DANIEL TAYLOR on the “sniper subculture:”

Reminds me of my days working retail bookselling. We carried a handful of those stupid “how to be a ninja” books, but to my knowledge we never actually sold one. They kept getting shoplifted. I now recognize I should have been blaming the “ninja subculture” instead of the pimply-faced adolescent guys that appeared to be responsible.

This has numerous applications, now that I think about it. Now, instead of blaming the Violence Policy Center for rampant dishonesty, I’ll blame the “opportunistic nonprofit-fundraising subculture.”

But they’ve still got the item citing Bellesiles on their website:

Early America was vastly different from the handgun-happy images one sees on television, in movies, and in the pages of gun magazines. Serious historians have documented that early Americans had little interest in guns. Until the mid-1800s, owning a gun was surprisingly uncommon. Those who owned firearms almost always owned long guns.

Historian Michael Bellesiles, for example, examined more than a thousand probate records from northern New England and Pennsylvania filed from 1765 to 1790. He found that only 14 percent of household inventories included firearms–and more than half of these were inoperable.22 Colonial settlers got meat mostly from domesticated animals like cows and pigs. When they wanted wild game, they bought it from native Americans or professional hunters, most of whom trapped their prey.23 Prior to 1850, at most only a tenth of the nation’s population individually owned guns of any kind.24

Sure, it’s only been a week since he resigned in disgrace. I blame the subculture of — oh, hell, never mind.