If you follow Formula 1, you know about this already. If you don’t, you may not know that Lewis Hamilton is one of the world’s elite road-racing drivers, a blindingly fast past World Champion who drives for Mercedes and is competitive this year.
Hamilton offended against F1’s unwritten code of European gentility by being photographed in the USA firing an AR-15 and, worse, enjoying it. Quel horreur!
Lewis Hamilton has been ordered to take down a video of him firing a machine gun at a shooting range in Colorado posted on the same day as the attempted gun attack on a French train.
Yeah, because someone might confuse an English guy having some fun in America with an Arab guy trying to commit a massacre in Europe. Exactly the same thing, right?
The Mercedes team boss Niki Lauda ordered Mr Hamilton to remove the video after it received a lot of criticism from fans for being insensitive.
The video received a lot of positive attention, too, but the criticism was from the right sort of people, you see. It’s “insensitive” to have Wrongfun, at least from the standpoint of a certain class of people (whose Rightfun, or perhaps we should say Leftfun, seems to be doesn’t-sound-fun-to-us acting as the Internet Society for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Fun).
There’s really only one fitting response to an accusation of being “insensitive” and that involves making a crude anglo-saxon verb, intransitive, into a verb, reflexive. As in, “Go ….” but unfortunately, that’s not how Hamilton’s corporate Fuhrerschaft reacted.
Hamilton said that he didn’t post the video personally to his Instagram account because a friend posts on his social media for him during race weekends.
Mercedes team chief, Toto Wolff, said, “My opinion is split on a personal level. Lewis is a rock star and he is living his life. Then on the other side you need be aware what is happening out there in the world” the Guardian reported.
Mercedes has a long history of being in tune with the thought leaders of Europe. Lauda is not the first Austrian associated with the marque by any means:
But today, the man whose Formula 1 prominence was bankrolled by a family banking fortune raised during those days, working for a company that employed 40,000 slave laborers during that period, is cracking down on the verdamnt Englander whose error was, it seems, to violate the Waffenkontrollgesetz.
Can’t be having that, can we?
The video received almost 34,000 likes on Instagram before it was deleted. Many of the comments, however, criticised Mr Hamilton for setting a bad example by using guns and for showing insensitivity towards the injured victims of the French train attack.
Note that the number of “likes” is quantified but the number of criticisms is a nebulous “many.”
One such commenter wrote: “Disappointing & unnecessary Lewis, Disappointed that you promote such stupidity”.
Yeah, it’s just heartbreaking that the guy can do something that, “one such commenter” dislikes. Because the Internet means never having to live your own crabbed little life, but having the opportunity to project your preferences on celebrities who never have heard of you and never will.
It’s kind of a shame that a freeborn Englishman has to travel thousands of miles to blow off a few rounds on a rifle range, but that’s the state of the world, 2015. It’s doubly shameful that he should be shamed for it by a couple of guys and a corporation who have entire mass graves’ worth of skeletons in their own closet.
We’re seeing the fundamental Law of German Industrialism in action: o=nce you’ve converted the pulled teeth and shorn hair into Reichsmarks, then Deutschmarks or Schillings and then, finally, Euros, the humans whose lifeless leichen you looted them from rebuke you no more.
All we can say to Hamilton is: if Lauda calls you into his office, and there’s a dentist’s chair, don’t go. He’s not a dentist, despite his family’s history with gold teeth.
Kevin was a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S). His focus was on weapons: their history, effects and employment. He started WeaponsMan.com in 2011 and operated it until he passed away in 2017. His work is being preserved here at the request of his family.
18 thoughts on “When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Formula 1”
A video of someone shooting a rifle is offensive and insensitive? Oh dear, how I weep for the future…
The Japanese pre-WWII concern that there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass if the American homeland was directly attacked is hardly an acceptable analogy in the present era. What deterrence do we present today? I’m not talking about carrier groups or bomber wings or armor or infantry divisions. Deterrence against an equally, or slightly less, matched opponent doesn’t present much utility in this type of warfare. Even then, everyone knows they will be hindered and handicapped from jump street so their abilities only need to be endured or survived until we as a country tire of it and move onto the next, bigger, better thing.
I’ll put this on conservatives since they all but hand the leftards the position of moral authority so they can delve deep into the intellectual argument.
It is refreshing to hear the truth spoken well.
Bravo WM.
I watched a few documentaries on Herr Hitler and he was quite the car fanatic. In fact Mercedes dutifully made several custom cars for the guy. Niki Lauda should ban the depiction of Fritos…… get it? Frito is spanish for fried.
Thank you very much, I’ll be here all week. Please tip you waitresses.
