I find it funny that Hurricane Irene is now on Twitter. In fact, she has an iPad. I suspect people who called the iPad a revolution didn’t quite envision it making revolutions in this manner.
Month: August 2011
Protecting Us From the Menace of Unregulated Wood
Feds raid guitar maker Gibson. Remember, they hate us because we are free.
Canton Officer Being “Disciplined”
I share WizardPC’s disappointment that the Officer in Canton responsible for a loony rage, where he threatened to kill a CCW holder that was compliant and in custody, is only facing disciplinary action. If I did that to a cop, I’d be in jail already. Like you and me only better, indeed.
Blame the Teachers
I think it’s mildly amusing to watch organizers of the London Olympics try to throw everyone else they possibly can under the bus when it comes to denying school kids tickets to Olympic shooting events. The executives may come from the private sector, but they are doing a very good job at embracing their status as government employees and passing the buck onto everyone else but themselves.
When the ban on allowing schoolkids to get free tickets to the shooting events was announced, they said the anti-gun lobby was to blame for the ban. As part of that excuse, blame also fell on the Mayor Boris Johnson’s anti-gun efforts.
Now that it’s been exposed as outrageously over-the-top insanity, they are deflecting the blame while also overturning the policy. The Olympic organizers are now claiming that the ban on tickets was based on feedback from teachers.
At least the broader Olympic competitive community came together to back the shooters with a defense of the inclusion of shooting from the British Olympic Association.
The British Olympic Association said the shooting competition at the Olympic Games was not only inspirational but sent positive messages of non-violence, respect and friendship.
“The London 2012 Olympic Games is an opportunity for high performance shooting athletes to showcase their skill and talent in a controlled and safe environment,†a BOA spokeswoman said.
â€Shooting athletes believe in the Olympic values and can, as role models, pass on the positive message of non-violence, respect and friendship. As such we believe the Ticketshare programme is an excellent opportunity for the future generation of Olympic shooting hopefuls to be inspired by today’s Olympians.â€
Of course, the London organizers are probably going to keep trying to shift the blame instead of just admitting they made a stupid decision since they aren’t getting the best attention at the moment. One of their organization volunteers who went through an application process, interview, and training session was arrested as a lead rioter recently. She threw bricks at a police car and was the first to throw bricks through the windows of a Vodafone store and declared that it was “the best day ever.” Yet, the group that recruited her wants to blame Olympic shooters for violence?
Media Doesn’t Matter
Lots of people have informed me I’ve been linked by Media Matters. I’m going to guess the Media doesn’t really Matter when you have time to pick on B-list blogs like this one. That said, I’m glad that my readers are alert and paying attention, as I never would have noticed the whole eleven hits they’ve sent me as of the time I’m posting this. I got more traffic yesterday from No Looking Backwards, who hasn’t posted anything in over a year, than I got from Media Matters. If this is Joyce’s attempt to counter the Republican Media Juggernaut, I just have to say I hope they continue to flush their money down the toilet. But Media matters took some time to refute something of mine, so I thought I should take some time to explain why I think their position is tenuous.
It is no secret that our community opposes registration of firearms. I myself do not favor it because I haven’t seen any evidence is accomplishes anything, and we’ve seen enough abuses and potential abuses to dissuade us. California has strict registration, and still has a rather high violent crime rate. Pennsylvania keeps computerized records of every gun sold, and yet Philadelphia still is still one of the more violent large cities. Michigan has registration, as does Chicago. Both Detroit and Chicago are extremely violent cities. So registration is off the table, and we’re not negotiating on that. We have the political power that we do not have to.
But the biggest mistake that Media Matters makes in their refutation of my assertion is this:
Strawing buying, buying a gun on behalf of a prohibited person,  is a federal crime but only certain states enable local prosecutors to target straw buyers. In New Jersey a local prosecutor could go after a straw buyer independently, not so in Delaware or Pennsylvania.
This is completely untrue. Straw buying is a crime in Pennsylvania. There is no private transfers for handguns in this state. If you buy a handgun, or transfer a handgun, it has to go through an FFL or a Sheriff. One of the two. What does Media Matters thinks enforces that law? Harsh language? The local police and local DA’s enforce it. Ask Tom Corbett and Lynne Abraham if there are state laws that allow local prosecution of straw buyers.
Delaware does not restrict private transfers between persons not prohibited. But Delaware does make it a crime to pass a firearm to a prohibited person, and they also have a state level straw purchasing statute. Nonetheless, despite the fact that the First State has fewer controls on the sale, transfer and disposition of firearms than Pennsylvania, it is not a significant source of crime guns for New Jersey, or any other state.
