September 2009 – Page 5 – A Geek With Guns

But Gun Control was Supposed to Make Us Safer

The anti-gun crowd is always telling us how much safer we will be with stricter gun laws. Well Days of our Trailers looked into the matter and found out it’s not true.

Get this the violent crime rate in this country has dropped the second year in a row. Illinois on the other hand experienced an increase in their murder rate. But the real icing on the cake is if you take Chicago’s statistics out of the equation Illinois’s murder rate would have dropped.

That’s right thanks to Chicago alone the entire state of Illinois shows an increase in its murder rate. That shouldn’t be possible since Chicago has very strict gun control laws. What do the anti-gunners have to say about that?

The Key to Negotiating

I found a quote on Slashdot form a user going by the name pete6677 that sums up the truth on negotiations:

This is what’s wrong with refusing to walk away from a deal. You have no negotiating leverage. When the other party knows you’re committed to buying no matter what, they have no reason to accommodate any request of yours.

They key is letting the party you are negotiating with know you’re willing to simply walk away if some of you wants aren’t met. The story this was posted in deals with the iPhone and the abuse of users by Apple and AT&T. Both companies know most people who are getting iPhones won’t walk away from any deal put in front of them, they want that phone period. Because of this they don’t allow many features people would find useful such as tethering and multi-tasking.

Never walk into any situation where you want to buy a product and allow the salesman to believe you aren’t willing to just walk away. I got some hefty discounts on my truck simply because I had a list of features that I knew none of their trucks had but their competitors did. Since they didn’t have anything with those features they gave me some discounts to make up for it.

This is also an important strategy when going to gun shows. Never purchase anything from a gun show without trying to negotiate a little bit. Many sellers will cut the price a bit, after all there is no guarantee somebody else will buy the item. This usually works best if you got to several gun shows and notice the seller has the same gun for sale at all of them. Likewise if you’re willing to pay cash often the sellers will cut you a bit of a deal as well.

Obviously haggling doesn’t always work. You won’t be able to walk into Target and negotiate the price of anything. But if you are dealing with a salesman who gets paid off of commission you generally have a good chance of netting either some discounts of free upgrades. The key is to make the salesman know you are willing to walk away.

Knowing how to barter is important, it can save you a lot of money over your life time.

Bloomberg’s Posse is a Little Screwed

So the NRA has a fact sheet on Bloomberg’s posse calling themselves the Mayors Against Illegal Guns. In this fact sheet is a list of mayors who have quit that is pretty long. Under that is a list of people who are not actually mayors of the localities as the group advertises. I count 28 names under that section which is quite a few incorrectly added names to their member role sheet.

This list is very complete and even has a section for mayors in the group who were convicted of crimes. I must say if Bloomberg wants to use his deceptively named group to attack the NRA he better start an offensive quickly. The NRA is curb stomping them with facts, which we know anti-gunners have a hard time with. Then again I think Bloomberg’s biggest failure here was the name he selected for his group. Although it did help initial membership by claiming it was against illegal guns as the groups true purpose is exposed many mayors are leaving. Don’t deceive your base membership, they won’t like it.

The NRA certainly is doing a good job with the fact sheet alone and pointing out the futility of Bloomberg’s posse and their crusade against guns.

Shocking Story of the Day Gun Buybacks Don’t Stop Violence

I know the title of the article is already making you shit your pants in confused hysteria. Bear with me because this news comes from the child hating NRA but it looks legitimate. Studies have found out that gun buyback programs don’t actually stop violence.

Of course we in the gun community already figured this out because of one fact that crops up with this guy buyback programs:

“It’s highly unlikely that a person who would use guns for violence would turn them in,” said Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminology professor who studies gun control.

Wait a minute you mean criminals not only will break the law but won’t turn in their tools when asked and given a cheap gift certificate? Truly shocking. Of course the local Sheriff chimed in:

Sheriff’s spokesman Dave Bristow concedes that would-be criminals are unlikely to surrender their guns. But he said the program might collect a gun that otherwise would one day be used in a crime.

“We’re trying to do something here that’s proactive,” he said. “Whether or not it works, how can you tell?”

So even he admits criminals probably won’t turn in guns, just law abiding citizens. And of course they are the ones we need to disarm after all because they may defend themselves. Of course he leaves a cop out in saying we can’t tell if it will work or not. But being Chicago has annual gun buybacks and one of the highest number of homicides in the country I think we can say pretty easily it doesn’t work. His further logic astounds me:

At a buyback event in May, the sheriff’s office collected 77 guns. Bristow said most of the guns were turned in by senior citizens. “Who’s to say that someone wouldn’t commit a burglary and steal that gun and then use it in a crime?” he said.

