Seriously; when’s the last time you saw an IRS agent with a mug-size cranial cavity?
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Month: September 2022
Non-Existent Slavery Makes People Own Guns?
Apparently I own a gun because I moved to a state that had slavery one hundred-sixty years ago; almost three decades before my great-grandfather came to America. Or so this column by Maya Srikrishnan claims.
Two recent studies have found more evidence that for many white Americans who advocate for gun rights, it isn’t simply about owning and using a tool, but even more about identity and power.
One of the research papers found that the larger the percentage of enslaved people a U.S. county had in 1860, the higher the rate of gun ownership its residents have today.
For the record, my great-grandfather came to America in the 1880’s and moved to a free state; no slavery. I ended up in this particular southern state almost 130 years later. Somehow, I don’t think this “centuries ago slavery makes people own guns now” claim holds up very well.
This silly assertion by Srikrishnan is based on a bit of questionable “research” titled “Historical prevalence of slavery predicts contemporary American gun ownership.” As you might expect, there are problems.
To identify the county-level distribution of firearms in the United States, we use a tragic, but well-validated proxy measure: the percentage of suicides in the county that are committed with a firearm (40–43).
Really? Let’s look at Buttrick’s citations, which allegedly “well-validate” firearm suicides as a ownership proxy, starting with Siegel.
While such a proxy does exist (the proportion of suicides in a state committed using a gun (FS/S), its correlation with state estimates of gun ownership in recent years is only 0.80.
TL;DR: Firearm suicides are a poor proxy; so we looked for something else, and checked that against 20 year-old surveys of gun ownership.
The next citation is Kleck. Maybe the suicide proxy fares better there.
The results indicate that (1) most measures used in past research have poor validity, making past findings uninterpretable, (2) the best measure for cross-sectional research is the percentage of suicides committed with guns, and (3) there are no known measures that are valid indicators of trends in gun levels, making credible longitudinal research on the subject impossible at present.
TL;DR 2: Suicides make a better proxy than anything else, but still suck so badly that credible research is “impossible.”
Frankly, a brief read of Buttrick’s “past slavery equals guns” paper showed a lot of problems. I even considered a full fisking of it, but realized that if his citations falsify the major point of his claim, it isn’t worth my time to nitpick the silly-ass assumptions.
Nor yours. But feel free, if you’re bored.
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Gun Controllers Aren’t Even Faking It Anymore
I ran across this opinion column the other day.
The statistical argument for gun control
Numbers don’t lie. People do. This thought came to mind while contemplating the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. So let’s look at some numbers related to guns, mass shootings and deaths in the U.S., comparing them to those in the rest of the world.
Feel free to read it, and pick out the… less than accurate… claims. I looked up the author, Geoffrey Clark, “Professor Emeritus in the School of Human Evolution & Social Change at Arizona State University,” and called him out on a few.
A couple of items I challenged him on were:
1. “assault rifles like the AR-15”
2. “semi-automatic M-16”
Astonishingly, I got a response from Clark.
I own guns myself. I certainly know the difference between semi-automatic and fully automatic weapons, am familiar with bump stocks (the Las Vegas nutjob used a bump stock), suppressors, etc., and have some knowledge of how to convert the former to the latter.
He knows the difference between semi-auto and full-auto. So I can only assume he deliberately lied.
Hmmm… I wonder if the ATF would be interested in Clark’s alleged knowledge of converting semi-autos into machineguns.
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“Ask Ian: My Most Unsafe Range Experience (Incoming Rounds!)”
Gun Jesus relates some stories about unsafe range practices.
I’ve got a story of my own.
At an LRT gathering several years ago, a few of us were at an informal — no range safety officers — range, basically plinking with assorted handguns.
Another person showed up with an M1A. He set up a fair bit off to the side of us, so other than being aware he was there, we didn’t pay much — enough, as it happened — attention to him. I did note that he set up at pistol distance with a rifle.
What we didn’t immediately notice was that, apparently having trouble hitting his target, he kept crawling forward. And diagonally. Towards us. In front of us.
I think we noticed him about the same time he realized he was crawling in front of us. We stopped shooting, and warned him. He immediately began screaming at us for violating range safety by shooting from behind him.
I also suspect M1A-boy was a fed CI. But that realization came after the fact.
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I Must Be Racist
I confess: I watched the first two episodes of Rings of Power. And, yeah; I have an opinion. Which Amazon won’t let me post.
If You Think Rings of Prime Is Bad, You’re Racist
Or so say the shills for Amazon. If they were bending over any more to justify the bad reviews, they would break their backs. ‘Painful To Watch’: Viewers Hate ‘Lord Of The Rings: Rings Of Power,’ Which Critics Insist Is Another Example Of Racism
I’d been warned that RoP had littel do with anyting Tolkien actually wrote, aside from using some character and place names. With that in mind, I decided to watch it, on two levels.
Level 1: Forget Tolkien. Just watch it as sone generic video attempt at high fantasy, on its own standalone merits (this was my default mode).
Results: Meh. Not very interesting. Does not engage. So far, I’ve two characters even vaguely interesting (and neither is Galadriel, Elrond, or anyone else who appear whose names appeared in Tolkien’s works).
I might watch another episode. I am curious as to where they plan to go with “The Stranger” (i.e.- what misplaced character name will he turn out to be).
Level 2: I try to keep this one at the back of my mind, and just take mental notes. It ain’t easy.
In this mode, I’m trying to reconcile this… whatever with what Tolkien actually wrote in the LOTR notes and the Silmarillion.
When you realize that Tolkien somhow forgot to ever mention that Galadriel, enchantress of the wood, actually spent more than an Age as a superhero warrior princess fighting Sauron single-handedly because no one else believes in Sauron…
It goes downhill from there. Kinda. I’m withholding judgement on young prince Durin, because Tolkien did suggest that Durin might’ve reincarnated, and the name got reused at least once; maybe it’s really one of those Durins.
I hope Elrond, who should be pushing 1,000 years of age at this point, does a lot of growing up in his next several thousand years, in time for the events of LOTR. Because the RoP Elrond needs repeated bitch-slapping. Perhaps Hugo Weaving would like to do the honors.
The issue of The Stranger is one of morbid curiosity, a weirdly fascinating train wreck. I don’t subscribe to any particular theory as to who he may be… because the writers have made such a hash of Tolkien’s stories that there’s no point in trying to forecast rthe results of their mushroom-addled “creativity.”
Some folks think he’ll be an Istari, maybe even Mithrandir. I could see the RoP crew deciding they need to bring them/him in about three thousand years before Tolkien said they showed up. I mean, they introduced the hobbits three thousand years early.
Others think it’s Sauron. Again, can’t rule it out. Even though the RoP plot already has Sauron active down south.
So I’ll probably attempt one more episode. Two, if I’m really bored. But barring a miracle, I can’t see bothering with more.
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A Little Wishful Thinking, Hillary von Pantsuit?
“I was sitting on a couch, and the press was let in. There were a bunch of them shooting up,” Clinton told O’Donnell from across a table at New York City’s famous Katz’s Delicatessen. “All of a sudden the White House gets alerted to these billboards that show me sitting down with, I thought, my legs together. But the way it’s shot, it’s sort of suggestive. And then I also begin to have the experience of having photographers all the time – I’d be on a stage, I’d be climbing stairs, and they’d be below me.”
…photographers were trying to get upskirt/crotch shots of her!(???)
IF I ever saw such a photo, I have mercifully purge from from long-term memory.
I would never, ever want to see HRC pix like please. Please, merciful Ghu.
Through the years, the best I can say about HRC’s physical appearance is that she was — again, at best — plain. And that was before the ’90s. She hasn’t aged well, with her exterior appearance growing to match her hideous personality — and politics — every year.
I’ve always wondered what all she has on Billy Jeff, that he never officially dumped her ugly ass.
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Shannon Watts Identifies Source Of All Shootings
And it’ll come as no great surprise to anyone who’s watched the lying, homicidal-by-proxy bitch for the past decade.
Shooting at State Fair leads to mass panic, early closure
A person was shot during a brawl that broke out at the Minnesota State Fair on Saturday, leading to a mass crowd panic and exodus, as well as an early closure of the fairgrounds.
What caused it? An argument? An attempted robbery? Maybe even a negligent discharge?
Nah.
SO MUCH FREEDOM
Yep, just get rid of that nasty freedom and we’ll live in a peaceful paradise.
Oddly enough, Watts doesn’t seem to have weighed in on the mass killing in Saskatchewan. But then, Trudeau has already been working on killing off freedom in Canada; so 10 dead and 15 wounded (so far) is all good.
Apparently you’re only really dead if you were shot. The Canadian victims can take comfort in that, I suppose.
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In Case You Thought That It Was Hyperbole To Say Biden Declared War On America…
Yeah, President Dementia’s PA speech. Republicans are the enemy. They’re a threat; you must attack them. Blood red lighting (except on CNN, which decided a pretty in pink color shift might be in order). Backed by uniformed military.
The presence of uniformed military in this context set off my alarms. And apparently it was supposed to.
WATCH: White House Senior Adviser Says ‘Hate Filled MAGA Agenda’ Has ‘No Place in a Democracy’
“The “MAGA agenda,” Bottoms said, has “been about distorting the truth” and “misleading people.”
[…]
“What the president has done as our commander in chief is he’s reminded us that democracies are fragile,” she said. “And if we are not intentional about preserving who we are as a country, if we are not intentional about reminding ourselves that there is a rule of law in this country, then we will be in danger.”
A “senior White House advisor” is telling that Biden was specifically speaking as the Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces when he gave that speech, made those accusations, made those threats.
According to the Constitution, Article II, the President wields “executive power” generally. Only in a military context is he the Commander in Chief (Art.II, Sec. 2).
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;
No wonder they made sure to put uniformed military in view. It was absolutely intentional. And for those who missed it, thank you, Bottoms, for further clarifying that Biden was speaking of putting down half the country militarily.
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KJP: We Have Created Nearly Ten Thousand Million Jobs
That’s a lot of jobs. More than enough jobs for every man, woman, and child on the freaking planet.
Please note that the effin’ moron didn’t merely have a slip of the tongue. She clearly referred to her notes as she read that insane claim.
And I have another Jean-Pierre tab open. If it’s what I expect…
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This Just Raises MORE Questions About the Mar-a-Lago Raid
BREAKING: DOJ releases FULL INVENTORY of items seized in Mar-a-Lago raid
33 items were listed as part of Exhibit A, with an accounting of what was contained within each item. Of those 33 boxes, 16 had documents that were labeled Secret, Top Secret, or Confidential, while the remaining 17 boxes contained either personal items, such as gifts or books, government documents without classification labels, or press materials, such as newspapers and magazines.
So.. more than half the boxes seized had no potentially classified docs, which was allegedly the subject of the warrant.
Why were they taken?
In total, 54 documents were seized labeled Secret, 18 documents seized labeled Top Secret, and another 31 documents that were labeled Confidential. An additional 12,853 items were either documents or photographs that were not classified or research materials, such as newspapers, magazines or other media files.
0.812% of the documents taken were potentially classified, and subject to the warrant. Maybe.
Again, were were the rest taken? Bear in mind that the feds have already admitted that some of what they took were privileged client-attorney docs.
A single, actual classified document could be a problem. But at this point we still don’t know if any were still classified. Trump claims the previously classified material had been declassified. Certainly the feds didn’t bother confiscating that stuff on their previous visits, which I think supports Trump’s claim.
We can’t even judge by the classified cover sheets shown in the infamous “crime scene” photo which the feds included in a court. Those cover sheets appear to be later additions by the feds, not the originals (one of which is partially visible in the photo). Do the originals show the the appropriate declassification markings. Is that why the feds felt the need to mask them with add-on sheets?
3 Articles of CLothing
Did someone classify Melania’s panties? Actually, I see twenty articles of [presumably classified?] clothing listed. WTF?
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