Remember that poll I asked you to give a bit of help? It seems TCPalm was not expecting two things: Traffic and the results. Rich Campbell took to the keyboard to whine about it under the title: National gun groups target TCPalm opinion poll on assault rifles.
At the risk of offending those who enjoy the warm caress of an AR-15, here goes:
TCPalm’s opinion poll on assault rifles — and efforts to ban the sale of these weapons in Florida via a constitutional amendment — was commandeered this week.
I guess a ships full of Viking-looking fellas arrived to the offices of the paper, attacked the IT department and screwed with the results. Was that it?
Normally, our weekly opinion poll does well if it receives 1,000 votes. Our poll on assault rifles went live Wednesday afternoon; by Thursday morning, it had garnered more than 10,000 votes. By noon Friday, it had topped 30,000 and was still going strong.
By almost 9 pm Friday, it had passed the 36,000 mark!
The gun-control debate has taken on a new intensity in the wake of the Feb. 14 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz has been charged with killing 17 students and staff with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.
It comes and goes. Gun Free Zones are still a thing, Mass Killers know it, shit happens AGAIN and the only people blamed are the ones who weren’t there. All those government official who screwed up by the numbers are not even given the finger.
The poll results also suggested some sort of conspiracy. Less than 4 percent of voters said they would support a constitutional ban on the sale of assault rifles. More than 96 percent said they would oppose it.
con·spir·a·cy
kənˈspirəsē/
noun: conspiracy; plural noun: conspiracies
a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.
Really? Express our opinion is somehow unlawful or harmful?
Hmmm.
Why the dramatic increase in traffic? And why were the results skewed so sharply in one direction?
Inquiring minds wanted to know.
We hold our breaths in collective antici…pation! ( not really.)
I put these questions to Tom Mardis, executive producer for TCPalm. He determined the vast majority of poll traffic — almost 90 percent — came through referrals on Facebook via several national pro-gun organizations.
I got mine via word of mouth from a Facebook friend. I am not going to dispute what you were told, if you were told that.
Typically, about one-third of referrals to our site come from social media, according to Mardis.
Only one-third? Holy crap, your marketing sucks. No wonder papers are going bankrupt. Buy some fake account traffic from the farms in the Far east or something.
Some of the Facebook groups that linked to our poll included “Hypocrisy and Stupidity of Gun Control Advocates,” “We Like Shooting” and “Oregon Republican League.”
Members of another website, AR15.com, followed the admonition of one of their compatriots and voted in the poll. On the site’s discussion board, the member who goes by the handle “9mmCarbine” wrote: “As many of you probably already know, those of us in Florida have been subjected lately to unrelenting harassment regarding our Second Amendment rights. There is a group here in Florida spearheaded by a congressman in Parkland where the school shooting was that is now proposing an amendment to our state constitution to an active assault weapons ban.
It is called grassroots advocacy, the real one. Not the BS you guys are used to when you get the press releases from the Gun Control Groups and copy/paste to your articles. But wait, this is supposed to be a conspiracy… secret and stuff. And these people did it in the open. Maybe you are throwing a little bit of bullshit to impress your friends.
9mmCarbine provided a link to our poll and wrote: “Please go hit this poll and hit it hard.”
Exactly the same thing I asked to my blog readers, Twitter followers and Facebook friends.
Many did.
Well, that is the point of Grassroots.
One member, “nat130,” bragged about voting 50 times in incognito mode
That is naughty, but also I have news for you: You don’t need to go incognito mode. It will let you vote as many times as you want on regular mode. You paper was too cheap to get a good poll service. And I don’t think nat130 and his friends clicked 30 thousand times.
Mardis said there was “an obvious attempt among those on the AR15.com site to purposely obfuscate the origin of the votes on TCPalm.”
Dude, in Florida there are almost 2 million people with concealed weapons permits and it does not matter if they do not own an AR-15, we always vote in favor of the Second Amendment. And how come you could only get under 1,500 votes for the other option? Oh yes, High School kids don’t read newspapers or truly organize country-wide marches.
We don’t view this as a win-or-lose issue. We run polls to get a sense of what local readers think about topics. However, this poll went national because of the passions surrounding the gun-control issue.
We do. That is why we are still standing after the billions of dollars in free publicity that the media has been giving Gun Control for 30 years or more.
“DCV_117” posted: “Man this poll is getting crushed.”
Now we know why.
Nobody told you before we are somewhat organized? Or is it that you assume we only use the internet to watch midget wrestling porn and illegally order guns and ammo in the dark web?
Thursday morning, 9mmCarbine returned to thank the troops for their efforts: “Outstanding, guys. Thank you. As of now, the poll is still up, so let’s keep fire directed at it.”
Yup. That is the way we do it. You ignore our numbers at your peril. By the way? How are your subscription numbers?
