California CCW - concealed carry forum

Woops. I was too confident in my own analysis here. I was just using ImageMagick identify -verbose, which spits out a bunch of stuff (what type of camera took the picture, camera settings, image editor information, etc). I didn't realize about the "ducky" tag. I think I goofed. I don't ever use Photoshop so I didn't think about the possibility that "ducky" is a universal Photoshop tag, and it happens that the visual style of the graphics on Duckymag is remarkably similar to the style and coolness of those images. Those images are so outrageous that they seemed laughable to me... but maybe they are real. I make mistakes, and this could very well be one of them. Anyway, the official word would be a message from the NRA on the subject. The story started out interesting, and continues to get more interesting I guess.

The other thing is, I can analyze the PDF also. There is much more information embedded in a typical PDF than in a typical JPEG. Ken, if you would please email that to me as admin at californiaccw.org I would be grateful, and would post the results of what I find embedded in it.

Analyzing documents, whether digital or otherwise, can have its pitfalls!

And Ken, WELCOME to the site. Here you'll find a variety of views, open-mindedness, civility, and fun. And if you're moving to California you will also find experts here who can help you have the best possible chance of getting a CCW. It depends largely on which county and city you move to. Finally, we have fun events all the time and we hope to see you at one of them soon.

Let me see if I am understanding this, a supposedly "secret NRA document" is posted (or parts of the document) online. Do we have the NRA's viewpoint on this? I think we have enough card carrying members to get a real person on the blower to verify this--maybe not during Christmas weekend, but by Tuesday at least. Seems like a lot of conjecture so far--does anybody here have a complete copy of this nefarious document? Has anybody here even seen this document?

Ken has kindly offered to send it to me. Ken specializes in publishing "leaks" from "inside the beltway" I guess they call it. Ken routinely gets sent documents which are non-published, shocking, and genuine. To be clear, I think this is one of the highest callings of journalism: to shed light where there is shadow, so my description of Ken's metier is with respect. In fact we sometimes use PRARs for a very similar function.

Anyway, when I get it I'll take a look at the PDF itself to see what I can glean from it, but this time with an open mind and no pre-conceived idea of what I should find.

Or could it be that this fabrication was "leaked" to a site that was willing to post anything spectacularly incendiary on a long weekend so that it would have plenty of run time before it could be shown to be false? I, too, would love to find out who was truly behind this tripe. If it was the NRA, that is why we have elections. If it was an anti-gun group meaning to slander and defame the NRA, that is what lawyers and litigation are for.

seanbonner wrote:

Wonkette (which is written by two men - take note everyone who keeps calling the writer "she")

I guess I'm behind the times -- Wonkette (AKA Ana Marie Cox) left her blog last July 31 for a new job as Washington D.C. editor of Time.com. She also left behind her blog's name for the new blog editors of the "Wonkette" blog. So, this NRA hoax column apparently wasn't written by Wonkette at all, but is currently the Alex Pareene and Ken Layne show. Just makes things a bit confusing for those who don't read "Wonkette, the D.C. Gossip" blog every day.

Tango-52 wrote:

Or could it be that this fabrication was "leaked" to a site that was willing to post anything spectacularly incendiary on a long weekend so that it would have plenty of run time before it could be shown to be false?

Absolutely, that is possible and that kind of thing does happen. All I can say now is, we should all stay open-minded and wait for more evidence. Yes the excerpts were outrageous but outrageous things happen. I erred in looking at the evidence with an outcome in mind. That's an easy error to make; let's try to avoid it, and wait for more evidence.

Tango-52 wrote:

I, too, would love to find out who was truly behind this tripe. If it was the NRA, that is why we have elections. If it was an anti-gun group meaning to slander and defame the NRA, that is what lawyers and litigation are for.

If that comes out as true, I would say, let's just get the facts out and leave it at that. The truth is all we need. And if this document really is an NRA document we should see it with the quotes in context and then figure out what it means. If the NRA really is supporting some other whacky agendas then it's time for them to clean house, at the very least.

A phone call very far up the food chain resulted in “what, where, gimme the address! So if it is legit, it is being held too just a few people. Once again we are not a racist organization.
Find an America’s First Freedom magazine. The cover has the stylistic art on the front, just faces, nothing else. The article is about the same old crew that will have your firearms if they are able. Do not speculate in public, it makes you look like a fool.

Admin wrote:

Yes the excerpts were outrageous but outrageous things happen.

No -- extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Therefore, this should be treated as a hoax until Wonkette and company can back it up.

At the very least, they could easily indicate which text is theirs and which is from their purported "big booklet".

Can we all still try to remember that this has very little, if anything, to do with CCW here in California.

Ok, we are at an impasse until we learn more. I maintain an open mind on this, and have sent Ken an email. Until we learn more, I'm locking this thread. All in all, quite an interesting story and I am quite curious about the outcome of this.

UPDATE: I have now seen the PDF itself. At a technical level, I didn't see any tags or embedded stuff in the file that would indicate anything one way or the other. At a content level, it looks and feels real to me. If it is real, it echoes what I said in the other thread about my feelings about the NRA, and it confirms further that there is a gulf between my values and what the NRA is working for. The PDF makes ties between the gun issue and other unrelated issues like animal rights, illegal immigration, the UN, and terrorism, connections that I don't see and don't agree with. There is a spooky "the storm is coming" theme running through the document, and I'm not into spookiness or coming storms or any of that.

Anyway, as G&S points out, none of this is relevant to CCW in California. This website has no affiliation with the NRA or any other group, and we are focused on only one issue, which is achieving fair, non-discretionary issuance of CCWs in California. That's it. And we don't link it to any other issues which aren't truly related. Our argument rests on a) it has worked and not caused any problems in 40 other states and b) government officials (sheriffs and chiefs) should act fairly, and should not use issuance as a political favor for the elite.

So I will leave this thread locked, and encourage any further discussion of this to happen on other forums where the NRA and other issues are more relevant.

I will edit this post more as more info comes in, such as an official response from the NRA.

I'll say again, bad science happens when the scientist goes in to the experiment with a certain outcome in mind, and I went in to my JPEG experiment with an outcome in mind and I got that outcome. Good science would have required me to apply my "ducky" test to a sample of other random JPEGs from the web, and I didn't do that.

I think I owe an apology to Wonkette for my bad science. Wonkette, if you PM me your mailing address, a sixpack of organic lager is on its way.