Category: Born again Cynic!
Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t good at rendering firearms, and that’s probably not a bad thing, for reasons that will soon be explored. It should also be noted that while AI rendered guns isn’t good yet, it is likely to improve. That might not be a good thing either.
First, we need some background on what exactly AI is, or more accurately, what is generative AI. It has been in development for decades, but it was only in 2022 that generative AI entered the public consciousness with consumer-friendly programs.
Suffice it to say that generative AI, which includes OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google Gemini, among many others, is the evolution of technology that emerged in the 1960s and is something that is now used every day, again both for good and bad.
That’s not just in how it renders firearms.
AI can create visual artwork, compose music, write papers and stories, and produce other content. Students are using it as a shortcut with homework, and anyone who has been on social media has likely seen images and videos of varying quality. With a few prompts, which are written instructions, AI can generate content that just a few years ago would have taken design teams days, even weeks to produce.
However, there is a lot of “AI slop,” as in low-quality, mass-produced digital content that shows a lack of human effort. Such content is seemingly created — if created is really the right term — by those seeking to flood the Internet to exploit algorithms and to generate quick ad revenue on some platforms.
How AI Works
It is important to understand how AI images are generated. How “intelligent” AI actually is remains a matter of debate.
Generative AI is based on “Large Language Models” (LLMs), which are trained on massive datasets of text and code to recognize patterns. Although they can be effective at parsing data, solving logic puzzles and even summarizing lengthy documents, LLMs can also produce factually incorrect, nonsensical, or made-up information that may seem plausible.
AI generates images by “learning” patterns from billions of existing pictures and their accompanying text descriptions. This process is called diffusion. AI is very good at generating images of well-known objects, where the attributes, including dimensions, color, and other properties, are clearly described.
It would seem that AI, therefore, should be good at rendering firearms, but a search of social media tells a very different story. AI-generated images of firearms depict weapons that would be impossible to produce in the real world, much like the fantastical settings created by the late Dutch artist M.C. Escher.
In the case of firearms, LLMs and AI have no shortage of information to draw from, yet generative AI platforms still struggle because they lack a true 3D understanding of the underlying mechanics, resulting in nonsensical attachments, bent barrels, missing triggers, and incorrect magazine placement. AI is still treating firearms as abstract collections of shapes rather than focusing on the functional mechanisms. That has resulted in impossible geometry.
There are now Facebook Groups and Reddit subs devoted to sharing AI-generated firearm images that defy reality. Even when it gets the basics right, AI still misses some key details. Several factors are at play, but the most basic is that generate AI is based on algorithms, and many are far less “intelligent” than it might seem.
Guns And Media — It’s Never Been Accurate
It is further worth taking a step back and remembering that mainstream depictions of firearms have long been questionable. Consider firearms in comic books and video games as just two examples.
Writers of the former and developers of the latter would routinely ignore basic mechanics, notably magazine capacities and recoil, opting instead to treat firearms as versatile plot devices that are only as accurate or deadly as the story demands at any given moment.
Likewise, the World War II-based comic books of the 1960s didn’t bother to feature realistic depictions of the enemy. The Germans were often presented with big red swastikas on their helmets, carrying weapons that were not an accurate drawing of the MP-40. It was a version that fit the narrative, even if it was far from accurate.
Video games have, in recent years, gone to great lengths to get many details of modern firearms right, including the look and sound, yet other attributes are often still very wrong, notably the weight and recoil. The guns may look correct, but they way they are employed and operate is anything but accurate.
Lack of Instruction?
AI continues to struggle with firearms for some very simple reasons. There is an old saying among computer programmers: “Garbage in, garbage out,” which is the principle that the quality of a system’s output is directly linked to the quality of input. Flawed or low-quality data will produce equally flawed or useless results.
In the case of AI, the “garbage in” is the lack of clear instructions.
“One of the reasons that guns are not properly rendered in AI is in the details,” explained Roger Entner, founder and principal analyst at Recon Analytics. “AI is only as good as the instructions you give it.”
AI often needs more information and details than it is given. It can get the basic shapes right, but it still doesn’t understand the mechanics.
“Guns are such intricate tools, with minuscule differences that are huge,” Entner told The Armory Life. “Gun owners may know these things so intricately, but AI does not.”
That is a key point to consider. There is already massive confusion in the mainstream consciousness about the differences between a commercial AR-15 and the military M16, so how can we expect AI to know better?
AI doesn’t just fall short with firearms, but all sorts of things.
“AI isn’t good at depicting a Cadillac XTS from a Chevrolet Malibu,” said Entner.
There is also the issue of bias, and it is firearm enthusiasts who are likely to notice the rendering problems of AI when it comes to guns.
