03/01/2016
Hello, I am the Mad N**i.
I want to take this opportunity to clear up a few things regarding a fairy tale that appeared in last weeks Globe and Mail, penned by writer/biology teacher Cameron MacDonald, of Burnaby BC.
Let me start by explaining a little about “The Mad N**i’s Cannon Works”. I am a welder/machinist/fabricator (though, not a fabricator in the same sense that Mr. MacDonald is a fabricator). A couple years ago, a friend and I cut apart an old oxygen tank and made our first pumpkin mortar, which we debuted at the 2014 pumpkin shoot in Mission, BC. We were launching intact pumpkins up to 600 meters. We was a big hit. People were coming over and asking where they could buy similar cannons so they could be as cool as us. What was meant to be a goof, turned out to be a business opportunity and the cannon works was born.
Now, “N**i” is neither a nickname I picked nor particularly appreciated. I considered going on Facebook and asking my “friends” to all wear pink shirts in hopes that people would stop picking on me and calling me unwanted names, but then my father’s voice echoed through my head. “Stop crying, or I will give you something to cry about”. This was not the way to handle things, So I embraced the name and made light of it.
I get called N**i in the same light as “grammar N**i” and “soup N**i”, not in the “hide your Jewish grandparents” context. I am rather particular. I call it being a perfectionist. some call it OCD, others call it “being a N**i”. “When its perfect, its good enough” I always say.
I had the hoodies printed up as an advertisement gimmick for the upcoming post Halloween pumpkin shoot, where we were unveiling our first ever double barrel cannon. we were a huge hit. We got orders for three cannons and surprisingly, 12 of the hoodies. I wasn’t sure how they would be accepted as I figured them to be a wee bit on the edge. We got a lot of comments, none of which were negative. Everyone was laughing and having a good time.
A few days later, I received a phone call from our gun club president. He informed me of a complaint from a new member that was going through orientation while the shoot was on. His complaint was that something on my hoody was not “family oriented” and felt the club needed to establish a dress code. I emailed the club president a photograph of the hoodies and offered my suggestion that this new member have his dues refunded and turned away (not my exact words). My reasoning was, that if a person that has been a member of the club for about an hour or so, is already trying to dictate bylaws to the executive, how much of a pain in the ass is he going to be once he has been a member for a week, a month or even a year.
A private meeting of the club executive was held the following week, and though I wasn’t privy to the actual discussion, the outcome was that no dress code would be imposed, and Mr. MacDonald would be offered the opportunity to request a full refund of his club dues.
And that was the end of that………or so we all thought.
On the afternoon of February, the 15th, I got a call from one of the club execs and he read me the article that appeared in the Globe And Mail. I couldn’t believe my ears. Who is this clown, and what did I ever
do to him?? Did I beat him up in high school? Did I maybe sleep with his wife? Someone showed me a picture of the pair, and a quick “no” was the answer to those two questions. I got myself a copy of the paper and read the article for myself.
Now, the hoodies in question are in fact, black. He got that part right. They read “The Mad N**i’s Cannon Works” with a large iron cross in the middle, and the slogan “The Best Blue Job In Town” across the bottom. This of course makes reference to the hot black oxide treatment that I offer. (AKA gun bluing).
In his story, Mr. MacDonald deliberately removes the apostrophe from the word “N**i’s”, changing it to “N**is”. This effectively changes the meaning of the word from a single person’s possession, to a group of people. Not once, but seven times throughout his story. I have difficulty believing this was an accident, him being a published author, and a college instructor for 13 years. I believe it was done with intent. He goes on to claim that there were a half dozen of these hoodie clad members of this previously unheard of hate group. I looked it up in the dictionary (it’s called fact checking, try it sometime), and just as I suspected, a “half dozen” still means six. There were only three of us.
