Month: October 2014

A Stark Difference in Threat Model Responses

Anybody who has been following the Internet drama festival that is GamerGhazi/GamerGate knows that the Internet has been at operational level full retard for a few weeks now. One side of the debate, if you want to call it that, is trying its damnedest to preserve what it believes to be the gaming culture. The other side of the debate is trying to overturn what it believes to be deep seated misogyny within the gaming culture. There is also a third faction, the Internet trolls, that have been manipulating the other two sides like a masterful puppeteer for shits and giggles.

I find Internet drama entertaining so I’ve been watching this exchange since it first blew up. But nothing about this little debacle has really been worth writing about on this blog. Until now! Anita Sarkeesian, one of the feminists who has attracted the wrath of the GamerGhazi/GamerGate community, was schedule to speak at Utah State University. She cancelled because she found out that the laws in Utah allow individuals to carry concealed firearms on campus:

The university consulted with federal and state law enforcement and had determined it was safe to go ahead with the presentation.

But Sarkeesian pulled out after learning from university officials that concealed weapons would be permitted, as long as attendees have a valid concealed firearm permit in accordance with Utah law.

This shows a stark difference in thinking that I find rather interesting. In her opinion the combination of a death threat and permitted individuals being allowed to carry a concealed firearm to her speaking event constitutes a danger to her person. Were I in her shoes I would feel the opposite.

Permit holders by and large are more law abiding than non-permit holders. Obtaining a carry permit requires passing a background check. Passing a background check requires one not have a history of violent crime. So we know that a permit holder, statistically speaking, is more law abiding and has no history of violent crime. Permit holders are also less likely to commit murder than police officers, which is why I’d prefer being surrounded by permit holders than having police officers providing security.

Another thing to consider is the importance of response time during active shootings. In many cases active shooters end up killing themselves upon running into armed resistance. Armed resistance, in the instances where the active shooter doesn’t commit suicide, forces the shooter to focus on somebody other than innocent bystanders. When individuals are allowed to carry concealed weapons to a venue the response time to an active shooting is potentially instantaneous.

Sarkeesian obviously has a different threat model than my own. She likely sees armed individuals, in any capacity other than police (judging by her desire to have somebody perform pat downs of individuals attending her talk) , as a potential threat. Because of this she doesn’t want permit holders carrying firearms to her event. Our threat models also differ in how we treat Internet death threats. My threat model disregards Internet death threats (which I have received enough of in my life to paper a room in my dwelling if I printed them out) since they’re almost always sent by angry teenagers full of impotent rage. Her threat model obviously treats Internet death threats far more seriously.

In the end each person must create their own threat model and act accordingly. As an individual with an interest in security I find the criteria people use to develop threat models and the responses they create based on those models fascinating. I would love to know the criteria used by Sarkeesian after this GamerGhazi/GamerGate fiasco to develop her threat model and the responses she has created based on that model.

My Recent Foray Into Lead Ammunition Ban Lunacy

I was feeling particularly masochistic yesterday so I opened up the Star Tribune and read through the Letters to the Editor section. On October 11th an individual wrote a letter explaining why a lead ammunition ban isn’t a great idea:

In the Oct. 3 article “Wildlife experts think hunters should consider nontoxic copper,” I was disappointed to read that activists are once again railing against traditional ammunition.

As the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will tell you, there have been no documented cases of lead poisoning in humans by eating wild game. Wild game harvested with traditional ammunition is safe, and to say otherwise is nothing but a scare tactic.

Bald eagle population levels are at an all-time high (even though traditional ammunition has been used for centuries), and even critics of traditional ammunition in this article agree it is not a threat to the eagle population.

Using lead ammunition is safe, so why does this issue get so much press each fall? What is the ultimate goal of traditional ammo critics?

There are some who would like to see all hunting and guns completely gone. They obviously can’t say or do these things outright in states like Minnesota, a state proud of its hunting heritage, so they must weaken our traditions. They chip away at them slowly, and they start with traditional ammunition.

Joe Drexler, Hastings

The point that Mr. Drexler made is a valid one. Gun control loons always try to take a light year when you give them an inch. But another opinionated individual totally missed that point:

An Oct. 11 letter writer sees a vast, antihunting conspiracy by the copper-ammunition crowd to take away one tiny hunting tradition at a time and ultimately end game hunting in Minnesota.

