Month: April 2014

Double Standards

I haven’t written about the fiasco with Mozilla’s five minute CEO because I felt it was stupid but Tam perfectly sums up something that really bugged me:

I’ve seen some pretty interesting rationalizations over the past few days from people nominally on my team for why it was okay for Metcalf and Zumbo to be shown the door for offending sponsors or being out of step with their subcultural zeitgeist, but Brendan Eich’s ouster was just… zomg… FIRST AMENDMENT!

Didn’t we just leave this ducking party?

You know that whole culture thing I discussed? Yeah, this is the type of shit I was talking about. There are still a lot of gunnies that talk about freedom but only mean freedom for everybody who is like them. When somebody does something that opposes gun rights gunnies call for their head. But when somebody does something that opposes their Christian morals they hide behind the veil of voluntary association.

I believe that Eich has every right to give his money to whatever cause he so desires. I also believe that people who oppose his cause have every right to call for his removal. Both acts are exercises of free speech. In the case of Eich the speech of his opposition won out. Whether he was forced to resign or did so voluntarily is unimportant. What is important is that he did something that pissed off a lot of Mozilla’s user base and that was bad for Mozilla’s business.

Imagine if Shannon Watts was appointed CEO of Mozilla. The general shooting community would react exactly as the gay rights community acted when Eich was appointed CEO. But since social conservatism runs strong in the shooting community a lot of words have been spent trying to justify how Eich being forced to step down was a horrible thing and why any good, upstanding, moral person should dump Firefox immediately (I’m exaggerating that last part a bit, I only know three gunnies who were advocating for people to dump Firefox after Eich stepped down).

Voluntary association and free speech run both ways. If an individual or organization is free to stop associating with somebody who is anti-gun then they are also free to stop associating with somebody who opposes legalized same-sex marriages.

Road Discrimination

One of the most common comebacks statists have when talking to anarchists is to ask who will build the roads. The thought being that only a violent gang could possibly manage to build and maintain transportation infrastructure. Whenever the idea of privatizing road construction or allowing local communities to handle the task statists say that such systems would mean the rich would enjoy good roads while the poor would have shitty roads. Apparently they believe that the state provides quality infrastructure to all. In other words statists have never looked at Minneapolis:

Minneapolis City Hall has one of two problems: Either it intentionally fixes the potholes of rich, white people faster than the potholes of poor, minority people, or the data-collection system it uses to perform basic functions is asleep on the job.

The background: Last week, the Star Tribune relied upon city data to conclude that City Hall responds more quickly to pothole complaints in wealthier, whiter areas of the city. The Department of Public Works rejects any claim of bias, and instead has tried to downplay the discrepancy as representing “strictly a paperwork process” (“Minneapolis fixes potholes citywide,” April 8).

It’s funny watching the state squirm when somebody actually looks at what it does. I just wish the Department of Public Works would be honest and explain why they give preference to wealthier neighborhoods. Wealthier people tend to make larger campaign contributions to politicians. That being the case the politicians are going to favor the wealthy. The wealthy purchased their government fair and square but the government doesn’t want to admit it because it wants to maintain the facade that it represents all people equally.

The NRA

During my textual monologue about the new generation of shooters I said some disparaging things about the National Rifle Association (NRA). This lead to an e-mail asking me why I dislike the NRA (it was actually a very polite e-mail, which I’m not used to receiving in response to criticisms I make). Assuming other people were wondering the same thing I felt that this would make a better blog post than an e-mail response. To save you a lot of reading I will just quote the relevant part of my post here:

I’ve had numerous heated discussions with fellows gun enthusiasts due to my political views (because the only thing more vile than a dirty liberal Democrat to some members of the shooting community is a downright dangerous anarchist). If you ever want to see a political discussion go from civil to yelling just bring up the fact that you think the Constitution is a flawed document that shouldn’t be cited as scripture. My viewpoints and the viewpoints of most of my anarchist friends do not align with the National Rifle Association (NRA). We don’t derive our ability to own and carry firearms from an amendment to some document written by power hunger individuals who were upset that the Articles of Confederation didn’t allow for monarchical control. Us metalheads aren’t interested in a country music concert and most anarchists and metalheads want to be as far away from a prayer breakfast as we can get.

