Poor judgement in blogging...Kevin Ecker
22 07 10 - 11:46 We've seen many examples of bad web bloggers recently .... We've seen it with the partial release of a tape of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod where the clip did not show her entire story, or intent. It turned out she was not a black racist but was actually speaking AGAINST racism in her talk to the NAACP.So that brings me to a local blogger. One from my own city in fact. A fellow conservative who works on many of the same political campaigns that I've worked (i.e. Gerlach, Thompson, Kline, Grehndal, Mack, Bellows etc.) . Under any other circumstances, I might even like him. But not under these.
I found this article written back in October of 2009 written by Kevin Ecker. Note that this is the same Kevin Ecker who mistakenly praised the likes of a Neo-Nazi and encouraged people to attend the Nazi's event Kevin promoted in his blog. To be fair, Kevin may not have known that the person he was writing about was a member of the National Socialist Movement. But he was. Now that he knows, Mr. Eckert has issued a disclaimer on the piece he originally wrote.
In his article on the 10 commandments of Carrying a Firearm, Ecker writes about me and a friend of mine, Joe Penaz saying that we are "not so go" (he meant good but his typing skills were lacking) "from whom you will likely receive lots of bad information that may end you up in jail or worse." I find this statement offending, slanderous and false.
Does Ecker really believe that the BCA would approve curriculum (which they did by approving our company) that would land people in jail? Mr. Ecker has never even set foot in one of our classes. Instead he acts as a shill for a couple of instructors who have already been discredited through their own trade practices by running down other instructors. Ecker provides a link to them in the same article.
Ecker has never contacted us (known in the trade as follow-up), nor as I said has he personally ever stepped foot in our classroom. I did try to contact him, several times. But the man never answers his phone.
Let's look at the facts:
1) Shade's Landing Inc. is an approved training organization in the state of Minnesota
2) It's instructors are NRA certified, including an NRA training counselor for rifle, shotgun, pistol, personal protection in the home, home firearm safety, and refuse to be a victim courses
3) The legal company we keep consists of noted attorneys David Gross and Marc Berris
4) Our curriculum has been APPROVED by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety as meeting or exceeding the MN standards for a MN carry class.
5) We've trained over 5,000 students in the art of the handgun and hold roughly 6.5% to 7% of all Minnesota permit holders.
6) We're certified to teach Utah by the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification
7) We post much of the feedback we get online - we let our clients do the talking
8) We've had various county attorneys and even a Sheriff's deputies take our class (one Sheriff wanted his deputy who handles permit applications to take the class to see what permit holders go through)
Mr. Kevin Ecker is simply a hack when it comes to writing, He does very little investigation of the claims he apparently hears from others. And there appears to be problems with other stories such as the neo-nazi article referenced above. Ecker should take far more care in what he writes.
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