Monthly Archives: February 2012

I screwed up and thankfully someone spotted it.  I grabbed the wrong spreadsheet and didn’t double check the UCR data to make sure it was the correct set before moving forward.

So upfront I need to state the following:

1. I screwed up, and I used the wrong data set for these graphs initially.
2. To many this could be considered misleading and attempting to hide the truth which impacts our credibility.  This was not intentional.
3. In this post I will show all the graphs affected within this post.  I also overwrote the current images to be correct with the 2010 UCS.  That is for all of you who hotlink, you don’t hotlink right?  At the end of this post I will also attach the spreadsheet used so you can inspect the data.

So, up front is the overall scores.  It ends up I was helping them, not hindering them.

R² fell to 0.0015 so it matches the R² from last September’s numbers.  As before it is completely insignificant and there is NO correlation between the Brady Scores and violent crime.

This chart also experienced a rapid decrease in R². It did have an effect on correlation however bringing it from –0.047 to a whopping 0.034!  For those of you who don’t know, that correlation is weaker as the strength is determined by an absolute value.  The sign just indicates direction.

R² plummeted on this chart.  The previous version was 0.613 correlation dropped as well to 0.605.  So again statistically irrelevant due to the low sample size, however the trend line is again opposite of the Brady Campaign claims.

Lastly we have the low rate graph.

Again, there are still 20 states with a crime rate below 300 per 100k.  The average Brady score is however did increase to 12.35.  Only three states of this group have a score above 20 though.  Still all states with a crime rate below 200 are below a Brady score of 10.

Also the total shift remains unchanged.

You can find the excel spreadsheet below.  So in closing, did I screw up, yes I did.  Did it affect the results, kind of but not really.  What I can say is my screw up wasn’t to our benefit, it was of benefit to the Brady Campaign.  Making those changes did nothing but make the correlations worse.

So in closing:

1. I screwed up, and I used the wrong data set for these graphs initially.
2. To many this could be considered misleading and attempting to hide the truth which impacts our credibility.  This was not intentional.  What I really did though was aid the enemy.
3. In this post I will show all the graphs affected within this post.  I also overwrite the current images after duplicating them to be correct with the 2010 UCS.  That is for all of you who hotlink, you don’t hotlink right, cause that isn’t nice?  Below is my data.

Use the graphs, validate the data, but don’t go stealing my work, this does take time.  Just give a link back here and say I did the work.  Is it really that hard?

2011 Brady Scores with 2010 UCR XLSX document.

So I was doing some checking tonight and discovered the following sequence of events.

As of 2140 Pacific time Smoke and Thunder(the real site) is down! Not only is it down, it appears it has been wiped:

I guess Smoking Blunder was too much for him. There’s a couple different options of why it went down from he figured the troll was done to someone’s lawyer was fully involved. This change was quite abrupt, I was working on checking for new profiles when all the sudden the member directory stopped working.

At 2147 I noticed the site now does the following the following:

This happens in chrome as well.

Now at 2151 it shows the following:

Umm, I don’t think so Timmy.  If anyone hacked that site, I know of no hacker that would just write “hacked”.  What would have happened would be, porn, general defacement of posts, or best of all a redirect.  Given the newly discovered Smoking Blunder, I would actually expect it to redirect there.

As defined by BenC in GBC:

hacked: i decided my attempt to troll the gun blogging community was doomed to failure, so i am taking my site down and putting “hacked” up to attempt to troll them further

Dude, I work in this crap for a living and as a person who loves being the “Red Team”, though I prefer the Blue to win in real life, I can think of no reason I would just display hacked on your site.  Especially since it isn’t even HTML.  It’s as if your entire website was erased, not hacked.  So, please, to continue the win, please continue visiting Smoking Blunder for your Gunnie Social Network needs.  Just look how funny those guys are!

Update 2227:

Yeah, I don’t think so Tim.  One that line doesn’t make sense, two, why don’t you just restore from your own back up.  You make backups right?

Update 2/27/2012 1100 Pacific:

Via email from Tango and I just verified it, Smoke and Thunder now just displays a webpage for his hosting provider.  It is suspected that he has surrendered the domain.  As I’m using my WYSIWYG editor I can’t easily put up a screenshot, but you can do it yourself if you want.  Guess he decided he couldn’t take the heat and got the hell out of the kitchen.

Update 2/27/2012 1345 Pacific:

It’s not over yet!  It appears that he’s moved hosts and is coming back for round two.  The site now shows a default construction page.