First: That there has been no case of human lead poisoning from ingesting lead shot and spatter doesn’t mean that the very-well-documented science of harm from lead ammunition to water fowl and other bird species is false. The writer may think that the bald eagle population is robust; I don’t.

Second: If the writer really wants to be authentic in his choice of traditional hunting “ammo,” he’d best go out and find a nice tree limb to make a bow from. (Sorry, no fiberglass-compound bows.) His traditional arrow shafts and real feather fletching, along with a gut drawstring, will be of his choosing. I hope he’s adept at making flint arrowheads.

Bob Brereton, St. Paul

Emphasis mine. That part just made me laugh. Mr. Brereton apparently feels that bald eagle populations aren’t robust and his feels obviously matter here. I think that really sets the tone of this letter as well since it shows that the issue is about feelings and not about facts. But the part that really made me laugh was the last paragraph where Mr. Brereton said that those wanting to use traditional ammunition should go back to the bow and arrow. Although Mr. Drexler’s letter used the term traditional ammunition his argument had nothing to do with lead ammunition being a hunting tradition. I’m fairly certain Mr. Brereton purposely missed the point because anybody with enough intelligence to write and mail a letter should be able to read and comprehend what Mr. Drexler wrote.

Mr. Drexler is correct though, this push to ban lead ammunition for hunting is just an attempt to get a camel’s nose under the ammunition tent. The history of gun control in this country is also a history of incremental restrictions. In 1934 we were told that machine guns, short barreled rifles, short barreled shotguns, suppressors, and a random assortment of firearms simply labeled any other weapons needed to be more tightly controlled. This control came in the form of a $200.00 tax stamp and approval from local law enforcers and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). After that gun control advocates demanded that the sale of all new firearms occur at federally registered dealers. Part of the new sales policy was that a record of the buyer had to be kept by the dealer. Then the gun control loons expanded on that by mandating that every person purchasing a new firearm be required to pass a background check. With its nose firmly under the tent the gun control camel then demanded a ban on standard capacity magazines and any firearm that it found aesthetically offensive.

Now gun controllers want to restrict lead ammunition. While I cannot read minds and therefore cannot know their intentions for sure I feel it is reasonable to not believe that they’re concerned about wildlife. More likely they want to ban lead ammunition because it’s affordable. Most gun control policies seem to be thinly veiled attempts at making participating in the shooting sports more expensive.

I’m Just Declaring Today Stupid Wednesday

That’s it, I’m declaring today Stupid Wednesday. There’s just so much idiocy in the news that I’m left wondering how many humans remember to breathe, let alone function at a high enough level to make the news. The City of St. Paul is looking to set a minimum price on tobacco products. But that’s not the dumbest part. As hard as it may be to believe the justification for this plan is even dumber than the plan itself:

“I’ve seen people come in — of age, because they’re purchasing in front of a police officer — but they simply throw down change on a countertop,” Gannon said. “And they have enough change in their pocket to buy a single cigarillo. And I just wonder where that cigarillo ends up at. Does it go out to somebody who may be younger who can’t afford more expensive cigarettes.”

Where does one even come up with such a conclusion? Just because somebody plunks down a bit of change to buy some cheap tobacco doesn’t mean, or even remotely imply, that they’re buying for underage individuals. And it gets dumber:

For law enforcement, limiting access to cigars can be important, because cigar wrappers also can be used to smoke marijuana.

Yup, cigar wrappers have to be controlled because they can be used to smoke weed. Because there’s no other possible way for somebody to smoke weed other than using an old cigar wrapper. No siree!

And just think, these are the people tasked with running your life. These are the people that make up the institution known as government. Your lives are in the hands of total fucking morons.

Five Years Old? Draw Something That Vaguely Resembles a Gun? Then You Must be Suicidal!

I honestly had a difficult time coming up with a title for this post because it contains more stupidity than a title rightly ought to describe. A five year-old kid in Mobile, Alabama drew something that vaguely looked like a gun. Since this is the nation of zero tolerance that picture required an immediate and overwhelmingly moronic response:

MOBILE, Alabama (WPMI) – An Alabama mother is furious that her 5-year-old daughter was forced to sign a school contract stating she wouldn’t kill herself or anyone else at school.

School officials told Rebecca, who did not want to give her last name, they had to send 5-year-old Elizabeth home after an incident in class.

