by Miguel Gonzalez of the Gun Free Zone blog announced today that his blog is closing. He started his blog in 2008 and it was one of the blogs that I visited frequently. He started adding co-bloggers AWA and J.Kb. a few years ago and J.Kb. went too far in a post.
From Miggy:
Gunfreezone.net is my brand and has been since 2008. Good or bad, I am responsible for what is being published under it and I have dealt consequences for mistakes made before and carried on…
The advocacy of sending anybody to a gulag camp and stealing their money is not acceptable under any circumstances in this blog. NONE.
I do not give a damn if it was sarcasm, joke, titillation or clickbait, it simply is a Mortal Sin.
“When people say they are going to kill you/send you to camp, take them at their word.”
How many times through the years I have posted this concept in the blog I am not sure, but probably a lot. It hurt me to no end to see that idiocy published under my brand.
This is something I can’t take back and nobody can. So, the only thing I can do is making sure this stops right here and that means shooting the horse in the head….
Ladies and Gentlemen, it has been a memorable ride. But now it has come to its end.
My social media presence will be at MiguelGGG (@MiguelGGG12) / X. Email should still be working for a while at least.
My eternal thanks to all of you who read, shared, contributed and even gave me crap.
Maybe we will continue in another realm.
This saddens me because another of the old time bloggers has ridden off into the sunset. When I started in May 2010, you had people like Miggy, Sebastian, SayUncle, Tam, Kevin Baker, Joe Huffman, Linoge, JayG, Weerd Beard, Sean, Breda, Thirdpower, and many more putting out stuff every day. We did battle with the evil minions of the gun prohibitionist lobby. We proudly wore the mantle of being called insurrectionists by Ladd and Josh at CSGV. We considered ourselves the Propaganda Corps of the Unorganized Militia and we had patches to prove it.
Some moved on to podcasting like Weerd and Breda, other went mainstream like JayG who is now an editor at Shooting Illustrated, some like Tam, Kevin Baker, and Joe Huffman still are at it, and sadly others like Sebastian, SayUncle, Thirdpower, and Linoge have essentially stopped writing.
I would disagree with those who say blogging is dead. However, it may be on life support. Commercial blogs such as TTAG, AmmoLand, and The Firearm Blog are still going strong but it isn’t the same. Then you have both podcasting and the YouTubers putting out “content”. I’m not sure where Instagram fits in all of this but I guess it does.
I will keep doing what I’ve been doing until I get tired of it. Fortunately, I’m not there yet.
I’m honored to even be remembered.
Sad to hear about Miguel, but I understand it.
I was one of those original gun bloggers as well, although not nearly as eminent as the ones you listed. I blogged for well over ten years, but shut the blog down several years ago. Even after I stopped writing new posts, I kept the blog active for a couple of years because I always had thoughts of starting up active posting again, but the fact is everything I would have to say was being said better by other people with bigger audiences…I never was much of a “me too” blogger, I only posted when I thought I had some unique perspective to share, so I finally deleted it a year or so ago.
People like convenience so it’s easier to go to substack and find all your favorite authors in one place, or go to Spotify or youtube and subscribe the podcasts and video channels. Individual blogs had their place, and still do in a niche market (I still prefer blogs, I don’t have a facebook account, don’t like listening to an hour long podcast filled with 45 minutes of nonsense and maybe 15 minutes of interesting content and I don’t like the subscription model of substack, so I still primarily read blogs when I’m looking for content), but they’re not mainstream any more like they were 10 or 15 years ago.
I’m still glad I was a (very small) part of the gun blogging community. I still have my media pass from the 2008 NRA Convention in Louisville where I met in the meat world most of the bloggers you mentioned by name (I shared a hotel room with Thirdpower). Good memories.
I think we accomplished a lot during the height of the popularity of blogs and I’m glad the few who’ve stuck it out this long are still at it and fighting the good fight. As long as you keep writing, I’ll keep reading and commenting. Thanks.
If we are going to continue to communicate, we really need some kind of decentralized medium. Social media is increasingly oppressive in spite of a temporary? improvement at X. The blogs were one way but perhaps not the only way. The mainstream media is worse than useless. Increasingly, so is conservative alt.media. I mostly attribute this to the malign influence of Salem Media and have taken to avoiding their outlets since they are mostly just an echo chamber these days. Substack seems to be the best thing going now but I have to ration because of cost.
Sad to hear that. And one more bites the dust… I don’t blog about guns all the time, but I do keep up with what is going on.