, and events surrounding WorldCon, including cherry picking half of a debate with George Martin, while leaving out my response, and the part where George admitted I was right. During that sub thread I got called envious, petty, a liar, and they insulted my integrity and intelligence. But that’s totally not a vitriolic personal attack.
One genius opened by calling me piteous, then declared that confrontation was bad. I pointed out he was confronting me. No. It isn’t confrontation when he does it. 😀
I was called unpopular (which is really goofy considering simultaneously another one of you was whining about my presence causing the lines to be too long). I was called polarizing and divisive (also interesting, since it seems as if there’s approximately a half a dozen of you, a couple hit and run one and dones, and far more people being supportive of me, happy that I’m going to be a guest.
In one post a guy made vague inferences that I’m somehow homophobic. Ironically, the next chronological post below his was from a fan of mine talking about how he and his lesbian daughter and girlfriend love all my books, and are super excited they all get to meet me in person.
That same dude kept talking about how I don’t belong there because of my “disgusting beliefs”, yet when pressed, could not name a single one of them. In fact, he posted like ten times saying it wasn’t his job to list my “disgusting beliefs” then said I protest too much. (lol. I’m sorry, that’s funny as hell). But anyways, that’s because A. if he lists my disgusting beliefs, half the convention is gonna say wait a second, I believe that too and don’t find it disgusting. And B. far more nefariously, if you describe something as a disgusting belief but don’t say what it is, that leaves it up to the audience’s imagination, which means that they’ll fill in the blanks with the worst thing possible.
Then there’s probably the most offensive one of all, whose name I do remember, because his fake name is Miles Vorkosigan, and the fact that somebody like him is besmirching such a beloved character is just sad. Read his disgusting screed and feel the partisan hatred he oozes toward half the country, before you hypocritically cry to me about vitriol.
And there are so many more. Seriously, everybody should go read those two locked threads directly off the MarsCon forum because it is a fascinating look at the pathological nature of cancel culture. I love how people throw shit at the wall to see what sticks, and then move goal posts when refuted, just to throw more shit the next post down, all while crying that they’re the victims.
By continuing to declare his false accusations of my intent and involvement, I think my initial concerns of his combativeness to dissenters were well-founded.
Oh, I don’t know about that! I just presented the history and evidence about your intent. We’ll let the audience decide. It also explains why I get “combative” when people try to get me deplatformed, considering this ain’t my first rodeo.
While my comments are public and I stand by them, I have never called Mr. Correia racist, sexist, etc. nor have called fo him to be disinvited from the convention.
Nope. You just inferred it, then let the attack mob go to work. You didn’t specifically call for me to be disinvited. You just used the exact same tactics which have gotten me and other authors disinvited from other conventions, while expecting an entirely different result.
However, Mr. Correia has continually accused me of doing so, and demanded I respond multiple times after I indicated I was not discussing it in the MarsCon forum further.
Yep. And I’m doing it again. I am accusing you of manipulating a system to get an author you don’t like booted from an event, as you and your friends have before, and you surely will again.
In private communication with the Con Chair, I was assured he understood that I was not calling for Mr. Correia to be disinvited nor had I suggested it. The Con Chair also posted this on my behalf publicly, to little effect on Mr. Correia’s continued demands and harassment.
That was before I sent the Con Chair the links to you and your friends doing this exact same thing to John Ringo.
I reiterate that to my knowledge, no one has publicly called for Mr. Correia to be disinvited, as he claims, though I understand that the difference between “disinvitation” and “we question why you picked him” can be a fine line to someone in Mr. Correia’s situation and experience.
This is so tiresomely repetitive. Yes, yes, you are totally innocent and just having a super public conversation with no ulterior motives. Just like the last twenty times you guys have done this to authors with the wrong politics to try and get them banned.
Mr. Correia’s response to my criticism of the Con Chair’s choice of him as GoH has been explosive, derisive, and disproportionate.
Oh, on the contrary. I’m being rather polite, all things considered. After years of attempted boycotts, threats, disinvites, harassment, insults, slander, and the weight of having a straw man version of me be utterly despised by thousands of total strangers, I’m letting you off easy.
It has gotten much nicer over the years though. I used to be one of a handful of people who got this treatment, but now half of America is wise to your scam. You’ve done it too many times, in too many industries. History has shown that responding to character assassins in any way will cause the assassin to label it as “explosive”. What you call “derisive” I call honest. As for “disproportionate” I’m the one getting mobbed and hounded for years on end by profoundly dishonest and manipulative people like you, so I don’t think you get to decide what’s “disproportionate” or not.
