Blacklist updated

I know this is late. I updated my Righthaven Blacklist utility within a few hours of hearing the news a week ago but didn’t have time to create the blog post at the time and then forgot about it…

Via Clayton Cramer, No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money, and Sebastian (this last site is down for at least a few more hours) there has been additional online news sources that are suing people for using excerpts from their sites. The utility has been updated to include these new sites.

VPC Blogger may have moved

For a little over a year from February 2008 until April 2009 we were treated to great sarcasm and lots of speculation about who could be the author for the VPC Blog. At the NRA Convention last May it came up again—no one would admit to doing it or knew who wrote it.

It may be the author moved to the U.K. because we now have some great posts at Gun Control Network with this slogan setting the tone:

We at The Gun Control Network believe that people aren’t to be trusted with having guns. Guns only murder, That’s all they do.

Quote of the day—Say Uncle

I wonder if the dinosaurs sounded this whiny when they went extinct?

Say Uncle
December 8, 2010
Classy
Referring to Josh Horwitz’s (Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence) post about the plaintiff in a gun rights lawsuit in Texas.
[And political extinction must be our goal.

It is tempting to back off of the gun rights issue and do something more fun for a change because we aren’t facing any immediate threats. But the thing is that we aren’t facing any political threats right now but there is still a significant social component of people who hate guns and gun owners. The political threat goes to near zero as soon as the social component goes a little below 50%. But slight above 50% and the threat is just as strong as ever. It is a lot like a switch. It is either On or Off. Think of the Supreme Court with the 5-4 decisions in Heller and McDonald. Had the decisions been 4-5 our world would be a completely different place today.

We breath somewhat easy today and talk of gun rights blogging being more difficult (BTW, I completely disagree) but things could rapidly change with only a few percentage points difference in our society. We need to politically and socially exterminate this menace to human rights. We do that by mocking them, comparing them to the KKK, and showing the vast majority of people the fun and benefits of gun ownership and use until their numbers are in the low single digits.—Joe]

Probably not what she had in mind

Roberta X recommended checking out the comic Abstruse Goose. It has a strong resemblance to XKCD and a quick scan of a few previous posts was more than sufficient to add it to my list of RSS feeds.

I then hit the Random button and got this on the first click:

lathe_of_god

This probably isn’t what Roberta (or wife Barbara) would call “good”. Of course the author does have something for the women too:

jersey_shore

A shining example

If you haven’t read the entire thread I captured from the comments of Joan Peterson (a Brady Campaign board member) post in my post here please read at least the last update. It is a shining example of their mindset and inability to grasp simple concepts essential to the understanding of the problem they claim to be desirous of fixing. Anyone capable of counting to 100 should have been able to grasp the example given yet she was oblivious.

I am nearly at a loss for words. I cannot get my mind around what I read.

It simply cannot be real. Can it? Who would believe it if I were to tell a story of the existence of such a person?

I have another question now, “Why have we been in a struggle with people like this for over 35 years?”

Or perhaps, “How is she able to function in the real world? Shouldn’t she be institutionalized?”

Perhaps Heinlein’s observation is the most applicable:

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

20 to 1

Brady Campaign board member Joan Peterson, posting under the name “japete”, recently asked 20 questions of gun rights activists. Sebastian answered with a post of his own as did many others in the comments.

I have been very busy with work and other things the last few days so I haven’t said anything until this morning.

When you let other people do the asking of the questions they get to avoid their weak spots and strike at your weak spots. In general this isn’t the best long term strategy. You can’t really win. At best you won’t lose and most likely you will just lose more slowly than if you did nothing. To make progress (Hey! I’m a progressive!) you must make them defend.

I don’t have 20 questions for the Brady’s. I’m afraid I’m outnumbered 20 to 1.

My response:

japete,

I have Just One Question for you:

Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?

I have to get to work right now but I should have time to answer your questions tonight.

I figure that at 20:1 my odds are better than that 50:50.

