… looks a bit like Ronald Reagan? Except I’m hoping Perry is better on the Second Amendment and the deficit than old Ronny was. I first thought that when I saw this picture. I wasn’t prepared, really, to jump in into the Perry camp until Michelle Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll.
Month: August 2011
Government at Work
Crazy Star Trek Fans
Someone in Riverside, Iowa, has put up a funny Star Trek memorial. You’ll totally earn your nerd credentials if you can tell me what’s wrong with it.
Not Cool
My previous post was rather polite, as I generally try to avoid drama these days. But that was before Tam pointed out that on Tuesday TTAG pilfered an entire post of hers, seen here. This wasn’t the first time, either, as was mentioned in Uncle’s post. I wasn’t too pleased with the reaction to Tam’s objection, when the first incident happened. But stealing a whole post? And then telling the world you don’t steal posts? If you want to know why no one links The Truth About Guns, this is why.
UPDATE: That’s better.
On the ATF Promotions for Fast and Furious
Bill Clinton Gone Vegan?
Say it ain’t so Bill? But my first thought after seeing that headline, is that he’s probably sleeping with some chick that’s a vegan, and so now he’s a vegan too. PETA is happy now, though:
In December 2010, PETA named Clinton its Person of the Year, estimating that his diet shift spared the lives of 200 animals a year.
I hate to break it to PETA, but I ate those animals instead. Yum.
Tough to Admit You Were Wrong
The Roanoke Times is having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that concealed carry in restaurants hasn’t increased crime in those places, but that crime in bars and restaurants actually seems to have decreased, and proceeds to rationalize their position, and suggest they could still be proven right:
But it is irresponsible to extrapolate too much from a naïve numerical count. Other factors weigh on crime rates. For example, was business down in bars over the same period? If bars had fewer patrons drinking less during the recession, then gun incidents might similarly fall off.
A 5 percent change could be statistical noise. It could reflect a decline from a previous increase. It could be the result of reduced enforcement in the face of less spending on public safety. Without deeper analysis and context, it is unreasonable to conclude any causal connection exists.
But if there had been a five percent increase, you can bet they’d be shouting from the rooftops how right they were. All their criticisms very well could be valid, but the fact of the matter is, the sky did not fall. We told you the sky would not fall. Now you don’t want to admit you were wrong, and that just seems to us to be a lot of whining to us.
Beretta Nano
An interesting addition to Beretta’s pistol line-up. I have some experience with their compact pistols, as my friend Jason has a Tomcat in .32ACP. The ergonomics of their smaller pistols are pretty good, as small pistols go. But it’s not quite as good for pocket carry as, say, a P-3AT or an LCP. This looks like it may work well in a pocket holster. I’ll be anxious to see.
Raising them Right
In response to a post from yesterday, a friend in Illinois sends this along with the caption, “My 8 year old trying to talk me out of my MAC-10”:
Good finger off the trigger discipline. Looks to be good muzzle discipline. Glad to see some people are raising their kids right these days. I present this to you in order to horrify the gun control folks who I know sometimes follow this site.
Blacklist? We Don’t Need No Steenkin’ Blacklist!
I’m not plugged into the gun blogger conspiracy, but I haven’t heard of any blacklist for other blogs, nor TTAG, either. I think I’ve linked a few of their stories. But I’m mostly in SayUncle’s boat, in that I’m not a regular reader. They do produce some quality material, but I have to sift through a lot of SEO fodder to get to the good stuff. It’s been a long time since I’ve added a blog to my regular reading list. Most of those that are on there have been in the RSS feed since before I was blogging, and even those I don’t always hit every day, if I’m busy. Others I hit occasionally, and, to be completely honest, a lot of them get “mark all items as read” if I don’t see anything in the first few posts.” It’s nothing personal, and I do that to some blogs that generate good content, but reading for link fodder isn’t the same as reading because you like blogs, and when you blog yourself, you’re generally looking for link worthy material, on some topic you feel you can add to the conversation. I only tend to read thoroughly when I have time, and that’s not often. Even in unemployment, I’ve been keeping busy bringing all my skills up a few notches, and revisiting some topics I haven’t touched in a while.
So I don’t think it’s any big conspiracy, or even an unspoken agreement, not to link to certain blogs. It’s tough to get links from me these days, because as traffic goes up, so does the noise. You get a lot more false link backs appearing in Google, and you get a lot of junk e-mail to the e-mail box. In addition to that, I get e-mailed every comment that comes through, because I like to stay on top of those. You take time to comment, I should take time to respond if I have something to say. The best way to get my attention these days, is if you add something to the conversation, paste a link in the comments. If the spam filter grabs it, let me know. I do read links people give me.
UPDATE: Kevin heralds the arrival of a beast the gun blogging community is all too familiar with. And PDB takes a considerably less kind take on the matter. I’ve tried to avoid the drama llama these days, so this is going to be all I have to say on the matter.
UPDATE: OK, maybe a little more. 3 Boxes of BS has more, as does SayUncle. Yeah, I wouldn’t say this community is that organized, or of a single mind either. But there are certain unwritten rules, and navigating them can be difficult. The trick to getting noticed in any community is to insert yourself into the conversation, even if you wantonly go about slaying sacred cows. I actually like it when someone links to me respectfully disagreeing with something I wrote, because it could start a back and forth that generates a lot of material without having to go digging. That kind of thing can often bring the drama llama, but it’s a sad fact that the drama llama is generally good for traffic.