“They told me she drew something that resembled a gun. According to them she pointed a crayon at another student and said ‘pew pew’,” Rebecca explained.

I’m not even sure what the line of thinking was here. The kid drew something that looked like a gun, which I understand requires immediate action from school administrators this day and age. I also understand that the response must be devoid of recognizable logic. But requiring the kid to sign a contract, which is unenforceable since she isn’t 18 and therefore irrelevant, stating that she won’t commit suicide? That’s just bizarre. The school administrators couldn’t believe the kid was either suicidal or a threat to fellow students otherwise they would have required more than a signature from a kid on a contract that wouldn’t accomplish anything on the best of days. Perhaps the school administrators are trying to get an incident of mental illness on the kid’s record in the hopes of making it more difficult for her to buy a gun in the future. Or, more likely, the school administrators are trying to embarrass the kid as much as possible in the hopes of linking anything involving guns with bad experiences.

More Sheepdog Stupidity

Why I bother venturing out into the Internet is beyond me. But to add another feather to my hat that sees the whole sheep, wolf, sheepdog analogy as corrosive and meant solely to jerk off the egos of insecure gun owners I now have this gem of an exchange:

Self-Proclaimed Sheepdog: “The difference between a sheep and a sheepdog is that a sheepdog runs towards the gunfight!”

Me: “Personally I find gunfights to be a hazard to my health and try to avoid them.”

Self-Proclaimed Sheepdog: “And that’s why you’re a sheep. You want to carry the gun but you can’t handle the responsibility that comes with it.”

Me: “If you were walking down the street and heard gunfire being exchanged between two groups would you run towards it?”

Self-Proclaimed Sheepdog: “You’re goddamn right I would!”

Me: “Well then you’re what I like to refer to as a self-correcting problem.”

In addition to being a self-correcting problem this individual also suffers from a hero complex. Not surprisingly there is a positive correlation between people who talk about running towards a gunfight and a rather tragic form of situational color blindness where anything other than black or white situations fail to register. I imagine most of the scenarios concocted in self-proclaimed sheepdogs’s heads is based on a simple pattern of first the neo-Nazi skinhead walks into a mall and announced “I am a neo-Nazi skinhead! I intent to murder all of you in cold blood without any reason! I am going to commence murdering you now!”, begins shooting, gets shot by the heroic sheepdog that ran towards him like all sheepdogs do, and all of the hot women in the mall have sex with their savior (and later all of the hot women on his Facebook friends list who read about his heroism have sex with him).

Defensive situations are seldom that black and white. What’s more likely is that our sheepdog will hear the sound of gun fire, run towards it, realize that it’s a complete clusterfuck where the good guys and bad guys are indiscernible, and end up getting shot dead by a stray bullet because he was stupid enough to run towards a gunfight.

Self-proclaimed sheepdogs like to act superior because they seem themselves as paragons of all that is right and proper in the world. As individuals of such high moral character it is up to them to defend all of the stupid sheep. That means running towards any situation that might involve wolves eating sheep. What these paragons of all that is right and proper fail to consider is that any confrontation is potentially hazardous to your health. I don’t know about them but there are people in my life who want me alive. Since I really like these people I don’t want to disappoint them by dying needlessly, which means I’m going to run towards any gunfights. Furthermore I know that involving myself in a random gunfight isn’t going to result in me getting my brains fucked out by hundreds of super hot women. What it will result in is me getting shot by a responding police officer who saw a man with a gun and decided his safety was more important than determining whether or not I was a good guy sheepdog. Even if I don’t get shot I know that there will likely be a long legal battle ahead.

Holding the attitude that you’re a sheepdog and will therefore run towards gunfights is a quick way to end up six feet under the ground or in a cage and in debt to a lawyer.

An Interesting Analysis of Kangaroos Fighting

A video of two kangaroos duking it out has been making the rounds on the Internet recently. It’s a badass video that I highly recommend watching:

As an added bonus to the video itself Jack Slack over at Fightland has done an interesting analysis of the fight as it pertains to human combat:

I don’t often break down street fights, because they do so much damage to the reputation of combat sports, but some of the facets on show in this fight in particular need to be discussed. Context changes everything. No gloves, pavement instead of canvas or mats, semi-prehensile tail—all of these factors force changes to the form that you are regularly taught in the gym. So for good or for bad, let’s talk about fighting on the streets.

It’s a good read and shows that there are similarities between the way us humans fight and the way other animals of this planet fight.

A Bigger Domestic Abuse Problem

Thanks to the National Football League (NFL) domestic abuse is on the front page of many news outlets. It’s quite sad that the only time people care about domestic abuse is when celebrities are involved but that’s the way it is. But since the topic is being discussed I think it’s worth bringing up a larger source of domestic abuse issues than NFL players:

And there is another American profession that has a significantly more alarming problem with domestic abuse. I’d urge everyone who believes in zero tolerance for NFL employees caught beating their wives or girlfriends to direct as much attention—or ideally, even more attention—at police officers who assault their partners. Several studies have found that the romantic partners of police officers suffer domestic abuse at rates significantly higher than the general population. And while all partner abuse is unacceptable, it is especially problematic when domestic abusers are literally the people that battered and abused women are supposed to call for help.

I’m not surprised that studies are showing that domestic abuse rates amongst police families are higher than average families. As I’ve noted before the primarily job of modern policing is extortion in the form of fines, citations, and civil forfeiture. That’s why you can find police officers with radar guns on most major highways and more police resources put towards enforcing the prohibition on unpatentable drugs than solving murders, burglaries, and assaults. The problem with focusing on extortion instead of protection is that it attracts a different kind of person, namely a kind of person who has no moral issue with hurting others. If your police force is made up of enough people who enjoying hurting people then chances are high that you’re also going to have a notable rate of domestic abuse amongst them.

Columbus Day

For a few years now there has been a lot of outrage of Columbus Day. Some regions in the United States have even begun renaming the day Indigenous People’s Day to avoid associating the holiday with Columbus.

I don’t understand why people are surprised, shocked, or outraged by the fact that the federal government declared a holiday to celebrate Columbus. Christopher Columbus sailed to a random plot of land, stuck a flag in it, declare the land and its inhabitants property of the Spanish crown, and started killing them and taking their shit. Let’s face it, this single man embodies everything that a government wants to do.

Even today the United States government tries to emulate its hero, Columbus, by sailing aircraft carriers around the world, sticking American flags in Middle Eastern land, declaring the land and its inhabitants the property of whatever puppet government the United States actually controls, and killing those inhabitants and taking their oil. The only thing that surprises me is that Columbus’s face isn’t on the flag of the United States.

Bloomington Police Spying on Shoppers at Mall of America

The Mall of America is one of those places I try to avoid like the plague. I don’t like shopping in meatspace on the best of days so throwing me into a vast complex of clothing stores is basically torture. Combine that with mall security that does its best to make mall ninjutsu a real thing and you get a recipe for bad times. Now I have another reason to avoid that hellhole, the Bloomington police are spying on everybody who shops there:

License plate readers are cameras that capture your license plate information just driving by. They record the plate number, the date, time and location of your vehicle. The information is then checked against a “hot list,” which includes license plates of people suspected of various crimes.

At the meeting, law enforcement officials from St. Paul, Duluth, Mendota Heights and Ramsey County all said the technology has helped them solve crimes.

You can add Bloomington to the list too. In their case, they have an agreement with Mall of America. According to Bloomington Police Chief Jeff Potts, the mall is allowed to access the data, although they have yet to do so.

“It’s solely for the purposes of safety, security and traffic management. Not marketing, not other things that were discussed here just a few minutes ago,” Potts explained. “We’re just using these cameras to try to keep the mall safe. The scans, the license plates that we read, are bounced against a database of known vehicles that are either stolen, wanted persons, people with warrants.”

I like how the Mr. Potts first says that the scanners are meant to keep the mall safe and immediately admits that the scanned license plates are being bounced off of a database of wanted persons. Which of the following scenarios is likely to be safer? An individual with a warrant out for his arrest goes to the Mall of America and while there buys (or even steals) a shirt and grabs some lunch or an individual with a warrant out for his arrest goes tot he Mall of American and his license plate informs the Bloomington Police Department to gear up, head to the mall, and have a wild shootout with the suspect. I’m much rather see the latter since modern policing seems to be entirely unconcerned with innocent bystanders.

As the article says, license plates scanners are used throughout Minnesota to violate what little privacy we still have. Because of this it’s difficult to avoid a place simply because you don’t want some nosy police officer stalking you via their license plate scanners. But when a place I already don’t like to go to admits to using these devices it just gives me more reason to avoid it.