New York Court Holds Stun Gun Ban is Not Unconstitutional, in Contravention of Caetano

Herschel Smith · 30 Mar 2025 · 2 Comments

Dean Weingarten has a good find at Ammoland. Judge Eduardo Ramos, the U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York,  has issued an Opinion & Order that a ban on stun guns is constitutional. A New York State law prohibits the private possession of stun guns and tasers; a New York City law prohibits the possession and selling of stun guns. Judge Ramos has ruled these laws do not infringe on rights protected by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. Let's briefly…… [read more]

Baltimore Police Academy Legal Instructor: Recruits Hit The Streets With Poor Understanding Of The Law

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

The Baltimore Sun:

A third of Baltimore Police recruits set to leave the academy and hit the streets lack a basic understanding of the laws governing constitutional policing and are being pushed through by the department nonetheless, according to the academy’s head of legal instruction.

“We’re giving them a badge and a gun tomorrow, the right to take someone’s liberty, ultimately the right to take someone’s life if it calls for it, and they have not demonstrated they can meet [basic] constitutional and legal standards,” said Sgt. Josh Rosenblatt Friday.

After a gun and badge ceremony at the academy Saturday, the recruits will receive eight weeks of training on the street before formally becoming Baltimore police officers, department officials noted.

But Rosenblatt, an attorney by training, said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun that 17 of those 50 recruits failed to pass scenario-based practical tests on legal standards related to basic police work, such as the need for probable cause before making arrests.

He said all did pass eventually, but only after he and other legal instructors were removed from administering the tests.

Some of the recruits, he said, have not been able to master basic material. Four have been in the academy for 18 months, having been recycled back from previous classes to continue their training, and still haven’t grasped the legal concepts, he said.

“With 18 months of training, they’re still failing to meet very basic legal standards,” he said. “Don’t illegally arrest people. Don’t illegally search people. These are not high standards.”

So we learn a number of things from this interesting report.  First of all, the legal instructor is an idiot.  He says, “We’re giving them a badge and a gun tomorrow, the right to take someone’s liberty, ultimately the right to take someone’s life if it calls for it.”

But if we’ve covered anything over these past years, it’s that rights and liberty come from God, not the state.  A constitution is a covenant, or solemn and sacred agreement between parties.  That covenant stipulates how the state will treat citizens.  No one can take rights.

For example, the right of due process must not be violated, period.  There is no excuse for violating the right of due process, and the Patriot Act is just such a violation.  In fact, with regards to taking a life, the Supreme Court decided in Tennessee versus Garner that a cop cannot shoot an escapee who is running from the police.  Cops can only discharge their weapons under the same circumstances I can, i.e., if a life is in danger.  In this case, a right isn’t being taken, it’s being protected.

And the very reason that the Supreme Court decided that a cop cannot shoot an escapee?  Because it bypasses the right of due process and places the cop in the position of removing a right, the very thing the legal instructor is saying cops can do under certain circumstances.  Do I need to drop what I’m doing and come up there to teach the course?

Second, the recruits cannot even come up the level of this idiot’s understanding of the law.  They’re going to make them all cops regardless of the fact that they cannot pass basic competency tests.  And why do we know this?  Why are they going to make them cops anyway?

Well, because of the third thing we learn.  This department is full of liars.  They did all pass the tests in spite of the fact that they hadn’t learned the material, they just had to do it without being proctored by the legal instructor.  Wink, wink.

But remember boys and girls.  The police are there to serve and protect, and they are the only ones qualified to handle firearms.

An Open Letter To Marty Daniel And Daniel Defense

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

Dear Marty,

I see that you weighed in with support for the “fix-NICS” bill.  I was sad to see this, so I wrote you a note that went something like this (in abbreviated form).

Sir,

I feel that this will be a huge mistake and I wish there was a way to undo this.  Unfortunately, there isn’t.  My readers have already sent me this information, and I was wondering if there was anything I could say to them about this?

