3^rd Blogiversary.

On Wednesday, May 14, 2003 I started The Smallest Minority. According to Blogger, this is my 2117^th post, and according to Sitemeter, this blog has received (as of this writing) 557,464 site visits and 675,975 page views since I signed up for the service in, I think, June or July of 2003. According to Haloscan, there are over 10,000 comments archived. TSM is, according to The Truth Laid Bear, a "Large Mammal" in his "ecosystem," curently ranked 832^nd out of over 50,000 blogs tracked. Technorati ranks TSM as 10,278^th out of the 39.4 million sites it tracks. Depending on how often I post, and how popular those posts are, my site traffic ranges from 450-850 hits a day (about 550 lately, since I haven't been writing much).

At the Nation of Riflemen shoot up at Ben Avery a couple of weeks ago, a reader came up to me and said "I've been reading your blog for the last four years!" What I said to him was "You couldn't have. I've only been posting for three." Forgive me. I was feeling ill. What I should have said was "It only seems that long!"

I've met, both online and in meatspace, a lot of great people through this blog, and had hours and hours of interesting and thought-provoking (and research-provoking) discussions. And it's provided me a place to vent, most importantly. I am pleased and somewhat humbled by the fact that there are so many people out there willing to take the time to read what I write, much less comment on it. I know that you're busy, and I appreciate that you spend some of your busy day here.

I am also encouraged to see more and more voices like mine out there. The number of "gunbloggers" when I started was, as far as I knew, pretty small, but it has grown and grown over the last three years. We have a voice, and we're using it. This is a good thing. And we're being read - this is a better thing.

Anyway, the point of this post is to thank you for dropping by. I write this stuff mostly for me, but if no one read it, I doubt I'd keep it up. Like most bloggers, I experience periodic episodes of burn-out, and also like most bloggers, real life interferes from time to time. But I don't have any plans to stop any time soon.

Oh, and Happy Mother's Day, everybody.