Maryland returns unprocessed handgun permit applications

Monachus Lex ^ | April 13, 2012 | John Pierce

[JohnPierce]

After Judge Legg handed down his ruling in Woollard v. Sheridan that Maryland's requirement of a "good and sufficient reason" to receive a handgun permit was unconstitutional, hundred of applicants flooded the Maryland State Police Licensing Division with applications.

However, Judge Legg subsequently issued a temporary stay of that order and the state is petitioning for a permanent stay pending appeal. Given those circumstances, Maryland has been returning applications unprocessed with the following letter ...

[jaydee770]

>>...but rather to impart useful information to OUR readers and to promote and join in on the discussion and conservative activism HERE on FR.”...<<

Then you should welcome content contributors, excerpted or full, with open arms.

I consider FR as an aggregator of conservative content. A *DARN GOOD* aggregator of conservative content! I don’t bookmark any blogs. I do have FR bookmarked. If I come to FR and read an excerpt, I may go to the external site and read the full article. But I *STILL* return to FR to read and/or join the discussion about the article. I don’t require the author to join in — there are plenty of interesting opinoins on FR without the author joining the discussion. Also, judging by the typical number of comments (or lack of) on the contributing pages, it seems to me that most freepers do the same: come to FR to find the content; go read the article and return to FR to discuss. FR gets the traffic on both sides of that content!!

FR admins appear to take the stance that only FR should receive traffic and everyone else should lose completely. That may not be FR’s actual intent, but that’s certainly how it appears to the casual observer. A reasonable and prudent person would realize that even excerpts are beneficial to FR, if your non-monetized site just wants web-traffic bragging rights.

Without bloggers posting interesting content on FR (excerpted or otherwise), this place would be a ghost town. FR needs content contributors as much as the content contributors need FR. Running off *any* valid conservative content is short-sided (at best). If you run off your content contributors, what do you think happens to your site traffic metrics and freepathon donations then? Reduced bragging rights and donations perhaps?

It also occurs to me that a better course of action (if excerpting is so bloody offensive) *MAY* be to at least take the admonishments offline. Email the contributor directly or block his IP or whatever. Griping, whining and moaning about it in the thread just leaves a big steaming pile of dung right in the middle of an otherwise interesting discussion. Something else to consider.

Been holding my tongue on this issue for awhile and I apologize to all for interrupting the discussion about the MD handgun permit injustice. Just my opinions on the issue. Other opinions will vary and may even be stinkier.

[Salamander]

FR has exactly *two* cookies.

One is Google Analytics and the other is the one that keeps you logged in.

Blogs usually have many trackers, beacons, adware, cookies and other garbage that invade your privacy and expose your machine and personal data to *other* sites that have the same crud installed.

Some people deeply resent the invasion of privacy and garbage that accrues after we visit those blogs.

I’ve had inboxes full of spam related to the blog topics “suddenly appear”, I’ve had ads on other sites ‘personalized for me” based on whatever the blog was about.

I do not like being cyber-stalked just because somebody is playing the penny-per-click game.

Last night, somebody posted a “cute video” from a blog and it totally crashed my laptop.

I had to cold boot to get it going again.

That is not why I come ~here~.

[Venturer]

Thank You

[humblegunner]

Without bloggers posting interesting content on FR (excerpted or otherwise), this place would be a ghost town.

Gosh, it's a wonder Free Republic survived all those years before
every Smacktard and his brother Smelvin had a blog to post excerpts from.

It must have been a ghost town around here, huh?

[Salamander]

Sure thing.

[I usually avoid looking at my MD sidebar because it’s so incredibly *depressing*]....LOL

[Gabz]

And people wonder why my husband and I by-passed Maryland and moved to Virginia from Delaware.............

[JohnPierce]

I took your advice and posted the entire text. You didn’t need to call me a “smacktard.” And it is completely coincidental that my brother’s name is Smelvin. :)

[RedMDer]

Freepers! All in favor of surrendering your right to bear arms Raise Both. All in favor of Free Republic, click here. or mail checks to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794

Freepers! All in favor of surrendering your right to bear arms Raise Both. All in favor of Free Republic, click here. or mail checks to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794

[humblegunner]

I wasn’t referring to you, and I’m sorry about your brother’s unfortunate name.

The fact is that there are some bloggers who “produce” low-quality
or outright stolen content and expect hits for excerpting it here.

They are tards worth smacking.

[JohnPierce]

Understood and of course I was joking about my brothers name. :)

[Venturer]

The amazing thing to me about our Governor, is that as lousy as he has been, he is a potential aspirant for the Presidency-——or he thinks he is.

He has robbed every fund ever set aside in Maryland and spent more time looking for new ways to tax us than any previous Govenor in the history of the state.

[mac_truck]

You should ‘invest’ in a program called ghostery.

I’d post a link but then someone would accuse me of being a blog-pimp. /s

[Salamander]

“The amazing thing to me about our Governor, is that as lousy as he has been, he is a potential aspirant for the Presidency”

NO NO NO!

God forbid!!!!

NO President O’Malice, *ever*!

That is fodder for night terrors.

