Year: 2012

Since Brady released its new scores, I’ve been meaning to go back and redo my spreadsheet to see if there’s still no correlation. Fortunately, Barron Barnett saved me the time. The answer is that, no, there is still no correlation between Brady scores and violent crime. What’s also good news is that Brady scores, in general, are declining. I still think Pennsylvania’s score of 26 out of 100 is embarrassingly high.

Miguel finds our opponents in a lie of omission this President’s Day. It is an unfortunate thing for our opponents that this supposed “insurrectionist meme” didn’t come to life with the NRA in the 1970s, but came to life at the founding of our nation, and has been part of the American landscape ever since. As much as they might enjoy sticking their head in the sand, this nation was forged through violent revolution, so it ought not be that remarkably surprising that revolutionist rhetoric has been part and parcel of our political culture.

I was relatively amused yesterday when reports from readers started coming in that I had garnered the attention of the world-class hypocrites at Media Matters. It’s always difficult to decide how to respond to an organization, who’s one of the biggest boosters of gun control out there, but whose leader has been condoning one of his underlings illegally toting a Glock around Washington D.C to protect him from imagined enemies. But by waiting, I can at least report to you that Media Matters sent me  a grand total of 18 visits yesterday. So much for the power and reach of Brock’s merry band of discontents.

I would think that Media Matters, of any organization, would support Starbuck’s policy, since it’s pretty obvious that the vast right-wing conspiracy Brock needs to protect himself from doesn’t have any compunction about headed in for a Chai Latte and a scone while peaceably strapped. But I guess if you’re fine with breaking the gun laws of the District of Columbia, you’ll have someone nearby with a hog leg tied on, no matter the wishes of Starbucks on the topic of carry. The rules are for the little people, after all; people like you and me.

For the record, the Starbucks BUYcott was a resounding success. The gun control folks were utterly destroyed, and we captured the media stories about it. My call was a call for politeness; to keep buying, sending a note to corporate every once in a while, and telling Starbucks we appreciate them. But I wanted to let Starbucks go back to selling coffee without having folks trying to continuously drag them into their cause, and making their social media outlets into a battleground of pro v. anti. It’s a shame there’s no voice on the other side of this issue calling for restraint, since the same ten or so anti-gun fanatics have been continuously, and quite rudely, spamming Starbucks Facebook Wall with  all matter of hysterics unrelated to coffee. And unlike me, who never owned this event, and is just another voice in the wind, they could coordinate a stop to their haranguing if they wanted.

No matter though, it’s the weekend, and the shills don’t get paid to troll on the weekends. Perhaps Starbucks will catch a break after all.

Bloomberg recently engaged in some yammering about how anti-gun folks need to replicate the strategy of the NRA. I agree with Jacob:

Good advice except for one, tiny problem: antigunners do not have a voting constituency.  The organizations which represent them are largely just front groups for professional politicians and activists which are funded by large foundations including Joyce and Tides.  They can’t turn out people to vote because they aren’t membership-based; they’re mostly astroturf.

That’s the beauty of it. They couldn’t replicate our success even if they wanted to. They cling bitterly to the notion that polling matters. It does not. If it did, Pennsylvania would have free market liquor right now. But the fact of the matter is, people don’t care enough about boozing it up free market style to actually turn it into a real political movement, and hold politicians accountable for results. Without passion, there can be no movement. We have passion, in large number. Their passionate folks are infinitesimally small in comparison.

From the Christian Science Monitor on how we learned to stop worrying and love Starbucks:

A coalition of secular, religious, and gun-control groups backing the boycott claim to represent 14 million Americans. But the ability of gun control groups to influence the lawmaking process has waned in recent years, with gun-rights legislation outnumbering gun-control laws by a 3-to-1 margin, according to a recent Associated Press analysis.

I heard NGVAC’s leader, Elliot Fineman on CSNBC talking about how they did Monte Carlo analysis to determine their overall impact. For those of you unfamiliar with statistical methods, Monte Carlo if a random sampling technique most often used to achieve results in mathematical systems that are too complex to do by systematic calculation. I’d love to know how this method is applied to Mr. Fineman’s model, but doubt it will be forthcoming, since we probably have enough collective statistical knowledge among the blogger folk to find flaws. If I had to bet, I’d bet that Fineman is completely full of crap, and largely pulled the number of our his posterior.