Code of Conduct:
More concerningly, Mr. Correia has flagrantly violated the Code of Conduct, specifically Item 9–”be excellent to each other”–which I interpret to mean that courtesy, kindness, and moderation are values of the MarsCon community.
So flagrant. Much tone. Muh civility. It is excellent to question people’s character, but not excellent to defend it. Oh no. That’s not how Madison interprets it. That’s combative. Excellence requires you to sit silently while people make shit up.
I think we’ve got a vast difference in understanding what excellence means.
My criticism of the Con Chair’s choice of Mr. Correia as GoH was specifically because Mr. Correia and a vocal subset of his fans have a reputation for being combative, rude, and dismissive of social collaboration online.
Actually, no. That’s what you shifted to after vague insinuations about me making people unsafe. Once I responded that unlocked Tone Policing on your play card.
And what the hell is “social collaboration” mean to you? I didn’t ask for you to blunder into a happy post about me getting to be a guest at something fun so you could make snide innuendos about the characters of my fans right before I get dog piled by a bunch of lying psychos and some lady who wants to tattle to the local paper that the guest is white and owns guns. If that’s your idea of social collaboration you’re damned right I’m dismissive of it, because frankly it sucks.
Regardless of whether this was founded or not (though in way of explanation, I took time to read more of Mr. Correia’s blog, social media, and essays to make sure my perception of him was not mistaken),
You guys can read all that for yourselves, I’ve got years worth of posts documenting this same nonsense. but if you don’t want to, I’ll save you some time. I’m the guy who responds to lying bullshit artists and partisan hacks the way everyone really wants to, but often can’t because somebody like Madison would then come along to try and cancel you.
You’re welcome.
Mr. Correia has behaved in exactly that way to me and others in the MarsCon community. He condones insults and ad hominem attacks,
I love how that’s always a one way street! Attack, attack, attack. Defend. HOW RUDE!
makes false accusations even after being presented with contrary evidence,
What evidence?
and generally has been unpleasant,
I can’t imagine why. Maybe if your friends call me a nazi some more I’ll finally become nicer.
unhelpful,
The people on my side of the debate would disagree on that one.
and unrepresentative of the previous tone of the MarsCon forum.
An interesting note on this one, buried way down in one of the locked threads on the MarsCon thread, one fan of mine didn’t want to deal with the stupid lies and went through and blocked all the super vocal Larry haters. To do that FB requires him to open their profile, which shows all their posts in the MarsCon forum… and interestingly enough, according to him nearly all of the really vocal and insulting people joining the dog pile Madison started… hadn’t posted much or at all on the MarsCon forum.
Curious.
What else changed in the forum’s tone? Were there ever any other thinly veiled personal attacks on GoH announcements? Because the tone seemed pretty happy until Madison posted and gave the Go signal for the cancel mob. (oh wait, she totally didn’t know that was gonna happen, even though the same thing happens every time they do this, including events she’s been eyeball deep in)
I have detailed some examples of his combative tone and inappropriate language below, also in the attached PDFs.
I linked them too, but just in case all the sub threads aren’t on there you really should go to the MarsCon forum and look at the locked threads on there, because some of the shit these people were slinging was downright deranged.
Concerns about Enforcement of These Policies:
Additionally, the ConChair has repeatedly stated publicly that Mr. Correia’s involvement and behavior at other conventions has no bearing on his presence at MarsCon and asked members who bring that up to refrain from doing so. Mr. Correia, however, blatantly continued to do so even after others abided by the Con Chair’s request.
Oh that’s just nonsense. Others DID NOT abide by the Con Chair’s request and everybody can go read the threads and see that for themselves. At first some dude brought up me upsetting the partisan apple cart at WorldCon many years ago, and after I explained to that first one my side of the story (and how everything I alleged has been proven true, and now they’re being held in a communist dictatorship and their big guest is a fierce advocate for Russian war crimes) he actually admitted I brought up a valid point.
Then afterwards some other guy kept bringing it up in a super insulting manner, and I shot down his ridiculous version of events. (this was the one who thought quoting GRRM trying to debate me was some kind of own, until I linked to the rest of the debate where I responded, told George where he got it wrong, and George grudgingly admitted I was right).
So you’re flat out lying on this one. If the Con Chair had a problem with anything I said in that particular exchange, I didn’t see it.
I believe that at the current time, the Con Chair is setting an unfortunate and unfair set of standards where the GoH doesn’t have to abide by the same rules as everyone else–even after publicly telling Mr. Correia the rules do, in fact, apply to him.