So when is someone going to grow a pair and say “Up Yours, I’m not taking it down!” It’s not as if he wouldn’t get picked up by any other F1 team in the world. Whatever. I have no time for the sort of cowards who back down because “popular opinion” has turned against them.
First: “…making a crude anglo-saxon verb, intransitive, into a verb, reflexive.”
OK, now that’s an exemplar extraordinaire. Double X-ring for you & I’m stealing that, lmao.
Second: Lauda & Mercedes can go… well, see above. Ferrari should’ve snagged him when they had the chance. Personally, as a huge F1 fan for decades (years & years in Deutschland will do that to some), I think someone should invite Lewis to Knob Creek.
Lewis is a closeted fairy, and a walking platitude machine. He never met a cliché he didn’t like. And steal. And use. Repeatedly. It’s as if he has a video loop running continuously in his head of that scene from the film “Bull Durham” when ‘Crash’ lectures ‘Meat’ on how to say all the right things to the press.
For as much courage as he shows while inside a race car, outside of one he’s a spineless wonder. Lewis apologized when he was ticketed for “hooning” (the ‘Strine term for ‘red-neckery’) in Australia in 2010 because he was caught doing a burn-out in a parking lot. There’s little that could be less reckless than an F1 driver doing burnouts in an Mercedes-Benz AMG C63 in an empty parking lot. But instead of laughing it off and telling them to go pound sand, he said ”What I did was silly and I want to apologise for it.”
If you’re surprised he let the video be taken down, then you obviously misoverestimate his “character.”
Ah, another Lewis hater. You guys abound. Now you profess to have some all-knowing gaydar to slime the best driver in F1 since Shumacher.
Classy.
When did Niki’s balls fall off? He had balls in the 1970s!
Once again I need it explained to me.
How is shooting a rifle at a range “insensitive” to the victims of the train attack?
I see that the terrorist had an AK and shot it off on a passenger train.
But I don’t see how shooting a different kind of rifle at a range is insensitive.
“How is shooting a rifle at a range “insensitive” to the victims of the train attack?”
It’s an Herbivore Thing. You wouldn’t understand.
“The Mercedes team boss Niki Lauda…”
Well there’s a name I never thought would make me blurt “You cowardly sniveling weasel!” It’s a shame to find out that lead foot was really clay all along.
Yeah, Daniel Bruhl did a really good version. “Twenty percent risk, not a percent more!” But it’s in the Euro context, which is more PC than anything in the USA except maybe a faculty lounge at a New England private liberal arts college.
I wonder why Mercedes continues to display insensitivity by continuing to race open wheel cars when just last weekend Justin Wilson, another English driver, was killed in a race?
I worked with dozens of Brits over my career, and to a man they were crazy for guns. They have great DNA going for them and the slashing and stabbing of Saxon warfare translates nicely into the warfare of racing. Brits have been making Ducatis, Ferraris, Mercedes, Porsches, ad nauseum go fast since forever. They’re in a rough patch now, but they will return. Those European technicians can build them, but it takes a swipe of the barbarian tar brush to get the most out of them.
Tomorrow my Celtic wife will buy her third car. She is in her late 50s, and keeps them 20 years or better. It will be a Porsche Cayenne, the thing she finds fits her best. I pointed out that the Porsche folks developed the Kublewagen for the Third Reich. This got dismissed in a dismissive way.
Another might-as-well-be-Brit will start wringing out another German car over the next few days. That seems to be the way it goes. I have a Ford F150.
My favorite “American” car was, like most of the great road race cars of its era, a British chassis: Ford Gt40 Mk.I. (The Mk.II is faster but rather scary to drive). The basic chassis design was done by Eric Broadley of Lola fame, yet the cars didn’t win until American teams started managing them (Shelby and Holman & Moody).
Porsche also had a low Nazi Party number, and made an entry in the competition for what became the Tiger tank. The final tank used Porsche’s turret, and some of the Porsche chassis were built as tank destroyers (“Elefant”).
On race week at COTA, Lone Star Gun Range in Lockhart, TX is always PACKED with folks from all over the world renting everything from .38 revolvers to the .50 rifle. It’s my favorite time to go shoot; you never know who you’re going to meet, but you can bet they’ll be having a hell of a good time.
Mine was the Shelby Cobra, preferably in 427. Another multi-cultural contraption. I assume they were scary enough. I’ve never driven one.
It was at that time I realized I’d never be able to afford what I needed on four wheels and switched to two. Americans can manage most things better than most, given an environment that actually allows the freedom to manage, and they are quick to spot the effective path. Movements in world-wide talent have always been interesting.
So Ferdinand did tanks too! Having just read Tiger Tracks and The Last Panther I can only say cool. They all worked for the Man in those days. I’m only sorry it broke their spirit so in the inevitable smack-down.