“AI really does render firearms poorly. Many details range from implausible to outright wrong. But in perspective, AI renders many objects poorly,” noted Dr. Jim Purtilo, associate professor of computer science at the University of Maryland.
“If someone in the firearm community notices it with guns more than with other objects, then this could well be another example of a selective attention bias, which is where people with a decided interest in a given object will be much more inclined to notice when details are wrong. Show a young man the photo of a pretty young girl, and he will never notice what is in the background. ‘What monster?’”
Such a selective attention bias has cropped up in cinema for years.
“Show an old war movie and the gun enthusiast will complain, ‘that’s not a rifle they used,’ the history aficionado will say, ‘that’s not how it happened,’ and the linguists will lament that characters used words that didn’t become common until the modern era. This illustrates our biases,” Purtilo told The Armory Life.
Still, the implausible images result from how AI generates them today. There is ample data on firearm attributes, but few descriptions of how everything connects. AI’s LLMs make a best guess, often with comedic results.
“Pictures are tougher for AI than we understand,” added Entner. “Generic descriptions of something to AI will generate a generic description. It is like asking a five-year-old to draw a Single Action Colt.”
AI is thus like a child, and it may not provide all the details unless pressed. Even then, it may not fully appreciate how things go together without further explanation.
“Said simply, the program is averaging all the details of its training images when deciding which features to include,” said Purtilo. “It might know that a firearm has sights, a shoulder stock, and attachments, but it doesn’t know how these details might depend on one another.
The average sight across all the images it analyzed might have been a scope, the average stock might have a pistol grip, and the average attachment might be a laser pointer — and that is how it gives you a Revolutionary War musket with pistol grip, high power optic, and laser pointer.”
The Barriers of AI
The current technical barriers are just one of the main reasons that AI is bad at rendering firearms. The other is policy. AI developers are already cautious about how AI can be used.
“On the technical side, guns are complex objects with very specific features. Because they are so specific and have many parts that can be rendered incorrectly, it’s easy for a human to identify them as incorrect, as AI is not good at replicating specific weapons,” said Dr. Cliff Lampe, professor of information and associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Information at the University of Michigan.
Lampe, who focuses on the study of misinformation in media, told The Armory Life that the policy reason is that many models specifically list firearms as a type of object to render poorly.
“You can imagine, for instance, that you don’t want to be able to have GenAI [generative artificial intelligence] create specific schematics for firearms. Different models may have different thresholds here as a matter of policy, but all of them will have some safety restrictions built in,” Lampe noted.
Microsoft’s Copilot and ChatGPT are now among the generative AI platforms that won’t even render a firearm if requested. Copilot won’t even render soldiers holding firearms. However, because of the rise in “AI slop,” it may be a good thing that AI can’t generate extremely accurate firearms in videos. No manufacturer would be happy to see their product — a car, gun, or something else — used irresponsibly in an AI-generated video.
For now, we may need to accept that AI doesn’t do guns well, just as comic writers and video game developers missed the mark in the past.
“I don’t know whether AI is more likely to generate silliness with firearms than other objects. But if so, then this may well reflect a selection bias in training materials,” Purtilo continued. “AI models are trained by ingesting a huge volume of raw content. The companies scrape pages from websites, books, social media, and more for this purpose.”
As Lampe noted, there is also the issue of policies that restrict many sites from including firearm images, which could impact how AI learns.
“This limits what material AI has for training,” said Purtilo. “If you can’t depict safe and responsible firearm use on the web, then no AI will be able to render images with safe and responsible use of firearms. Whatever it generates will be inherently gibberish.”
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I guess I got out of there at just the right time! Grumpy
The National Rifle Association has gone through a period of tremendous upheaval after the courts
found former NRA officials guilty of financial mismanagement. Now, the legal troubles continue as
the NRA is taking on it’s own fundraising arm in court.
For years, NRA members were told everything was hunky-dory, and most of us believed it.
Then came the fight between Oliver North and Wayne LaPierre, the “AckMack” troubles and finally the lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The allegations were explosive, but they are no longer just allegations after a jury weighed the evidence — Wayne LaPierre and other senior NRA officials were found liable for misconduct involving the organization’s finances.
Wayne LaPierre, former NRA CEO was ordered to pay back four million dollars to the NRA
and cannot serve as an NRA officer or director for 10 Years.
LaPierre was ordered to repay more than $4 million to the NRA and was later barred from serving as an NRA officer or director for 10 years. Recent appeals have upheld those penalties. Of course, the damage went far beyond the courtroom.
Troubles Ending?
