Month: February 2014

We’re Going to Need More Cages

Via Shall Not Be Questioned I came across an opinion piece from a guy who wants Connecticut to strictly enforce its new “assault weapon” registration law:

Connecticut has a gun problem.

It’s estimated that perhaps scores of thousands of Connecticut residents failed to register their military-style assault weapons with state police by Dec. 31.

[…]

Although willful noncompliance with the law is doubtless a major issue, it’s possible that many gun owners are unaware of their obligation to register military-style assault weapons and would do so if given another chance.

But the bottom line is that the state must try to enforce the law. Authorities should use the background check database as a way to find assault weapon purchasers who might not have registered those guns in compliance with the new law.

A Class D felony calls for a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Even much lesser penalties or probation would mar a heretofore clean record and could adversely affect, say, the ability to have a pistol permit.

If you want to disobey the law, you should be prepared to face the consequences.

Let’s consider the logistics of what the author is advocating. It’s estimated that tens of thousands of Connecticut gun owners failed to comply with the new “assault weapon” restrictions. The author wants Connecticut law enforcement agents to use the background check system to discover who may own an “assault weapon” and have him kidnapped and held in a cage for five years. Connecticut already has overcrowded prisons so new facilities would have to be constructed. Back in 1995 the Connecticut General Assembly responded to a request to know the costs associated with building new prison capacity. The cost per bed in Connecticut, at that time, was estimated to be $50,388.

Using a very conservative estimate of 20,000 noncompliant gun owners (since there are multiple tens of thousands I went with the lowest possible figure of 20,000) and 1995 prices to build new cages (because that’s the most recent information I was able to obtain) the state of Connecticut would be look at paying out $1,007,760,000 just to add the capacity necessary to cage all of these gun owners. Again, this figure is a low ball figure since the cost of constructing a new cage is higher than in 1995 and the number of noncompliant gun owners likely exceeds 20,000. But we get the idea that the costs of doing as the author recommends would be mind bogglingly high.

And what would Connecticut get out of spending over one billion dollars to enforce its new law? Not a damn thing. Merely being in possession of an aesthetically offensive semi-automatic rifle doesn’t make an individual violent. The satisfaction that could be obtained from doing what the author advocates is vengeance against the disobedient. If we want to go down that route I’m sure I can find several felonies the author committed in the last week and demand he be caged for them.

You Can’t Own Property, Man

Private property is often held up as one of the founding principles of the United States. But private property doesn’t exist, the state owns all property. This is why armed thugs with badges can order you to evacuate your home and then occupy and ransack it:

Franz said it all started shortly after overhearing a fight at her neighbor’s house across the street Sunday. A short time later, the SWAT team swarmed her neighborhood.

“The cop goes ‘You all need to leave, you can’t be in your house,'” said Franz.

That happened around 1 p.m. About six hours later, deputies cleared the scene and she went back home. But something was off when she walked through the door.

“I stopped, I froze because I realized somebody had messed with my TV,” said Franz.

Franz said her blinds were opened, her Xbox and TV were disconnected, and a drape over her bedroom window was thrown on the floor.

At first she thought it was a burglar but then realized nothing was missing.

[…]

Franz said she called the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office to complain.

“He did call me back and he said ‘Yeah Ms. Franz my men did come in your house,'” said Franz.

What else could Franz have done? Had she refused to leave the SWAT officers would likely have kidnapped her or executed her on the spot. Legally speaking there probably isn’t much she can do since, as the story points out, there are exceptions to the warrant requirement for officers entering a home. Those exceptions aren’t clear cut and the police typically get off without punishment even when they do something illegal.

This story further reinforces the lesson that the state owns all property and we’re simply allowed to rent some of it. The second we fail to pay our rent, err, property tax or a costume-clad thug with a badge wants it we must either leave or face the state’s violence.

Repairing Broken Equipment Sucks

Nothing new for you today. I did managed to get my ancient desktop running again after pulling out several bad memory modules and tossing in a different power supply. Most of my server infrastructure is fully operational again. Not having an operational e-mail server does suck pretty heavily if you’re wondering.

Oh well, it could have been worse. At least I’ve been having decent luck with my electronic necromancy.

