Straight Case

B.O.H.I.C.A.

Oregon's Gun-Banner In Chief (OGBIC) pukes up a presser to announce (at a gun-free-zone venue) that a new "Gun Safety Agenda" is being promulgated rammed down our throats.

Governor, my guns are perfectly safe already, thank you. I carry at least one every day, and none of mine have ever hurt anyone yet, although with your continuing curtailment of gun freedoms here, and a corresponding expansion of crime and thuggery, the chances of my having to use one of my guns in defense of myself and/or my family increase every day.

As you set your "Agenda", bear in mind what the ultimate purpose of the Second Amendment really is: to allow us to keep and bear arms so as to be able to remove tyrannical governments. 

A different threat, your responses

The events unfolding in San Bernardino show us a different threat. Not an unknown threat, just a different one.

We have been used to seeing various formats of homicidal/suicidal Jihad here: 9-11, the various Jihadi gun attacks since then, etc. All these attacks had one common characteristic: the Muslims involved were all determined to kill members of the Western Civilization, but pretty much stuck to methods which left their shock troops dead with the event. One-way attacks. Don't "pass go", Get your 72 raisins immediately.

With San Berdoo, we have just seen an attack in which the Jihadis had trained and prepared to strike with force and effect, but moved on quickly to, presumably, strike again later. Far from the normal homicide/suicide attack, this is more like revolutionary attack. This resembles what we used to refer to as a "partisan" attack. Similar to the tactics of the French or Yugoslavian partisans who attacked the Nazis during WW2. What we just saw could have been very successful for the Jihadis, and the only reason it wasn't, was better training and discipline/communication on the part of the police authorities.

My purpose here is not to figure out how to defeat this different flavor of Jihad, but to prepare the average citizen to survive it. Methods of defeat for the Muslim Jihad will have to wait for a National Command Authority determined to defeat Islamic Jihad itself, and we don't have such leadership now, we have the opposite. We have political and command leadership determined to NOT face down islamic Jihad instead of the other way around. The effect for John Q. Citizen is that he will probably have to face the shock troops of Jihad alone, possibly with the help of local police.

A personal note: I am trained in various aspects of public safety, and as events unfolded and were reported yesterday in San Berdnardino, I evaluated the events as if they were the result of criminal gang activity, since, to me, the events more resembled the activity of, say, Mexican drug cartels or the criminal gang MS-13 (both very active in San Bernardino), and both are orgs not unwilling to create mass murder to get their point across. I was wrong in that analysis, mostly because I applied the usual standard of homicide/suicide Jihad, then rejected it, and this event did not fit that model.

So, how to prepare?

1. Arm up. The protected citizen will be armed at all times, with handgun(s) within hands' reach at home and away, and a long gun close by as well. You will have to figure out how to conform to "safe storage" laws to accomplish this in your home and in your car (presumably, your "away" long gun stays in the car). At home, I have quick-reaction pistol safes (plural), and the long gun goes back in the big safe when kids are present, so I comply. In the car, I carry on my person as I am permitted to do, and my long gun is a Kel-tec folding rifle with internal lock, carried in a locking gun case, kept in the locked trunk of the vehicle.That complies with local law as well (it would NOT comply in CA or several Eastern states though).
2. Train up. At this point, if you have not already done so, join a local gun club or commercial firearms practice facility. Your preference should be one which has practice facilities for handgun (any caliber), rifle (any caliber) and shotgun. With the exceptions of no 50BMG and no full-auto, my club fits these requirements. You will need to allot sufficient funds for ammo, and/or begin to reload your chosen calibers. You will need to allot sufficient time to practice, probably a minimum of once per month in the training phase, and four times per year with all defense firearms as a maintenance-of-training effort.
3. Smarten up. Apply some common sense as to your selection of events to attend, particularly if you will be responsible for others' safety. Large outdoor events are Jihad targets of opportunity, as are crowded shopping malls. Organized athletic events in arenas and stadia are probably safer to some degree, but the Jihadis wouold love to target one for the kill ratio that they could achieve. Consider applying a sliding scale of risk to your life and it's chosen events. Yeah, that's a bummer, but we are at war, dude! You are probably safest at home, relatively safe out and about in your vehicle, safe enough doing shopping that is NOT done in large, crowded venues at peak predictable times. You are less safe in any public crowd, on mass transportation, at any outdoor event which has been heavily advertised as to attendance prospects. The training and/or dedication of your local policing authority is a factor in your relative safety also. Evaluate it.
4. Vote up. National elections are close at hand. Regardless of your political affiliation, you need to vote for your own safety. Safety is personal, and politicians and political parties which refuse to recognize your personal safety as their Job #1 should NOT get your vote. This is not about flavors of morality, this is about survival. See my note on National Command Authority, above.

