… the community really needed a replacement for the “shoulder thing that goes up.” This replacement has been making its way around the online gunny community.
We’re increasingly ruled by clowns, and this guy is just a particularly good example.
Month: January 2014
The Death of Community Blogging
The signs have been around for a while now that what I would call “community blogging” has been on its death bed. There’s no greater evidence for that than the fact that The Volokh Conspiracy has decided to move over to the Washington Post, and will in six month go behind their paywall. As a regular reader who learned a whole lot from 10 years of reading The Volokh Conspiracy, I would be more inclined to pay the Conspirators for a subscription directly than I would to fork over my money to the enemy, which is the Washington Post.
I certainly don’t think that anyone owes anyone else content, but it’s sad to see what’s been happening to blogging. I would classify community blogging as that done primarily for the purpose of civic engagement, with profit being an ancillary purpose at best. There have been plenty of blogs and bloggers who have made the transition from community blogging to either commercial blogging or professional writing. I have no problem with people deciding to do what’s best for them.
Maybe I’m just being an old fuddy duddy but I miss the days when bloggers thought themselves an insurrection against institutions like the Washington Post, and other commercial interests that didn’t give much of a crap short of making a buck. Maybe in the end we’ll gain something from the transformation, but I do have to say I miss the good old days.
Not too Excited About the R51?
Tam notes that the beer goggles are wearing off when it comes to some folks and the R-51. I agree with Tam on this one: I plan to get one just because of the novelty, and because the price is right. I have no plans to carry an R-51 and didn’t think “what an awesome carry gun” when I first saw it.
I’m generally not a big fan of single stacks for carry, because if I’m dressed for being able to conceal something the size of an R51, I’m dressed for being able to conceal a Glock 19, and all things being equal, I’d rather have 16 rounds than 7. The next step down for me is a pocket pistol, for those situations where I can’t dress to conceal a Glock 19, and where it’d be nice to have some option above pepper spray and harsh language.
Florida “Warning Shot” Bill Advances, But Misnamed
This bill seems to be to be some duct tape added to the giant ball of fail that is Florida’s criminal law, so in that sense I tend to agree with Bob Owens of Bearing Arms that “[t]his is bad legislation piled up on top of bad legislation, instead of legislators admitting that they made a mistake.” Florida’s criminal laws seem particularly nutty and laced with unintended consequences from legislators showing how they are “tough on crime.” But having read this post at Legal Insurrection, and read the HB89 bill, the characterization of this as the “Warning Shot” Bill is greatly overblown by the media.
The bill in no way, shape or form authorizes warning shots, and the media is grossly irresponsible for suggesting it does. Why? Because when it passes, there will be people who have an entirely false belief they have state sanction to fire warning shots. This matches the media’s gross irresponsibility of characterizing elimination of the duty to retreat as a “shoot first” bill that lets you blast away at anyone you feel a little scared of. When you spread this kind of nonsense, there are certain people who are going to believe it. It makes a culture of violence more likely, not less. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I suppose they don’t care about the body count, as long as it advances their agenda of reinstitution the duty to retreat from your attacker before resorting to use of deadly force to protect yourself.
All this bill says is that if you’re justified in using deadly force, you’re justified in also threatening to use deadly force. Could that be a warning shot? Maybe. But this bill never mentions warning shots. As Legal Insurrection points out, even under this bill, Marissa Alexander would still be in jail.
Media MAIG Mayor Politicizes Town Finances
Thanks to a reader for sending me this article on Media, PA mayor Bob McMahon, who pushed to have the town divest in the gun business:
Mayor Bob McMahon, a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and a Vietnam veteran, said he’d had “a lot of involvement†with assault weapons. He said he saw no reason for their use other than for military purposes.
“A message has to be sent. I’m strongly in support of this resolution,†said McMahon.
I think it’s time for gun owners to send a message to Mayor McMahon. The next meeting is the 20th. If there are any gun owners in Media, it would be advisable to make a showing and make your voice heard! It’s like playing whack-a-mole. You have to keep whacking when the gopher pops up or you lose.
Editing Comments is Back
The plugin I used to use to allow commenters to edit their comments now works again with a hardened WordPress install, so I have re-enabled it, tested it, and it seems to work. I’m still looking for a plugin that would allow readers to “Like” comments anonymously, similar to Facebook.
Audio Ads
I have a reader complaining of audio ads popping up on the site. I’d note we take Google Ads. I don’t have control over what Google decides to run, but I can block specific ads. I just recently switched off the type of ad that allows audio to be played upon mouseovers. If you notice any ads that auto play, or notice sound coming from the site, let me know. I don’t specifically want anything that auto plays sound appearing on this site. If that’s ever the case, it’s a mistake.