I haven’t received a reply from you Marty, but I assume you’ve been busy, sir.  I also assume you’ve heard an earful about this, because you’ve withdrawn your support.

Very well.  I’m a forgiving sort of person and it’s the same position I took on Rock River Arms when they flirted with gun control in their own state, intentionally or not.  I’ve made many mistakes in my life, and my aim is to learn from them all and become a better person.

But this episode requires a little bit of unpacking.  You clearly demonstrated bad judgment in the initial endorsement of this bill.  I know that you are a Christian and a defender of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  This means a lot to me, and more than anything else will earn my trust and patronage.  This is also why I recently purchased a CMMG gun – they are a Christian company too.

As a Christian, you must be wiser and more circumspect than those around you.  You cannot be thrown about by the shifting tides and the changing winds.  You must understand that the results of the fall in Adam and his federal headship over all mankind causes sin, and sin causes the very things that the progressives use to foist their schemes of control over others.

You must understand that firearms were ubiquitous in early schools, so much so that gun clubs were a thing.  The changes wrought by society are entirely due to rejection of the very gospel that you claim to support.  And no rejection of the gospel can be repaired or ameliorated by a law or new scheme of control.

Gun control is evil in all of its forms.  It was Dr. Greg Bahnsen who pointed out the utter wickedness of gun control schemes.

The Bible does contain a few direct references to weapons control. There were many times throughout Israel’s history that it rebelled against God (in fact, it happened all the time). To mock His people back into submission to His Law, the Lord would often use wicked neighbors to punish Israel’s rebellion. Most notable were the Philistines and the Babylonians. 1 Samuel 13:19-22 relates the story: “Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plowshares, mattocks, axes, and sickles sharpened…So on the day of battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in this hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them.” Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon also removed all of the craftsmen from Israel during the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 24:14). Both of these administrations were considered exceedingly wicked including their acts of weapons control.

Furthermore, you must understand that the progressives are incrementalists and have been at this a very long time.  They are patient in achieving their goals.  Here is a perfect example.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

This is why a registry is the Holy Grail for the progressive.  They won’t stop with their initial victories.  Oh no.  In fact, they’ve told you so.  As for this so called “fix-NICS” bill, you must understand what while you might intend something like that for good, the state will never work it that way.

Any increase in the registry of people who cannot own guns will sweep into its chasm veterans who were diagnosed with PTSD, didn’t know they were on a prohibited list (because Obama’s VA reported them as prohibited), try to buy a gun, and then find out they have committed a felony and end up being arrested under this new bill.

Any increase in the registry will sweep into its chasm men and women who someone wanted to be on the list and [falsely] reported them as mentally defective, with the village witch doctors – or psychiatrists – employed by the state now an integral part of the process.

All of that bypasses the right of due process.  One of my readers observed this about court appointed mental health professionals.

Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence. The issue is criminal conduct, crime. Suggesting that persons with legal disabilities are criminals shows the nonsensical argument of this politician and his fellow control freaks. Shame on them.

And just today, another astute reader made this observation.

Just as a gun registry is a precursor to gun confiscation, a mental illness registry is a precursor to the “confiscation” of the mentally ill.

The denial of second amendment rights for a certain category of people is a precedent for the denial of any and all other rights held by people in that category.

All men have certain inalienable rights. U.S. citizens have those rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

Denial or abridgement of those rights for any portion of the population, absent act or crime by each individual, is premised on a determination of one or the other of two things: 1) No human or citizen has any rights that may not be abridged or denied by government at will; or, 2) A certain segment of the population may be deemed to be neither citizens, nor fully human.

Our founders correctly believed that it’s never a good idea to give the state more power, or to centralize what power does exist in the state.  If America is suffering from a lapse in moral constitution, it has nothing to do with the laws or lack thereof.  As a Christian, you know the corrective for that problem.

