So, David Sirota has gotten around to responding to my wager. Of course, he isn’t going to take the wager — but he is manfully trying to find his way out of the corner into which he has painted himself though his (a) ignorance or (b) dishonesty on the question of firearms and the damage they are capable of doing.

A quick explanation: Sirota wrote that he was worried about guns capable of being used to kill “scores” of people in a matter of “seconds.” Offering the most generous interpretation of his words that is logically sound, I offered him a bet: That he cannot use any firearm covered by the old “Assault Weapons Ban” to make 40 (two score) kill-zone hits on human-sized targets in less than one minute. And I mocked his claim to “Mountain West” gun-culture street cred by noting that he lives in Denver, a fine city—very nice place, in my experience—but not exactly the sort of environment that imparts, by simple virtue of living there, an understanding of the things Sirota pretends to understand.

Sirota’s response takes an ad hominem form; with readers’ indulgence, I’ll offer a few ex hominem responses. Sirota writes:

I’ll refrain from countering a National Review pundit’s attempts to discern between what is and is not the real Rocky Mountain West – frankly, it’s just too hilarious to observe a Washington hack at a William F. Buckley magazine depict himself as some arbiter or authority on this region. All I’ll say is that I’ve been working in and living in places like Montana and Colorado for the last decade and have enjoyed the occasional skeet shooting outing.

Now, though it hurts my feelings to learn that Sirota has not read National Review or my own work often enough to glean the intelligence that both the magazine and I are based in New York City, not Washington, I suspect I see more firepower in my neighborhood than Sirota sees in Denver. New York City has strict gun-control laws; Sirota should come hang out in the 40th Precinct some time around 4 a.m. on a hot Saturday night and see how safe that makes him feel.

But even if that weren’t the case, a wee bit of biographical research would reveal, to any self-respecting journalist with the will and self-respect to Google, that I hail, with rather extravagant pride, from Lubbock, Texas, and lived for some time in the part of Colorado that often does not wish to claim Denver: the northwesternmost corner, where I was the editor of a small-town newspaper in the miniscule town of Craig, where the local bar opens at 7 a.m. and pipeline workers blast pronghorn out of their truck windows. Entertaining place, Craig. (I wrote about one oddball Craig experience here.) Spent much time in Craig, Sirota?

Sirota also implies that I myself am insufficiently familiar with guns. (Never mind, for the moment, that I carried one to work every day for years. And, hey! Sirota’s been skeet shooting!) He writes:

While Williamson seems to suggest he’s some sort of gun expert, his specific challenge shows he probably never been around a firearm in his life. I say that because he says he can prove someone can’t kill 40 people in a minute by lining up human-shaped targets at a firing range and showing that it’s very difficult to hit all of them in a minute. Except, there’s just one problem – crowds of people don’t stand shoulder to shoulder. Often times, a crowd of people is lined up, allowing one bullet to pass through multiple bodies. The real way to “prove” the obviousness of my column’s assertion would be to put, say, 7 human-shaped targets in a line facing the shooter. But, of course, anyone who has been to a firing range (among them, obviously not Williamson) knows that’s not how firing ranges actually work.

The careful reader will notice that my challenge was not for a tradition “firing range” but for a “tactical shooting course,” i.e., a course in which the targets are spread out, at different distances and angles, with obstacles in the way, and such. I think that’s a fair trade-off: It’s still a heck of a lot easier than shooting a moving target — or 40 moving targets, to be precise. I was being generous to the guy, more so than he deserves.

As for the particulars of his claims above, he reveals yet more ignorance. Most rifle bullets cannot pass through seven human bodies in a row, especially not those fired from the little .223-caliber rounds used in the AR-15 that Sirota mentions and most of the other so-called assault rifles. So, if he wants a little side bet, I’ll take it: Hang seven roughly human-sized animals, say, hogs, back-to-belly, and shoot at them with any commercially available cartridge used in any of the weapons covered by the AWB. Hell, use an elephant gun. If the bullet makes it into the seventh, I’ll throw in another month’s pay. At any rate, it’s a relatively rare thing for a single shot to kill two people in the real world, outside of combat. I don’t believe that has been the case in any of the famous mass shootings of recent years, at least as far as my desultory research has uncovered. (If anybody has more complete information on that, I’d appreciate knowing for sure.)

In the end, Sirota doubles down, writing: “But insisting that you can’t empty two 30-round AR-15 magazines into a crowd and kill 40 people is just ridiculous.”

Okay, if it’s ridiculous, then he should take my bet. We’ll have a third party line up the targets on a shooting course, and we’ll use targets that have roughly the same ballistic resistance as a human body, so that Sirota can get his theoretical pass-through effect. If the AWB guns aren’t enough, he is welcome to use a machine gun, for all I care. And I’ll sweeten the deal: If Sirota wins, on top of my original wager of one month’s pay, I’ll donate the MSRP of a Glock 27, my favored concealed-carry pistol, to the anti-gun charity of Sirota’s choice. And I will relinquish my concealed-carry permit.

What’s it going to be, Sirota? Got the courage of your convictions, or not?

P.S.: It should be noted that Sirota manages to pass on another falsehood in his response, writing that “fully automatic weapons” are “legal in many states.” That may be true, but it is only trivially true. Fully automatic weapons are regulated at the federal level, and the civilians who are permitted to own them fall into a few very, very narrow categories: dealers who hold a federal firearms license allowing them to trade in such weapons (e.g., privately owned businesses that supply police departments), businessmen with special-purpose permits (Hollywood prop shops, or defense and police training firms, for example) and “C&R” permit holders — that’s “curios and relics” — e.g., Old West freaks who own century-old Gatlin guns and the like. C&R purchases can be made only after a federal permit is issued as well — and only certain kinds of weapons are covered, mostly antiques. So, true, Kansas does not put additional state-level hurdles in the way — but notice that Dorothy country is not exactly covered up with bad guys pulling 7-Eleven heists with WWII-era Mausers after passing a federal background check and getting a permit from the secretary of the treasury. Just doesn’t happen much.