‘This is just my conscience’: Georgia gun store closing over shootings targeting children
BY Herschel Smith
10 months, 4 weeks ago
A Georgia gun shop owner has decided to shutter his business, saying he does not want to be responsible for children dying in a mass shooting.
Jon Waldman opened Georgia Ballistics in Duluth in March 2021, hoping to get into a line of work that would survive the pandemic — but as gun sales increased across the country, Waldman noticed that the number of children impacted by mass shootings also shot up.
“I don’t want something that I’ve personally touched, that I’ve helped a client with be used on children,” Waldman told 11Alive. “What stops this [gun] from being used against my kid? That’s the problem I have, you never know the person getting it just because they pass a background check.”
Okay, whatever. On that logic, every person who works in pharmaceuticals should quit because people can overdose, including accidental ODs by unwatched children. Same thing for every cleaning chemical manufacturer, which also causes deaths of children every year. And every worker for a car manufacturer should quit because their vehicles can be used to cause roadways deaths (and there are tens of thousands of them every year).
Anyway, do you see that rifle he is holding? It’s an Ohio Ordnance HCAR. I sent him a note asking what he is charging for it. I have yet to receive a response. Or else, this is a stock photo and not really a picture of the guy selling the business, in which American journalists suck. But we already knew that.
On June 2, 2023 at 5:39 am, Chris said:
I bought a HCAR 4-5 years ago. About $4300.00 if I remember correctly.
Just got an email from Ohio Ordnance over the holiday weekend. They’re over $7000,00 now.
It’s my go to rifle and worth every penny. But I don’t know about 7G’s..
Chris (CIII)
On June 2, 2023 at 7:24 am, Joe Blow said:
Opened biz in 21, less than 2 years later, he pulls a leftist talking point out of the ether (to cover the poor sales?)
… think its safe to say he wasn’t one of us to begin with.
On June 2, 2023 at 7:47 am, Don W Curton said:
Fancy tips to get quick media attention –
1. Pretend to be a real gun guy. Helps if there’s military experience or some other factor to “prove” you’re a real gun guy and know more than normal people about guns.
2. Say some BS about how deadly guns are and no one needs an assault rifle.
3. Repeat leftist talking points about reasonable gun control.
4. Rinse, repeat.
On June 2, 2023 at 7:57 am, J said:
He kinda resembles a xiden, and he/she/they/them is hiding it’s rainbow flag
On June 2, 2023 at 8:11 am, Bill Buppert said:
Meh, since all FFLs are unfunded BATFE field offices, I have no regrets if he shuts his doors.
On June 2, 2023 at 11:05 am, Plague Monk said:
I sympathize with Mr. Waldman’s view, but instead of closing his store I think he should do as my late father did with the store that he co-owned in the 1960s and 1970s.
No semi-autos of any kind; rifle or handgun. Dad was in the Army during the Korean War, and never used the M1 Garand, which he thought was “expletive deleted”.
Only white males over the age of 21 were allowed in the store, including active duty service people. When I enlisted in USAF at the age of 20, one of the conditions was that I would NOT be trained on the M-16, which he(and I) regard(ed) as an abomination.
He did not believe in early exposure to firearms; I never fired a gun until around 1980. My younger brother decided that he never wanted anything to do with guns, and I sometimes think that he made the wiser choice on that subject(He runs a chain of small town newspapers in the plains states, and they are virulently anti-gun)
After the NRA decided to get into politics with the creation of the ILA, Dad dropped his life membership(he attended the Cincinnati Coup, and was on the side of the Old Guard), he stopped allowing NRA members into the store.
The store never got robbed or had any problems while Dad and his original partner operated the store. After his partner died in the early 80s, the man’s son came in, and when the son decided to allow anyone to buy, Dad sold his share and walked away. The store lasted only a year or so, as it was broken into several times and the son was robbed and pistol whipped a few times.
The only group I belong to is the OGCA, life member. I rarely attend their meetings any more, as I am appalled at most of the weapons being offered, and the human waste that seems to comprise 90 percent of the attendees. Allowing women to own firearms?
Fortunately there are a few gun stores in southern Ohio that cater to us Fudds, and I spend my firearms money in those establishments.
I collect old rifles and shotguns, but I haven’t fired any since about 1987. They are interesting pieces of history and engineering. I also have a lot of old engineering drawings, some dating back to the mid 1800s.
In closing Mr. Waldman may have his heart in the right place, but i think he is handling it wrong.
On June 2, 2023 at 1:04 pm, Orwell's Ghost said:
Plague Monk,
How does one enlist in the military and not get trained on the standard service rifle? Did you pull a Desmond Dawes or something? Did you get drummed out cause your dad said that you weren’t allowed to trained on the M16? Honestly, even cooks get trained on the Stardard Service rifle.
Also, if your father was in Korea, did he use the M1 Carbine, BAR, 1903A3 since he thought the M1 was such crap? And the M1 Garand is not an “expletive deleted” and I knew more than a few WW2/Korea Vets that would have vehemenately disagreed with that statement were they still alive. Did he ever have to shoot a doped out Chinese soldier in heavy winter gear with a carbine? My buddies dad did and the guy almost killed him. He swapped out the carbine for the Garand cause it didn’t care how doped up you were or how many layers of winter clothing you had on.