Again, you must be wiser than your opponents, if indeed the controllers are your opponents.  Even the so-called National Association of Evangelicals, which is anything but national or evangelical, has flirted with gun control because they want to be cool, hip, modern and progressive.  You need to be better and smarter than that.

When the teachers of religion go their own way, you need to remember the Bible.  When the state sings its siren song of more peace for more power, you need to remember that, as Dr. Bahnsen pointed out, all gun control is based in wickedness, and the state is always lying to you.

Please, please, please do not ever let this happen again.  It will take time and hard work to rebuild trust with the gun community.  Please invest the time and work to do just that.

John Walsh Wants You On A Mental Illness Registry Even If You’re Only A “Would-Be” Gun Owner

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

TMZ:

The host of “America’s Most Wanted,” who also helped create a national registry for sex offenders, says the same system is needed for mentally ill people looking to buy guns.

We got John Walsh Saturday at LAX and asked what he made of Florida’s new gun law — in which the age limit to purchase guns was raised to 21 … and teachers can now be armed.

He says it’s a step in the right direction, but also thinks arming teachers is the wrong way to protect schools from potential shooters — he wants trained pros on the ground instead.

Here’s the most interesting tidbit … John apparently believes a national registry logging people with serious mental illness needs to be implemented for would-be gun owners.

I don’t watch television so I don’t see him on TV.  But you see where this is going, right?  The progs want a registry of everyone with notes about what the village witch doctor thinks about him.  We’ve seen this advocated before.

If you think the second amendment is all about amelioration of tyranny, then maybe you will be on that list too.  After all, who decides what mental illness is and who suffers from it?  Remember what commenter Menckenlite observed concerning guns and mental health?

Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence. The issue is criminal conduct, crime. Suggesting that persons with legal disabilities are criminals shows the nonsensical argument of this politician and his fellow control freaks. Shame on them.

Never forget that such a system bypasses due process.  That’s why the progressives love it.

Trump Administration Takes Action On Gun Control

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

Newsweek:

The Trump administration took its first steps to ban bump stocks on guns through regulatory action Saturday morning.

The Department of Justice submitted notice of proposed regulation to clarify the meaning of “machinegun” in the National Firearms Act and Gun Control Act includes bump stock devices, and that federal law, therefore, prohibits their possession, sale, or manufacture.

“President Trump is absolutely committed to ensuring the safety and security of every American and he has directed us to propose a regulation addressing bump stocks,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a statement.

Well I guess it does matter after all what Trump thinks about gun rights, and I guess he isn’t exactly the man he made himself out to be, is he?

Also noteworthy is that Trump praised Florida’s new gun control law, including the banning of bump stocks and the prohibition against persons under 21 from purchasing guns.

Yes, I know.  Trump is better than Hillary.  No, Trump isn’t pro-gun.  Yes, Trump is who he made himself out to be.  He never intimated that he was a strong second amendment supporter, at least as we understand the second amendment.  His words were always limited to concealed carry and how it could help with crime.  His son was always a Fudd, concerned more about hunters.

It’s the way it is folks.  Trump gave us a little more time.  He isn’t playing 3-D chess.

 

Senator Cornyn Has Enough Votes For NICS Bill

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

The Texas Tribune:

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has enough support to pass his “Fix NICS” gun control bill without the possibility of a filibuster, his office said Friday morning.

It’s not yet clear when the bill might get a vote, but a staff member said there are now 62 sponsors of the bill — a significant milestone. The bill would hold government agencies accountable for failing to properly document individuals’ criminal histories in the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

Cornyn and U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., first launched that bill in November after the Sutherland Springs shooting that killed more than two dozen people. But it has stalled in the Senate since then, despite having dozens of senators sign on as co-sponsors recent weeks.

The bill has bipartisan support, though Texas’ other U.S. senator, Republican Ted Cruz, is not among the co-sponsors.

We could go into detail on what this bill does and doesn’t do, but I think there are dangers lurking in this bill.  I also want to make clear that my objection to it is that the entire concept of the NICS is an unconstitutional infringement.