It’s pretty obvious that I despise the NRA, right? Well my opinion regarding the NRA isn’t that cut and dry. The thing to remember is that the NRA is a large organization composed of approximately four million members. That being the case it’s difficult to make an overall judgement of the organization. I personally have a love-hate relationship with the NRA. While the organization does many things that I don’t like (with my range of dislike of individual things going from mild to borderline disgust) it also does many things that I do like.

Let’s start with the things I dislike about the NRA. The most obvious place to start is with the organization’s politics. In general the NRA uses its political clout to fight for gun rights and the organization has a good track record. However it also does incredibly boneheaded political maneuvers in my opinion. For example, during the last presidential election the NRA threw its political weight behind Mitt Romney. I’m not sure how endorsing a candidate who has a history of being, at best, wishy-washy on gun rights promotes gun rights but that’s what the NRA did. And the organization has endorsed other candidates who have been less than stellar in regards to gun rights.

Another thing I dislike about the NRA, and it is something that I dislike about most large and established organizations, is it’s apparent inability to adapt strategically. Political endorsements and campaign contributions are its hammer and it gets used whether the problem is a nail or a screw. There are many avenues of promote gun rights that the NRA has failed to utilize effective. Social media is probably ones of the biggest avenues that remains underutilized (although that seems to be slowly changing). Like them or not social media tools are probably the best way to reach the new generation. Much of what the NRA does with its barrage of physical mail could be better, and more cheaply, accomplished with Facebook, Twitter, etc. While the NRA does maintain Facebook and Twitter accounts it doesn’t use them much for engagement, which is the real power of social media. It would be nice to see the NRA engaging its online audience to both gather support for gun rights and to refute claims made by gun control supporters.

The third major problem I have with the NRA is it’s habit of taking credit for the accomplishments of others. This ties with the NRA’s inability to adapt. When organizations such as the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) make gains using a strategy left underutilized by the NRA it’s inevitable that the NRA will try to take credit for the success. Taking undue credit is sketchy at best and downright disgusting at worst. Instead of trying to make itself look like the only game in town the NRA should spend time reaching out to other gun rights organizations and try to build an alliance instead of a monopoly. Give credit where credit is due and make a point to work together with other gun rights organizations.

My last major gripe with the NRA is cultural. As was pointed out in Grant Cunningham’s excellent post on the new generation of shooters the NRA culturally appeals to political and social conservative Christians. While this group has traditionally been the biggest supporters of gun rights they are a dying breed (literally, they are getting older and the younger generation isn’t falling over itself to replace them). I don’t believe that the NRA should stop appealing to political and social conservatives but it should also invest time in appealing to other cultures. There’s nothing wrong with keeping the country music concerts and prayer breakfasts but it would go a long way to offer alternatives for those uninterested in such events. A death metal concert may be too niche but a concert by a group popular with the younger generation wouldn’t hurt. How about a workshop on using direct action to fight for gun rights? Some of us political radicals aren’t interested in working for political campaigns or marking boxes next to names of politicians but we love doing hands-on activities.

OK, that is a rather lengthy (although not all inclusive) summary of my criticisms of the NRA. Now let me bring up some things that I like about the organization.

One of the best things the NRA does in my opinion is promote firearm safety. While advocates of gun control spend time and money trying to scare children away from firearms the NRA invests time and money educating children on how to be safe with and around firearms. Children are naturally curious. Scaring them can often discourage them from exploring for a while it seldom works in the long run. Eventually their innate curiosity gets the best of them and they decided to face their fear. Education on the other hand tends to work well. If you want your child to be safe around firearms you need to destroy the mystery surrounding firearms. This is best done by educating children on firearms. Take away the mystery by showing them what a firearm is and how it works. Take your children to the range so they can experience what a firearm truly is in a supervised manner. This is something the NRA understands and directly works on.

The NRA also invests effort in firearm training. If you’ve never been around firearms the NRA has programs that introduce you to the shooting sports in a safe manner. Are you interested in learning how to instruct others on the use of firearms? There are numerous NRA programs for training trainers. I think it’s also beneficial to have a program geared towards teaching women how to shoot. My reason for thinking this is, unfortunately, related to the cultural problem surrounding the firearms community. Woman are sometimes treated as inferior by male shooters (especially traditional shooters). While those of us who aren’t sexist pigs are working to change this it’s taking time. Until things have been changed I appreciate having a mechanism for women to learn how to shoot without having to deal with the potential cultural neanderthal shitting all over their experience.