So Media Matters is completely ignorant of their knowledge of the relevant law in this area, which is hardly surprising given that their prattling in this issue have generally tended toward extreme ignorance when I’ve come across them. They are also ignorant in their statement of this fact:
Regardless of how New Jersey compares to other States there are lots of Federal Firearms Licensees in New Jersey. Further, there is no reason to assume the gun traffickers Vice mentions are necessarily previously convicted criminals unable to legally obtain firearms.
When looking at sources of guns, I think comparing New Jersey to other states is kind of important, especially given how many violent cities in the Garden State border Pennsylvania. Unlike the law abiding, criminals don’t have any reason not to cross a state border. You’d expect a serious FFL disparity would pretty heavily influence where guns come from. Rather than going through a specific site, I went straight to the ATF to find out what the numbers are. But first, what are the trace numbers for New Jersey?
First off is that New Jersey is New Jersey’s largest source of crime guns, at 405. This is followed by Pennsylvania, at 284, and then North Carolina (185), then Virginia (171). New York State, which New Jersey shares a border with was 67. Delaware, which borders New Jersey had no guns traced to it, despite having the most lax sale and transfer laws of any state bordering it. Maryland had 27 traces. I don’t think the role of FFL density can be denied in influencing these numbers.
New Jersey has 265 dealer type FFLs. Pennsylvania has 2225. That’s not just a few more FFLs. That’s an order of magnitude more FFLs. New York State has about half as many (1622), and they are much more concentrated upstate than Pennsylvania’s, which exist in high density in border areas. Delaware has 114 FFLs to its name, which is reflected in low stats to New Jersey or any state. North Carolina has slightly more than New York, at 1753. Virginia has even less at 1419. Keep in mind that Virginia has a one-gun-a-month statute, and North Carolina requires a permit to purchase a handgun, the same as New Jersey. Maryland, which also requires a purchase permit, has 484 FFLs.
So what kind of correlations do we find? Does where guns come from correlate more to Brady Score or the number of FFLs? Or Capital to Capital distance? There is actually no correlation between FFL numbers and traces overall, because the strongest correlation, which isn’t actually all that strong, is Capitol to Capitol distance, with a Pearson correlation of about 0.4. There was a very small correlation between number of traces and Brady Score, but it was in the opposite direction, of -0.3 correlation, meaning that the higher the Brady score went, the more guns could be traced from that state to New Jersey.
If you consider the effect that geography has on trace numbers, and restrain the correlation to states that are under 300 miles capital-to-capital distance from New Jersey, you get a correlation of 0.87, which is actually quite strong. Even just eliminating New Jersey itself from consideration, the correlation increases to 0.23 comparing FFL numbers to traces overall.
So we can see that the two major factors when it comes to guns being traced in New Jersey from other states is either distance from the state, or the number of FFLs it has. There is no correlation on Brady Score if you take the same limitations for that. Therefore, despite Media Doesn’t Matter’s calling into question of the integrity of my claims, they stand up to analysis. It is their claims which fall over. Perhaps they want to go on a mission to reduce the number of FFLs. New Jersey’s has certainly been successful at doing that, by largely extinguishing interest in shooting and gun ownership through the use of byzantine laws and stifling regulation. But in our Constitutional framework, that’s an unworkable goal, and should not be advocates by anyone who claims to care about the Bill or Rights.
Hawaii Gets Sued
Never heard of the plaintiffs before, so I hope they know what they are doing. Our expert Second Amendment litigators often remind us the biggest threats are from ill considered suits brought forward by amateurs at best, and kooks at worst. Not saying that’s the case here, but always something to watch out for when you see new suits being filed. Looking at the actual suit, it doesn’t look bad. Given that, I wish them luck.
UPDATE: I apologize for the Scribd link. I hate Scribd with a white hot passion, and really wish people wouldn’t use it. Most browsers can handle a direct link to a PDF just fine.
Steve Jobs Resigns
I’m guessing his battle with cancer is not going well. He’ll stay on as Chairman of the Board, and as an Apple employee, but he’s naming Tim Cook as his successor as CEO. I’m glad I didn’t just buy Apple stock. Apple did not do very well with Jobs out of the picture. Those of us that were Apple aficionados back then know what a roller coaster it was during the days of Scully, Spindler, and Amelio. My concern about Tim Cook is that his track record is that of an operations guy, not as a visionary. Hopefully the company is positioned well to survive without Jobs at the helm, but most successful CEOs with narcissistic streaks a mile wide are usually too into the cult of themselves to work too hard on a good succession plan. I guess we’ll see.
eBay
SayUncle reports the company seems to believe its job is to impose California law on everyone. Apparently now they are enforcing California law that’s not even law anymore, when it comes to firearms accessories. I never use eBay because of their anti-gun policies.
Turning Gamers into Side Income
While I’m mired in the suck of unemployment, the wheels have been churning. My previous job consumed enough CPU cycles to keep my mind pretty thoroughly occupied, and what was left over, I dedicated to shooting, the Second Amendment, and blogging about shooting and the Second Amendment. Shooting is now an expense, so I’m not doing much of it these days, and blogging was never more than a part time job. So that leaves me with what to do between rounds of looking for work, and doing interviews.