Each opinion poll we run comes with a disclaimer: “This is not a scientific poll.” The discussion above illustrates the point. When a hot-button issue such as gun control gets commandeered, we’re all wise to take the results with a proverbial grain of salt.
Translation: Aww crap! We cannot use the results of the poll to keep pushing for more Gun Control.
I happen to support the Second Amendment.
Bullshit and here comes the “but.”
But I also have serious reservations about allowing public ownership of assault weapons. Moreover, I reject the claim by many gun enthusiasts that banning assault weapons would put us on a slippery slope to ban guns altogether.
And there we have it. You do realize that nobody believe you, right? What you are saying is akin to “I happen to support the First Amendment. But I also have serious reservations about allowing public ownership of computers and printers.” Utterly irrational, no?
There are a lot of people like me who would steadfastly oppose such efforts.
You would sell Gun Owners in a millisecond for a Pulitzer and a the cool side of a pillow.
One final thought: Don’t shoot the messenger.
Literally.
Son, if Gun Owners were as violent as your kind thinks we are, you’d be filing tortilla quality reports at a shitty newspaper in Aguascalientes, Mexico.
And by the way, you are welcome. All those extra hits on your paper’s website means more income for the owners and you may still have a job for a bit longer.
Heh.
Be careful what you wish for, indeed!
Perhaps he can transfer some of that new found skepticism to the polls showing irrational numbers supporting gun control.
“Journalists” are some of the lowest forms of life on earth, so F this guy.
Most of them, yeah. There are a few that actually practice true “journalism,” although their numbers are sadly dwindling thanks to the libtard’s P.C. bullshit.
“I guess a ship full of Viking-looking fellas arrived to the offices of the paper, attacked the IT department and screwed with the results. Was that it?”
Once again life imitates art:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNlYBNTCBG8
*************************************
“Moreover, I reject the claim by many gun enthusiasts that banning assault weapons would put us on a slippery slope to ban guns altogether.”
Reject it all you like, but we have precedent on our side. See also NFA’34. You got full auto et al ‘banned’ and now you’re after ‘bumpstocks’ and ‘assault weapons’ because you ‘feel’ it’s not enough. And when THOSE bannings don’t reach your utopian dreams, you’ll as for more bans.
If not for a SCOTUS loss in Miller (due to some fed.gov legal shenannigans), we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
“They’re going to say, ‘You give them bump stock, it’s going to be a slippery slope.’ I certainly hope so” — Nancy Pelosi, Oct 5, 2017.
Miller should have been moot because the guy was dead at the time.
Yes, but Miller isn’t an unmitigated disaster. It did uphold short barrel bans, because the dishonest lawyer representing Miller didn’t bother to show up in court so the court had no evidence that short barrel weapons should be protected.
However, the reasoning in Miller was that the 2nd Amendment protects weapons that are relevant to the militia (i.e., have military applicability). So, Miller basically says “AR-15s are particularly protected”. It is the direct opposite of the “sporting purpose” nonsense. And while I would not want to sign up to be the test case, it seems that you could apply Miller to get short barrel weapons protected, by doing the belated showing that they *are* military weapons.
[…] via Gun Owners respond to a poll and hurt the feelings of a Journalist […]
Poll is still up so keep voting. It’s on the same page as his big glass of whine
“the warm caress of an AR-15”
Of course he has to sexualize/fetishize it. No way he “happen(s) to support the 2nd Amendment.”
Anyone who says “I support (insert whatever here) , but” does NOT support it.
How many politicians say they support the 2A but wanta ban evil ar15s?
And the founders didnt envision “assault weapons” when they wrote the 2A..
Well genius, they didnt envision computers and your whiney twitter account either… stay awake out there guys.
Ignore everything before the “but”
Would somebody please help this poor “journalist” get the sand out of his vag? /sarc
Funny how libtard newsies react. When it goes their way it’s “worthy news” but when it doesn’t it’s a “conspiracy.”
Meh, whatever.
True journalism is dead. It was killed by libtards & their vaunted “political-correctness.” These current so-called “journalists” are just sock puppets from the libtard’s Minitrue.
For a “journalist” that is so good at talking about stats (1/3rd of our traffic normally comes from social media, etc…) he really sucks at doing a back of the napkin analysis of the results.
Seriously, if I had a regular poll which normally got around 1000 responses, and one week the same poll got over 30,000, I would do some analysis. The first step being a dismissal of about 75% of the responses. Basically, until further investigation demonstrates otherwise, assume that a bunch of the answers in the No column are invalid.
Well, that still means that over 8,500 people voted NO on this stupid poll.
I wonder. Would he be writing the same article if the results went the other way?
It’s the Hillary Defense: “I didn’t get the results I wanted so the other side must have cheated.”
Yooo guuuuys, I was trying to make a false consensus, and you ruined it!!! That’s not fair!!!