Now, let me paint a picture for you all. First, we have my 50 year old friend. A well respected, long time business owner in mission, and one of the original members of our gun club. Bespectacled and portly, rarely to be seen without a smile on his face, he always reminds me a bit of a beardless Santa Clause in the off season. Next is myself, 48 years old and half crippled. Finally, you have my care aid. A 25 year old girl, 4 foot 10 inches, four months pregnant, and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. Hardly a match for a platoon of Mossad agents, well except for maybe the hormonal pregnant girl when she’s hungry.
“Had I just witnessed a neo n**i group, happily blasting away at a bunch of pumpkins?” he asks the readers. He goes on to criticize the “50 other people blasting away while happily ignoring them”. If not one other person in all those people saw a problem, other than the author, I would question his perception. The fact that he reported 6 people where there were only 3, suggests to me that he is either blatantly lying, or seeing double. A quick google search took me to his page. Picture after picture of him drinking. One of his friends even expressing his concern, that he felt Cameron had a drinking problem. Did this “responsible” man actually show up at a live fire range, intoxicated to the point that he was seeing double, and was unable to accurately read “a large font”?
He moves on with his story, claiming my clothes to be racist. Again, I question if this is an error, or malice. As he is an educator, I would expect he would know better. Screaming “racism” is so much more exciting while spinning a yarn, than the simple truth of people killing each other over religion, not race, which has been commonplace around the world for thousands of years. More people have been slaughtered because “my god is better than your god” than for any other reason. Hands down.
Reading on, when Mr. MacDonald got the reply from the club, he was insulted. His feelings were hurt and he acted out like a petulant child throwing a tantrum. He “felt he had a moral obligation to step up the fight”. what fight? Is he cuckoo? Was he drunk? I am starting to question if this man is actually mentally stable enough to be a gun owner. Why would someone even want to be a member of a club that you have been at odds with literally since your first hours of membership? So, he emails the RCMP and the Vancouver City Police hate crimes division. Both parties tell him the same thing. No laws have
been broken, but at least they are now aware of the fledgling terrorists, training in preparation of next years “pumpkincide”.
Maybe this guy was intimidated by the cutesy cartoon caricatures on the front of our hoodies, as he wasn’t brave enough to confront Santa, the cripple, nor his midget nurse, but luckily for us all, once he got behind a keyboard, he sure grew a monster set.
He observed “50 people” (60 actually) all around us, not one of them seeming to have a problem with us or our wardrobe. The club listened to his complaint, reviewed the matter, and concluded there was no problem worth pursuing. He then goes to two different law enforcement agencies, and is told by both that no laws have been broken. There is no fight. He is tilting at windmills. What we have here is a guy shouting discrimination, while discriminating against my wardrobe because it made him feel uncomfortable. Some people spend all their time looking for things to be offended by. Maybe it’s a distraction from the drinking.
He ends his article with one last blatant lie, for dramatic effect, I can only guess. “they were shooting guns, after all”. Yes, we were at a gun range, but oddly, we were the only ones there without guns. We weren’t carrying guns, and we weren’t shooting, we were busy loading and firing pumpkins out of our cannons, and socializing with the crowd. It does make us sound a lot more villainous though, doesn’t it? Now, for the record, I don’t actually Hate pumpkins, they just make such good projectiles. Eggplant, on the other hand, is a totally different matter.
Its hard to put an exact figure on it, but in my estimation, his story is about 90% imagined based on a meager 10% of truth. As an avid gun owner and member of the shooting community, public opinion does matter, as much as we all wish it didn’t. Articles like this in the newspaper only cause harm. Politicians listen to the masses, and this whole matter is a huge black eye for all of us to wear. One newbie’s opinion and vivid imagination, whether it was swayed by drugs, alcohol, or a hormonal imbalance, has taken on a life of its own, and smeared our entire community. I find it ironic, an article written, by the author, most likely just to see his name in the paper, is most likely going to land his name on a court docket as well. Welcome to the club, Cam. If I may steal a word that I learned today while reading comments on a forum discussing your article, you are, in my opinion, a class A “douchewaffle”(that’s not racist, is it?).