In my free time I’ve been doing some more flight simming, and involving myself more in that community. A few people have made games revolving around flight sims, but those have mostly involved Virtual Airlines, and Virtual Air Traffic Control. The problem I have with all of these ideas is that they are essentially extensions of simulations, and as games go, I think that caters to more of a niche audience.
I’ve always believed that the primary purpose in any gaming community is being able to compare yourself to other people. That’s true whether you’re a video gamer, or your game is competitive pistol shooting. If you don’t look at the people under you in a ranking, and think “Heh, I’m better than all those guys,” and look at the people above you on the ranking and think, “For now, I’ll learn from you, because you are better than me, but one day, one day, I’m going to totally pwn you,” then you’re not really endowed with the competitive spirit, and may even lament what I’m talking about. A true gamer prides himself on his competence in his craft, but in order to understand the bounds of that competence, comparison is necessary.
In order to compare yourself, you have to have a pretty good social understanding of the community in which your operating, which requires an active social element, where people know and interact with each other. In my college days, I was a high wizard on a MUD. A good MUD needed to have a balance of both these elements on order to succeed; you needed to know your fellow players enough to divide them into rivals and allies, and you also needed a way to measure your skills in relation to others.
Competition is an excellent driving force, but you can not make the path to masterdom easy, lest the view from the top of the mountain seem uninspiring. You also cannot make it too difficult, for then the sensible path is just to surrender to the mountain and turn back. In my experience with competitive Silhouette shooting, competence is too difficult, and that discourages beginners. I think practical shooting is more popular today because it has the right balance of difficulty to master, but still offers enough early reward to keep it interesting for beginners.
Fantasy is another important element in any game. At the risk of offending people, this is another major appeal of IDPA and IPSC that other, more traditional shooting sport lack. Both try to be simulations of defensive handgun situations. This translates to the flight sim community as well, which feeds pretty exclusively off fantasy. Flight sims cater to aviation enthusiasts who don’t have the time, money, or good health to do the real thing. Whether you’re an actual pilot who still dreams of flying large airliners, or a diabetic who can’t get a medical certificate to fly a Cessna, the community has something to offer you. But to go back to the shooting analogy, imagine an IPSC or IDPA competition essentially boiled down to a match director scoring everything up, and going down the line at the end of the match, “You lived, you died, you lived, you lived, you died,” etc, etc. You’d probably still have people who’d be interested, but who are the winners and losers? Who is better than the next guy? Sure, you want to live, but this is a game! It has to be to keep people interested long term.
If you can combine the fantasy with community and competition, I think you have something really appealing. This is the thought that’s been obsessing me for at least the past five days. I’ve been playing a game that’s a plugin to the two major flight sims, that almost has the right idea, but it’s a poorly thought out and shoddy implementation too focused on simulation rather than social networking and gaming. I think I know how to do it much better. To top it off, Microsoft largely got out of the flight sim business, and that industry is about to be upheaved with the arrival of X-Plane 10. All I keep thinking about is, if I could get 2000 people to pay me 15 bucks a year, that’s real money. If I could get 4000 people a year to pay me 15 bucks a year, that’s almost a job. This community is willing to pay money for entertainment, and a lot of folks have made money on third party add-ons. Even if I got 500 people t pay me 15 dollars, it’s decent money versus the effort. It’ll boost my skills at software development and integration, which can’t hurt for a job. My ideas will tax my skills in Python, C++, PHP, SQL and systems administration skills such that I’m having a hard time seeing a downside to doing this. At worst I keep working with some important jobs skills, and at best I make a few bucks on the side. This is one of those times when I feel a lot of things coming together. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I think this could help me out, and provide some people with entertainment, and perhaps contribute to another community that has a tough time recruiting new members.
Vindicated
At my last job, I was pretty adamant, as the person who implemented Internet policy, that we should leave things relatively free, and not do any filtering or monitoring of our employees. Except for a few instances, I never had much of an argument from executive management, though I once had to threaten to quit to maintain my policy. Now I’m glad to see my philosophy vindicated.
If you’re in a knowledge business, it is simply not possible to be focused on work for eight hours straight. Anyone who believes, in a knowledge or research field, you can spend eight hours straight focused on a singular mental task is delusional, and probably, to be blunt, not smart enough to ever have done that kind of creative work. Designing a drug is not even remotely anything like assembling a car in a factory.
You need some mental relief from the day. In tech, I’d take a break when I could no longer make headway on a problem. You get to a point where you kind of hit a wall, and you need to step away from the problem a bit. When you come back to it, often the answer is obvious. I’ve had more than a few cases where I’d step away, go read an article on an unrelated subject, then come back and see the error of my ways immediately.