So early this afternoon my inbox started exploding with more about the current “Drama Llama”.  Normally I’d just continue ignoring the whole thing as I’ve done since the last post, but this was just too good.  Linoge posted it, then Weer’d, Evyl Robot, Jennifer, and then Only Guns and Money.  All I can say is this guy must have really done something because there’s a lot of detail in it.  Either that or there was a group working on it, like some sort of conspiracy.  Who knows, like Law Dog, I don’t hate the guy, I don’t care two shits about him, though I would say I know he’s probably going to get pissy over this.

So without further ado, here is Smoking Blunder, not to be confused with Smoke and Thunder Chunder.

I applaud this individual on his attention to detail as he even recreated the redirect issue that was discovered yesterday.  The 404 redirect for Smoking Blunder is classic.

There are details spread throughout the site making fun of, what has to be the dumbest person on the planet, the Administrator Smoke and Chunder.  I’m sure in one way or another the idiot is going to blame me for this, just like he blamed me for someone making a profile of his own site.  The thing to remember about gun bloggers is this, they’re smart and they’re usually the opposite of inept when it comes to technology.

Anonymity only gets you so far and I’m sure there’s probably a bunch of people inquisitive enough to figure out exactly who this guy is.  I will say my wife would like to drill two nails through his testicals with a rope tied to each side that’s attached to a cinder block.  She then wants to shove that cinder block off a ledge into the ocean.  He can drown or sacrifice his nuts, his choice.  If you’re wondering why, here’s why.  Not to mention we have two friends that Oleg has taken pictures of too.  Erin’s response was classic though:

So just to be clear, you’re asking me to allow my pink pony to frolic in your mudhole? Because that’s what I think when J. Random Netguy asks me to “back channel” him.

I’ll back channel you, baby. Good and hard. Unf unf unf.

I wonder how bad his meltdown is going to be from this one.  Especially since this time around he can’t stop the signal on his profile.

Mr. Weissmann, speaking at a University of San Francisco conference called “Big Brother in the 21st Century” on Friday, said that the court ruling prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use.

Currently they’re trying to figure out how they’re going to get the devices back without a warrant.  Why are they having problems?

For instance, he said, agency is now “wrestling” with the legality of whether agents can lift up the lid of a trash can without committing trespass. The majority opinion in U.S. v. Jones held that the agents had trespassed when placing the GPS device on a car without warrant.

They’re going to try the ask nicely route.  Because what judge is going to sign a warrant because you placed things illegally on someone’s car to begin with?

I’m sure any such conversation is going to go something like this:

Me: Can I help you?

FBI: Yes sir, see we were illegally monitoring your vehicle and we need to get our GPS back now.

Me: Which vehicle was it on?

FBI: Well sir we can just grab it if you’ll let us.

Me: You were illegally monitoring my vehicle and now you think I’m going to let you near it again? Which vehicle?

FBI: Your truck, on the rear bumper.

Me: Pulls it off and says, “I’ll Idaho Stress test it and send you the pieces and results.” *slams door*

Then I would proceed to dissect and reverse engineer it, document it, and then blow up the parts.  Then being a man of my word I’d mail them the pieces with a piece of paper that says, “You crap failed.”

A scout is trustworthy, so I guess I must be.  Someone else agrees too!

So It’s a meme!

The rules are : “I will write down five things that indicate to me that a gun owner or shooter maybe is an honest one.  Then I will tag five other gun owners who are also bloggers and I hope will participate.”

Ok, I will weigh in, some of the people I link may or may not continue but they’re being listed because they’re worth listening to.

1. If they don’t know the answer to a question they will say so and go find out the answer not just for you but themselves as well.
2. If something was lucky, they’ll even say so while laughing about it.  We all know that often luck as a lot to do with it.  I think luck played a huge factor two weeks ago, but I also tried to understand what was going on.
3. Seeks knowledge of those who’ve been doing this longer and doesn’t just dismiss comments.  Adam and Joe have both given me comments during the matches.  When they talk, I shut the hell up and listen.
4. Doesn’t interrupt others to chime in with their opinion or just talk for the sake of talking.  When they start talking you have an urge to just be quite and listen to what they have to say.
5. They aren’t out to prove anything to anyone but themselves.  When you’re only goal is improving yourself you have a very unique even perspective.

So who matches that bill:

First up is Joe at The View From North Central Idaho.  He matches all of those point above and even more.

Second is Linoge at Walls of the City.

Third is Weer’d at Weer’d World.

Fourth is Law Dog at The Law Dog Files.

Fifth is Kevin Baker from The Smallest Minority.

If you’re listed and want to participate, awesome, if not no worries.  I will say that if those above aren’t in your regular reading, they probably should be.