[Salamander]

Already got it.

Naggy little thing, isn’t it?

;D

[it’s down in my toolbar right now, bug-eyed and telling me it’s blocked 0 of 1..that’d be the FR FOCUS cookie]

[KarenMarie]

Thank you for that, I really appreciate it!

Great little program.

:)

[marktwain]

Thank you for all the work you do, and for the wonderful things you have done with opencarry.org. I appreciate all of your efforts, and it is nice of you to post your work here on Freerepublic.

I have posted a good bit of it here myself.

Personally, I find the idea of “blog pimpers” to be silly. If John Robinson objects to people posting excerpts to their blog on Freerepublic, I can live with it, but I think it better policy to allow those who wish to post excerpts of their work to do so. John owns the site, and he is a man who has done wonderful work in defending the Constitution and the Republic.

Once again, Thank you for your efforts. They are much appreciated.

[Gay State Conservative]

Justice delayed is justice denied.Given that the 2nd Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights and given the SCOTUS's recent 2nd Amendment ruling there's gotta be an expedited way in which the SCOTUS can spell out,in detail,ways in which "government" (Federal,State,County,Municipal) are *allowed* to regulate firearms.

In detail....in *minute* detail.Everything from fees to waiting times and everything in between.Marxists at all levels of government use the courts as a delaying tactic in so many different situations.That's particularly true with gun cases since the landmark SC decision of a couple of years ago.It must stop.

[jaydee770]

>>... it’s a wonder Free Republic survived all those years before every Smacktard and his brother Smelvin had a blog to post excerpts from...<<

That was then. Per Robinson’s own post, the blogosphere has exploded far beyond “back then”. I would imagine the number of FR accounts have also grown from whatever it was “back then” along the same timeline. Fortunately for all, FR has grown from “back then”, instead of stagnating.

But if you are quite sure of yourselves, then start diligently banning any account that excerpts a blog (if they are so bloody offensive), delete the excerpted post and lets see what happens to your web-traffic bragging rights and the freepathon donations over the following few months.

However, if you thought that wise, you would have already started doing it by now. You (and likely Mr Robinson) know better than to be so imprudent with your on-topic, conservative content contributors *AND* I’m probably not alone in believing FR is (lucky for us) better off *with* those excerpters than without them. Like I said, FR’s web-traffic metrics stands to benefit from both sides of that excerpted post whether you like it or not. All you have to do is try *not* to run-off readers with irascible admins/mods.

So again, I come to (and support) FR to find great conservative content and the related discussions. The discussion is quite often better than the content which is one of the primary reasons I like FR. I don’t mind if a post is a blog excerpt at all. By the way, if you aren’t aware, we have tabbed-web-browsers nowadays that allow you to open that blog link in another tab WITHOUT LEAVING FR. So I go read the rest of the article at the link, then return to the FR tab for the discussion. I doubt I’m alone in doing that.

[humblegunner]

But if you are quite sure of yourselves, then start diligently banning any account that excerpts a blog (if they are so bloody offensive), delete the excerpted post and lets see what happens to your web-traffic bragging rights and the freepathon donations over the following few months.

Try to pay attention.

Nobody wants anybody banned.

What is being asked is that bloggers, posting their own material, should post it in full.

I know, it's a hard concept to grasp. Give yourself a few minutes and read it again.

[jaydee770]

>>...Has he paid FR for those hits?...<<

Well, did FR pay him for the content? And before you make the attempt: No! Being allowed to post on FR is not “payment”, though some may consider it a supreme honor.

I would not have found that content unless it caught my eye and was of some interest to me on FREEREPUBLIC.COM. I had to generate web traffic on FR just to read the excerpt. After reading the full article, I returned to FR to read the discussion. That’s *more* web traffic for FR. More web-traffic than the blogger’s site received.

So, FR *STILL* got web traffic to help satisfy their pursuit of the nebulous “bragging rights” metrics (since it’s not monetized).

FR still “wins” more web-traffic than the blogger even though the post was an excerpt and I followed a link to a blog page.

Do I read FR in some weird way that no-one else does?
- Load FR forum page, browse posts & click interesting article
- FR forum article page loads in a new browser tab
- It’s an excerpt, so I follow the link to full article in a new browser tab
- close blog tab and switch to FR forum article tab for the discussion
- load/reload subsequent FR discussion page(s)
- maybe post comment(s) and reply(s)

So, I gave that blogger (who did all the work composing the article) one page load. How many did I generate on FR? Do you recognize that it was *MORE* than the blogger received?

So, I just don’t get the indignant shouts of “THIEF!” over an excerpted blog post, when the blogger is both providing free content *to* FR AND generating web traffic *for* FR. It seems to me FR comes out better than the blogger in the arrangement - perhaps far better - even though the blogger also benefited from a hit or two.

What am I missing? What am I not seeing that would make this arrangement so offensive? FR gets free content (the hardest part), FR enjoys volunteers working to generate web-traffic for FR and (perhaps best of all from a logistics point of view) FR has a smaller storage requirement with excerpts vs full articles. Seems to me FR would welcome the activity with open arms, if not openly prefer it!