Free Republic

I started shooting at age five. By the time I turned 12, my parents gave me an NRA Life Membership. I’ve studied, written and taught about firearms law and the Bill of Rights since the 1960s, helping to enact concealed-carry laws in states across the country and authoring numerous other pieces of pro-firearms legislation. I’m a competitive shooter who’s hunted on five continents, and I founded a 150-acre shooting park in my home state of Illinois. All told, I’ve written more than 1,700 articles for firearms publications over the last four decades, as well as hosting and producing several firearms...

The ex-Guns & Ammo Magazine writer fired after penning a column in favor of limited gun control is speaking out, bitterly saying, “I’ve been vanished, disappeared. Now you see him. Now you don’t.” “Compromise is a bad word these days,” Dick Metcalf, 67, told The New York Times of what he believes is the unyielding, give-no-ground ethos adopted by Second Amendment supporters in the U.S. today. “People think it means giving up your principles.” Metcalf, a longtime writer on firearms and U.S. gun culture, saw his association with Guns & Ammo terminated in November -- he also had a T.V....

The byline of Dick Metcalf, one of the country’s pre-eminent gun journalists, has gone missing. It has been removed from Guns & Ammo magazine, where his widely-read column once ran on the back page. He no longer stars on a popular television show about firearms. Gun companies have stopped flying him around the world and sending him the latest weapons to review. In late October, Mr. Metcalf wrote a column that the magazine titled “Let’s Talk Limits,” which debated gun laws. “The fact is,” wrote Mr. Metcalf, who has taught history at Cornell and Yale, “all constitutional rights are regulated,...

Technical Editor Dick Metcalf [above] penned the editorial for the December issue. Metcalf, a writer whose technical knowledge (or lack thereof) has earned him brickbats before, bases his editorial on a distinction between “infringement” and “regulation.” “I bring this up,” Metcalf writes, “because way too many gun owners still believe that any regulation of the right to keep and bear arms is an infringement. The fact is that all Constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.” That, dear reader, is a major WTF moment. One of many . . . Metcalf’s dietribe [sic] turns to the...

At the same time, how can anyone deny that the 2nd Amendment is already regulated by innumerable federal, state, and local statutes, and always has been? Even the Supreme Court's widely applauded Heller and McDonald decisions affirming an individual right to keep and bear arms, and the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals' Moore ruling overturning the Illinois ban on concealed carry, specifically held that other firearms laws and regulations do pass constitutional muster. Do we all agree with every part of those rulings? Of course not. I personally do not. But these are laws; now part of the organic fabric...

The top editor of Guns & Ammo became the second employee of the venerable firearms magazine to lose his job after a column advocating gun control backfired, prompting rifle-toting readers to unload on the publication. In a statement posted Wednesday on the InterMedia Outdoors-owned magazine’s homepage, Jim Bequette apologized to “each and every reader” of the magazine for Dick Metcalf’s column that appeared in its December issue, which generated “unprecedented” controversy and left readers “hopping mad” in regards to the magazine’s commitment to the Second Amendment. ********** In his column entitled “Let’s Talk Limits: Do certain firearm regulations really constitute...

Guns and Ammo Magazine, the “world’s most widely read firearms magazine,” has fired contributing editor Dick Metcalf after the publication received immense backlash for its December 2013 issue featuring his editorial advocating for gun control. “Way too many gun owners still seem to believe that any regulation of the right to keep and bear arms is an infringement,” Metcalf wrote in the column titled “Let’s Talk Limits.” “The fact is, all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.” “All U.S. citizens have a right to keep and bear arms,” he added, “but I do not believe...

Guns & Ammo Official Response to Metcalf Article I just received the official response from Guns & Ammo regarding the Dick Metcalf article in the December 2013 issue. This is an exclusive breaking story.

As you all know Dick Metcalf recently wrote an article in Guns&Ammo which was intended to be controversial. It was more than that, and in my opinion crossed over the line. In our fight for our rights, there is only black and white, there is no shade of gray. You are either wholly with us, or you are against us. Since that article was published many have vocally protested it. Some have done it on the internet. Other have done it behind the scenes. The end result is Mr. Metcalf is no longer with Guns&Ammo In addition The editor who...

Time to cancel your subscriptions, Guns and Ammo Editor Dick Metcalf has penned an editorial for their December issue that will be leaving fans in shock; he’s supporting gun control. Metcalf claims there is a large difference between regulation, (well-regulated militia) and a direct infringement of civil rights, he has made this distinction the premise of his claims. “I bring this up,” he wrote, “because way too many gun owners still believe that any regulation of the right to keep and bear arms is an infringement. The fact is that all Constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need...