Radio, TV, and elsewhere

Yet another busy week has passed.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the high point of my week was a review in the Washington Post, which flattered me by declaring that Arms is “entertaining, often funny and ultimately an important addition to the limited canon on guns.”

Maclean’s magazine called the book “a pleasingly acerbic popular history—an equal-opportunity lambasting of everyone from American gun weenies to Canadian cultural nationalists.”

I also wrote a piece for Maclean’s (online only), on why the now-defunct long gun registry, a hot political topic less than a year ago, is suddenly a non-issue on the campaign trail.

I touched on the same theme a couple of days later, talking to Ryan Jesperson on Edmonton’s CHED 630 radio.

And to round things out, I made an appearance on TVO’s The Agenda, to discuss the documentary “Up In Arms,” along with its director, Nadine Pequeneza. You can see that film here, and I recommend it: it’s a balanced and thorough look at a gun lobby most Canadians don’t know exists.

 

 

A busy week … more to come

It’s been a busy week, and I haven’t been keeping things up. But since my last post, I’ve been on CBC Windsor’s Afternoon Drive with Bob Steele (no podcast available, sorry), and on CFAX 1070 in Victoria, BC (podcast here, with my part starting at around 36:30).

Also this past week was the Windsor launch for Biblioasis’s fall fiction list, where I filled in for Samuel Archibald (author of the Giller-longlisted Arvida), who was unable to make it. A good time was had by all, etc., with readings from Larry Tremblay (The Orange Grove), Kevin Hardcastle (Debris), and Anakana Schofield (Martin John). At some point in the festivities I seem to have been struck by a large, invisible truck loaded with whiskey, but I’m fully recovered now. No records survive; if you missed it, you missed it.

While in Windsor, I saw for the first time the October issue of Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine, which listed my book, Arms, among ten books you should pick up this fall.

On Friday, inverse.com put up a short Q&A with me, where I touch on the nineteenth century revolution in firepower, the masculine imperative of the gun culture, and what’s wrong with stand-your-ground laws. You can read that interview here. I also had a chance to talk to a Grade 12 class at Toronto’s Chaminade College about that masculine imperative. And to round out Friday, Publishers’ Weekly listed Arms among its hot Canadian titles.

What’s to come? This week I have a couple of things in the works, which you won’t be able to see until later in the fall (he said, mysteriously). Stay tuned.

Tommy Schnurmacher Show, CJAD-800 Montreal

This morning I popped up again like a bad penny, this time on CJAD 800’s Tommy Schnurmacher Show.

In a short interview, I touched on Canada’s gun lobby, my reasons for writing the book, and the success of Canadian gun control.

Windsor Star interview re Arms

Today, the Windsor Star published an interview I gave a couple of weeks back, on my way back from Detroit.

I told them I’d get hate mail, and I did, right on schedule:
What a sack of lying Liebral CRAP! I suppose his next project will be to remove the locks on people’s homes! This Mother Canucking dipstick doesn’t have a clue and lives in a fantasy World where Unicorns poop glitter.

Well, yes. And let me tell you, glitter is a real pain in the ass to clean up. But it’s a lot easier than mucking out a stable.