…and expecting different results.

Responses to the New York Daily News’ article on the “terrifying” experience of shooting an AR15 prompted its author to write a follow up piece to be sure everyone knows just how mean the world is to him.   You didn’t think I was going to let that one go, did you?  Hang on boys and girls……

Oh poor dear. Your feelings were hurt. You exercised your First Amendment rights to support your opinions and were astounded, flabbergasted, offended and outright shocked that anyone might respond with anything other than glowing praise.

We have First Amendment rights, too.

In your fervor to once again promote yourself as a champion of peace loving peoples among a world run amok with gun loving zealots, you managed to completely gloss over the points where those of us who responded took a red pen to erroneous facts. Instead, you chose, quite intentionally I believe, to focus on how you were maligned and mistreated and called a whiny little girl with a skinned knee, or words to that affect. Let me be perfectly clear, I do not disagree with those assessments however your characterization that this is a gender war upon your poor soul is ludicrous. Or did you miss the fact that many of us in the law abiding world of responsible gun owners are women?

Its ok if you did, I certainly couldn’t expect you to have noticed such details when your first article was so peppered with glaring omissions and outright fabrications.

As I type this over my morning coffee with my cat on my lap and my dog at my feet, I imagine you in your mother’s basement, desperately calling for more Hot Pockets while you read the scathing reviews of your so called journalism. “Mom, here’s another one, they said MEAN THINGS about me!”.

Suck it up, buttercup. Because here’s the thing: you don’t have a right not to be offended. Shocking, I know but it’s true.

You have a right to your own opinion but you do not have the right to your own facts, and using a Platform such as the New York Daily News to promote them, knowing they are false, undermines the credibility of the press entirely. You’re certainly not alone in these endeavors, Katie Couric recently participated in a heavily edited video piece that should properly be labeled propaganda, then doubled down defending its Conclusions First, Questions Later position. I could name a slew of other celebrities and media personalities who have done the same but it would take too much time and effort; their journalistic sins are legion. You saw an opportunity to jump on the bandwagon and finally sit with the cool kids at lunch. Yay, you!

Except that you, like Couric, chose to double down and respond to the backlash your highly excitable work product generated. And you’ve chosen to portray yourself as a victim of the big-scary-gun owning public. You carefully cherry picked a few comments, while refusing to publish the responses in toto, to present yourself in a positive light, while vilifying the big-scary-meanies who used words to hurt you.
You are upset because after you willfully offended people who exercise their Second Amendment Rights they used their First Amendment rights in a way that offended you. The horror! The humanity! How dare they!

Nevermind that you made light of a serious psychiatric condition to describe your alleged terror at firing a simple small caliber rifle. Nevermind that you completely fabricated a narrative where you allegedly switched this particular firearm to full automatic fire, and were traumatized for life, when it was absolutely impossible to do so. Nevermind that you preyed on the fears of the public by allowing, no, purposefully attempting to make them believe that all such firearms are a push of a button away from being machine guns. You lied. You got called out on it. Instead of confessing that you took creative license a little too far, you tried to engage in a war of words about how badly you’ve been treated. You lied. You were called a liar. You stomped your feet and threw a temper tantrum in the New York Daily News. The lady doth protest too much.

And yes, I wholly support that it is your right to do so. As misguided, ridiculous, idiotic, puerile, callow and petty as it was. For the simple fact that it is your right. The First Amendment is not the ONLY Amendment, though. And your right to the First, and every other liberty you claim as an American, holds in this nation only as long as men and women with the Second have the means to defend it. From your comfortable little place in the universe, where every kid gets a trophy and you should be treated like the special little snowflake you are, you have no concept of what oppression or tyranny really are. So you create it as it relates to your reality.

Don’t be surprised when the rest of us give you a reality check.

Dannielle Romeo, southwest Virginia
wife. mother. domestic violence survivor. member NRA

ps I’m including a photo of me, taken at my property where we have a shooting range. The firearm I am holding is nearly identical to the one you claimed to have operated in Philadelphia. Please note that I am in what a friend has dubbed the “supported and chill” firing position due to a lower leg cast for a broken ankle. It is important to train for every scenario, and be able to accurately strike a target despite an infirmity. If being sent videos of pink swathed little girls at the range upset you so much, this ought to really make your day.

On June 15, 2016 an article appeared in the New York Daily News, sorted under, all all things, Crime News.  You can find the original article here.  Since I have a low tolerance threshold for fools,  my response to the author and a separate letter to his editor follows.