UPDATE: I read somewhere online that Sitemeter was doing ad injection. SayUncle noted it was Sitemeter. I’ve removed Sitemeter. I don’t need them when I have analytics.
Monday News Links
Headed out to lunch today since this is the first day this month that neither of us are sick. Just in time to get snowed in by the latest snowstorm that I’m sure The Weather Channel has assigned some stupid name to. Now for some news links …
Private militias in Mexico refuse to disarm, because they are fighting the drug cartels. I’m sure CSGV stands ready to condemn them.
Ruger CEO explains why they are abandoning the California market. I expect more companies will do this. That was probably the point of this legislation. They have to figure out ways to ban guns that the courts might let them get away with. Here’s a legislative and legal history of the CA handgun roster. More from John Richardson too.
How to get the government to read the constitution?
First Amendment victory:Â freedom of the Press was meant to protect a technology, not an industry.
I thought only “corporate gun lobby” bullies did the whole hate thing?
Is Slidefire about to Akins themselves? I’m not entirely certain how that sled works, but my understanding has always been if you have some mechanical contraption actuate the trigger, but your action is to press some device that counts as a single function, you’ve got a machine gun on your hand.
This is a good question regarding Sean Penn. I think there have always been different rules for Hollywood in California. Though misdemeanors can typically be expunged, which would restore rights provided the expungement fully restores rights, causing the conviction to be free of legal effects.
TN gun rights case going to the Supreme Court.
Part 5 of Miguel’s series looking at the MAIG e-mails in more detail.
Gun wars to heat up in 2014? I would imagine the Democrats are not going to be all that eager to take the issue up in an election year when they are facing a number of vulnerable seats in red states.
The Supreme Court has denied cert on an appeal for the Montana Firearms Freedom Act. There was never any chance the Firearms Freedom Acts were going anywhere.
Appropriations Bill Not as Bad as First Thought
Josh Prince revises his previous post, noting that some of the protections that appeared to be missing are apparently still in place. It didn’t appear to mention the prohibition on creating a registry. Is that part of permanent legislation too? Or are we still missing that? It seems to me that preventing ATF from consolidating all those records in West Virginia into a registry is a pretty key provision to lose.
How Effective Are Brady & LCPGV Policies?
Since the Brady Campaign and Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence have released their 2013 scores, it offers an opportunity to examine the effectiveness of their policies. I’ve done similar analysis in previous years, but wanted to take a fresh look at it. My raw data can be found here, sourced from both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2012 for crime data, and the Center for Disease Control’s Death Statistics for 2010 for suicide and gun death data. First, let’s look at violent crime:
At first this looks like it might correlate, but the Coefficient of Determination (r2) for these two sets is 0.00009, which is statistically insignificant. This means you can’t explain the variation in violent crime by the variation in the Brady Score for any state. There is no correlation between a state’s Brady Score and that states violent crime rate. Conclusion? Brady policy is not effective at controlling violent crime.
So what about other crimes? Perhaps it can control murder? And let’s not forget a favorite Brady tactic of including suicides in their statistics to justify their policies. How does that fare?
Even visually you can see there’s absolutely no correlation between Brady score and the murder rate, and the statistical calculations bear that out. The r2 value between Brady Score and Murder is 0.004. This is not statistically significant, meaning that the variance in the murder rates between states is not explained by the Brady Score. The Brady folks do a bit better with their nebulous “Gun Death” rate, which is how many people die from gunshot wounds every year, including suicides. The r2 value between Brady Score and Gun Deaths are 0.52, which means 52% of the variation in the gun death rate can statistically be determined by the variation in Brady Score. This is statistically significant, and the correlation coefficient (r) is -0.74, which is considered a strong negative correlation (Brady score goes up, gun death goes down). They Brady folks do less well with overall suicide, which has an r2 value of 0.41, and an r value of -0.64, which is considered a moderate relationship. This would tend to suggest there is a considerable substitution effect if guns are not as available.
The overall conclusion I think can be reached is that Brady policies have absolutely no effect on violent crime or murder rates, and probably do not greatly affect the availability of firearms to criminals. Brady policy does have a strong effect on the ability of non-criminal citizens to purchase firearms, which is reflected by the correlation between gun deaths (which includes suicides) and Brady Score, and suicide overall. There appears to be a substitution effect of guns are not available, since suicide rates do not correlate as strongly with Brady Score as Gun Death rates. While there is a correlation between state data and suicide rates, international comparisons have found no link between gun prevalence and suicide rates.