Update (September 23, 2010 1200):

japete responded:

Joe-probably all of those domestic homicides, restricting gangs and criminals from guns would save lots of live; I could go on and on. What is your point? So you think that restricting felons, domestic abusers, dangerously mentally ill people, terrorist would not have or won’t save lives? That’s hard to believe.

juan commented (and japete chastised him for making such a comment):

We should require an IQ test for gun ownership, that way none of the current crop of gun owning whackos would qualify to even own a gun. Problem solved!

I responded:

japete,

Please read the question and the post at the link carefully. I am asking which of those tens of thousands of laws, already in existence, restricting handheld weapons have demonstrated their effectiveness in making people safer. The CDC study concluded there is no evidence to support such a conclusion.

I am interested in actualities not potentialities. My point is that we should, and probably can, agree on replicating laws that produce clear, measurable, results that make societies safer with no appreciable risk and low cost.

If the goal of anti-gun activists is to improve public safety then they should agree, and would get agreement from the pro-gun side, that if a law cannot be shown to provide benefits with low risk and reasonable cost it should not be replicated and in fact should be repealed.

Because it has been repeatedly shown that gun laws do not measurably improve public safety, and have non-zero risk and cost yet anti-gun activists do not agree to repeal ineffective laws we question the claimed motive to improve public safety. There must be some other motive for increasing restrictions on weapons.

Juan,

You want to require an I.Q. test for gun ownership? Okay, so anyone that takes the test gets to own a firearm. Then anyone capability of sitting still long enough and answering the questions, rightly or wrongly, would be eligible to exercise their specifically enumerate right to keep and bear arms. If all anti-gun activists would go silent with that concession I would concede, even though I disagreed with it on principle and spend my time on other activities. But that surely isn’t what you meant. Presumably you had some minimum score which the prospective gun owner had to achieve on their I.Q. test before they could exercise their rights. Aside from the legal issue of requiring a test to exercise a fundamental right I have to wonder what you think the minimum threshold for gun ownership would be such that “none of the current gun owning whackos would qualify”. And are you smart enough to properly determine that threshold?

My I.Q. is about 150. What is yours?

I’m outnumbered 20:1. I think I’m holding my own so far.

Update (September 24, 2010 1415):

japete responded:

No bragging, Joe. Gun laws in most other industrialized countries are more strict than ours. Gun deaths per 100,000 in these countries don’t even come close to the number in this country. That is proof that some restrictions lead to lower percentages of gun deaths per population.

I responded:

japete,

You are avoiding the question again. The question is whether such laws made them safer. Not whether such laws reduced the “gun deaths”. This has been pointed out before here, if in response to firearms restrictions the criminal homicide using a firearm goes to zero but the total homicide and violent crime rate doubles then society has not been made safer.

If more innocent life is taken or permanently injured I take no consolation in the fact that no firearms was involved.

So again, where is the data that shows any restriction on person weapon ownership has made the average person safer?

Update (September 24, 2010 1600):

japete responded:

Joe- this is a new one. So, reduced gun deaths isn’t safer from the public? Please explain.

I responded:

japete,

I’m beginning to feel some frustration because I don’t know how to explain it much more clearly. Correct, just because there are fewer criminal uses of firearms does not mean the public is safer. Violent crime may increase even though firearms are not involved. The hypothesis to explain this unexpected (by some) results is that restrictions on the access of firearms may in fact enable crime because the victims are less able to defend themselves.

To the best of my knowledge there are zero peer reviewed studies that clearly show increasing restrictions on firearms has resulted in decreased violent crime. There are indications that criminal use of firearms has decreased but violent crime without a weapon or the substituting of different weapons increased to at least equal the benefits of the decrease in the crimes enabled by the firearms.

Hence, a decrease in the criminal use of firearms does not result in an increase in public safety.