3-Gun & Tactical Rifle Scopes

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

In the interest of following up George’s question on rifle scopes, I currently use a Vortex Strike Eagle (although I don’t currently shoot 3-Gun).  It’s a second focal plane scope, and it’s price point is very reasonable.  I am interested in the newer Vortex Viper, but it’s price point is higher.

Here is a video that is a little dated, but still has some interesting information and perspective.

Also, Vortex explains first and second focal plane for us.

Please feel free to weigh in with comments explaining your choice of scope and why you chose it, along with price point.

Miramar Police Department Has Suspended Two Officers From Their SWAT Team For Responding To The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting Without Having Orders To Do So

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

Blue Lives Matter:

The Miramar Police Department has suspended two officers from their SWAT team for responding to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting without having orders to do so.

When the first reports of an active shooter came out, the Miramar officers were in training in Coral Springs, nearby the Parkland high school, and they rushed to assist in stopping the carnage that left 17 students and faculty fatally shot, and another 16 wounded, on Valentine’s Day, the Miami Herald reported.

The police response to the mass shooting at the school – specifically that of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office – has been highly criticized for the incident commander’s failure to use updated active-shooter response methods.

Broward County Sheriff’s Captain Jan Jordan has been criticized for ordering officers to set up a perimeter rather than sending them in to stop the shooter, whose whereabouts were still unknown.

Several police officers and medics have reported that they believed more lives were lost because the incident commander wouldn’t let them respond earlier.

Some critics have called the officers who stayed outside and waited for permission to enter “cowards,” but now Miramar police are punishing two members of their own elite unit who did rush toward danger to try to save students’ lives.

Miramar Police Detectives Jeffrey Gilbert and Carl Schlosser were suspended from the Miramar SWAT team eight days after the shooting in Parkland, according to the Miami Herald.

Both remain on active duty with the department, but working in different capacities, the Sun-Sentinelreported.

“Effective immediately you have been suspended from the SWAT Team until further notice,” Miramar SWAT team commander Captain Kevin Nosowicz wrote in a Feb. 22 memo obtained by the Miami Herald through a public records request. “Please make arrangements with the training department to turn in your SWAT-issued rifle.”

The memo said Det. Gilbert and Det. Schlosser acted “without the knowledge or authorization from your chain of command” and created an “officer safety situation due to dispatch not knowing your location or activity” by heading to the massacre-in-progress independently.

An “officer safety situation.”  Next up, a little more detail.

The human urge to aid in a disaster is strong. But it can also run counter to police training. Too much response to a mass casualty situation can create confusion and hinder responders, as recent mass shootings have shown, according to Pat Franklin, a retired Miami Beach police detective.

“This is not their area, this is not their jurisdiction,” said Franklin, who consults with law enforcement agencies on internal affairs investigations. “You don’t want to let those guys loose into something that’s chaotic where they might take inappropriate action. It is prudent to have them stand down unless there is a plan.”

Of course, given the history of SWAT engagements we’ve documented over the years, I doubt that taking inappropriate actions are of a concern to the police.  They do it all day long every day all over America.  No, the issue here is as I’ve told you before.

You can call them cowards, and they are indeed just that.  But – and listen to me again – they followed procedure.  It runs contrary to procedure to save people.  It runs contrary to police procedure to put officer safety anything but first.  It runs contrary to procedure to go outside the chain of command and take actions deemed appropriate by the professional on the scene.  It even runs contrary to procedure to enter jurisdiction not your own in order to save lives.

Here that again.  “This is not their area, this is not their jurisdiction.”  It’s not even acceptable to render comfort and aid to children being shot when you’re not in your own jurisdiction.  If you are a citizen who helps or saves someone else, if you’re holding a weapon when the police arrive and follow their procedures, you’re going to get shot.  Even if you’re a cop and you render aid outside your own jurisdiction, you’re going to get disciplined.