I’m Back

You may have noticed that the website was down most of yesterday afternoon and evening. There was a major power outage at my dwelling last night. Around 2:30 this morning the power was restored and when I went to restart my servers only to find that my server wasn’t turning on (well it was turning on but it wasn’t passing POST). After a lot of mucking about, which primarily included salvaging parts from an old computer to replace the destroyed parts in my server, I was finally able to get my e-mail server online. The web server that runs this site had to do some work on repairing the file system so it wasn’t online until recently.

The downside of running your own server is that you’re responsible for restoring your shit. Needless to say I didn’t get anything written as far as posts and since I’m still repairing equipment that went belly up in an apparent power surge I won’t be getting anything up later today either.

Competitive Sports Can Teach Valuable Self-Defense Skills

I’ve decided to take up judo as both a form of exercise and a self-defense tool. After reviewing numerous martial arts I settled on judo for two primary reasons: it’s an art that focuses on throwing and can be practiced against a fully resisting opponent. The reason I’m interested in a throwing art is because throwing opens an opportunity for running and running is what I really want to do in a self-defense situation. But the second reason is more important in my opinion.

When it comes to self-defense arts there are two schools of thought. The first school, which includes arts such as aikido and most forms of karate, teach self-defense moves by having individuals practice against fully cooperative opponents. The second school, which includes arts such as judo and Brazilian jujutsu, teach self-defense moves by having individuals practice them against fully resisting opponents. Often the second school is criticized for being sport focused, which is a criticism often made against various shooting sports such as United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA). Critics often claim that the skills learned in these sports don’t transfer over to self-defense. In the case of martial arts that practice against fully resisting opponents critics claim that the moves, being safe enough to practice on a fully resisting opponent, are ineffective in a real fight. The criticisms against USPSA usually revolve around the “bad gamer habits” that one develops when shooting competitively.

One of the first things I heard when I decided to start USPSA was that the habits it caused me to develop would get me killed. But these claims are, in my not so humble opinion, malarkey. USPSA teaches you several important skills including operating a firearm under stress, shooting while moving, and the ability to engage hostile targets efficiently while avoiding friendly targets. All three of those things and many of the other skills one picks up by participating in a combat handgun sport are transferable to an actual self-defense situation.

Martial arts that allowed one to practice against fully resisting opponents share similar criticisms. Critics often claim that the “bad habits” learned in a sport such as judo will get one killed in a real fight. One of the toughest problems with self-defense situations is having to deal with one or more human beings. Humans, being creatures capable of thinking, aren’t restricted to acting in predictable ways. Prearranged scenarios involving cooperating opponents are not going to prepare you to deal with uncooperative attackers. While arts that allow fully resisting opponents may not have a repertoire of especially lethal moves (although throwing a guy against a concrete sidewalk can be extremely painful and potentially lethal) they will ensure you have actually practiced the moves you know against opponents who were trying put you on the ground.

There is no way to fully simulate a self-defense situation. Critics of USPSA often cite force-on-force training as the ultimate method of realistic self-defense training. While force-on-force training certainly offers different elements than USPSA it’s still the same as an actual self-defense encounter. After all, the chances of you getting seriously injured or killed in force-on-force training is practically zero. Likewise, martial arts that rely on cooperative opponents can teach you far more dangerous techniques than arts that rely on resistive opponents. But when the time comes to actually utilize one of those moves you may find yourself screwed since you’ve only practiced it on a cooperative opponent and a resisting opponent is unlikely to offer you the window needed to perform the move.

Let’s cease this constant sport versus self-defense debate (I know my plea is falling on deaf ears but I’m going to make it regardless). Combat sports can teach you many valuable skills when it comes to self-defense. While the sporting nature of those combat sports may lead one to develop skills that aren’t effective in a self-defense situation you must be able to overcome numerous ineffective responses when entering a self-defense situation anyways. At least you will have a solid foundation of effective skills to work with though.

Sometimes It’s Just Not Worth It

So there’s another trial in Florida revolving around a situation that ended up with an African American teenager being shot by a white male. The shooter is claiming self-defense and the prosecutor is claiming murder. After the fiasco that was the Zimmerman trial I’m not even going to make an attempt to guess whether or not the defendant is innocent. But I will take a moment to discuss potentially confrontational situations:

On the evening of 23 November 2012, Mr Dunn and his fiancee parked at the petrol station in Jacksonville, Florida, after attending his son’s wedding. His fiancee went inside to buy wine and crisps.

Davis and three other teenage boys, all African American, had stopped at the same place after visiting a shopping mall.