(to author- and posted through “join the conversation” link)

I’m wondering if the author acquired PTSD from making Jiffy Pop.
Sugar if you’re gonna try to write a big bad scary gun article ( and establish your man card bona fides by adding that you have some sort of experience with pistols) you might want to learn the proper terminology and equipment. You might also want to leave out the part where you soil yourself.
Let’s start with which AR platform you were ….insert sigh of exasperation here….able to shoot. The most popular is chambered in .223. This recoil and sound of a round being fired is roughly equivalent to the average .22 long rifle . Something we actual shooters call a “plinking” gun. They aren’t loud, another good feature and if you were wearing your safety equipment like ear protection it’s audible but not Godzilla epic proportions as you made it out to be. Pumpkin, I drop pans in my kitchen that make more noise.
A standard magazine, not clip (every time you call it a clip god kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens!) holds 30 rounds. Not 40. I actually work part time in a gun shop and can’t for the life of me recall seeing a single AR there with a forty round mag…there’s a reason for that so that’s your homework assignment today, k?
fully auto, huh? See this is where I know you are completely full of organic fertilizer. Esp when you claimed one could be obtained in seven minutes. Automatic weapons are not available on the general market. You need a dealer (yes even if you want to buy from an individual collector) who is certified as an NFA dealer. You have to pay for additional permits called a tax stamp. The application goes directly to BATFE.You typically also need finger print cards and a sign off by the sheriff of your county. The application process takes upwards of a year. Once you have the ok then you can pay for the gun (automatics will run you upwards of ten to thirty grand. Or more) and complete your state forms and Federal form for your NICS background check. Yes, you still have to go through these.
while it is remotely possible a gun shop had a fully automatic firearm for you to try its not probable. They would not have allowed you to potentially damage a customer’s order (or mess with their very expensive property) . They likely would not have allowed you to shoot one of their own as inexperienced as you are and for the purposes of such an article. And the probably didn’t even have one.
So darling i’m calling bullshit on your propaganda piece. I’ve spent a lot of time on the range, much of it teaching new shooters to responsibly handle the big-scary-gun. Know what they thought after shooting it? That much of what they read, pieces like yours, were written by imbeciles. In crayon.
I’d suggest you go review something more your speed like chewing gum but I’m afraid that if you tried to blow a bubble and it popped, you would be terrified and need a safe space for your trauma to subside.
The ‪#‎nydailynews‬ should be ashamed to have you on staff. . If they’d like to send a real reporter over here, I’d be happy to take him or her to the range and to a few gun shops and show them the steps it takes to make such a purchase. They won’t be able to complete a purchase here though if they like something…fed law requires that an out of state buyer must have the guns shipped to a federally licensed dealer to complete the necessary paperwork and id verification process in person. Yes- a background check.
I’ll close simply with what I though the moment I read your absolutely astounding piece of trash journalism….Bless your heart!

(to editor)

Honestly do you bother to vet any pieces submitted by your writers anymore? Did Mr. Kuntzman come out of his safe space long enough to go through editing? Or is he still in therapy (that you’ll end up paying for) over his “terrifying” experience?

The firearm shown in the photos and video is an AR style rifle chambered in .223; this is only slightly louder than the average .22 long rifle that many enthusiasts use for “plinking” (cheap target practice, low caliber). They are so scary that we often have to stop practice to clear my flock of domestic ducks from down range. Curious little things. But safety first!

With even simple foam ear protection a shot is audible but nowhere near the epic proportions of noise so eloquently described in horrific detail by your author. There’s also next to no recoil. I’ve had worse recoil from a bra strap (in the interests of full disclosure, they are pretty good sized bras).

Your author goes on to embellish the smell of sulfur and her (oops, his) terror at taking “a few shots” with the firearms, going on to explain his need for counseling services for a raging case of immediate onset PTSD. The fact that he makes sport of such a serious condition affecting American veterans and people who have actually survived life or death situations is appalling. However he continues to discuss “full automatic fire. At this point I have to demand your publication issue an immediate retraction and correction for piss-poor journalism. Your author did not fire an automatic weapon and claiming to have turned this rifle to automatic fire when it was absolutely impossible on this firearm is an outright fabrication of the highest order, meant only for shock value. Fully automatic firearms are highly regulated. The AR he was able to get his hands on fires only one round for each time the trigger is pulled. There is no way in the world he was able to make that firearm shoot multiple rounds at a time, and making this false claim with the statement that “this is how you kill 49 people in 60 seconds”, a clear reference to the Orlando massacre by an Islamic extremist, is nothing short of reprehensible.

If you’d like to foot the bill for a real reporter to visit a real life owner and take a real life hands on walk through of shooting several different calibers of the AR platform, please let me know. After all, you sent him to Philly the first time (why is that?). We’ll also be happy to show your reporters, and give them the opportunity, to fire other types of rifles, because I guarantee you that my muzzle loader black powder gun ( a primitive style rifle where each round must be individually loaded) makes a hell of a lot more noise than any of my AR style firearms.

Your publication is not the Maury Povich show. I thought you needed reminding since this individual’s so called journalism reads as if it should end with “You are NOT the father!”. You might also want to post a sign in the break room warning other employees not to make microwave popcorn when Mr. Kuntzman is nearby; it could trigger his PTSD. Hopefully your company medical policy covered the surgical removal of his cranium from his rectal orifice. If not, I’m sure we can start a GoFundMe.

Dannielle Romeo, southwest Virginia.
Wife. Mother. Member VACDL. Member NRA. Secretary, local Chapter FONRA. Domestic violence survivor. Firearms enthusiast and proud responsible owner.