I have read many books, countless peer reviewed studies without finding a satisfactory answer to my Just One Question. There are a few studies that show some hints that there were improvements but critics quickly found holes in them. If you follow the link to the CDC review of the dozens of papers on the topic you will find they conclude just what I am telling you. There is no clear evidence that any firearm restriction improves public safety. It may be that some law has improved public safety but the effect was so small that it was lost in the noise of all the other factors affecting violent crime such as poverty, changing demographic (large numbers of unemployed young men are bad for violent crime statistics), etc. But if the effect is that small then what is the justification for the costs of enforcement, the creation of a black market, and infringing upon a specific enumerated right?

Update (September 24, 2010 2015):

japete responded:

I, too, am frustrated with this thread. We do know that the Brady Law has prevented about 1.7 prohibited purchasers from buying guns. I have heard every argument possible about why that doesn’t prove anything. To me it proves that if we require background checks on all gun sales, we can prohibit people who shouldn’t have guns from getting them. Yes, they could go to the black market but they have been stopped in the first place. Some gun deaths are spur of the moment or when someone is quite angry. This is not at all scientific, but it seems logical to me that if you can stop people from buying guns, you may stop some gun injuries and deaths. We don’t know this since we have not tried it yet on a federal level. That’s the only way to make it work since then people couldn’t go to another state to get their gun from a private seller. So if there isn’t a gun around, one could say you have prevented a death in some cases. And since guns account for the highest number of homicides, it seems logical to me. For instance, I believe that my sister would be alive today if her estranged husband hadn’t had a lot of guns around his house when she stopped by to deliver some papers. He knew she was coming-she called him. He got ready with his gun and surprised her. Maybe a knife? She was more athletic than he and would have likely outrun him. A candlestick? Maybe but not likely. A hammer? Unlikely as well. Guns are more deadly- it’s that simple. Facts show that.

Sean D Sorrentino responded…

“Joe- this is a new one. So, reduced gun deaths isn’t safer from the public? Please explain.”
he already did. Let’s do a thought experiment. there is a room with 100 people. in one room there is a gun, and one person will be killed with it. 1 death per hundred, 1 “gun death” per hundred. in another room there are no guns, just a knife. 2 people will be killed. 2 deaths per hundred, but 0 “gun deaths.” which is “safer?”
Using the metric “gun death” doesn’t tell you the total rate.

japete responded:

Huh? totally missed this logic. I don’t think there is any there.

My response:

Since you cannot understand Seand D Sorrentino’s explanation of my case it is clear there is no further point in me saying anything. You are unwilling or incapable of understanding anything I (or any criminologist, or statistician) have to say on the topic. We simply do not have enough shared concepts to make communication possible.

I have recorded this thread on my blog here. It will be a shining example of the mindset of a board member of the Brady Campaign for years if not decades.

Game over.

Thanks for playing.

Update (September 25, 2010 0830):

My most recent response was not posted. She did reply with “Reasoned Discourse”:

There were so many comments to this thread that it’s not possible to answer them in the time I have available. From what I can tell, what you are all saying is that guns are not the problem. I see it differently. I have provided facts to show that gun deaths take more lives than any other means in the U.S. I am concentrating on the U.S. and what is going on here. It is still true that gun deaths per 100,000 are higher in the U.S. than other industrialized countries. You have shown me your own graphs and your own facts. We will have to agree to disagree about this. It is futile to keep going with this thread.

Automated blacklist checker

As you probably already know some bloggers have been sued (for details see here, here, here, here, and here).


I don’t have problem with people enforcing their copyrights. But there is the concept of “fair use” which also needs to be taken into account. It is the general impression that the lawsuits do not recognize “fair use”.


The best plan of protection proffered so far (I have something else in mind that will take some more legal research) is to not link to any content from the offending news organizations (“blacklist” them).


Searching your blog for existing content that should be removed or edited is going to be dependent on the type of blogging software you use. Sebastian has something for WordPress.


Here is something to use with dasBlog software.