On Tuesday, Mr Dunn, a software developer, testified that the music blasting from the boys’ sport utility vehicle, next to his, was so loud it hurt his ears. He said he asked them cordially to turn it down, and they did.

But Davis, sitting in the rear passenger-side seat, apparently ordered his friend in the front seat to turn the music back up. Then, Mr Dunn testified, he became verbally abusive toward Mr Dunn, called him a “cracker”, a derogatory word for a white person, and then threatened his life.

Here’s the million dollar question: was it worth engaging with the teenagers in the first place? Obviously we have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight to say it wasn’t. But let’s put ourselves into the shoes of Mr. Dunn for a second. Were you in his position would you have asked the teenagers to turn their music down? I wouldn’t have. Why? Because it simply wouldn’t have been worth it. Mr. Dunn was only at the gas station temporarily, which means the discomfort of the loud music would only last a minute or two. That right there makes the effort of asking the person to turn down their music greater than the reward for me.

I’m not saying Mr. Dunn was in the wrong by asking the teenagers to turn their music down. What I am saying is that most of the time when faced with a short-term inconvenience inflicted on us by another it’s better to just suffer it. Especially when you consider how hotheaded people in this country can be. Something as simple as asking an individual to turn down their music can seen as a challenge and the response is often going to be a confrontation (not necessarily a violent one but a confrontation nonetheless).

The first step on should take in any self-defense situation is avoidance. This is something everybody should keep in the back of their head.

Gun Control Activist Arrested for Carrying Gun into a School

It’s only Tuesday and the irony scale has already been pegged. Gun control advocates have a list about a mile long of places that they don’t believe guns should be allowed. While the list ultimately encompasses everywhere the most forbidden of all places are schools. Needless to say it was only a matter of time until a gun control advocate decided to carry a gun into a school:

BUFFALO, N.Y.(WIVB)- More than a dozen cop cars, the SWAT team, K9 units and the Erie County Sheriff’s Air One helicopter swarmed Harvey Austin Elementary School in Buffalo on Thursday after reports of a man with a gun near the school or on the grounds. Dwayne Ferguson, head of the Buffalo chapter of MAD DADS, was taken into custody. He will be arraigned Friday.

[…]

Police believe the 52-year-old may have been the person that prompted the 911 call. Police say they do not believe he had any ill intent and Ferguson has a valid permit for the weapon.

[…]

News 4 interviewed Ferguson in March of 2013 at a rally in support of the NY SAFE Act. At the time, Ferguson stated the law did not go far enough.

“Our kids are not buying assault weapons, they’re buying pistols and they’re buying them right out of community stores and back here in the school. So this is serious. It needs to go further than what it is,” he said.

There’s really not much else that needs to be said here. But need has never been my driving factor and there are a few things I want to say about this.

First, the amount of hypocrisy displayed by Mr. Ferguson is so thick that it’s palpable. It was only last year that Mr. Ferguson was upset that the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act didn’t go far enough. His primary hangup regarding the SAFE Act seems to be that it didn’t restrict handguns enough. Specifically he didn’t believe the law went far enough to prevent children from acquiring handguns. As it turns out Mr. Ferguson possesses a permit that allows him to carry a firearm that he feels isn’t restricted heavily enough. Then, to peg the irony scale, he brings that handgun into a school. If he is concerned about children obtaining handguns illegally (because it was still illegal to transfer a handgun to a child before the SAFE Act) wouldn’t you think he would try to prevent children from coming into close proximity to handguns?

Second, stories like this lead me to believe that many gun control advocates aren’t sincere. They spend a lot of time talking about the need to restrict access to firearms but what they really want is to restrict people they don’t like from accessing firearms. I haven’t met a gun control advocate yet that believed police officers and military personnel shouldn’t possess firearms (after all, those groups will need firearms to enforce gun control laws). There are also a large number of gun control advocates that believe “important” people (as defined by them) should be allowed to carry firearms because they’re better than you and me. In the case of Mr. Ferguson it seems he believes he is one of these “important” people, which isn’t surprising considering how egotistical many gun control advocates are (after all they do know what’s best for you).

Third, the reaction by the police was absurd. A dozen police cars, SWAT team, K9 unit, and helicopter aren’t necessary for a report of an individual carrying a firearm. If the initial report involved an actual shooting then I could see such a militaristic response but the act of carrying a firearm isn’t in of itself dangerous. But our society has become so incredibly fearful that we believe any report of a man carrying a gun, especially in a school, warrants the deployment of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of firepower before even a cursory investigation is performed. The first response to the initial call should have involved the 911 operator asking whether or not the individual in question was acting in a violent manner. If he wasn’t then I could see sending an officer or two to the school to inform the individual that carrying a gun on school grounds is illegal and that he should exit the building and place the firearm in his vehicle before returning.

