A former contributor to “Guns & Ammo” said he was fired two months ago for a column that enraged readers with its pro-gun control bent because major gun manufacturers threatened to cut ties with the publication if he continued to work there.
Gun journalist Dick Metcalf told the New York Times in an interview published Saturday that he’s “been vanished, disappeared. Now you see him. Now you don’t.”
Metcalf’s column in the magazine’s December issue dealt with gun laws and argued that regulation of the Second Amendment does not infringe on Americans’ right to keep and bear arms.
“The fact is, all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be,” he wrote. “Freedom of speech is regulated. You cannot falsely and deliberately shout, ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.”
Editor Jim Bequette, who approved the column, issued an apology after readers threatened to boycott the magazine until Metcalf was fired; he resigned and Metcalf was let go.
According to Metcalf, his editor said that two major gun manufacturers had said “in no uncertain terms” that they would terminate their relationship with InterMedia Outdoors, the parent company of “Guns & Ammo” that also co-produced Metcalf’s TV show, if Metcalf continued to work there.
The world of gun journalism is close-knit, as the Times points out, and it’s often the case that those who buck the absolutist view of the Second Amendment are forced out of a job by editors under pressure from advertisers.
“We are locked in a struggle with powerful forces in this country who will do anything to destroy the Second Amendment,” Richard Venola, a former editor of Guns & Ammo, told the Times. “The time for ceding some rational points is gone.”
Metcalf laments that those extremist views dominate debate over gun policy in the United States.
“Compromise is a bad word these days,” he told the Times. “People think it means giving up your principles.”