Because.  Procedure.  Officer safety first.  Chain of command.  And remember boys and girls, these are the people who want you to be disarmed and unable to take care of your own people.

The Weekly Standard Goes Gun Control

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

Normally I don’t like to lift prose out of articles at length because I like to send traffic to the original post.  That’s not necessarily true here.  I don’t give a crap about The Weekly Standard for more than a few reasons, not the least of which is that they are gun controllers.  Why else would you publish gun control advocacy like this wrapped in the patriotic blanket of state’s rights?

Nino would not approve.

The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia never intended for guns to end up in schools—and he said so 10 years ago. When he wrote the landmark District of Columbia v. Heller decision, Scalia declared that the “right to keep and bear arms” was an individual right. It was a watershed moment for gun rights advocates. Scalia, ever the careful textualist, was quite specific and forceful in his 2008 decision. And while he may not have imagined a president pushing for armed classrooms, his words are prescient a decade later.

In the years leading up to the Heller decision, gun regulations had varied dramatically: a handgun legally purchased in Arizona might get you a felony conviction in the nation’s capital. Enter Dick Anthony Heller. As a licensed special police officer for the District of Columbia, Heller could carry a gun while on duty, but not while at home. The D.C. handgun ban became the central issue in his lawsuit. In the end, Scalia and four fellow conservative justices agreed: the ban was unconstitutional, and the Second Amendment was an individual right.

That’s probably what most people know about Heller. You can keep your handguns. Neither the District of Columbia, nor other cities, can take away what is a natural right. But most people probably haven’t read Heller (and who could blame them, it’s 157 pages long). If you did read the decision, you might remember that Scalia and the majority specifically staked out what limitations on guns are still in place. (For instance, machine guns are off limits.)

But Scalia also talks about schools in the decision:

. . . nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings . . .

This unambiguous statement is even repeated in the syllabus of the decision. It’s clear Scalia wasn’t pushing to turn America into a gun bazaar—especially if the guns were near schoolchildren, felons, and “sickos” (as President Trump likes to say).

Some states do have armed teachers. Trump made sure to highlight that point when he called on the governors of Texas and Arkansas during a recent televised event. But here again, the court has an answer. Scalia makes it clear in Heller that much of gun regulation is a federalist issue: “States, we said, were free to restrict or protect the right under their police powers.”

So, if Gov. Greg Abbott wants to have armed schools in Texas but Gov. Jerry Brown prefers California’s restrictive guns laws, well, fine. If the state law doesn’t violate the Constitution, then it’s not an issue for Washington. It’s not clear that Trump was thinking about such federalist nuance when he declared “Gun free zones are dangerous. The bad guys love gun-free zones.”

When I first wrote about guns in schools last month I was primarily concerned with the unintended consequences of placing half a million guns close to hormonally-challenged teenagers. Today, I’m also worried about a president who seems to view America as more of a personal fiefdom than as a collection of states with different peoples, traditions, and priorities. What’s good for San Francisco is not always good for San Antonio.

Defense of the image of God in man is always good, regardless of where it is or who does it.  The fact that The Weekly Standard published this pabulum speaks volumes on just what kind of people run the place.

I always said that Heller was weak, as was McDonald, and I can go back in time and find numerous examples of said dislike for the Heller decision.  But the constitution is a covenant whose rights are applied to all people in every nook and cranny of America all of the time.  It’s not by mistake that the progressives see rights as limited, but constitutional allowances for wars of choice, federal taxation, the CIA, the FBI, the DHS, the EPA, and on and on the list could go, from the department of education to SWAT teams and the war on drugs, to federally controlled and mandated health care, to subsidized housing and redistribution of wealth, and federal ownership of land.

The powers of the federal government (except to enforce the guaranteed right of RKBA) are unlimited, but your rights don’t even rate enough for any one to care if a state wants to violate them.

Or in other words, The Weekly Standard, like all progressives, has it ass backwards.