This story demonstrates so many issues I have with gun control advocates and the state in general. Between the irony, hypocrisy, and overreaction I can’t help but sit in here and shake my head.

Dropping Bombs on Cellular Signals

There should be a new motto for the ongoing War of Terror: it gets worse. Every day new reports regarding the War of Terror manage to reveal facts that are worse than the facts revealed in previous reports. The fact we have regarding the United State’s use of drones is already pretty damning.

We know that the United States regularly practices double-tapping, the act of dropping a second bomb on a target minutes after the first, which often catches first responders in the blast. Two years ago the United States redefined the term militant to include all military-aged males inside a strike zone, which has done wonders for reducing the number of “civilian” causalities. With the term militant redefined the fact that drone bombings kill more civilians than terrorists is an irrelevant fact. Even with the term militant redefined the number of civilian causalities in the form of children is alarming. Even after all of this the United States still loosened restrictions in regards to who it can and cannot legally bomb.

As hard as it is to imagine it still gets worse. Yesterday it was revealed by Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald that the United States is now using geolocation data from cellular phones as sole criteria for determining where to drop bombs:

The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.

According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.

[…]

In one tactic, the NSA “geolocates” the SIM card or handset of a suspected terrorist’s mobile phone, enabling the CIA and U.S. military to conduct night raids and drone strikes to kill or capture the individual in possession of the device.

[…]

As a result, even when the agency correctly identifies and targets a SIM card belonging to a terror suspect, the phone may actually be carried by someone else, who is then killed in a strike. According to the former drone operator, the geolocation cells at the NSA that run the tracking program – known as Geo Cell –sometimes facilitate strikes without knowing whether the individual in possession of a tracked cell phone or SIM card is in fact the intended target of the strike.

This tactic is asinine. As the article points out, the location of a cellular phone doesn’t indicate the location of its owner. Cellular phones can be loaned to friends and family members, left in taxicabs, stolen, or otherwise relocated in a manner that doesn’t indicate the location of its owner. In addition to simply removing the phone from the target’s location there is also the issue of cloning. While cellular phone companies can often identify clones cellular identify information I have my doubts that the United States government takes such precautions when using geolocation information to determine where to drop bombs.

We’ve been told that the utmost care is taken when selecting targets for drone assassination. These claims have been invalidated by information leaked from the military and intelligence agencies. Perhaps the United States once took care when targeting individuals although I have my doubts. But it’s obvious at this point that little care is being taken when determining who to bomb. If things continue in this direction it won’t be long until a random populated location generator is used to determine where to drop bombs.

This war, like all wars, has gotten out of hand. The only purpose left in waging the War of Terror is to fulfill the blood lust of psychopaths and to line the pockets of defense contractors.

Pigs Hate Dogs

It’s a new morning and that means another dog has been shot by a cop. This time an officer decided to take out a man’s service dog — on the man’s son’s birthday:

FILER • A dog is dead, and its owner is alleging trigger-happy police work after a Filer officer shot the animal Saturday outside his home.

Police, however, say the dog was aggressive and had to be put down.

Rick Clubb said Monday that his son’s 9th birthday party was wrapping up about 5:30 p.m. when Officer Tarek Hassani came to his home on Jacklyne Circle on complaints of dogs running at-large.

He shot the 7-year-old black labrador, “Hooch,” Clubb said, though it showed no aggressive behavior.

I’m not surprised that the cops are claiming that the animal was acting aggressively since that’s the excuse they always use. But this time the fiasco was caught on film:

Had a hairless ape been kicking at me I’d be a bit aggressive as well. But the dog must be given a great deal of credit. Even though the officer was kicking at it the dog never actually attacked him. Of course the officer still put a bullet in the poor beast because killing a dog doesn’t end in punishment unlike killing a human (which can end in a lot of paperwork and nobody likes paperwork).

This video leads me to wonder if the officer acted aggressively towards the dog specifically to rile it up and therefore have a justification to shoot it. I’m then left to wonder how often such scenarios play out. Could it be that many of the incidents of “dogs acting aggressively” are due to officers first acting aggressively towards those dogs just to get a desired response?