I also appreciate what the NRA does to promote the construction and improvement of firing ranges. Due to the legal landscape in this country it’s almost impossible to build anything without an army of lawyers to look over your plan. The NRA offers advice on how to build firing ranges in a manner that won’t upset the lawyers. It also offers grants for improving existing ranges. Without firing ranges the shooting sports become difficult to participate in. Any help that can be received for building new ranges or improving current ones is appreciated.

My overall opinion of the NRA changes depending on its current actions. When it does something like endorse a lackluster politician (but I repeat myself) I find myself wanting to burn my membership card. But then I hear about a firing range that was given a grant by the NRA for facility improvements and I’m happy to hold my membership card. As I said, it’s a love-hate relationship. Due to my range’s requirement of being an NRA member I will maintain my membership for the foreseeable future. But I not longer push people to sign up with the organization. If you want to sign up then do so but you shouldn’t feel like being an NRA member is mandatory to enjoy the shooting sports. Do what’s right for you.

I’m Back

Some of you may have noticed that the website was offline most of yesterday. As it turns out the SSL certificate for this domain expired yesterday, which was fine because I was going to have to revoke it due to the Heartbleet bug recently revealed in OpenSSL. Unfortunately I was traveling for business when this all happened so I decided to take the server offline until I could return home and get the problems fixed.

Yesterday I installed new versions of OpenSSL and Nginx to alleviate the Heartbleed bug and verified the fix via the Qualys SSL testing tool (this blog has an “A” rating). I also loaded a new certificate onto the server. Fortunately, thanks to the use of forward secrecy, any traffic that may have been intercepted from my server still remains undecryptable even if somebody did manage to exploit the Heartbleed vulnerability to acquire my private key.

The New Generation of Shooters

I stumbled across an article that says something that I don’t believe is said often enough in the shooting community:

I’ve written before about the lack of welcome given to the Millennial Generation (and the later members of Gen X) by the shooting community. Their tattoos and piercings put off some, while their voting patterns and interest in social justice causes make others mad. As I’ve said, they look and think differently from the generations which came before — and that makes many people very nervous.

But there is a point of common interest: they like guns (they particularly like suppressors!) and they believe that people have a right to own them. We share that enthusiasm with them, and that’s what’s important.

Yes, they’re different. They like guns but worry about income inequalities; they enjoy shooting but also a clean environment; they want to buy ammo but dislike the multinational corporations which make it possible for them to do so. In short, they’re full of dichotomies and inconsistencies — just like the rest of us!

Appearance-wise I’m one of the most bland people out there. I’m always always dressed business casual, I keep my hair short and naturally colored, and my skin is entirely devoid of tattoos or piercings. In other words my appearances are generally unoffensive to the traditional shooting culture. But I’m also an anarchist and a metalhead. That means I keep some very colorful company. Many of my friends would fall in the category that is sometimes referred to as punks. They have long hair that can be cut into mohawks, colored anything from pink to blue, are often covered in piercing and tattoos, and wear clothing with enough spikes that one could mistake a single individual for an entire Spartan legion in phalanx formation. They’re damn good people but often receive a less than welcome response from traditional shooters.

Now it’s story time. Back in the day I had a girlfriend who liked to color her hair. During the year we were dating she had changed her hair color from having two pink stripes framing her face to first entirely light blue then green then light blue again and finally pink. While she grew up around firearms she hadn’t been shooting in quite some time so I decided to take her to an undisclosed range (undisclosed because I don’t want to sully the range’s good name). Everything was fine until a couple of more elderly individuals showed up.