The rules do apply to me. Which is why I get to respond to your accusations right now, which is pretty cool. But honestly, this line here is a trap, and any convention which falls into it is doomed to descend into partisan irrelevance. When a con allows every crank with an axe to grind the ability to declare what the acceptable “tone” of all the guests are based upon the power of their personal offense, they’re gonna use that like a club.
Madison may pretend not to, but she knows this. It’s the hecklers veto.
The Con Chair has stated publicly that Mr. Correia’s online behavior (even in professional or professional adjacent spaces) has no bearing on his ability to be a guest as long as he is not “rude in person” (see PDF highlights).
Now this is a fun one, because despite the multitude of allegations of feeling “unsafe” from Madison’s tiny but very loud mob, I’ve been to hundreds of events and never had an issue at any of them. Why? Because their traditional weapons of snide insinuation, backbiting, and internet cancel mobs don’t really work in real life. They only work online, where a handful of cranks can give the appearance of being representative of reality.
That Miles dude was the most blatant with this particular line of bullshit, talking about how my fans will be shouting down panelists, or wearing cosplay with (strangely unspecified) hate symbols. Hmm… I wonder whatever he could be insinuating there?
In all the years I’ve been doing this, over hundreds of events, big and small, red state or blue state, many of which I was the GoH, nobody has ever seen me or my fans do anything like that. However, we have seen people from the other side throw some truly outlandish emotional tantrum crap at events, so I’m sensing a bit of a projection issue on this one.
On the internet, I return rudeness with rudeness, because I choose not to play by the arbitrary rules of fake civility set by profoundly dishonest and manipulative people. In person this has never been an issue because very few people are dumb enough to walk up to a total stranger in person and open with a bunch of crap about how they’re unsafe hatemongers. In real life the cancel culture people tend to sulk in the corners sucking their thumbs, bitter that everybody else is having a good time.
I believe this is a mistake,
Your mistake was thinking that I’m as kind hearted as John Ringo. Despite how you and your ilk portray him, he’s actually a really nice guy. And I watched people like you try to grind him to pieces, and that taught me how your scam works.
though I also respect the right of a convention to define and curate what kind of tone and behavior it finds acceptable. In this case, I believe this dichotomy is not in the spirit of the Code of Conduct and it is being blatantly ignored.
Not ignored. I’m meeting your accusations head on.
You complain about tone. Yet there is never any acceptable tone for anyone who pushes back against the cancel mob. The only thing you do accept is us meekly and silently taking whatever snide accusations you make, regardless of how fake and stupid they are.
My Request:
I request that the Con Chair and committee review my complaint and concerns in accordance to the reporting procedures outlined by the Harassment Policy. I am not requesting any specific action or disinvitation, only that I would like my complaints escalated to the proper channels and allow them to handle it in accordance with their policies or internal procedures.
And my request to the committee is take a look at the history here and what has happened at other events, so that they realize they need to take a stand against this nefarious online outrage mob nonsense.
Because I’ll let you in on another of their little secrets. It ain’t about me. It is about you, and every other convention, get together, and institution out there. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else. The places that threw me and my people out, they find a new target the next year, because their outrage is addictive. There’s always someone who makes them feel “unsafe”. Getting offended and having you placate them gives them social power and clout. They get to feel important and boss you around. The more people who cave to this scam, the stronger they get.
One sick byproduct of this is that other cons see the outrage mobs forcing cons to disinvite guests with vaguely unspecified “disgusting beliefs” and then they simply don’t ever invite anyone from that half of the political spectrum at all, because why risk the controversy. Those cons then get to enjoy their boring mono-culture, as attendance declines, and the outraged keep expanding the borders of what tones they find unacceptable. The early victims of this scam have since cannibalized their own side, so now even people with the *correct* politics are scared to speak, because they might not be correct enough.
My “tone” is guy who is sick of this shit, by way of Portuguese dairy farmer. If that is unacceptable, so be it. At this point of my career I gain nothing from going to conventions. In fact, factoring in the event and the travel time before and after, and how valuable my writing time is, I actively lose money for each event I do.
So why do I still bother? I like to see my fans, and they enjoy hanging out with me. Unlike all the slander and stupid accusations that’ve been hurled at them, they’re awesome people. We have a great time.
But more importantly, I keep going to cons because I don’t like to let bullies win. I know that every single time I get invited to something, this same exact thing is going to happen. I’ve been through this. I’ve watched others go through this. I know their tricks. I know their tactics. None of this is new.
They’ve tried this for the last few cons I went to. They tried this same exact thing last year when I was the GoH at FenCon. Same thing. Some vague complaints about feeling unsafe. Some outrage. Dire predictions of danger and craziness. About five to ten listless angry types posting lots. And don’t worry, up next in the cycle if you don’t cave, will come the very dramatic flouncing, as those five to ten people very loudly and publicly declare that they simply cannot attend any event which would host such a monster with all his disgusting yet unspecified ideas.
