Where I’ve Been

Visiting Bitter’s grandmother, who turns 90 this year. When grandma invites you out to Hawaii, and offers you a condo to stay in, and a guest membership at her country club, you go! I’m still jet lagged, so things won’t return to normal until Monday. I hadn’t had a real vacation since, well, we went to Hawaii to visit her grandmother in 2010.

Waikiki

The perils of going it alone

Commenter Patrick suggests that using “commercial” social media platforms leaves the user subject to being censored by the platform owner, and that to be more free one should use blogs and RSS.

The problem with this is amply illustrated by the recent (temporary) takedown of Brian Krebs’ self-hosted blog. His analysis is here. At least with a commercial hosting solution, you’re at the mercy of one, somewhat predictable, potential censor. One that can be named and shamed, or even sued for breach of contract if necessary. If you go it alone, you’re a lot more vulnerable to attack.

It’s all very well and good to say “well, this shouldn’t be possible.” But when you get down into the nitty gritty, it gets a lot more complex. And the easiest (and therefore cheapest) way for your upstream provider to protect their own interests is to cut you off. Facebook, Twitter, and Google can afford to pay for world-class DDoS protection. And, in fact, their “normal” traffic would look like a DDoS attack to Sebastian’s self-hosted solution.

There is no perfect solution, no magic bullet. But the reason people have gravitated towards Facebook and Twitter (and the rest) is because it makes a lot of the problems of running an internet presence Somebody Else’s Problem.

Instapundit to Twitter: Drop Dead

Glenn Reynolds is not staying where he isn’t wanted. For all the same reasons that Sebastian pulled the plug here.

Twitter seemed to be much more about filling the niche of an RSS feed than a peer to peer content network. And Facebook is just as good for keeping up with commercial content (and somewhat better because it doesn’t have the message size restrictions, it has publishable calendars and native media storage).

This is Why We Need Constitutional Carry

Because protections built into the law mean nothing to the Pennsylvania State Police. They apparently have illegally linked the LTCF information to our Drivers’ Licenses so that when you’re pulled over at a traffic stop the officer can see all your information related to the LTCF. It may not just be cops either:

Furthermore, even if there was, it is illegal to disclose this information to individuals other than a law enforcement officer acting in the scope of his/her duties. As I understand the new system, it is being relayed to emergency responders, which may even include tow truck drivers that are part of the system.

I’m very uncomfortable with this state of affairs. This essentially makes Pennsylvania a duty-to-inform state. How long before they link this to the plate readers the cops use these days? Bullshit. This information was supposed to be private and increasingly we’re seeing state officials violate the law when they feel like it. What’s worse? Most of the time they get away with it.

Guns Kill Sign Appears Locally

Sebastian reports that someone has posted a “Guns Kill” sign on the PA Turnpike overpass for Bustleton Pike in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania. It just happens to be about a block away from a popular gun shop in the area.

It’s not clear if it’s a coordinated campaign yet, and Sebastian couldn’t get a picture of it since he passed it too quickly.

However, he did say that if some enterprising individual in the area happened to have a rainy Friday off, that a “Control” sign on the end of Gun could easily be added to make the statement far more factual. After all, we support truth in advertising.

NRA Releases Candidate Grades for Pennsylvania

You can see here. It’s pretty much what I expected. Pat Toomey gets his grade reduced from an A to a C and loses his endorsement. In my local congressional race, it looks like Brian Fitzpatrick turned in a B questionnaire and is not going to carry an NRA endorsement. However, Fitzpatrick is running against Steve Santarsiero, whose F grade is really an understatement. Recall that Steve Santarsiero called for door-to-door confiscation of semi-automatic firearms. In other suburban Philadelphia races, Republican Pat Meehan is down to a B- with a D rated Mary Ellen Balchunis running against him. A race to watch is the sixth district, held by A rated and endorsed Ryan Costello, up against a D rated Mike Parrish. Costello is the only suburban district not running in mad fear of Bloomberg’s money. I cannot stress how damaging Bloomberg has been to gun rights in the Philadelphia suburbs, and that’s almost entirely because he brings more cash to the table than we can, and our local gun owners are not active enough in the issue politically to counter his money. It is not for lack of gun owners that we are losing ground, it is for lack of gun owners who give a shit enough to do something.

John C. Rafferty has drawn an endorsement with an A- grade in the  race for Attorney General. His Democratic opponent Josh Shapiro is D rated, and on his web site says that he plans to “Expand background checks to cover private sales of long guns.” I’m not sure how the AG has the power to do that, but there you go. We’d also continue to worry about our reciprocity agreements with other states with Shapiro in the AG seat. Also consider that the AG seat is a springboard for Governor.

Been Busy Raising Money for the NRA Foundation

Last night was our annual Bucks County Friends of NRA banquet. Our last dinner was in 2014, because of burnout with the committee, we didn’t have a dinner in 2015. We were happy to have 150 people show up, most of whom were new. We turned out more people than Shannon Watts did at her last protest! One thing I noticed is that the number of women attending is way up, and this year we had a number of younger couples, like 20s and 30s younger. We’re not just attracting the OFWG demographic anymore. The community is definitely changing, or at least the people engaged with the issue enough to attend a fundraiser is changing.

Our rough estimate is that we raised $13000 for NRA Foundation programs. We’ve done better, and we’ve done worse. Overall, I think it was a good dinner for having skipped a year. Half that money stays in Eastern Pennsylvania, the other half goes into the Foundation’s fund to fund shooting programs generally. Every year the Eastern PA committees meet to go over grant requests and decide who gets the money raised through these dinners. Youth shooting programs come first. You can read more about the Friends program here, or find a dinner near you.

NRA DecanterAbout a year ago I got tired of trying to win guns and losing, so I started putting all my tickets in to the cheesiest item on the table that no one else was bidding on. One year I got the NRA fan, which is actually a decent desk fan. This year I got the hand blown NRA wine decanter. Doesn’t everyone need a hand blown NRA-branded wine decanter? Once you have one, you’ll never know how you ever lived without it.

Disappointing this year was the NRA toaster. A few years ago NRA had a toaster that would toast “NRA” onto your toast. It was a two slice model, and it went for $400 dollars at the live auction. This year they decided to introduce the same toaster in a four-slice high-capacity assault configuration, and it only went for $110. Disappointing really.

Red Meat for their Respective Bases

I watched the debate last night, despite there not being enough booze in the world to get through that. Pass the Brawndo. I call it a draw, with the real loser being the American People. I think Trump’s base got a lot of red meat from Trump with his trade protectionism and good old fashioned “law & order” talk, and Hillary’s base got red meat both from her, and from plenty of Trump hate. Glenn Reynolds I think summed up my sentiment best:

Honestly, the bar was set so low that both cleared it: Trump didn’t throw anything, and she didn’t cough up blood. Happy 2016!

Ruger Uncraps The Mk Series of .22 Pistols

The first pistol I ever bought was a Mk.II. Later I bought a Mk.III. My chief complaints about the Mk.III:

  • It was designed by lawyers. It’s got every awful “safety feature” you can think of.
  • It’s really difficult to strip and clean.

Tam managed to get a hold of a Ruger Mk.IV and it looks like Ruger has addressed those issues. I’m very happy to see this, because the Ruger Mk series is a first pistol for a lot of people, and it serves an important function in the community.