How Brazil’s ‘Lord Of Guns’ Armed Rio’s Drug War With U.S. Weapons

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

HuffPo:

The guns were cached in swimming pool heating units ― pools and their accessories being the sort of thing you can ship from Miami to Rio de Janeiro without arousing suspicion. The smugglers had gutted the units and filled them back to their original weight with rifles and ammunition.

There were 60 assault-style rifles and ammo in the shipment that arrived at Rio’s international airport on June 1, 2017 ― 45 of them manufactured in the United States. And they were all almost certainly intended for the drug gangs fighting among themselves and against local police in Rio’s favelas, helping drive a sharp spike in violence across Brazil’s second-largest city. These were Brazilian turf wars, waged with weapons manufactured in Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Illinois, Minnesota, South Carolina, Alabama and Florida.

The shipment was no one-time deal. The Brazilian traffickers had a routine, with code words rooted in Portuguese lingo. The assault-style rifles were flechas in the traffickers’ slang — arrows. The cartridges were biscoitos, or cookies. Bullets and ammunition were jujuba de Smith: jujuba like the candy, Smith as in Smith & Wesson. At one point in their investigation, Rio’s Civil Police listened in on a phone call between two men, one identified as Gil dos Santos Almeida, the other as João Victor Silva Roza, who police say helped negotiate weapon sales in Rio de Janeiro. The following is a translation of a transcript of the call included in Federal Police records and documents from Brazil’s Federal Public Ministry …

Barbieri’s case, however, highlights another phenomenon that is rarely discussed: the fact that American guns often find their way out of the United States via smugglers looking to make an easy profit by selling cheaply bought contraband at a sizable markup.

“This has been going on for decades and decades, because the United States is the candy store of guns for the world,” said Joseph Vince, a retired special agent for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF. “This has nothing to do with the Second Amendment, or hunters or shooters. This has to do with us creating a situation that takes a lot of lives and provides the means for organized crime to exist in these countries.”

Breathless and dramatic, yes?  But there is this admission.

American rifles are not exactly flooding Brazil, at least not to the extent that they have flowed into Mexico and other Latin American countries. Still, in the last three years, Brazil’s Federal Police have seized more than 1,500 American-made guns, most of them from people the police say are drug traffickers and members of drug gangs, according to a report the Federal Police released in December.

1500 American-made guns.  That’s the problem here?  Really, if the alleged gun writers just knew a little more about their subject they wouldn’t look so stupid and say such stupid things.

The folks at Hyatt Gun Shop – one of the largest gun shops on earth generally with 5000+ people on line at any time searching for guns – will tell you that the gunsmiths at Hyatt (there are eight on duty all the time, with many more in the wings) would rather work on a Springfield Armory 1911 than a Kimber any day because it’s a better weapon.

In case you didn’t know, the Springfield Armory 1911s are made in Brazil, where the gunsmiths and fabricators are as good as any in America.  Brazil doesn’t need American weapons because they have their own gunsmiths.  We just pay them more to make good armaments for us instead of Brazilians.

HuffPo: Go back to square one, learn your subject, and start over.  America isn’t Brazil’s problem.  Brazil is Brazil’s problem.

Anti-Gunners Whine, Bitch And Moan: Uh Oh, Here Comes A Flock Of Wah Wah’s

BY Herschel Smith
8 years ago

The Verge:

In the days after the Parkland shooting, users flocked to Wikipedia to learn about guns. When users searched for “AR-15” — the style of gun used during the shooting — they were directed to the page for the “Colt AR-15.” The page was viewed more than 200,000 times on the day after Parkland, a hundred times its usual traffic. But those users didn’t find much information about mass shootings or political efforts. In fact, the Colt AR-15 page made no mention of gun control at all, instead spending over a thousand words describing the technical details of the gun’s various parts.