Then FenCon had huge attendance, everybody had a great time, we quadrupled their charity auction, and nobody missed the handful of people who threw the big foot stompy tantrum about me being there.
If you guys decide to boot me over my tone, cool. Just be aware, that won’t satisfy them. You’ve paid the Danegeld. If you want to keep me as GoH, also cool. We’ll have fun. Your call.
From my lefty critical reviews, more reasons why sane people should buy this book!
“the point is not to show gun control adherents as wrong but as foolish and contemptible”
Indeed. You should have seen what I said about Moms Demand Action before the lawyers made me tone it down!
“the book echoes the recently invented position in the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision holding that the Second Amendment restricts states, a position held by none of the Framers.”
Silly, Clarence Thomas, rights are only for liberals! Everybody knows that SCOTUS can’t tell states they aren’t allowed to restrict their residents’ civil liberties. That’s why Brown v. Board of Education ruled in favor of the democrats and allowed them to keep segregation!
“implies those who do not agree with the author are irrational”
Oh, I don’t just imply it! That’s what all those pages of cites are for.
“implies (gun control vultures)are a threat to democracy”
Well, duh.
“There are better books which support the second amendment in clear and rational terms”
I notice the concern troll reviews (I love the Second Amendment BUT…) always say that, then never name any of these pro 2A books they love. Go figure.
“it felt hate driven”
It probably sounded that way because that one came from an audiobook review of a 7 hour audiobook that was posted like 30 minutes after the audiobook download became available. I imagine everything sounds hatemongery when played at 20x speed.
“This book is a lot of things, mostly it’s the incoherent ramblings of a guy who sleeps with a pistol tucked into his boxers.”
I don’t just stick a gun in my shorts. I carry in a Phlster Floodlight. I’m not a barbarian!
“This repetition of easily debunked radical talking points is harmful to the cause of gun ownership.”
A. Sadly he forgot to list or easily debunk any of my radical talking points. I’m assuming that’s because this was from an unverified purchase so he’d have to actually like read the book and stuff.
B. For some reason I’m kinda thinking this guy isn’t actually that concerned about what’s “harmful” to gun ownership.
“The second amendment, and the current interpretation of it by the court, is in no danger for at least the next twenty years. Just look at who sits on the Supreme Court currently.”
A. Nobody wants your guns (looks at the last week’s activity in New York, Illinois, Maryland, Colorado, California, the ATF’s new brace rule, and a new federal assault weapon’s ban proposal) uh…
B. I was unaware that conservative justices routinely live to be a hundred, but we all feel super better having that single line of defense to not having our rights obliterated! Don’t worry. After your rights, property, and freedom are taken away, maybe, just maybe, in 5-10 years and millions of dollars in lawyer fees your case might make it to a court that currently doesn’t want to make you a serf.
C. 20 years? If this dope had actually read the book he’d know I’m shooting for forever. I’d like my great grandkids to have their liberty too.
“Larry Correa —-Co owner of a Gun Store, Registered Fire Arms Instructor- fiction author in following Genre Urban fantasy Thriller Fantasy Science fiction Doesn’t appear to have any legal qualifications/training. Ummmmm????”
A. You spelled my name wrong. Racist. I’m triggered.
B. Retired gun store owner. Novels pay way better!
C. well, the short version of my gun related resume still managed to take up a couple of pages. But what are my 30 years of experience compared to his 3 minutes on Google? (of course, liberals don’t need experience, they have the Power of Heart. Like Captain Planet!)
D. That last part would probably matter if I’d written a law book. (Good thing the publishing house had lawyers to fact check me!)
There you go. I’m actually kind of gleeful about more of these vapid reviews from gun haters coming in, because this is going to make an amazing blurb sheet. 😀
I encourage everybody to leave an honest review, but please, unlike these dopes, actually wait until you’ve read the book first!
EDIT: The dork who thinks only states have civil liberties showed up on my Twitter feed to yell at me for not buying into his goofy pet legal theory. 😀
Please do me a favor and tell your friends. I wrote this book in the hopes that it’ll help move the needle on the debate. It is for people who already believe in the 2nd, and I want to arm them with facts and help them articulate good arguments. And it is for people who are on the fence, who’ve maybe bought into the media narrative, but who are trying to get educated.
I hope it helps!
I did a dozen interviews (radio, print, podcast) already, and I’ve got 19 more scheduled so far this week.
