Linoge

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Enough Was Enough

October 12, 2012 by 3 Comments

Linoge at Walls of the City has done yeoman’s work in compiling the record of plagiarism, theft, copyright violations, and outright lies perpetrated in the name of gun blogging by Robert Farago and his minions at Tthe Truth About Guns. This post was a long time in the making and probably overdue. As Linoge notes, he was assisted in his efforts by a number of other pro-rights bloggers and I’m happy to say I was one of them.

What brought this to a head and resulted in the Linoge’s “uber-post” were two events that happened at the Gun Rights Policy Conference. The first was the awarding of a SAF Defender of Liberty award (one of many) to Farago. When the Second Amendment Foundation made the award they were unaware of Farago’s duplicitous past of plagiarism, copyright violations, and lies. An uber-post like that of Linoge – and the linking of it by other reputable gun bloggers – will help prevent this sort of error in the future.

The second, and much more serious, event was the treatment of Washington Times senior editor Emily Miller by Farago. Not only did he ambush her in the hallway in a creepy manner but his subsequent posts were beyond the pale. From Emily’s comments on the encounter which she posted at Shall Not Be Questioned:

Thank you so much for this post. I felt ambushed by that guy. He was
very creepy and jumpy, which made me nervous. I should have trusted my
instincts, but instead stayed and answered all his questions politely. I
don’t know why he feels the need to repeatedly attack me for being a
girl and for not having extensive training in the six months I’ve owned a
gun. That’s all true, but I’ve also gotten the gun laws changed in D.C.
to make it easier to get a legal gun, so the haters don’t affect my
work!

If you do read Linoge’s post – and you should – you will see a report of an incident at the 2011 NRA Annual Meeting involving similar rude and condescending behavior by Farago towards attorney Alan Gura. I was there, I witnessed it, and I was furious. 

Alan Gura and Emily Miller have in their different ways done more for gun rights in the last five years than virtually anyone out there. We don’t need the National Enquirer of the gun blogosphere treating them like dirt. It is as simple as that. We can quibble about whether it matters if Farago is a plagiarist or not but rude, boorish, and condescending behavior towards good people doing great work should always be called out.

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Linoge On NGVAC

January 30, 2012 by 1 Comment

Linoge at Walls of the City does an excellent job at dissecting and then eviscerating the “new” gun control group National Gun Victims Action Council. He looks at its leaders and then their overview of what they want to do.

As with all gun control groups, they will eventually tell you the truth about their aims. In this case, NGVAC says “Any sane gun law will lead to the government being able to take your guns away.”

Linoge calls this “a seven-inch, ivory-handled KA-BAR shoved between the third and fourth ribs of the dorsal side of “gun control” (which is a wonderful image in and of itself) and then continues:

Why? Simple: one of the favorite talking points of “gun control” extremists – especially when someone accurately observes that registration leads to confiscation – is that no modern “gun control” organization wants to take your guns away.

ORLY?

Well, then, thank you Elliot and thank you Andrew and thank you to the rest of the National Gun Victims Action Council for providing us such an easy counterpoint to that claim – after all, why would people so viciously obsessed with firearms and the demonization of them want the government to have the ability to take our firearms away if they did not actually want the government to do exactly that?

As one of Linoge’s commenters says that one would expect NGVAC “to at least obfuscate the message in a way that doesn’t offend anyone with two brain cells to rub together.”

Indeed.

Read Linoge’s whole post. It provides a logical antidote to the pablum put out by the gun prohibitionists.

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Linoge – More Guns Do Not Equal More “Gun Violence”

September 23, 2011 by

Linoge of Walls of the City blog has followed up his earlier post on CDC data showing a negative correlation between the number of firearms and gun-related deaths with one using recently released FBI data. In this examination, Linoge looked at the correlation between the number of firearms and crimes.

Used by permission of Linoge.

Like with his earlier study, he found a negative correlation between the number of firearms and crime.

2. When comparing raw numbers, there is a weak, negative correlation between the number of firearms in America and the number of crimes committed with firearms, and this negative correlation seems to grow stronger the more data we have.

3. When comparing rates, there is a strong, negative correlation between the number of firearms per person in America and the number of crimes committed with firearms per person, and this negative correlation also seems to grow stronger the more data we have.

As I said about his first study, this is important research. It gives those of us who are pro-rights the quantitative ammunition with which to counter the flimsy arguments of the anti-rights bigots in the gun prohibitionist camp. These studies are ones that you should bookmark, print out, or share with like-minded friends.

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Do Gun Numbers And Fatalities Correlate?

September 15, 2011 by 1 Comment

The answer is yes – negatively. In this case, negative is good. The more negative it is, the better.

We know that because of a lot of hard work and number crunching by Linoge at Walls of the City blog. He has just put out his Graphics Matter, Year the Third. He has examined the available data from the last 28 years and has thoroughly debunked the gun prohibitionists’ theory that more guns equals more deaths. His analysis leads him to conclude:

1. The hypothesis of “more guns = more deaths” is demonstrably false over the past 28 years of documented American history. The number of firearms in civilian circulation have been steadily increasing over that time period, and the number of firearm-related fatalities has not been equivalently increasing. However, again, since there seems to be some confusion on the concept, proving “more guns = more deaths” to be false does not prove “more guns = fewer deaths” to be true. Doing so would require accounting for far more variables than I did, and involve far more interesting math than I employed, and require controlling for far more variables than I care to.

2. When comparing raw numbers, there is a weak, negative correlation between the number of firearms in America and the number of firearm-related fatalities, and that correlation seems to become more negative with additional data.

3. When comparing rates, there is a strong, negative correlation between the number of firearms per person in America and the number of firearm-related fatalities per person, and that correlation seems to become more negative with additional data.

And unlike the gun prohibitionists, he provides his full analysis and data. That is very important in this sort of research. It allows other researchers the ability to replicate his results. Being able to do that serves to confirm the validity of his findings.

The work that Linoge did is very sophisticated but very understandable. I have had 5 semesters of statistics over the years and I would say the work he has done here is every bit as rigorous as what would be seen in a peer-reviewed journal article. Unlike a journal article, he explains what he did every step of the way and didn’t fill his page with academic jargon mumbo-jumbo.

The post that Linoge just put up should be read by everyone involved in the fight for gun rights. It is that important.

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Not Above The Rules

May 19, 2011 by 1 Comment

If you go the the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence’s website today, you will see a blue hole where their Twitter feed used to be. The reason is that their Twitter account has been suspended due to a violation of the terms of service. In other words, by using Twitter to “out” bloggers and, more importantly, reveal their personal information including home addresses, Ladd Everitt and CSGV broke the rules and are now paying for it.

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The @CSGV Twitter account was suspended because Linoge of Walls of the City blog requested that three of CSGV’s posts be removed because they constituted harassment. As one might expect from those of their ilk, Ladd Everitt and CSGV are playing the victim and claiming it was removed due to a false report.

Sebastian at Snow Flakes in Hell who has also been a target of their “outing” campaign and harassment posted this regarding their Facebook page and missing posts. It is easy to play the victim to your adoring synchophants when you remove all contradictory information. As it is, Sebastian refused to play their little game of releasing personal information on Ladd Everitt.

I think Linoge’s post, The Dustbin of History, really sums up the desperation shown by CSGV and the other gun prohibitionist groups. The “outing” campaign was just one manifestation of that desperation. It is definitely worth a read including following the embedded links.