From time to time, I find it necessary to go find out what people are looking for, for two reasons. One, I want to know what is piquing the curiosity of Internet readers in general and more specifically, what keywords or phrases did readers use that landed them at the Black Bear Blog.
There’s always the odd words or phrases that to me have no explanation as to why anyone would be searching for that and it’s something I might have included somewhere in an article that places the Black Bear Blog on search results pages. But traffic to the site this month has been different and far easier to define.
The three hottest topics readers have been searching for from the perspective of the Black Bear Blog has been Jim Zumbo, Christian Trejbal and HR1022. For those who may have been living in a time warp, here’s a brief recap. Jim Zumbo, former outdoor writer for Outdoor Life created a firestorm when he posted at his Outdoor Life blog calling certain “military style” semi-automatic weapons “terrorist” weapons.
Christian Trejbal is a contributing editorial writer for the Roanoke Times (Virginia) who opted to publish at the RT website the names and addresses of around 135,000 concealed weapons permit holders.
And thirdly, HR1022 is U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy‘s version of an assault weapons ban that she would like introduced to Congress. The bill goes far beyond the Clinton era AWB listing scores of weapons that would virtually outlaw millions of guns in this country.
Although I can’t say that any of these topics were hot topics for the general public, I can say that they certainly were for hunters, shooters and Second Amendment advocates. Heading up the list surprisingly was the search for HR1022. This is encouraging and tells me a little something about my readers. It tells me that they are aware of its existence and are more interested in it than whether Jim Zumbo should have said what he said or if Christian Trejbal should have publish names, not that either of these topics aren’t important.
The Christian Trejbal affair I think grabbed a broader sampling of American readers simply because it touched the nerve of more people than say a hunting and shooting issue. Publishing the names and addresses of concealed weapon permit holders, affects a wide array of people, not just hunters and shooters.
Because of this, more well-known journalists joined in on the debate. I have read perhaps the majority of them from the mainstream media, to renowned bloggers, citizen journalists and rabid participants of message boards across the Internet. Michelle Malkin, a well known and respected conservative writer, journalist and syndicated columnist, shared a piece at CNSNews. Marc Fisher of the Washington Post weighed in as did J.R. Dunn of American Thinker, to name just a few.
All of these topics have a common thread – guns. Guns represent freedom. They are what the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was written for and debate is always passionate, touching the lives of every American. Patrick Henry once warned: “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.â€
Americans do guard strongly their freedom and when someone “approaches that jewel”, as we have seen, the gloves can come off.
Tom Remington