During one of the cease fires one of the individuals approached me as I was walking out to swap targets. He didn’t bother introducing himself or offer any other form of nicety but jumped right into questioning me about my at the time girlfriend. His first question was “Does she know what she’s doing?” From the tone of the question I was led to believe he was insinuating that she didn’t know how to shoot or at least shoot safely. I said “She knows exactly what she’s doing. She grew up around firearms.” To which he said “She doesn’t look like she knows what she’s doing.” This statement irritated me. Her target was testament enough that she knew what she was doing. Furthermore at no point did she handle any of the firearms she was using in an unsafe manner. Needless to say I had to ask “How so?” I half expected him to make an offhand remark about her gender being unable to shoot. Instead he surprised me by saying “Well she looks like a gang banger.” This really, and I mean really, pissed me off. I politely informed the man, truthfully, that she held a Ph.D. in mathematics and more security clearances than he was probably aware existed. When we returned to the firing line and called the range hot my wonderful electronic earmuffs picked up the conversation he was having with his friend and needless to say there were a lot of rather unflattering remarks being made about my girlfriend. Unfortunately she was also wearing fancy electronic earmuffs and overheard their conversation. Her enthusiasm for shooting deadened a notable amount that day.

We in the shooting community often spend a lot of time talking about the need to get more people involved in shooting. Unfortunately for many of the more vocal shooters what they really mean is that they want more people like them in the shooting community. Unless you’re a Republican voting, politically and socially conservative, Christian church goer they don’t want you in their little club. The linked article made a point that demonstrates this quite well:

One thing is certain: these new shooters don’t like the NRA and they aren’t members. They don’t know the organization because the organization hasn’t taken the time to know them. What they believe they know about the NRA and its members comes from the mainstream media, because too many members have decided that these new shooters aren’t worth getting to know as human beings.

(Frankly, the organization’s social stances haven’t helped, either. Seriously, look at the major social activities planned for the NRA convention later this month: a country music concert and a prayer breakfast. Do you really think these people are going to be excited about either?)

I’ve had numerous heated discussions with fellows gun enthusiasts due to my political views (because the only thing more vile than a dirty liberal Democrat to some members of the shooting community is a downright dangerous anarchist). If you ever want to see a political discussion go from civil to yelling just bring up the fact that you think the Constitution is a flawed document that shouldn’t be cited as scripture. My viewpoints and the viewpoints of most of my anarchist friends do not align with the National Rifle Association (NRA). We don’t derive our ability to own and carry firearms from an amendment to some document written by power hunger individuals who were upset that the Articles of Confederation didn’t allow for monarchical control. Us metalheads aren’t interested in a country music concert and most anarchists and metalheads want to be as far away from a prayer breakfast as we can get.

Fortunately most of the gun rights activists I know aren’t bigoted pricks. But many of the shooters I know are. And those shooters are usually more than willing to share their opinion of others without much resistance. I try to make it a point when I hear one of those individuals shooting their mouths off at or about people they don’t like to speak up. If we want to grow the shooting community we need to be accepting of all people who are interested in guns. That “dirty liberal” who supports background checks but otherwise is in favor of gun rights? Yes, accept him. You may be able to change his mind about background checks but being a dick to him isn’t going to do it. What about that transgendered individual or that gay couple? You damn well better accept them because the second you don’t you not only turn them off to shooting but you also make the rest of us in the community look like bigoted assholes.

While you don’t have to like everything about fellow shooters you should at least realize that shooting is enough common ground to build an alliance, and preferably a friendship, on.

Increasing Minimum Wage

One of the political battles currently being waged here in Minnesota is an increase of the state mandated minimum wage:

Minnesota’s legislative Democrats have struck a deal to raise the wages of the state’s lowest-paid workers.

Details of the agreement are expected to be released by House and Senate leaders Monday morning, but two sources with knowledge of the deal said Sunday that the minimum wage would rise to $9.50 an hour and future increases would be linked to increases in inflation.

The first question I have to ask about this deal is which inflation metric would minimum wage be pegged to? There are several different measures of inflation. Inflation numbers reported by the state are heavily doctored to make things appear better than they are. If this deal uses any state-approved inflation metrics pegging minimum wage to inflation will be meaningless.

As an individual who subscribes to the Austrian tradition of economics (also known as the only tradition that actually knows what it’s talking about) I will point out that increasing the state mandated minimum wage will also lead to an increase in unemployment. And as an agorist I believe an increase in unemployment will lead to an increase in the minimum wage.

How can I make such lofty claims? Because there exists an “underground” economy. Being unemployed doesn’t mean a person isn’t making money. Most people faced with the prospects of starvation or breaking the law will choose the latter. That means people who are officially unemployed will seek employment in the “underground” economy. The biggest advantage of working in the “underground” economy is that any income received is off of the books. Income acquire off of the books cannot be tracked by the state and therefore cannot be taxed. By working in the “underground” economy individuals need not spend half of the year working for Uncle Sam.