In private email Robb Allen reports if you have direct access to your data store you should be able to do something like:



SELECT * FROM posts WHERE postContent like ‘%{website}% OR postContent like ‘%{website2}%’ etc.


For future links I have created a web based utility that will check a link for you to see if it is on the blacklist. Some people got a preview of it last week. This morning I updated it so that it can handle heavier traffic and it looks a little prettier. Feel free to share it with whoever might have need of it.

Hard times for Gun Guys

I had noticed there wasn’t much activity on the Gun Guys web site but I hadn’t really put things together. Stephen did:

For some time blogging at gunguys.com has rarely been more than a repost of
something someone at another group wrote up with little commentary, and recently
the blogging frequency has dropped to once a week or so. Now … their last post
(at least as of Thursday night) was about SCOTUS nominee Kagan, and is two weeks
old.

And he notes this from the Gun Guys web site:

About Us

Mission: GunGuys seeks to inform, engage and persuade fellow
Americans to change the way we look at guns, and gun culture.

GunGuys.com is a completely independent and unaffiliated news website and
blog that focuses on all aspects of the gun issue, including politics and
analysis, policies and culture, shootings and violence, the gun lobby and gun
industry, extremism and terrorism, advocacy and campaigns, rhetoric and
messaging, as well as humor and satire.

History: From 2006 to Feb. 2010, GunGuys.com was managed by
the Freedom States Alliance (FSA), a non-profit organization working to reduce
gun violence in America. FSA dissolved on Feb. 23, 2010, and merged with States United to Prevent Gun Violence.

Since that time GunGuys.com is now an independent and unaffiliated blog. All
opinions, analysis, comments, posts, editorials, videos, images and articles
reflect only the views of GunGuys.com and do not represent the positions
of any organization, group, cause or campaign
.

GunGuys.com is no longer a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Emphasis in the original.

Nice.

I still think he should be charged with violation of 18 USC 241. But until that becomes politically feasible having him scurry back under the rock he came from is an acceptable alternative.

Quote of the day–Ed Black

Much of the unprecedented economic growth of the past 10 years can actually be
credited to the doctrine of fair use, as the Internet itself depends on the
ability to use content in a limited and nonlicensed manner. To stay on the edge of innovation and
productivity, we must keep fair use as one of the cornerstones for creativity,
innovation, and, as today’s study indicates, an engine for growth for our
country.

Ed Black
Fair Use Worth More to Economy Than Copyright, CCIA Says
President and CEO of CCIA.
September 12, 2007
[I’ve been doing some research into “fair use“. For the obvious reasons.

There may be other options as well as those I have seen discussed. I’ll report back if I find anything “interesting”.–Joe]

The email

Robb Allen forwarded me the email about the Brady Campaign that contributed to a lot of the blog traffic about the Brady Campaign membership list. It is an exact copy of this.

Wife Barbara Scott especially likes this picture of Paul Helmke which can be found in the email:

In our family we refer to this type of humor as “Scott Family humor”.

You never know

Sometimes it is a surprise when I post something I think is fairly ordinary and it gets a lot of traffic.

Other times when I make a post I know it’s going to get some links and more traffic than most. A year or so ago I had decided that if I wanted to take the time (typically it’s a two to four hour investment so it’s not something I have time to do everyday) I can write a high traffic post at will.

When I stumbled across the Brady Campaign membership list on sale a couple weeks ago I thought I had something really big but the response was a little disappointing. Yes, I got more traffic than normal with about 1000 visits that day instead of the normal 500 to 700 but it wasn’t quite as what I had expected. [Shrug] Okay, so it’s not as interesting as I thought it was.

That was two weeks ago.

Friday afternoon Detroit Gun Rights Examiner Rob Reed made a post about it, Kurt Hofmann followed up with one of his own and things exploded. Numerous forums and email lists copied them, a few more blogs picked it up, and my Sitemeter entry page has looked like this for nearly two days:

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My visitor and page counts:

Notice that on the 18th of last month when I originally made the post there was a little bump but not that much. Compare that to yesterday and what continues today.