As for the gun store, it sounds a bit…racist. And god forbid women owning firearms. FFS…
But hey, whatever, to each his own, but you don’t really sound like a gun guy to me and sound more like a statist. Typical self admitted “Fudd”. I’d almost bet that you would be ok with gun grabs as long as they don’t get your double barrel.
On June 2, 2023 at 4:55 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Plague Monk
The idea that “only service people” or “cops” are qualified enough to own firearms or should be permitted to own them – is a common conceit of gun controllers of all stripes. With due respects to your late father, that is the rock-bottom truth.
Why is the state more-comfortable with the idea of soldiers and cops having access to firearms, rather than ordinary everyday people? Well, for starters, the military and the police are the enforcement arms of – and take their orders from – the state.
The Founders of the United States explicitly wanted the people themselves armed, as a check upon the natural tendency of governments to grow too powerful and even tyrannical over time.
It is germane to note that the Founders had direct experience of being under the heel of tyranny, namely the regime of King George III of Great Britain, in the form of Redcoats quartered in their very homes and places of business (or those of their neighbors and fellow colonists), and did not want the new nation to repeat that experience.
That experience was also part of the reason why the Founders were against the establishment of large standing armies.
Colonel Jeff Cooper, U.S.M.C. (ret.) once stated that in the act of picking up a rifle, a subject is transformed into a citizen. That is precisely what the Founders of this republic intended to be the case.
On June 2, 2023 at 5:13 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
Mr. Waldman is evidently a man who needs some work on the nature of cause-and-effect thinking and basic logic. If it is not out of line to say so, perhaps also on his sense of morality and right-and-wrong.
Guns are inanimate objects, and are incapable of picking themselves up, loading themselves, pointing themselves and going off. They are, in the lingo of the day, hardware and not software. Firearms violence is not a hardware problem; it is a software problem, which is to say that it is a problem of human beings themselves and not their tools.
This is so self-evidently true that even a child can understand it.
Before firearms existed, humans intent upon committing violence simply found other tools, such as bows-and-arrows, swords, knives, etc. – and still before those existed, a rock or a club sufficed, or bare hands.
A century ago in this country, by which I mean the United States in 1923, it was far-easier to obtain firearms and ammunition than it is today. An adult could simply walk into a hardware store and purchase a Thompson submachine gun or Browning Automatic Rifle and ammunition for them, or any number of other small arms…. without any license or permit of any kind being necessary. As well as common shotguns, pistols and revolvers, and rifles of various kinds.
The Auto-Ordnance Company, the makers of the Thompson, had military contracts during WWI, but when the war ended in 1918, they shifted to marketing the Thompson SMG to cowboys and ranchers as a suitable weapon with which to defend their cattle herds from rustlers. No one panicked, indeed no one cared – it was all quite unremarkable and normal. Why? Because people were not so foolish as to believe that an inanimate object was capable of hurting anyone.
Yet, in that same time, mass shootings and mass murders of the kind which are now so common in the U.S. – were extremely rare. And those that did occur almost always took place between criminal gangs or amongst the members of the Sicilian mafia, the “mob” or “the outfit.”
Firearms-related crimes did not ramp up dramatically until the Prohibition Era got seriously underway later in the 1920s and into the 1930s. It was then that with so much illicit profit at stake from selling bootlegged alcohol and spirits, that the bloodshed began in earnest. And since the federal government itself was responsible for the prohibition in the first place, it can be argued that the feds created the problem in the first place, or at least made it worse.
Most historians of that time are agreed that the mafia was made into a criminal force to be reckoned with – during this time. Prior to alcohol being outlawed, they were neither nearly so large nor so powerful as they later became.
And it was against that backdrop that the National Firearms Act of 1934 was passed in Congress. That was the thin-end of the wedge, in terms of gun control legislation.
On June 2, 2023 at 5:37 pm, Jack Crabb said:
TL: DR version – Waldman is a dipshit or a liar. And those two are not mutually exclusive.
On June 3, 2023 at 5:58 am, Nosmo said:
Conside the positives here – someone will buy the business and, hopefully, that will be someone more interested in both “business as livilihood” and individual rights and liberties, and not beholden to Leftist Talking Points. It might even be worth shopping there when Under New Management.
On June 3, 2023 at 7:11 am, Latigo Morgan said:
Couldn’t find anything on his early life, but his behavior screams “every single time”.
On June 3, 2023 at 10:03 am, Heywood said:
@Plague Monk Yep. I’ll say it. You are a liar.
On June 3, 2023 at 1:35 pm, Echo Hotel said:
Why are you here, Plague Monk?
On June 3, 2023 at 5:12 pm, xtphreak said:
@Echo Hotel
He’s a professional fecal agitator, i.e; a troll.
On June 4, 2023 at 5:21 pm, Dan D. said:
“Jon Waldman” is obviously front man for a two year psyop and “got a call” from the FBI that “now is the time.” I mean, look a that guy: pudgy, poor goatee, tacticool watch on the inside of his wrist, crappy inventory, “just trying to feed my family, man!”-alibi… It screams glowie.
Also liked Buppert’s comment. “Smell ya later, loser.”