Archive for the 'Media' Category

Hey Google-YouTube.  Why do you suck so badly?

I removed a post made by fellow writer PGF.  I did so after receiving this note from Ammoland editor Fredy Riehl, as follows.

Hello  captainsjournal100″ (sic)

You have content from our website that is in violation of our copyrights. (here is one example, you have multiple.)

The Captain’s Journal » Self-Defense Skills and Drills, The Casino Drill (captainsjournal.com)

 Please remove all content and images you may have scraped from our domain at once and email us notice it has all been deleted and scrubbed from your domain captainsjournal.com

This is a poorly written letter with awful editing (e.g., you don’t end the sentence with a period if there is a qualifier in parentheses, nor put a period inside the parentheses, I don’t know what the ” is about at the beginning of the letter, etc.).  But I got the gist of his offense.

I responded to Fredy as follows.

Mr. Riehl,

To avoid problems with you, the offending post has been removed.  The post was made by one of my somewhat less experienced co-writers, not me, but that’s irrelevant to the main point.

But let me make this clear to you.  I don’t consider any other post (of which I’m aware) to have violated ANY legal stipulations whatsoever.  I consider previous posts in which TCJ has linked Ammoland to be “fair use.”  I make precisely zero (0) dollars or cents from my web site.  In fact, I have to pay for the services.  This is a labor of love for the sake of the 2A.

Furthermore, I’m surprised that you would have sent this note.  You clearly don’t understand the way the internet works.  We ALWAYS lift a bit of pose out of articles, commentary, and observations, usually make some comments or remarks of our own, whether agreeing and expanding on the points (usually the case) or in rare cases disagreeing and explaining why, and then send the reader to the link we provide for Ammoland (or whatever other publisher).  This increases (a) your traffic, and (b) your internet power (Google Page Rank).  That you don’t understand this is a testimony to … frankly, I don’t know what.  I rarely get notes like this except from very small publishers who get almost no traffic.  Again, I’m quite surprised at you.  Almost stunned at the ignorance of your note.

David Codrea and I have exchanged links like this almost forever, and if I do lift some limited content from his web site or Ammoland article (or Firearms News), I will NEVER copy in a link he provides himself based on his own research.  I have also helped him a bit with research (usually limited but it has happened), never demanding payment or recognition.

Henceforth, I will link to Ammoland almost never.

See how that works?  Was that what you intended?

And I will add that the instances where I have helped David are extremely rare and the instances where he has helped me far outnumber the times I’ve helped him.  But the point still stands.

For evidence of what I’m saying, go peruse Instapundit any day to see the prose they lift from articles, sending visits to the source.  It’s all fair use.  This is the way the internet works.  PGF responded to me with this note.

Not only did I link the full article but what i did amounted to a tease and promo, even directing the reader that they had to procede to ammoland to get the main and important information.

I responded back with this note.

I know.  They’re acting like a small and inexperienced publisher.  This is all water over the dam.  This is fair use, and they know it.

I’m not worried about it – in fact, a bit offended that he sent the note to begin with.

This is why the 2A community might fail in the end.  He thinks we’re siphoning traffic.  Rather, we’re sending it to him.

Fredy finally responded with this: “Thank you for your fast action and for your support of our second amendment.  This is all just a matter of housekeeping when we have a large site with lawyers involved.”

I don’t think so.  I think the Ammoland lawyers know the difference between copywrite violations and fair use by sites who make no income (but rather, send traffic to the source).  I think Fredy has a flair for the dramatic.

And thus, I won’t be linking Ammoland anymore.  I thought I should explain this to readers.

Armed America News.

by Anonymous:

Guns.com, one of the industry’s top websites for gun-related news, reviews, and a not-too-new firearm and accessory marketplace, has recently implemented a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for all employees, including remote workers. While the move has been seen as forward-thinking by some, others aren’t so convinced that it was such a smart move.

The company announced their decision the last day of September in a company-wide email that was sent out less than an hour before close-of-day. The company, which just celebrated its 10-year anniversary, is mandating that all employees provide proof of Covid-19 vaccination before November 15. Without it, employment with Guns.com will be terminated as of that date.