OK so you want people to turn in their guns because a criminal may steal them and use the stolen merchandise to commit a crime? In that case you should hold a car buyback program because some criminal may steal somebody’s car and use it as a getaway vehicle during the committing of a crime. If you have a burglary problem in your city maybe you should either work to stop that or let citizens take care of burglars themselves via their guns. Of course non-functional guns aren’t a threat but they get turned in:

A 2001 report on youth violence by the U.S. Surgeon General’s office says, “There is some evidence that most of the guns turned in are not functional and that most persons turning in guns have other guns at home.”

So really you aren’t getting functioning guns off of the street. After all why would somebody turn in a valuable gun for a pidley $50 to $100? Be we know gun buybacks aren’t about stopping violence at all but political imagery. Apparently we’re not the only ones:

Kleck said officials continue to hold buybacks because it allows them to look like they are reducing gun-related crime without angering people who support gun rights. “It’s a politically cost-free way of seeming to do something about the violence,” he said.

Yup it’s a method to show you’re doing something without actually doing anything. See hiring more police and having more patrols costs money. Giving out $50 to $100 per firearm costs relatively nothing in comparison. So what is the smart thing to do? Spend money on a solution or play security theatre? Well according to Manatee County in Florida the former.

Seriously Obama Take a Break

I mean come on you need to slow down. You’re goal of turning this country into a government controller state is getting out of hand. If you don’t slow down the entire country will be government regulated and controller then what are you doing to do? Sit on your but all day and not have anything to do that’s what.

Why am I brining this up? Because the Obamessiah is now pushing for further government control over the financial sector under the name of an overhaul. He’s going to be giving a speech urging more power to be given to the central bank and Federal Reserve. From the article:

The White House would give the central bank, the Federal Reserve, new powers over huge financial firms and the ability to seize banks whose collapse could threaten the economy.

Yes that’s going to work out just great, give the assholes who helped cause this problem more control. It’s not like the government was encouraging banks to give loans for houses that people couldn’t afford. But hey Obama is going to work on his promise to save or create jobs in the only way he knows how, create more federal agencies:

Mr Obama also wants a new watchdog, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, for products like mortgages, car loans and credit cards and the Federal Trade Commission will gain new powers to protect consumers.

This is going to be great because the federal government has been oh so good at protecting consumers from themselves. Let’s all thank Uncle Sam for taking control of our lives and regulating us heavily to protect us from what we may do to ourselves. Fuck personal responsibility we need to be told what to do otherwise we’ll fuck ourselves over!

If anybody didn’t get smeared with the sarcasm dripping off of that previous statement your obviously wearing a very thick rain jacket.

No the NRA aren’t Bullying Children

Man you just have to love the mainstream media, you always know where they stand. I’m not sure if any of your heard but Florida has been looking into changing their state bird from the mockingbird. Well NRA board member Marion Hammer, a fan of the mockingbird, has been working hard to ensure things remain the same.

Likewise Florida let school children vote on a new bird. So the mainstream media is making it sound as if the NRA is not only directly fighting the change of the state bird but is also hating on children.

The problem is, as Sebastian on Snowflakes in Hell points out, neither accusation is true. See if you are member of an organization you can also do things independently of that organization. For instance I’m a member of the company I work at. According to the mainstream media that would imply my entire company is fighting for gun rights which isn’t true. See I’m working independently from the company that employs me. Just because one member of an organization does something doesn’t mean the entire organization is working with them.

Of course being the media is so anti-gun they love nothing more than making accusations against the big bad evil NRA who now also hate children.

Security Doesn’t Have to Cost Liberty

In memory of 9/11 Bruce Schneier reposted a previous post of his. In it he explains that so called security measures that came at the cost of individual liberty not only miss the point but also are unneeded. Things like the PATROIT Act and warrantless wiretapping won’t actually help prevent the next attack, instead they take away civil liberty and gain us nothing. Furthermore there are ways to implement security without taking civil liberty:

It’s easy to refute the notion that all security comes at the expense of liberty. Arming pilots, reinforcing cockpit doors, and teaching flight attendants karate are all examples of security measures that have no effect on individual privacy or liberties. So are better authentication of airport maintenance workers, or dead-man switches that force planes to automatically land at the closest airport, or armed air marshals traveling on flights.

Liberty-depriving security measures are most often found when system designers failed to take security into account from the beginning. They’re Band-aids, and evidence of bad security planning. When security is designed into a system, it can work without forcing people to give up their freedoms.

Likewise cries for more surveillance also miss the point. Have more data doesn’t always mean you have more usable information, in fact quite the opposite is true. If you gather too much data you’ll have to sift through tons of garbage to find a few good items:

Demands for even more surveillance miss the point. The problem is not obtaining data, it’s deciding which data is worth analyzing and then interpreting it. Everyone already leaves a wide audit trail as we go through life, and law enforcement can already access those records with search warrants. The FBI quickly pieced together the terrorists’ identities and the last few months of their lives, once they knew where to look. If they had thrown up their hands and said that they couldn’t figure out who did it or how, they might have a case for needing more surveillance data. But they didn’t, and they don’t.

