Commentary Archives - Backwoods Home Magazine

The Newtown atrocity and “gun control”

By Massad Ayoob Issue #140 • March/April, 2013 In mid-December of 2012, a mentally disturbed twenty-year-old whose escalating aberrant behavior had gone untreated and unchecked murdered his own mother, stole her guns, and entered the Sandy...

Should we scrap our ‘old’ Constitution?

By John Silveira Issue #135 • May/June, 2012 In a recent New York Times article by Adam Liptak, he observed that the Constitution of the United States is not only the oldest constitution in existence, but...

Our energy crisis Part 2 — Nuclear energy is sensible and safe

By John Silveira Issue #114 • November/December, 2008 When an atomic bomb was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945, the amount of energy...

Personal guns getting to be in style

By Dave Duffy Issue #74 • March/April, 2002 Have you noticed how the mass media's attacks against gun ownership have gone way down since the terrorist attacks of September 11? Of course, it's kind of difficult...

Paying for social security with worthless $

By Dave Duffy Issue #117 • May/June, 2009 The year was 1976. I was 32 and writing a book about retirement planning with Tony Lamb, a noted 73-year-old activist who had taken up the cause of...

Reaching for the stars during a recession

By Dave Duffy Issue #125 • September/October, 2010 Toby is the volunteer assistant golf coach for the team this magazine sponsors, the Gold Beach High School Panthers. He has spent hundreds of hours of his own...

Armed and Female

By Massad Ayoob Issue #63 • May/June, 2000 I didn't come up with the term "Armed and Female." Paxton Quigley did. She's a neat lady. I know her, trained her, taught with her, and have the...

Magnesium and the International Criminal Court

By John Silveira Issue #125 • September/October, 2010 There was an interesting ad that ran in BHM for two issues, but it was pulled for lack of response. It was about magnesium, the lack of it...

ID cards are an idea whose time should never come

By John Silveira October 28, 2001 I just read in the October 8th issue of U.S. News and World Report a column by Randall E. Stross in which he advocates some kind of national I.D. Card....

Loading the gun for a dictatorship

By John Silveira Issue #103 • January/February, 2007 My late friend, Jim Callahan, was a self-professed "liberal." At least, when I first met him, that's what he claimed. Actually, he wasn't. But Jim wasn't a "conservative"...

Reflecting on a life in the woods, and looking ahead

By Marjorie Burris Issue #60 • November/December, 1999 It is a good life here on the old homestead. We've worked hard, and we are enjoying the fruits of our labor. It was tough digging the holes...

Here are some answers to often-asked questions of anti-gunners

By Massad Ayoob Issue #45 • May/June, 1997 It has become increasingly politically incorrect to be a firearms owner. This is because trends tend to be set by the fashionable and the media-connected in metropolitan environments....

Finding solutions in firewood

By Dave Duffy January 16, 2000 When I am confounded and afraid, that is, when I have trouble figuring out what to do next in a critical situation, I go to my woodpile, grab an axe,...

Defunding government is a sensible voter solution to reining in local government

By Dave Duffy Issue #128 • March/April, 2011 Like so many other communities across the country, my community of Curry County on the southern Oregon coast has rejected efforts by local government to raise taxes in...

The land of the unfree

By John Silveira Issue #101 • September/October, 2006 It's official! The numbers are in once again! For I-don't-know-how-many-years-running, the United States, this so-called "land of the free," is imprisoning more people, in both absolute numbers and...

Fake lawsuits, stacked juries, and LAWYERS!

By John Silveira Issue #89 • September/October, 2004 Mac, that's O.E. MacDougal, our poker playing friend from Southern California, is back. He blew into town yesterday with the good weather and brought his fishing rods, his...