That focus on hardware was by design. For months, the “Colt AR-15” page has been largely edited by a group of gun enthusiast editors. They joined together under the name “Wikipedia Project: Firearms,” or “WP:Firearms” for short. Expertise groups are common on Wikipedia, and in some ways, WP:Firearms fits the mold perfectly: a collection of users with detailed knowledge of a specific topic, keeping a close eye on all the pages where that knowledge might be relevant. But on Wikipedia, as in the real world, the users with the deepest technical knowledge of firearms are also the most fervent gun owners and the most hostile to gun control. For critics, that’s led to a persistent pro-gun bias on the web’s leading source of neutral information at a time when the gun control debate is more heated than ever.

Much of the alleged bias comes from how the articles are structured. For months before Parkland, information on generic AR-15 models was relegated to the Modern Sporting Rifles entry, which detailed various models and after-market additions, but made no mention of mass shootings or other gun control efforts. When some editors tried to include those topics, the backlash from WP:Firearms was immediate.

“Mass-shootings already have their own articles, all relevant info is, or should be, in that page and not needlessly duplicated on other articles,” one editor wrote. “If we start adding info about just one shooting incident to one tenuously-connected article, we’ll be opening a literal Pandora’s box (figuratively speaking).”

Fighting a similarly proposed edit on the Smith & Wesson page, user Trekphiler went further. “There are millions of weapons in civilian hands, including thousands of AR-15s,” he wrote, “and none of them have harmed anyone. This is the usual gun confiscator garbage.”

When users tried to detail the gun control concerns in the Colt AR-15 page, where most “AR-15” searches were still being directed, they ran into another technicality. “Sorry, this is an article about Colt’s AR-15 ™ rifle,” one WP:Firearms editor responded. “This is not the correct article for information that is about AR-15’s in general. That section of the article should be edited to remove the references to crimes that were not committed with Colt AR-15 rifles.”

The fight over gun nomenclature goes far beyond Wikipedia. Gun enthusiasts see terms like “assault weapon” as imprecise, while concrete terms like “semi-automatic” are overly broad. Even the term “AR-15” is difficult to pin down: what was a once-specific trademark has metastasized into a trans-corporate branding tool. “Modern sporting rifle,” the term preferred by WP:Firearms, is seen by many as a public relations gambit by the gun industry to downplay how deadly the weapons really are. There’s no perfect term, but as long as the two sides are fighting over nomenclature, any proposed measures will get lost in a maze of conflicting terms. And on crowdsourced and managed Wikipedia, that means heated, arcane, and tautological debates, often driven by political and cultural biases.

The title of The Verge article is “How gun buffs took over Wikipedia’s AR-15 page.”  Adam Weinstein also bitches about the throw-down he is witnessing over guns.

The phenomenon isn’t new, but in the weeks since the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., a lot of gun-skeptical liberals are getting a taste of it for the first time: While debating the merits of various gun control proposals, Second Amendment enthusiasts often diminish, or outright dismiss their views if they use imprecise firearms terminology. Perhaps someone tweets about “assault-style” weapons, only to be told that there’s no such thing. Maybe they’re reprimanded that an AR-15 is neither an assault rifle nor “high-powered.” Or they say something about “machine guns” when they really mean semiautomatic rifles. Or they get sucked into an hours-long Facebook exchange over the difference between the terms clip and magazine.

Has this happened to you? If so, you’ve been gunsplained: harangued with the pedantry of the more-credible-than-thou firearms owner, admonished that your inferior knowledge of guns and their nomenclature puts an asterisk next to your opinion on gun control.

It can feel infuriating, being forced to sweat the finest taxonomic distinctions between our nation’s unlimited variety of lethal weapons. I know this feeling acutely, having covered gun violence critically for the better part of a decade and having just buried an old mentor, killed in the Parkland massacre.

“Gunsplained and harangued.”  Ooo … if you think this is tough, just wait until you try to take them from us.  That’ll really be the bitchin’ day!

Just go cry me a river boys.  Grow a set, and stop griping over the fight you asked for on guns.  Uh oh, here comes a flock of wah wah’s.



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