While two exceptions are provided — or rather applications for exemption — some employees have little faith in them. The medical exemption, for example, provides a list of conditions which are not considered valid reasons for opting out of the Covid vaccine. This includes any autoimmune disorder. Just to reiterate, even if you are immune compromised, Guns.com still requires you to get the jab. And then there’s a religious exemption, which has historically been a “can’t touch this” kind of document. The Guns.com religious exemption wants employees to identify and explain their sincerely held religious beliefs which preclude the vaccine, in addition to indicating whether you have asked for such an exemption from previous employers, the outcome of that exemption, and the company with which the religious exemption was submitted. They also require you to explain “whether you are opposed to all vaccines, and if not, the religious basis on which you object to the Covid-19 vaccine in particular (as opposed to other vaccines).”

We should always be careful with anonymous sources, but in this case an inquiry was made to Mr. Greg Minkler who responded and stated “no comment.”  If it wasn’t true, it would have been easy enough to deny it and renounce such a mandate.

This is an awful look for Guns.com.

I’ll wait, but until I learn otherwise, I’ll never link Guns.com again, and won’t even read them.

If this is true, they are dead to me.

That’s not cool at all.  I’ll help him call out the perps.

I recall an instance where one of the talking head generals on the national news wrote a commentary about the campaign in Afghanistan (or maybe it was Iraq) where he had lifted two entire paragraphs out of one of my posts, word for word, and put his name on the article without attribution for his source.

As I said, not cool. It’s theft, whether held to account or not.

NYT does a fawning piece on UBL.

They forgot to mention the massive stashes of porn loaded on his computer that was confiscated by SpecOps.  Guess that was inconvenient to the Islamic narrative and the great picture of a loving family man.

Say it ain’t so.

“Last week, the Biden administration promised gun control groups that it will soon roll out a massive push for limits on firearm purchases and other measures. President Biden reiterated that promise on Sunday. And the television networks aren’t waiting to lay the groundwork for this effort. CBS is in a full-court press for gun control on its evening entertainment television shows. The bad guys are always white supremacists who use machine guns — supposedly AR-15s — to commit mass public shootings. Criminals in Mexico supposedly get machine guns from the United States. A father’s desire to protect his family only leads to tragedy when his daughter gets into the gun safe and uses the weapon in a mass public shooting. And guns in the home pose a danger for children. Gun registration is necessary for solving crime. NBC isn’t to be left out, showing a woman who tried but failed to use a gun to protect herself. Instead, her gun was taken from her and used to kill a police officer. The lesson is that owning a gun will only bring you grief. And that’s just in the first six weeks of the year. Every show gives an inaccurate impression about firearms, thereby helping in this push for gun restrictions. It’s as though these shows were written by Michael Bloomberg’s gun control organizations. Indeed, the networks are working with these groups.”

Oh I don’t think it’s that hard to get machine guns or any other kind of weapon from the U.S. to Mexico.  Just ask the U.S. DoJ and the ATF.  They’re experts at it.  And then just to clean up the mess they’ll prosecute and imprison the very FFL they forced to do the transfers.  Wipe, wipe, scrub, scrub, clean as a whistle.  No muss, no fuss.

As for TV, does anyone really watch that any more?  I don’t watch television.  Oh, I have to admit that I might turn on “For a Few Dollars More” just to watch the masterful job Lee Van Cleef does with the character Colonel Douglas Mortimer.  It’s just awesome viewing late at night on a Friday after a week of work.

Somehow, I don’t think Hollywood is happy with me feasting my eyes on righteous gun play for two hours and then ignoring all of their other crap.

And somehow I sense that they are desperate.  They want to be relevant in a market that is making them increasingly irrelevant.  They feel left out.  Pity.

First up is VCDL.  Nothing has affected their web site, but their Facebook page is gone.  Permanently, I would guess.  I don’t know if they’re seeking a replacement.

Second, 2A Sanctuary Groups is being censored.  They now have a MeWe page.

David Codrea.

“Lives lost to suicide are not as important as the public’s right to purchase firearms promptly, said Charles Heller, co-founder and spokesman for the Arizona Citizens Defense League,” the Arizona Daily Star cited Sunday in a report attempting to tie a university student suicide in with “same-day gun sales.”

That sounds pretty callous, doesn’t it? You’d think a seasoned advocate like Heller, a longtime radio host and AzCDL’s media coordinator, would be sensitive to that and more skilled at making his point without alienating people with such overt indifference to human tragedy.

That is if Heller actually said it. He actually didn’t.

“[Arizona Daily Star reporter Carol Ann Alaimo] made up a quote from me out of whole cloth,” Heller unequivocally declares at Liberty Watch Radio. “That quote is a lie.”

And he has the audio to prove it.

I have three main points to make here.

First, this is why Andrew Torba of Gab refers to folks like this as the legacy media.  They are no longer, and should not be referred to as, main stream media.  There is no honor left among them.

Second, I suspect that it doesn’t matter anyway.  They are preaching to their side.  Our side no longer cares what they say.  America is now too polarized for this to affect the enlightened.  Choices have been made, sides have been chosen, and in many ways we are speaking past each other.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to win the war of ideas, and winning requires engagement.  There will certainly be the occasional confused soul who gets blown about by the wind, and we may be able to persuade them to think rightly, but in my opinion the best medicine is to say the truth, tactfully but without apology, and let the chips fall.

Speaking of that, let me state without equivocation that the fact that someone may purchase a firearm and commit suicide with it is absolutely no justification whatsoever to infringe upon my right to purchase firearms or ammunition, be that infringement a waiting period, another background check, or whatever.

The issue with the wording the author chose to pin on him is that it is a formal logical fallacy, i.e., affirming a disjunct.

1. A is true or B is true.
2. B is true.
3. Therefore, A is not true.

It isn’t either-or.  It’s both-and.  Lives are important.  My right to purchase firearms is important.  My right to purchase firearms has nothing to do with the fact that a life is important.  I deny that infringing upon my rights will have any appreciable affect on lives lost due to suicide, and doing so certainly won’t have any affect on my life, as I do not intend to commit suicide.  That’s a sin.

Moreover, this isn’t how society is run.  The fact that someone may use a vehicle to drive drunk and kill themselves is no justification to infringe on my purchase of a vehicle.  The fact that someone may purchase food that is bad for them is no justification for forcing me to wait to purchase food or go to classes given by the government on what I should eat.

The tactful way to deal with this is to say that suicide is regrettable and sad, and God does not condone it.  And that observation has nothing whatsoever to do with my ownership of firearms or the speed with which I can purchase one.  And you can’t prove there is a connection.  Finally, even applying a rule like that to firearms ownership is more than society does for the rest of life, whether drugs, vehicles, food, or anything else.

David Codrea.

“In 2012, only 322 people were murdered with any kind of rifle, F.B.I. data shows,” an exceedingly rare, honest analysis in The New York Times, of all places, revealed. How many of those fit the inconsistent definitions of “assault weapon” used by various states and gun-grabbing interests are unknown because such statistics are not known, but the obvious answer is a fraction of the 322, out of thousands of homicides.

Yet when you see a media outlet or a gun control group tweeting out their latest press release masked as news hysterically demanding semiautomatics and standard capacity magazines be banned and confiscated because they’re “weapons of war,” you see no “This claim is disputed” warning.

That’s because Twitter sucks and Jack Dorsey is a punk.  Twitter has become a replacement for serious thought by serious people, and is limited to whatever ten second sound bite someone can throw together.  It’s a venue for the attention-challenged.

One thing I do blame on Trump is that he stayed on Twitter after the election, lending credibility to that venue, forcing readership to go there, and empowering Jack Dorsey to levels far above what his stupid little empire warrants.

Trump should have let Twitter die the death it so richly deserves.

Reddit/firearms.

Mrgunsngear did a video on Biden’s gun plan. It was as honest and factual as all his videos are. He only used information from the ATF and Biden’s website to describe what the gun plan would mean for Americans.

Youtube SHUT IT DOWN. Here is a link to Mrgunsngear’s facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/148004891979252/posts/3336444793135230/?sfnsn=mo

I actually watched the video. It wasn’t controversial. It literally was just him explaining Biden’s gun plan.

Edit: Here is a link to the video that was posted on YouTube. You can judge for yourself. There is nothing controversial about it. https://fb.watch/1lHwZyYrbF/

Ha!  Until Fakebook takes it down.

A long, long time ago, American patriots should have seen this coming and planned for a different social media platform.

This is our own fault for relying on the communists.