Again, we are at war. The war has been brought to these shores by Islam, and it's not going to get "wished away", even though this seems to be the primary "combat strategy" of the current political Administration. YOU are responsible for your OWN safety, so make safety happen for you, NOW!

A final word. Religion. Your personal religious creed should give you the mental strength to survive the mental rigors of mortal combat. It is NOT required for that purpose, but if you hold to a creed, it will pay you to increase your attention to it in these anxious times. Your creed is your business under our Constitution. Your survival is a natural AND Constitutional Right under our system. You MUST consider anyone who attacks you for your creed or attacks your Right to survival as your enemy. Islam is attacking/denying both

The events unfolding in San Bernardino show us a different threat. Not an unknown threat, just a different one.

We have been used to seeing various formats of homicidal/suicidal Jihad here: 9-11, the various Jihadi gun attacks since then, etc. All these attacks had one common characteristic: the Muslims involved were all determined to kill members of the Western Civilization, but pretty much stuck to methods which left their shock troops dead with the event. One-way attacks. Don't "pass go", Get your 72 raisins immediately.

With San Berdoo, we have just seen an attack in which the Jihadis had trained and prepared to strike with force and effect, but moved on quickly to, presumably, strike again later. Far from the normal homicide/suicide attack, this is more like revolutionary attack. This resembles what we used to refer to as a "partisan" attack. Similar to the tactics of the French or Yugoslavian partisans who attacked the Nazis during WW2. What we just saw could have been very successful for the Jihadis, and the only reason it wasn't, was better training and discipline/communication on the part of the police authorities.

My purpose here is not to figure out how to defeat this different flavor of Jihad, but to prepare the average citizen to survive it. Methods of defeat for the Muslim Jihad will have to wait for a National Command Authority determined to defeat Islamic Jihad itself, and we don't have such leadership now, we have the opposite. We have political and command leadership determined to NOT face down islamic Jihad instead of the other way around. The effect for John Q. Citizen is that he will probably have to face the shock troops of Jihad alone, possibly with the help of local police.

A personal note: I am trained in various aspects of public safety, and as events unfolded and were reported yesterday in San Berdnardino, I evaluated the events as if they were the result of criminal gang activity, since, to me, the events more resembled the activity of, say, Mexican drug cartels or the criminal gang MS-13 (both very active in San Bernardino), and both are orgs not unwilling to create mass murder to get their point across. I was wrong in that analysis, mostly because I applied the usual standard of homicide/suicide Jihad, then rejected it, and this event did not fit that model.

So, how to prepare?

1. Arm up. The protected citizen will be armed at all times, with handgun(s) within hands' reach at home and away, and a long gun close by as well. You will have to figure out how to conform to "safe storage" laws to accomplish this in your home and in your car (presumably, your "away" long gun stays in the car). At home, I have quick-reaction pistol safes (plural), and the long gun goes back in the big safe when kids are present, so I comply. In the car, I carry on my person as I am permitted to do, and my long gun is a Kel-tec folding rifle with internal lock, carried in a locking gun case, kept in the locked trunk of the vehicle.That complies with local law as well (it would NOT comply in CA or several Eastern states though).
2. Train up. At this point, if you have not already done so, join a local gun club or commercial firearms practice facility. Your preference should be one which has practice facilities for handgun (any caliber), rifle (any caliber) and shotgun. With the exceptions of no 50BMG and no full-auto, my club fits these requirements. You will need to allot sufficient funds for ammo, and/or begin to reload your chosen calibers. You will need to allot sufficient time to practice, probably a minimum of once per month in the training phase, and four times per year with all defense firearms as a maintenance-of-training effort.
3. Smarten up. Apply some common sense as to your selection of events to attend, particularly if you will be responsible for others' safety. Large outdoor events are Jihad targets of opportunity, as are crowded shopping malls. Organized athletic events in arenas and stadia are probably safer to some degree, but the Jihadis wouold love to target one for the kill ratio that they could achieve. Consider applying a sliding scale of risk to your life and it's chosen events. Yeah, that's a bummer, but we are at war, dude! You are probably safest at home, relatively safe out and about in your vehicle, safe enough doing shopping that is NOT done in large, crowded venues at peak predictable times. You are less safe in any public crowd, on mass transportation, at any outdoor event which has been heavily advertised as to attendance prospects. The training and/or dedication of your local policing authority is a factor in your relative safety also. Evaluate it.
4. Vote up. National elections are close at hand. Regardless of your political affiliation, you need to vote for your own safety. Safety is personal, and politicians and political parties which refuse to recognize your personal safety as their Job #1 should NOT get your vote. This is not about flavors of morality, this is about survival. See my note on National Command Authority, above.

Again, we are at war. The war has been brought to these shores by Islam, and it's not going to get "wished away", even though this seems to be the primary "combat strategy" of the current political Administration. YOU are responsible for your OWN safety, so make safety happen for you, NOW!

A final word. Religion. Your personal religious creed should give you the mental strength to survive the mental rigors of mortal combat. It is NOT required for that purpose, but if you hold to a creed, it will pay you to increase your attention to it in these anxious times. Your creed is your business under our Constitution. Your survival is a natural AND Constitutional Right under our system. You MUST consider anyone who attacks you for your creed or attacks your Right to survival as your enemy. Islam is attacking/denying both

Public money DIRECTLY spent for a gun grab

Interesting case, all the more so because it all happened within 5 miles of my residence.

Fact set: Crazy kid defeats lock on older brother's gun safe (a sheet-metal type, it sounds like), takes an AR-15, a vest and plenty of ammo then goes to shoot up the local High School (biggest high school in the State). He kills one, wounds another, but when the pressure is applied by the good guys, he kills himself (standard MO of these cowards).

Of course, that's when the gun-grabbing drama-llamas took over, and as a result, you have probably heard of the Reynolds High School shooting of last year.

Continuing. At the time, there was quite some speculation that the liberal Multnomah County District Attorney would charge the shooter's older bro (gun owner) with some crime, but in the end, no one could prove that the safe was left unlocked (and Oregon lacks "safe storage" laws anyway), and older bro said he had locked it. So, no crime was charged, but the authorities kept the AR and associated equipment. The older bro SUED THE CITY OF TROUTDALE, because Oregon law is quite clear that when no charges are preferred, evidence seized MUST be returned to lawful owners within a time certain.

Enter: the Troutdale City Attorney. It seems that he disagrees with his superior prosecutor, the DA, and wanted charges on older bro, but lacks jurisdiction to file them (in Oregon, only minor crimes may be charged by a City, most crimes have to be charged by the District Attorney), so he dithered and kept the gun, which was in the custody of the Troutdale Police Property Room. A State Judge heard the lawsuit, and ruled in favor of the plaintiff (older bro) that the gun and equipment must be returned. The City Attorney stalled, but apparently figured out a way to keep the plaintiff's gun: give him Fair Market Value for it. The lawsuit was soon settled.

According to this article, the City Council buried the payment to older bro on a lengthy and boring agenda of City Council administrative business, and snuck it through, except for the reporters on the City Beats. Oregonian Reporter Steve Duin, a gun-grabber himself by many previous writings, noticed and wrote the story up. Okay, at least said reporter is a digger, is willing to take on government hanky-panky, right?

Nazzofast, Guido. Read the whole article.

About fifty words in, Reporter Duin writes a paragraph listing the property involved in the lawsuit:

"One Daniel Defense Armament DDM4 carbine rifle, one of the bullies in the AR-15 family (emphasis added). Eight 30-round Magpul magazines. A “plate carrier” vest, a United State Army standard-issue laundry bag and “several hundred rounds” of ammunition."

It appears that TWO people have now personified the rifle (illogically made an inanimate object into a person), not only the City Attorney, who could not bear the idea of the gun being returned to it's rightful and blameless owner, AND Reporter Duin, who has declared that the most popular rifle in the USA is a "bully".

I was taught that there is no higher authority on the etymology of the English Language than the Oxford English Dictionary, so I went there and looked up "bully":

"(pl. bullies) a person who uses their strength or power to frighten or hurt weaker people"  (my emphasis).

O.E.D. very specifically refers to a "bully" as a PERSON (twice, once directly and one indirectly).

So sorry, Steve Duin, old sport, your anti-gun predjudice is STILL showing in your public writing. Don't bother apologizing or issuing a correction though, it would compound your anti-liberty personality defect by adding insincerity to it.

 

Defending Fallen Veterans

Again!

This is cross-posted from my Rivrdog Blog.

Typepad is fixed, so I write...

So now I can scribble my sweet nothings about Saving The Culture again! Oh, goody!

Bragging Humble: Yes it is possible for a little fish in a big ocean to matter, all you have to do is migrate upstream to a smaller water body, to wit:

Gresham, Oregon. I live in the 4th largest city in Oregon, and all of the other Cities bigger than Gresham are far more liberal. Portland being the best example of a lib-town.

Gresham is over 100,000 now, but there are enough conservatives (relatively-speaking, the citizens are "conservatives") living here to actually cause the City Administration and other functionaries of Government to have to plan to accomodate our points of view.

Example: Recently, a wrong-headed school Principal sent a lad home for wearing a tee shirt depicting the "Battlefield Cross", or combination of boots, rifle and helmet that has come to symbolize a soldier who fell in battle, making the ultimate sacrifice for his country. This caused an immediate outrage in Gresham, an outrage which spurred the liberal Oregonian newspaper to opine:

  Common sense deficit: The subject of firearms is a sensitive one these days, particularly in schools. Even so, the treatment an eighth-grade student in Gresham’s Dexter McCarty Middle School almost beggars belief.    Alan Holmes wore a T-shirt to school last week that featured an image of a rifle. No, Holmes wasn’t wearing promotional NRA gear. On his shirt, rather, was an arrangement of helmet, boots and rifle widely used to indicate respect for fallen soldiers. Lest anyone mistake the arrangement for anything but a memorial, the shirt also read, “Standing for those who stood for us.” Holmes was told that his shirt violated the school’s dress code, The Oregonian/OregonLive’s Laura Frazier wrote. His choices: Change it or go home. He went home, and the district has since promised to review its dress code. We’ll see where that goes.    The code, as Frazier reported, prohibits clothing with, among other things, “violence related references.” To cram Holmes’ shirt within this definition is a stretch, to say the least. But if a memorial arrangement that contains a rifle is too disturbing a thing for Gresham’s eighth-graders to witness, district officials might want to reconsider Gresham High School’s fight song too. It begins as follows: “March, march on down the field/ Fighting for Gresham High/We’ll back the blue and white/With the spirit of do or die.”    March, fight, do or die. That’s awfully martial.    And talk about “violence related references.”

Well, then. If Liberal Portland can opine, conservative Gresham might feel a tad stronger. The Gresham Outlook published my letter on the subject, a letter in which, as a Veteran, I demand redress of insults to me and all local Veterans, as well as the child directly affected. Note how the Editor dressed it up with a bold sidebar of my demands:

Folks, this business of Saving The Culture can get into some conflict. I am laying MY creds on the line here, and demanding, as a citizen, that the culture be protected from the erosion of the faceless liberal zombies. In MY day, this erosion would never have happened, because respect for veterans who fell in battle was automatic, and never questioned. Maybe we can't go all the way back to that time, but we can and MUST demand the respect due our heroes of war.war.

I am shortly going to have major surgery, and will miss the next meeting of the School Board, in which I would, in the normal course of events, have presented these demands in person. I am working on a surprise for the School Board, though, and my message should still get through. Let's just say that I am not the only Grumpy Major in these parts, and two others ought to be there in my stead at the meeting on November 5th. Thanks to the magic of You Tube, I might be there myself...more later when I get that video up.

POTUS shows his colors

On Wednesday, the pro-2A site, Bearing Arms, published an article detailing several parents of Roseburg shooting victims who had objected to President Obama's political blood-dancing for gun control immediately after the horrific crimes were committed.

Yesterday, as the parents/families of the victims were assembled at Roseburg High School to meet Obama for his supposedly-humanitarian trip to Roseburg, one parent was excluded. Note that he was one of the parents who had expressed his displeasure at Obama's blood-dancing.

Several observations:

• This puts the definite lie to Obama's claim that the trip was solely for humanitarian purposes, to "hug" the parents and family members of the victims. Even if Mr. Cooper had had an angry moment before, he should have been invited. He could have been privately frisked for weapons and accompanied by several Secret Service agents if there was any threat past verbal anger, but he should have been invited, not excluded.
• Obama can't stand the heat, and should stay the HELL out of the kitchen.
• Politically, Obama just lost ALL of the bona fides he might have built up for making the trip, and the National orgs which protect the 2A ALL need to follow my example and spread this news far and wide. NOW!

Anyone who still lacked an insight into Obama's character need look no farther than this display of discourteous cowardice.

Yes, COWARDICE.

Resign, Mister President. You are unfit to hold office for another minute.

Cross-posted to the Rivrdog blog.

 

Try THIS Background Check, Obama

...and BTW, NRA, you should have no objection, either.

The Straight Spine people propose that NICS be replaced with a system that:

1. Works. For EVERYONE, not just gun dealers and cops. The present NICS totters along, breaking down frequently. It needs to be scrapped and replaced. BTW, Mister President, there are just a few states requiring NICS checks on all gun transfers now. If you DID get your way, and suddenly, ALL gun transfers in the whole Nation had to go through NICS, it would prevent gun transfers because NICS would fail at the start of every business day when it was turned on. You KNOW that, though, don't you?
2. Gets the minimal information. We are checking only PEOPLE here, so there is absolutely NO reason to have to enter any descriptors for the gun. I give you MY name and DOB, then the name and DOB of the transferee, and you check us out. You then issue a confirmation number for the transfer which we must keep for a time, or the dealer must enter on the 4473. The system keeps the record for the current 24 hours allowed by the NICS enabling law, then flushes it.
3.  Performs as close to "instantly" as possible. The system designers would be required to sample current NICS traffic to determine the period of highest traffic the system handles now, to set performance the new system would have to handle. The system would have to handle TWICE that traffic at acceptance, and be scalable to handle FIVE TIMES that traffic with minimum adjustment.
4.  Has no enforcement action attached. Two things: the current NICS, which HAS enforcement action avenues attached, results in VERY few enforcement actions, and also, few people who know that they must hide their gun possession from the authorities are going to involve themselves with the new system anyway. Criminals do not do regular gun transfers.
5. Has no cost to users, other than as a budget line item. The Feds can just eat the cost if they want the transfer checks made. The wet dream of gun-banners, of course, is to figure out some way of attaching crippling fees to all gun transfers, solely to discourage gun ownership. That is probably actionable as being a Civil Rights violation, BTW.

Some of my more die-hard 2A-defending buddies are going to scream at me for this, but I don't give a flying fig what they do, frankly. There is ONE very good reason to have this system. Can you guess what it is?

If you said, "keep crazies from getting guns", you get to wear the Dunce Cap.

If you said, "let the Government track guns", you are not only a Dunce, you didn't READ my proposal. No gun info in the system, remember, Sparky?

That reason is Civil Liability. I will predict right now that Obama could be successful in harassing gun owners if he wanted to be. He COULD impose (Congress would have to go along) Liability Insurance on us. I can predict that such a mandated insurance system would be as much of a clusterfuck as ObamaCare is now, maybe worse, BUT IT WOULD PASS. It would pass because the claim will be made (and sold) that it imposes NO undue hardship on gun-bearers to buy insurance. If my system is in place first, it will serve as a model to insure PEOPLE against civil liability arising out of their ownership/carriage of firearms. It will NOT involve registering the guns. It MIGHT involve so-called "safe storage", and insurers MIGHT be allowed to require certain other ameliorations of risk, perhaps even TRAINING in firearms use (horrors, say my buddies) or maybe even standardized QUALIFICATION (double horrors, isn't there an inalienable right to shoot things that you don't intend to?). I do NOT disagree with the idea of insurance. I would buy it myself now if the available policies were any good, but they suck, have too many "outs" for the insurers, too many limits on the insureds.

In summary: Our Courts have ruled that certain folks may not possess firearms. We are not likely to change that short of a total Re-Do of the Republic. Given that certain persons MUST be excluded from possession/commerce in firearms, some sort of background check is appropriate, so let's design a system we can live with. That system is NOT NICS.

 

The "Uber-post", Disarming Military Veterans

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

This all comes to eight pages or so of single-spaced type, so you will need a while to read it. I used the military format for expository writing: tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, then tell 'em, then tell 'em what you've told 'em. I hope that doesn't get old, but since this is primarily aimed at Veterans, it's appropriate to do it that way.

Prediction: Obama Executive Order ammo ban coming

The "AK-47" question in the dee-bate the other night was a peek into Obama's mind. It was obviously a planted question, and Obama gave a canned answer to wake up his anti-gun base. Since the same answer would have mande the Blue Dog Democrats unhappy, he was taking a chance, and I'd guess that for Obama to take a chance, there's got to be big money at stake, so I'd hazard a guess that Soros or his designate is laundering a big contribution to slip to the Won, and gun control was his condition of the donation.

How will the gun control work?

As I've said before, with a hostile House (and maybe Senate, there are some Blue Dogs over there), the Won can't run any gun-control law through Congress. Using the FBATFE to insert some new anti-gun regulations might work, but that outfit pretty much trashed itself out of credibility with Gunwalker.

That leaves only Executive Orders as the method left to impose gun control. As they've been arguing in Baltimore for months, ammo control is the key to gun control, and Obama can impose at least partial ammo control on AK-47, SKS, RPK and AKM owners with a stroke of the pen by banning importation of offshore ammo in those calibers (7.62X39, 5.45X39, 7.62X54R).

This blog predicts he will do that, and what's more, he will do that whether he wins or loses the election.

You know what to do. If you have less than several battle-days' worth* of ammo for your Commie rifles, get an order in NOW. When it comes, that EO will probably freeze shipment of ordered ammo in the comm-bloc calibers, so you need to get the ammo into your possession before November 7th.

You've been warned.

PayPal up to their usual Anti-American tricks

Cross-posted at Rivrdog blog, here.

Via Tom Tancredo, former congressman from CO, "Sheriff Mack", who's about to announce for Congress out of TX, was putting on a "Constitutional Sheriff's Convention" in Vegas, apparently last weekend or about now. Donations had been solicited to defray the expenses, and apparently, the Sheriff made the mistake of using PayPal as a medium of exchange.

After $40,000 had already come in through PayPal, PayPal froze Sheriff Mack's money, mumbling some excuse about the legality of his organization to receive donations.

I've got news for PayPal, they likely just committed Federal Wire Fraud, by allowing the donations to come in and build up a sizeable kitty, then seizing the money, without warrant, lawsuit, court order, anything. Good luck getting any Obama-appointed US Attorney to file those charges, though.

This is about par for PayPal, which never saw a Defender of the Constitution they didn't want to screw over. You will recall, I'm sure, the flap a few years ago about PayPal doing the same thing to one or more gun-auction companies.

The ownership of PayPal evidently just hates the Bill of Rights, there's no other way to express it. Next week, I'm beginning to solicit funds for my new political action company which will seek to end the hegemony of the Greens over motorized boating in Oregon. I've spent several hours at my business bank, JP Morgan Chase, with my very patient business banker teaching me the ins and outs of handling money online. One of the first questions he asked me was if I was going to use PayPal. I said no, and told him why. He then said I had made a wise choice, since of the many ways to handle money online, PayPal was the most expensive, at 4% of each transaction. The one I am going to go with will charge me either 1.35% or 1.78%, depending on whether I scan a card or key it in. No one else charges as much as PayPal.

PayPal are not only Anti-Constitution, they are robbers to boot. Make a firm vow now to never use them again, there are too many other good choices. You can start with Google Wallet, for one choice that's about half the price of PayPal, and so far, Google doesn't seek to trash the Constitution with their business dealings. Google Wallet goes both ways, you can pay with it or collect with it. Opening a merchant account takes only seconds (if you are incorporated). There are other choices for taking in funds via the Internet, but you have to watch three things: the percentage fees, any monthly (minimum) fees, and equipment cost. Some, like The Square, throw in the equipment, but charge a higher fee to make up for it, and some, like Merchant Anywhere, charge less fee but the charge for equipment to connect to your smartphone or tablet is substantial.

Whatever you pick to make or take payment electronically, a patriot will never pick PayPal.

H/T To Brother Michael, up on the Mountain.

"USA Today" firearms poll re-do may be a scam - UPDATED !

***************************************************************************************************************************

UPDATE: 011211 1303 PST: Thanks to Joe and Uncle, my fears are somewhat relieved on this old, moldy poll. Joe explained it in comments, on the Rivrdog post. I guess that means that the only real worry, if you want to spare some, is that USA Today has a garbage dump where they should have a Web bureau in their org chart. However, since neither Joe nor Uncle could say that data is NOT being mined from the responses to the old, moldy poll, we should still be on our guard about it. My advice is stay away. We gunnies proved 4 1/2 years ago that we can put more fingers to more keyboards faster than the anti-2A crowd, and for the life of me, I don't see any value in continuing that fight. We WON for Christ's sake! The Brady Bunch KNOWS we won. Put that trophy back in the trophy case, people, we don't have to keep playing the 2007 playoffs over and over again.

***************************************************************************************************************************

I've gotten an email which purports to link to the USA Today poll on support for the Second Amendment. Since I knew that this was a pre-Heller poll taken back in 2007, I began to sense something might be wrong.

Someone is probably collecting/trapping the IPs of those favorable to the Second Amendment. It COULD be a beneficial organization, but it also could be a nefarious one. I suspect the latter.

Here's my evidence:

First, the link location, and do NOT paste this link, just remember it. Break out a medieval quill pen and parchment if you have one, and ink it down.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/quickquestion/2007/november/popup5895.htm

Now, go to a real USA Today site and look for polls; you'll find that there is no way to access any. The paper (at least the online edition) doesn't have a web page devoted to a daily poll. There IS something called a USA Today/Gallup poll. Here's the latest one of those which I can find using Google and Ask.com, and it's a month old:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2011-12-12/2012-election-swing-states-poll/51844930/1

OK, compare the two URLs I have on this post so far.

The URLs are NOT similar in any way.

Now, search on "usa today quick question polls". There is nothing on that search page to indicate that USA Today ever ran a "quick question" poll after the 2007 firearms poll, and I suspect the reason for that is because the huge response from gun owners (and anti-gunners) thrashed their host so badly they quit doing it.

Now, I'm not a real geek. I have ZERO technical training in this area of Internet technology (and I slept in my own bed last night, and didn't get close to a Holiday Inn Express, heh). That disclaimer aside, I suspect that this latest "re-issuance" of the "USA Today" poll is a fake.

Some evidence of the fake.

All the previous REAL USA-Today polls come up as a full page when you visit their site, but this one does not, it comes up at about a one-sixth page or less, tucked into the top left of a large, otherwise blank page. Also, it is unusual for ANY poll to be presented just as a simple "yes-no-no opinion" box. Any outfit with a reputation to uphold, like USA Today has, would have some other writings and explanations on the page, and probably some links to take you back to a page with more of their content (and some ads, which pay the bills). Survey Monkey is the standard for polls you don't want to pay for but need to post nowadays, and their poll page will always link to back to their website.

I firmly conclude that this is not an actual re-issuance of the 2007 USA Today poll, but is a fake, and that leaves the Big Question: whose fake is it? Also another important question: when you visit a page, any page, you leave a trail to that page. Who is mining the data from these trails to that page? Are they friend or foe?

Unless you know the answers to the above paragraph's questions, don't punch the "send" button on this ersatz "poll".

Now, if some REAL geek wants to set me straight, and offers the science to refute my suspicion here, I will gladly publish that information, with or without retribution at the request of that author, whatever is desired.

Until then, take warning and don't fall for this phishing attempt.

Re-posted from the main blog.