Without having to pay taxes the average person would enjoy an sizable increase in their wage. Increasing the state mandated minimum wage also increases unemployment. Increasing unemployment causes individuals to seek “unofficial” employment. Income from “unofficial” employment is untaxed. Therefore laws that increase state mandated minimum wage can increase the actual minimum wage but not through the mechanism that statists believe.

Less Blood Running in Chicago’s Streets After Passage of Illinois’s Carry Legislation

Whenever gun laws are liberalized the gun control advocates are quick to scream that blood will be running through the streets. However this prediction of death and destruction has failed to come true. What has happened in areas where gun laws are liberalized is violent crime either remains unchanged or is reduced. Chicago has regularly held position in the top 10 list of United States city homicide rates. Illinois recently passed carry legislation. What’s interesting is the change in Chicago’s homicide rate under Illinois’s carry law:

Chicago police are reporting that the murder rate for the first quarter of the year is the lowest it’s been in more than 50 years, which gun advocates are attributing to a concealed carry law passed in Illinois last year.

The first three months of 2014 have seen the fewest number of homicides since 1958 — six fewer than this time in 2013, and 55 fewer than this time in 2012, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.

I won’t go so far as to say Illinois’s carry legislation is responsible for the drop in Chicago’s homicide rate but the correlation is certainly there. What I will say is that Illinois’s carry legislation didn’t lead to an increase in homicide rates as predicted by gun control advocates.

The rapid decline in this country’s gun control movement is most likely due to its failure to make a case. Every prediction made by gun control advocates has failed to come to fruition. Predictions by advocates of gun rights have had great success in accurately predicting the outcome of liberalized gun laws. When one side of an argument has nothing to show but failure it makes a good case for the other side.

The Republican Party Continues Its Downward Spiral Into Irrelevancy

It’s funny how people continue to tout the Republican Party (GOP) as a viable alternative to the Democratic Party. While the parties agree on every important political issue the GOP has been spiraling into irrelevancy for the last several decades. This downward spiral has gone mostly unnoticed until the last decade or so. But the signs of irrelevancy are all around us. Take, for example, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA is at the top of the GOP’s hit list. That being the case you would think the GOP would be pouring everything it has into repealing the legislation. If it is then the GOP obviously doesn’t have much left because all that party has managed to do is lower its standards:

At the prodding of business organizations, House Republicans quietly secured a recent change in President Barack Obama’s health law to expand coverage choices, a striking, one-of-a-kind departure from dozens of high-decibel attempts to repeal or dismember it.

Democrats describe the change involving small-business coverage options as a straightforward improvement of the type they are eager to make, and Obama signed it into law. Republicans are loath to agree, given the strong sentiment among the rank and file that the only fix the law deserves is a burial.

“Maybe you say it helps (Obamacare), but it really helps the small businessman,” said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., one of several physician-lawmakers among Republicans and an advocate of repeal.

We’ve gone from the GOP trying to repeal the legislation and replace it with the exact same thing (Romney’s “repeal and replace” slogan) to improving the law to sliding in minor updates and declaring them as victories (quietly of course since they still want to pretend that they want to repeal the law).

I think the GOP is learning a lesson many businesses have learned throughout history. One cannot compete by being exactly the same as your competitor. You must find a way to distinguish yourself whether it be from different products, lower prices, and better customer service. The GOP has become nothing more than the Democratic Party mixed with religion. Needless to say the American people seem less and less inclined to have a large and powerful government that is mixed with religion so they’re opting for just having a large and powerful government. This choice is making the GOP less relevant every year. I’d say this is also turning American into a one party political system but it already is one so nothing is really changing in that respect.

Japanese Archers Circa 1860s

Here’s an interesting picture I stumbled across on Reddit:

japanese-archers

Supposedly its a colorized photograph of Japanese archers from around 1860. What I find interesting is how Japanese bows, known as yumi, were constructed. As the picture shows the bows are very tall and asymmetrical. While the common belief is that yumi were designed in this asymmetrical manner to make them easier to use while on horseback the design actually predates horseback archery in Japan.

The bow is also drawn in a manner different than most bows. In the video you can see how the archer actually starts with the bow and arrow above his head and lowers it as he draws: