unix_jedi

Michael Yon's ego has driven him to double down on his previous stance.

Perhaps it's his military training - "attack into an ambush". The only problem with seeing it like that is that rather than our ambushing him, he ran full tilt by himself into the "gun fanatic" camp - as we were peacefully minding our own business and roasting marshmallows.

Sunday, he posted another indirect attack to incite the "gun fanatics", labeling it "Truth or Dare".

How many of the guns in Mexico are coming from the United States? Good question that will prove extremely contentious if the number of weapons proves to be high.

He doesn't answer how much he thinks. If he's really upset about being "misquoted" and "misunderstood", why wouldn't he lay out his thinking, his chain of facts, and his conclusions?

Perhaps he's not as misunderstood and misquoted as he'd like to claim. Politicians has a line for that "... taken out of context ..."

Yesterday, another post. Tons of arms.

Nobody seems to dispute that tons of weapons apparently are flowing into Mexico. A big question is, where are they coming from? The only casualties assured to occur are those people who are shot by the real guns from the questionable sources, and the truth. There are almost certainly people within the U.S. government who would fit the facts to fit their agendas, and there are vast numbers of citizens who would do the same. Iraq and Afghanistan provide stark international reminders of this on the global scale. It seemed that every cranny of government and civilian political organizations, overtly lied or spackled over inconvenient facts that did not lead to pre-determined outcomes for Iraq, in particular. Personally, I don't trust any government, nor do I trust the amorphous "gun lobby" in the United States.

Amorphous? I believe this means that the Big Bad NRA hasn't said anything (as they didn't in L'Affaire de Zumbo until the dust had long since settled.)
Instead it's individuals - lots of us. All of whom are disagreeing, yet there's no good way to dismiss us. To lump us into an "amorphous" lobby allows Yon to avoid dealing with the fact that we're not paid, we're not corrupted by money.
So he claims we're just part of a lobby. Thus money's at the root of it. Not to be trusted. Yon's initial dispatch said "... lets be honest... "
You First, Mr. Yon.

All are filled with overt and hidden agendas. Huge money flies around.

Where's my check?

Having grown up in America, I'm not sure which to disbelieve more: the government agendas, or the private agendas.

Mr. Yon? You just gave away your viewpoint again.

I grew up in the South, and was shooting and hunting as a young boy. By my young twenties, I had become intimately familiar with perhaps a hundred types of small arms. Having lived in places like Florida, North Carolina, California and Massachusetts, I am extremely well aware of the gun arguments -- from various sides -- and the high emotions surrounding them. That intimate knowledge causes me to suspect the gun-fanatics as much as the anti-gun fanatics. Neither camp can be counted on to tell the good, the bad and the ugly. None are to be trusted with mere facts, even when actual facts can be found.

Ah, damn all their eyes, trust nobody, and ignore all the facts. Very logical of Yon. Too bad he's unable to actually defend this, preferring instead to stick to passive-aggressive attacks, smears and slanders.

(I haven't forgotten his email note on this: It's just fascinating to see apparent gun-fanatics misquote a document that is just inches away on the same computer screen. If they invest only that minimal level of attention to the guns they are apparently packing, it's just a matter of time before they accidentally shoot themselves or someone else. Attention to detail is an important component of gun safety.)

Some of the comments on these posts are very informative and illustrative. The first (starts from the bottom) comment does the sort of number crunching that is apparently "not to be trusted with facts":

"John": Finally! some numbers. 1547 guns in a year. That is "tons" now? they still don't say how many were traced, just 90% of the TRACEABLE ones were traced. Even if 100% were traceable, that means that 1392 were from the USA. ATF stats for 2007 say that 2.7 MILLION guns were sold that year. (http://www.atf.gov/firearms/stats/afmer/afmer2007.pdf)
Not only that, but 207,000+ guns were legally exported. So 90% of the guns that were traced to the US turns out to be 1392 guns, that is less than 1 tenth of 1 percent (0.67%) of all exported guns, and less than 5 hundredths of a percent (0.05%) of all of the guns sold in the us in 2007. That isn't TONS, of guns, that is POUNDS of guns.


"ctone" lays the smack down in the original comment thread at comment 64.

Gen. McCaffrey in 1996 -
Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the White House drug policy director, traveled to Mexico in March 1996 smoothing the way for an agreement between the two governments which has resulted in Mexican soldiers beginning to train at Ft. Bragg and other American bases, and in the gift of 73 "surplus" helicopters, four C-26 surveillance planes, night vision goggles, radios and other military equipment. In addition, the White House has requested $9 million in military aid for Mexico for fiscal year 1998 (up from $3 million in fiscal year 1996) for the purchase of new weapons from U.S. arms manufacturers. - http://www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/mexico.htm

Gen McCaffrey 2009 -
The outgunned Mexican law enforcement authorities face armed criminal attacks from platoon-sized units employing night vision goggles, electronic intercept collection, encrypted communications, fairly sophisticated information operations, sea-going submersibles, helicopters and modern transport aviation, automatic weapons, RPG’s, Anti-Tank 66 mm rockets, mines and booby traps, heavy machine guns, 50 cal sniper rifles, massive use of military hand grenades, and the most modern models of 40mm grenade machine guns. - http://www.mccaffreyassociates.com/pdfs/Mexico_AAR_-_December_2008.pdf

There's some great reporting going on on Yon's site - in his comments, not by Yon.

Let me repeat part of ctone's McCaffrey quote:
electronic intercept collection, encrypted communications, fairly sophisticated information operations, sea-going submersibles, helicopters and modern transport aviation, automatic weapons, RPG’s, Anti-Tank 66 mm rockets, mines and booby traps, heavy machine guns, 50 cal sniper rifles, massive use of military hand grenades, and the most modern models of 40mm grenade machine guns.

Yon's question was: Tons of Arms Flowing into Mexico, But From Where?

According to McCaffrey, which was Yon's original source for his screed, the (current) Mexican Civil War is being fought with:
* sea-going submersibles
* helicopters and modern transport aviation
* automatic weapons
* RPGs
* Anti-Tank 66 mm rockets
* mines
* heavy machine guns
* 50 cal sniper rifles
* hand grenades
* 40mm grenade machine guns

Of those, only one might have been bought in the US. (And probably by the US Government and supplied to the Mexican Government.)

But Yon claims that we "gun fanatics" are misquoting him. Misunderstanding him.

Look at that list above, and then remember what Yon said to start this Zumboish story:

but we must be honest here and help curb flows that are killing Mexicans and Americans. The idea that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" should be saved for someone who will buy it. That's like saying IEDs don't kill people, people kill people. Nuclear weapons don't kill people...

Guns kill people. I'm not giving up my guns and I'll stand shoulder to shoulder with other Americans who want to keep theirs. But we must be honest about the problems to face them.

Be honest? Mr. Yon, I think there's only one very dishonest person here.


[update: Yuri is fired up too]

Skimming some headlines, I saw:
Man Flown To Hospital After Pickup Hits Bobcat

Wait. WHAT? I mean, bobcats can be nasty critters, but after hit by a pickup? What, did it flip into the cab or something?

http://www.newsnet5.com/home-backup/19036967/detail.html

Troopers said a 64-year-old man was driving a Bobcat on the highway just after 3 p.m. when a pick-up truck hit him from behind. Both vehicles flipped over. The driver of the Bobcat was flown to MetroHealth Medical Center for treatment.

Oh.
A Bobcat. Dozer.

Not a Bobcat. Cat.


It got me to click on it - I wonder if it was on purpose. (Not used to seeing smart and clever in the MSM these days.)

Not for his initial post, which was nonsense enough and well rebutted in the comments, but for his followup to his email list.

As Zumbo did, he tries to claim that it's the "gun-fanatics" who can't read, and are dangerous and inattentive to the weapons we "presumably pack".

My work is misquoted around the world every day, but nowhere as often as on my own site. Some readers seem to think that I wish to ban firearms in the United States, or that I claim that automatic weapons are flowing to Mexico. Automatic weapons almost certainly are flowing to Mexico, which would explain how they got there. But I didn't write it. Nor would an easy reading of the short dispatch reveal that I am calling to ban guns in the United States. It's just fascinating to see apparent gun-fanatics misquote a document that is just inches away on the same computer screen. If they invest only that minimal level of attention to the guns they are apparently packing, it's just a matter of time before they accidentally shoot themselves or someone else. Attention to detail is an important component of gun safety.

I wonder what we're supposed to have misunderstood about those latest slanders.

Other than Yon's apparently yet another "Only One" elitist who doesn't trust us with guns. And isn't honest enough to admit it, just like most of the gun banners he claims he's not part of. *He's* not going to give up *his* guns. But he's not a fanatic. It's the rest of us that have to give up our guns, our freedoms.

The idea that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" should be saved for someone who will buy it.

I've asked how RPGs and fragmentation grenades factor into that. Since that's what's currently the top weapon in the battles. I don't expect an answer.

His webmaster posted a "defense". He claimed to be a former cop and soldier, actually mentioned grenades, and that "Michael of course knows that those aren't coming from America", and that Michael prefers semi-automatic ... This is from memory, because that note is down the memory hole now. I quoted some of it, as did some others. It was "posted with Michael's permission." Notably, at no point did it give any clarification or real defense. The fact it's now down the memory hole I think says a good bit. In the meantime, I've started screen-shotting the comments spanking Yon. I suspect they're all about to get disappeared... (Just dangerous nuts who are probably about to accidentally shoot themselves... Not really that valuable... No loss, right?)

Via the IRC chat and conspirator C-90:



Wow, so Europe "can too", as long as they hold onto his... Wait, do they think he's [Bill] Clinton? And isn't that a bit sterotypical and racist about the...

Maybe it's just a bad angle.



Maybe not.

(Prompted directly by a post at TSM, and something I've been meaning to post for a long while, I've typed it into IRC several times.)

When I was in college, the group I hung out with was almost all physics majors.

The advisor for the Physics Majors was a stereotypical, absentminded physics Ph.D. I'd had 3 classes he taught with my friends his advisees, and he'd seen me around campus with the physics majors and got it stuck in his head I was a physics major, too.

I had to take over 2 years of physics for my major, plus some labs, and the physics building was a good way to cut through campus if you knew how to navigate it... Around advising time, 4 times a year, he'd see me, and demand that I come to see him for advising.

"Doc, I'm not a physics major." "Oh, right, right."

One day I'm walking through the building and he sees me down the hall and yells for me to come see him in his office.

Geez, not again.

So I walked in, prepped and ready to say, again, "I'm not a physics major..." and he says "I want you to sign up for my meteorology course!"

Which caught me totally off guard. While I was still kind of getting back to mental equilibrium, he gave me the hard sales pitch. Promised a easy B if I showed up. No math, he promised.
But he was pushing it hard. Actually, in hindsight, really hard. But at the time it seemed reasonable. I did have some spare hours I needed to fill.

So I said, well, OK, and signed up with one of the aforementioned physics majors I hung out with. He was a likable prof, meteorology's interesting, and I had to fill the hours somehow, and would be more interesting than most electives taught by the Liberal Arts sort.

Over Christmas break I log into the system, check the class schedule, and find that it's in the... Physics building auditorium?
Huh? Bwahuh? A "Senior level" (4xx) class.. In the *auditorium?*

First day of class, arrive with my friend. There are a couple of chemistry majors I've had classes with, and a couple of physics majors I know.

And a LOT of cute girls. Room's filled with them. Few guys I don't know. But, wait, wait, wait, wait. Cute girls? Physics class? I haven't seen a lot of cute girls since it was elective time... *DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER DANGER*.

In comes Doc and we start the preliminaries Yadda yadda, This is Meteorology, Phys 4xx, if you're expecting something else....

Then with about 1/2 the classtime left, he starts on "dimensional analysis". Simple. Look: If you keep your units together, you can make sure you're doing it right. So, for instance: if you do a acceleration question, and end up with meters.. you know you did it wrong!

*yawn*. I mean. Really. This is a senior-level class!

The class explodes. People are waving their hands, there's screeching and yelling, and those of us who know each other from Organic, Physics, or Calculus are looking at each other with astonishment, and looking at the rest of the class.

Soon, I'm turned around trying to explain the the girls behind us, and my friend is leaning over explaining to the girls in front of us. The people I know are all writing, and talking to the people around them as the Doc is trying to handle questions.

This isn't that hard. I mean, if you don't get this in high school you'll get killed in Chemistry 101. What is going on? My friend and I were thinking this had to be a Candid Camera setup.

We spent the next two freaking days on Dimensional Analysis. At the end of the third class, I followed Doc to his office. Walked in, pointed at him and exclaimed "You're using us!"

He slumped in his chair, said "Close the door" and as soon as I closed it, he covered his face with his hands and said "Oh, god, I can't make it without you guys."

As I was figuring out, and he confirmed, that class was required by the Education seniors ... with Science Concentrations. Required for teaching High School Science.

After his first year of trying to explain basic science to the Education, Science majors, he'd come up with a plan: find friendly hard science majors, and promise them a B if they'd be his Teaching Assistants. Seed the room with people who knew what Dimensional Analysis was. (Obi-Wan Kenobi felt the disturbance when he tried to explain Adiabatic Lapse Rate...)

These "kids" - after at least 7 semesters at a University, within 6 months would be teaching High School Science - didn't know basic science.

So we were the unpaid TA's to get them up to speed enough to pass a 3 hour class that had barely (by our standards) math.

He was brilliant, utterly brilliant. It was a cunning, perfect plan, that worked well. We got all the Education, Science majors out to train the next generation. We got our A's and B's, and a trauma that we couldn't talk about for years.

Thanks to the Xman:

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2009/01/16/ajc_conservative_columnist.html

He emailed me this this morning and said I was a "wuss" if I didn't "go for it".

Well, I'm not. Nor am I a wuss!


However, a weekly on-time column would be very hard for me to deliver.

Especially to a organization that's demonstrated it's lack of ethics and morals many times, and is actively running itself out of business. But that's more secondary to the fact that I'm not all that "conservative".

But the biggest problem is the fact that they're looking to replace their Token Conservative.

For more than 20 years, one of the most well-read columns on our opinion pages has been written by Jim Wooten, our conservative columnist. [We certainly wouldn't want to offend or confuse our (constantly diminishing, for some strange reason) readership with too many opinions or diverse takes, after all] After a long and distinguished career, Jim will be leaving the editorial board, effective June 30.

Which strikes me as being pretty offensive overall, especially for a position I'd consider taking. This is from an organization that will fight tooth and nail from being described as "liberal", "very liberal", or more accurately, "press wing of the Democrat party". (More importantly and directly to me they've yet to ever find any problem with anything claimed to be "anti-gun", and will slant coverage past "slippery slope" to "wall" immediately.)

Yet, they have one solitary spot... for.. a "conservative".


A few years back, Jonah Goldberg described why he stopped answering the phone for the Sunday Morning shows. Sadly, I can't find his description right this second, but it was to the effect that they wanted some token towards "both sides", no matter his actual opinion, and so it would be him, 2 left-wing guests, and 1 or 2 "hosts" ganged up against him.

No, even if I was that "Conservative", I don't think that's a job I want.

Talk about the definition of walking into a "Hostile Work Environment"....

Ronald Reagan used to say, 'The seven most feared words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."'


I think that's possibly to be overtaken by "Obama Umbrella".

Obama's political staff is deciding whether to create a service organization that would use the vast corps of its grass-roots campaign supporters. As described by one source knowledgeable with the discussions, this nonprofit arm would be used to help victims of natural disasters, but would do so under the Obama umbrella

The proposal is now starting to sound like what happens when project meetings get out of control. "They'll help elect Democrats to Congress! And they'll pressure wavering lawmakers! And, hey, what if we promised they'll mobilize in natural disasters! And they could fight crime! And they'll have special uniforms!"

Mike Rowe on dirty jobs.

Not just the TV show, but literally, dirty jobs. I started watching it, thinking it was hilariously funny, but in the last 5 minutes, he gets serious.

To paraphrase, it's great to demand and call for "building more" infrastructure, but every year the people to do that - build infrastructure - are fewer and fewer.

Watch the whole thing.

ColtCCO is back.

http://www.coltcco.com/?p=325

My TN Handgun Carry Permit was denied renewal because I was charged with going armed, and the TN Dept of Safety doesn’t care to see that the charges were entirely dismissed by the judge. They don’t even have an excuse, as the TBI does have that info in their database, I passed two TICS background checks this past month, so TN Dept of Safety apparently just saw the charge was made, and gave up right there, guilty until proven innocent. Government incompetence is the gift that just keeps on giving, considering that the original charge of going armed that I spent so much time and money getting dismissed, was entirely their fault in the first place, by written admission of their own director.

You can’t win against the Leviathan. It’s not malicious, just obstinately stupid and stubborn.

(and a new webcomic I guess I'll have to read all the way through now...)

Everybody's unique. The parts that make us up tend to make us good at some things. Some people excel at math. Others at reading people and selling the product that best suits them. A few of the less-moral make excellent telemarketers. Let's let the Most Interesting Man In the World Explain:

Right. Good advice. Know what you're good at - and not good at.

Recently on the IRC channel:
[.......]: what can i do to get you guys more interested in recruiting nra members?
Unix-Jedi: I've been reconsidering, but I still wouldn't feel GOOD about rejoining
[.......]: don't join, i don't care. i don't want to hear about it because i've already heard every fucking excuse in the world. everything from goats to politics.
[.......]: seriously, I'm trying to tap into those who are willing to help the cause in this way. the nra is the 800lb gorilla. if it becomes the 1200lb gorilla, congress won't want to touch us.

Helluva way to convince me, let me tell you.
Which is pretty much the problem I have with the NRA. So you want me to be one of the "additional" 400 pounders... to ignore? Join, give your money, and shut up, we're driving the bus. You want to get tossed under it again? We can do it! We've done it before! We'll do it again!

( With an infinite number of Gorillas... )
The appeal to fear that's embodied here is also a bad idea. The NRA ballooned during the Clinton years due to that sort of fear. And it flattened as that fear left. It's stayed flat while "action shooting" has taken off like a rocket. And while the AR is the best-selling weapons platforms, and practical and defensive pistol and carbine shooting are causing disruptions in local gun-clubs that have been primarily shotgun based for decades. New shooters, but not a lot of new NRA memberships. (And many ranges built in NRA memberships to their dues, which distort how bad it might be without that.)

It might well balloon as a result of the last election but those members aren't there to stay. If you're actually working on getting and keeping members, this isn't the way to do it.

Or, you know, you can go about your membership drive by calling all of those (and more) issues "excuses" and that you've "heard them all".

You'll have to pardon me if that doesn't do a lot towards:
1) Calling Alanis, because that's ironic.
2) Cementing my concern that the NRA will ignore me anyway, so my money is far better spent elsewhere where they respect me and will respond to me, as well as being more supportive, not attempting to take credit where it's due, and to be concerned with my rights more than companies in the field. (NRA's had that problem in the past, too. Whoops, is that another "excuse?")
3) Making a LOL poster: "MEMBERSHIP DRIVE FAIL"

Hard to improve on what Stingray has said and illustrated.

So go see his post.

And maybe take Tam's take into consideration.

...

Prepping for IDPA tomorrow. Now that I've finally moved up in classification after far too long... time to defend the new ranking.

Been busy de-rusting a S&W 65 I lent to my father. He asked me something about it at Thanksgiving - and pulled it out almost covered in rust.

Baking soda, aluminum foil, baking soda paste and some brass scrub brushes later... it's feeling much better now.

And I only launched the trigger return spring twice during reassembly.

"Thanks", such as they are, to Ry who noted this in the #gunblogger_conspiracy chat.

Seems H-S Precision is about as out of touch with the gun buying public as Jim Zumbo used to be.

Lon Horiuchi as an endorser.

Linked with no further comment:
http://eavesdropdc.blogspot.com/2008/11/metro-yes-we-can.html

Overheard while transferring from ridiculously crowded Red Line train to ridiculously crowded Yellow Line train at China Town
Woman One: Dammmnnn girl! This Metro so damn c-rowded
Woman Two: Shit yeah. Too many people here.
Woman One: Don’t worry, Obama gonna take care of that.

A few years back, I lived in Apex, and there was a really friendly mailman, who seemed to be really good at his job.

For some values of "delivering mail", anyway.

"Mailman Steve" -- a pudgy, kindly 58-year-old who toiled along a route in a rapidly growing neighborhood here -- was given probation in federal court this week for squirreling away at least seven years' worth of undelivered junk mail, which he had stacked in his garage and buried in his yard.
...
It should come as no surprise that the U.S. Postal Service did not receive a single complaint from Padgett's customers about missing mail during the years he withheld pizza circulars, oil change discount notices and Chinese menus.
...
The Postal Service notified hundreds of residents, but only one responded. That customer, Kenna Reinhardt, wrote not to condemn Padgett but to honor him.
"Mr. Padgett did not mean harm to any person, rather he overcompensated by doing his job better than anyone," Reinhardt said in the letter, which was entered into the record by U.S. Atty. Josh Howard.
...
Others offered to help cover Padgett's legal fees, to nominate him for awards and to ask that he deliver mail in their neighborhoods, the paper reported.
...
And please don't call it "junk mail," [Sandy] Cutts [Direct Marketing Association public affairs director] said. "We don't use the 'J' word."

I'm damn sure calling it Junk Mail now.

This looks like a case where the punishment will mostly fit the crime. Yes, he should have delivered the Junk Mail. It was his job. People paid for that advertising, and it was his duty to deliver.

But I don't recall any problems with him when he was delivering mail to me. Except possibly a bit less junk mail. Far better than the current dunderheads delivering the mail. (Latest trick, listing package delivery as "attempted", while both of us are in the house and they didn't even leave a notice.)

Last Tuesday (Election Day), 6 cars in the Faculty/Staff parking lot sported some incarnation of "Obama '08" bumper stickers.

Yesterday (one week after the election) more than 20 did.

Probably the best comment on the election season I failed to document in time.

Election Day, driving to work, past the big, old, cemetery in the middle of town...

There were 20 Obama yard signs up in the cemetery. By the time later in the day when I went by with a camera - they were gone.

Now you see it, now you don't.
Which looks to be pretty much what's going to be par for the course for the next few years.

Guess what I just got emailed via one of those FWD:FWD: FWD: Forward: FWD: chains...


> Redistribution of Wealth

> Today on my way to lunch I passed a
> homeless guy with a sign that read
> 'Vote Obama, I need the money.' I
> laughed.

.....

Seems.. awfully.. familiar


Congrats, Breda and Old NFO!

You've reached Internet Ubiquity and Anonymity! So brilliant that people cut and paste without attribution!

Wia pdb, via the C&R mailing list, attributed to gcr1:

This is my rifle.
I have many like it, and they are all MINE.
My rifles are my life. Without my rifles I am useless.
I must buy any nice Milsurp, before Bubba does.
I will learn how to restore and preserve guns.
I must clean my rifles and shoot them often.

So be it, until all old military rifles find a loving home.

The witty reparte! The Banter!

The quoteable quips!

http://www.nrahab.com/2008/10/27/on-revolvers/.

(Hopefully this won't degenerate as badly as the last post I made.)

irc://slashnet.org/#gunblogger_conspiracy