I think the difference is because I had a rather narrow perspective on the significance of the data I found. Things clicked for Reed and Hofmann.

Episode one of Top Shot

I watched the first episode of Top Shot last night. Barb watched about 10 minutes and then got bored and went off to do something else.

I liked it far better than I expected to. I don’t care for reality shows. When I first heard about Survivor back in late 1999 I was about to become unemployed as my contract with Microsoft expired. I thought it might be something I could do well at and I got an application and looked into the show concept further. It was completely different than I expected and I was repulsed. I expected something about working together and making conditions better for everyone on the island. I envisioned the winner being the person who did the most to improve the small “society”. I contemplated the skills and innovation I could bring to the situation. What would I bring with me and what sort of things could be accomplished with the materials on hand. It wasn’t going to be anything like that. It was going to be about getting rid of other people not working together with people. What sort of life lesson is this? It’s total crap.

That said it did cross my mind that Top Shot might be something I could participate in–for about 500 mS. I’m not a “Top Shot”. I do okay in the local matches but I’m just a “B” class shooter. I shoot at a level of about 65% (my current USPSA classification is 65.94% with a high of 68.53%) of the worlds best shooters. I could not imagine that would be good enough and didn’t pursue it.

Then I found out Caleb was accepted. What? I’m on par with Caleb! Oh well, it was at a bad time with our current project (Windows Phone Seven) at Microsoft and I had an obligation to complete that work anyway.

I really should have listened to what Caleb said last night on Gun Nuts Radio about it before making the following comments but I have other commitments for tonight and don’t have the time.

After seeing the first episode I again thought I could have had a chance. Mike Seeklander and his spotter’s performance was pathetic. Yes, as Tam pointed out the 100 yard shot Seeklander failed on is not as straightforward as one might think. But assuming the problem was not with the shooter being incompetent then either the spotter and shooter could have solved the problem had they been thinking. Here is how.

One of the shots was on paper. Use the same point of aim and try it again. If it lands on paper in close to the same place then you know offset in both X and Y from point of aim. Use that offset to put the bullet on target. If it doesn’t then the one on paper was random and you need to find the offset. The spotter should have found a nearby spot of bare ground where the bullet strike could be easily seen and directed the shooter there to find the offsets. If no such bare ground was available then systematically try offset in increments of 1/2 the paper width/height. Get a bullet on paper and confirm the offsets! They may have tried that and it was edited before airing but I was extremely annoyed that I didn’t see it happening. I felt the other team members should have put both the spotter and shooter on the chopping block. They both failed.

This episode also confirmed my hypothesis that if someone brags about how good a shooter they are it is near certain proof they are crap. All the great shooters I have personally met are extremely modest or at least silent about how great they think they are.

If you take nothing more from this post remember this. You can do a quick and dirty zero of your gun with one shot. Aim at something and shoot. Then stabilize the gun while aiming at the same place. With the gun still pointed at the same exact spot adjust the sights until the sights point at the place where the bullet hit.

Bloggers I have met

I updated my list of Bloggers I have met after meeting a bunch of people at the NRA Annual Meeting. I’m just certain that I left one or more people off the list but I can’t think of who it might be. If you find your name isn’t on the list, it should be, and you want it to be please send me an email and I’ll correct my error(s).

Quote of the day–Dave Kopel

Petitioners’ prohibitions are now and always have been based on invidious prejudice that the law-abiding citizens of the District are incipient murderers.


David B. Kopel
2008
Brief of The International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association (ILEETA), The International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI), Maryland State Lodge, Fraternal Order of Police, Southern States Police Benevolent Association, 29 Elected California District Attorneys, San Francisco Veteran Police Officers Association, Long Beach Police Officers Association, Texas Police Chiefs Association, Texas Municipal Police Association, New York State Association of Auxiliary Police, Mendocino County, Calif., Sheriff Thomas D. Allman, Oregon State Rep. Andy Olson, National Police Defense Foundation, Law Enforcement Alliance of America, and The Independence Institute as amici curiae in support of respondent. D.C. v. Heller.
[This applies to anyplace, anytime, there are restrictions on the right of ordinary people to keep and bear arms.


Also note that this is a big worded way of saying the anti-gun people are bigots.


I was adding a quote to my database from spending most of the evening listening and talking to Dave Kopel at the NRA Annual Meeting last month (thank you Sebastian and Bitter for arranging it!) when I ran across this one that I had not yet posted. I would post the one I heard directly last month (it is awesome!) but he had been drinking and was probably a little more enthusiastic about freedom than he normally presents himself in public.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Tamara K.

How’s it feel to be on the losing side, Paul? Hey, did you hear? Louisiana’s passing its own Firearms Freedom Act, Indiana’s Parking Lot bill passed, and Arizona just got Vermont Style Carry. We have got your astroturf “movement” down and we are kicking it like a naked fat guy at Altamont. Taste the ash heap of history, you bigoted old Bolshie.


Tamara K.
April 14, 2010
Hi, Paul!
[I normally exclude Tam from the competition for QOTD because there would be little point in anyone checking out The View From North Central Idaho for a QOTD when they would have already picked it up when reading the View From The Porch earlier. But this was different. I was catching up on my RSS feeds that I was got behind on in the days before Boomershoot 2010 and I thought this was particularly applicable again six weeks after it was written because of my discovery of the Brady membership numbers.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Breda

Joe Huffman is not really a redneck.



He seems very sophisticated, not a redneck at all.


Breda
May, 2010
The Educated Redneck
[I probably would have responded with something like, “You can fool all of the people some of the time…” but Alan had a more unique response which I also considered for use as the QOTD.


I have to wonder if she said this before or after I explained how current womens fashion was destroying old growth habitat and creating an endangered species in the NRA Press Room to a bunch of bloggers while she was there.


See also a more serious and detailed response as to why I have the subtitle I do.


Thank you Breda.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Neal Knox

There is a silly notion, fervently adhered to by many gun owners, that if our side of the gun issue would just sit down and talk with the other side, we could work out a “reasonable” compromise that would satisfy “society’s need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” while imposing little inconvenience upon law-abiding gun owners.

…and the lion shall lie down with the lamb.

Neal Knox
July 29, 1988
The Insatiable Thirst To Ban Guns
The Gun Rights War, page 118.
[He goes on to explain that after every infringement concession the anti-gun people immediately propose a further infringement. No concession by the proponents of freedom has ever appeased the anti-freedom forces.

Chris Knox added a note to the article and pointed out:

The single exception to the history of NRA either supporting or acquiescing to every Federal gun law now on the book is the 1994 Clinton ‘assault weapon’ ban. Bill Clinton signed that bill half a decade after this piece was originally written. ILA, under the leadership of hardliners, fought the Clinton ban with everything it had–and lost. The tactical loss turned into a strategic victory. The long-term result was the Democrats losing its lock on the House majority and the first sitting Speaker to be turned out of office in a century.

Today we are still enjoying the benefits of this “strategic victory” that occurred 16 years ago. The AWB is no more, the anti-gun people have significantly scaled back their ambitions, and still congress gives them a cold shoulder.

I found this quote particularly applicable because of a story Dave Hardy told a small group of us at lunch yesterday. He told us that during the debate for the Gun Control Act of 1968 the NRA seriously considered conceding defensive handguns and rallying around hunting rifles and shotguns.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dixie

Mike, you’ve had the same “relationship” with gun bloggers that a baseball has with a Louisville Slugger.


Dixie
May 15, 2010
Referring to MikeB302000 in a comment here after MikeB said, “Joe, Thanks so much for posting those pictures. I feel like I’ve met them now too, some of whom I’ve had quite a relationship with over the last year or two.”
[That was out of the park Dixie. Thank you.–Joe]