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Talk Archives

• User talk:Yaf/Archive 1 -- 22 November 2005 - 14 July 2007
• User talk:Yaf/Archive 2 -- 14 July 2007 - 7 April 2008

Welcome

Please feel free to leave comments. Thanks. Yaf

Gun politics in the United States

Dear Yaf,

Please consider undoing your 01:26, 28 April 2008 and 01:19, 28 April 2008 edits on the "types of firearms" section in "gun politics in the US."

The Josh Sugarmann internal link does indeed contain the quotation I used; that quotation represents a pro-gun control source who felt that confusion was important to the bill's support (I can provide similar NRA-based comments, but I thought the Sugarmann quotation had more credibility).

Also, I must admit that I have been unable to read Kruschke, but he was writing in 1995 (as to previous edit) and the confusion between full-auto and semi-auto in the American public is likely less now, after all the discussion that attended the aftermath and sunsetting of the 1994 assault weapons ban.

As to "third category," this is his conflation of semi-auto and full-auto firearms (see first paragraph of the "types" subsection). If he did write "automatic weapons" (the brackets indicate he did not), he made an error of logic: there are NO other automatic weapons (automatic and full-automatic are generally considered synonyms) besides machineguns and submachinguns--the inclusion of "certain types of military and police rifles" in his list is therefore either repetitive (if they are automatic) or incorrect (if they are semi-automatic, but he includes them as "automatic weapons").

If you feel that he truly meant automatic military and police rifles, and is merely redundant, please permit me to label his redundancy so redundant(in a superscript).

Finally, if you feel the "confusion" paragraph doesn't stand unless I get ANOTHER reference in addition to Sugarmann, I can do so.

Regards,

icammd

I don't categorically disagree with what you were trying to say. However, the removed text was:

It should be remembered that Krushke was writing in 1995, a time when popular misconceptions about ] and their semi-automatic commercial versions were credited as an important factor in the passage of the ]: " public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."<ref>], 1988</ref>

and the reference is not verifiable as written. If you can find a quote by Sugarmann that says this, that would be great, but we would need to put Sugarmann's words in quotes, and use a reference/cite that is verifiable. As it was written, it was not verifiable. Find a source, put in quote marks as needed to identify it was a quote, cite it with a reference that is verifiable, and I would have no issues with this at all. Cheers, Yaf (talk) 21:39, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Arbcom

Your participation in Arbcom is requested here. Thank you. 20:24, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Lurking

For the record, I have followed your edit defense (hard to say you're warring when you're just trying to stand your ground) with SaltyBoar and would just like to let you know that your civility exceeds anything I would have exhibited. Mostly for that reason, I stick to the technical and avoid political discussions. I'd just like to commend you for "standing post" on this one. You do the work so others don't have to. --'''I am Asamuel''' (talk) 21:18, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Arbcom request

OK, I'll see what I can do this afternoon. I've been putting this off for much the same reason that the "Hunting weapon" argument chased off not one, but two moderators--discussing things with him is about as pleasant as bashing one's head into a brick wall repeatedly... scot (talk) 18:30, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

So far five arbitrators have rejected hearing our case. The reason appears to be that they feel all of us need to be more open to compromise (i.e., a pox on all your houses). --SMP0328. (talk) 20:20, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Can't say I blame 'em, though. The WP system assumes rational responses from editors; when this is not possible, the WP way largely fails to work. The arbitrators are assuming moral relativism, in that all requests are equally valid. When an editor advocates censorship as his only compromise position, though, moral relativism doesn't work. Especially can't say I blame 'em (the arbitrators), though, as I can never convince him of anything anymore. Wonder what changed him so; before the change in his user name in response to privacy issues or whatever happened to him, he was open to reason. He was tough, but rational. I even considered him a good sounding board and a virtual friend, as his talking points often did improve articles in addition to helping balance them. The 2A article was arrived at through rational discusions with him over many months about 3 years ago, when rational discourse still worked. He even claimed to have a deer tag, and was going to go deer hunting. Then, everything changed. He had an attack of paranoia, whether justifiable or not I never knew, and he changed his user name, and he exercised his "right to vanish", which I supported, as it is clearly a right of all editors to vanish should the need arise. He also became noticeably less precise in his edits and comments. Since then, though, he has been extremely anti-gun, pushing a Brady Campaign talking points POV push to ridiculous extremes, by advocating censorship of all attempts to achieve a neutral balance of content in gun-related political articles. Would be nice to know what caused this radical shift; it would help in understanding what might work in achieving compromises in writing articles going forward. Yaf (talk) 16:54, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Problems in the Right Wing article

Hello, another user has once again removed Fascism and Nazism from the Right wing article. I am sure you all came to a census on putting them there and you probably have more authority on the subject then me. I telling you this since you reverted the last attempt to get rid of the terms. 69.29.254.57 (talk) 21:53, 4 May 2008 (UTC)