More data can even be counterproductive. The NSA and the CIA have been criticized for relying too much on signals intelligence, and not enough on human intelligence. The East German police collected data on four million East Germans, roughly a quarter of their population. Yet they did not foresee the peaceful overthrow of the Communist government because they invested heavily in data collection instead of data interpretation. We need more intelligence agents squatting on the ground in the Middle East arguing the Koran, not sitting in Washington arguing about wiretapping laws.

And this my friends is the difference between the government’s so called security experts and somebody who intimately understands security. Just having more data isn’t a good thing, it’s a liability. Likewise adding bandages to previously exploited security flaws doesn’t accomplish anything either. Security is only effective if it’s placed in the design from the start.

I wish our law makers would realize these things instead of using their “we must do SOMETHING” mentality that we’ve conditioned them to do.

Maybe Drunken Carrying is a Problem in New York

A few posts ago I mentioned Bloomberg was getting his knickers in a bunch over a non-issue, which is people drunkenly carrying firearms in New York. Well I found a good post on Snowflakes in Hell that adds legitimacy to Bloomberg’s hysterics.

William Powell is a 15 year veteran of the Queens (as in Brooklyn not Britain) police department. Well he was out and about off duty while drunkenly carrying a firearm which he accidentally shot off blowing a hold through his friend’s car. Of course guns don’t just go off unless you’re playing with them:

“He was wasted drunk,” said a source. “He said he was adjusting his gun and it went off.”

And here we’re always told police are the only ones responsible enough to carry a firearm. Some responsibility there.

The Truth About Bloomberg’s Posse

The truth is Bloomberg’s deceptively named group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, is just that deceptively named. I found a great story via the NRA ILA about one such mayor who was deceived.

Mayor Ernie Wiggins doesn’t remember signing up for the organization. He did sign up for their mailing list but didn’t remember actually lending his name to the organization:

“I’ll be honest when I say I don’t recall signing up for the coalition’s membership and obviously I didn’t realize what it was all about,” Wiggins said.

He said he originally signed up to be on the coalition’s e-mail list to follow its information, but did not agree to become a coalition member.

Additionally:

“Frankly, I don’t recall if I responded to the e-mails when they e-mailed to ask me if I wanted to continue to receive the e-mails,” Wiggins said. “All of a sudden I am a member of this organization, and frankly on the surface the organization sounds innocent, who’s not against illegal guns?”

That’s exactly the point I want people to realized. The name of the organization is far different than their mission. Having a group named Mayors Against Illegal Guns seems to imply the group is against just that, illegal guns. The problem is Bloomberg is using his group to attack guns in general regardless of legal status. I’m sure many members of the group don’t even realize this fact and that’s why we need to let them know.

And letting them know is key. Mayor Wiggins left due to request by rights minded citizens of the NRA:

“I do respect local people who are members of the National Rifle Association who have asked me to remove my name from the membership, and I have done so,” Wiggins said.

If we don’t let the listed members of that group know the truth behind the organization they’re supposedly members of they may never find out. It’s out job as activists to give information to other people, especially those who need it most.

Keep up the good work everybody, we’re slowly whittling away at Bloomberg’s posse. If we keep this up he won’t have enough rich elitists to put up any kind of real fight against the rights of American citizens.

Anniversary of 9/11

I really can’t pass on mentioning today is the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. I’d like to take this time to remember those who died in the attacks, those who fought the terrorists and prevented another plane from killing even more people, and mention a few things.

Since 9/11 security theatre has been ever expanding. The people in the government has used the attack to throw more and more personal rights away. Our representatives, senators, and presidents used this tragedy to strip more and more of our personal liberties in the name of “security.” Now don’t get me wrong I’m not a truther but I will freely admit our government’s reaction to the attacks has established nothing that could secure us from further attacks. Let’s look at what has happened since 9/11 shall we?

1. The passing of the PATRIOT Act.

2. The banning of most liquids on air planes.

3. The banning of carrying anything that could be construed as a potential sharp or pointy weapon. Except knitting needles of course.

4. Gitmo was used to place prisoners somewhere where they didn’t get a fair hearing and trial.

5. We now require United State’s citizens to have a passport before traveling to Canada.

6. The secret “no fly” list.

7. A bill presented to prevent people on the secret “no fly” list from purchasing firearms.

8. “Random” further interrogation by TSA agents simply because you’re a person of muslim decent or a randomly selected sucker used to show the TSA isn’t racially profiling.

9. Warrantless wiretapping.

10. Trying to get a system of national ID cards passed under the names of REAL ID and now PASS ID.

Really is this how we want to honor those who died in the attacks by destroying the thing this country once stood for above all else, liberty? Let’s remember and honor those who died 8 years ago today by voting out those who used those deaths to pass their personal agendas and repealing those laws that not only go against our constitution but against personal liberty as well.