The NRA spent years and tens of millions of dollars fighting legal battles while membership, revenue and most importantly, political influence, declined. Thankfully, reform-minded members eventually won key board elections and sought to move the organization beyond the LaPierre era. Many members assumed that was the end of the story.
It wasn’t.
Today, a new controversy is unfolding between the NRA and what was formerly known as the NRA Foundation.
The NRA filed suit against the foundation to prevent it from using the name or likeness of the NRA. On June 2, 2026, the NRA Foundation announced it would rebrand as the 1791 Foundation. Foundation President Tom King stated that the organization’s mission remains unchanged and the rebranding is intended to strengthen its ability to support firearms education, youth programs, law enforcement training, and other charitable initiatives. Critics, however, note that the ongoing dispute centers not only on the foundation’s charitable mission but also on its historic role as a supporting organization for the NRA. Whether the rebranding represents a change in identity, a change in mission, or simply a change in name is likely to remain a central point of disagreement.
Specifically, the NRA’s complaint asserts that foundation officials “sought to sever the relationship between the NRA and the Foundation by attempting to strip the NRA of its right to appoint the Foundation’s directors and seizing that power for themselves.” The foundation rejects those allegations and argues it is acting independently and in accordance with its charitable responsibilities. The dispute is now being fought in court. As many of the parties involved are famously litigious, I’ll refrain from asking more pointed questions until more facts are known.
Friends of NRA
Part of the confusion stems from the fact that many gun owners have long viewed the NRA and NRA Foundation as essentially the same organization. They are not. The NRA is the membership and advocacy organization (technically a 501(c)(4) organization) that conducts lobbying, political activity, training programs, competitions and member services. The NRA Foundation (a 501(c)(3) organization under tax code) was created as a separate charitable organization to raise tax-deductible donations for firearms education, youth programs, grants and related charitable purposes.
Most NRA members never paid much attention to the distinction because the two organizations worked closely together and shared a common mission. Historically, the NRA Foundation worked closely with the NRA and funded many NRA-related programs, while also making grants to youth shooting sports, clubs, law-enforcement training, conservation efforts, and other charitable initiatives.
According to recent reports, the 1791 Foundation controls roughly $160 million in net assets, while the NRA itself reported approximately $15.7 million in net assets. In other words, the charitable organization at the center of the current dispute controls the overwhelming majority of the financial resources involved. At its core, the legal battle centers on control of substantial charitable assets and how those resources will be used going forward.
The Question
Most members have neither the time nor the desire to read court filings, tax returns, and legal briefs. They simply want to know whether their money is advancing the Second Amendment or funding another round of gamesmanship, so we’ll attempt to answer the question at the center of this debate: If NRA members voted for reform, did reform follow the money?
The LaPierre era taught NRA members that problems can remain hidden for years behind familiar names and repeated assurances that everything is under control. The lesson wasn’t that some NRA leaders were corrupt; the lesson was that the members should pay attention and never stop asking questions.
In other words, the old advice to “Trust but verify” is still good advice, so those same important questions need to be asked today:
• Who controls the assets?
• Who controls the fundraising?
• Who controls the grants?
• Who decides where donor dollars ultimately go?
Most importantly, how much overlap exists between today’s 1791 Foundation leadership and the NRA leadership structure in the years leading up to the New York verdict?
Meet the New Boss
Several names associated with the current 1791 Foundation are familiar to longtime NRA observers. Among them are Tom King and former NRA President Charles Cotton, both prominent figures within NRA leadership during the LaPierre years.
Neither man’s involvement proves wrongdoing, and they have not been accused of misconduct in connection with the current dispute. However, these associations invite increased scrutiny from members who spent the last several years fighting for accountability and transparency.
Foundation leaders tell a very different story. In a recent editorial, 1791 Foundation Vice President Ronnie Barrett argued the dispute began after the foundation gained greater independence and increased scrutiny of NRA reimbursement requests.
According to Barrett, trustees concluded that too much donor money was being spent on overhead and administrative expenses and chose to direct more funds toward charitable programs instead. Barrett contends the lawsuit is not about abandoning the NRA’s mission but about a charitable foundation exercising independent judgment over donor funds.
Barrett’s editorial focuses extensively on donor stewardship, overhead costs and the foundation’s independence from the NRA. However, it did not touch on the number of prominent LaPierre-era NRA leaders who now hold key positions within the 1791 Foundation.
Readers will have to decide for themselves whether the dispute is primarily about stewardship, as Barrett argues, or whether it also reflects a struggle between competing factions within the broader firearms community. Either way, the continued prominence of several longtime NRA leaders ensures that questions about continuity and accountability are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of the NRA’s lawsuit, and the courts will ultimately sort out the competing claims. In the meantime, donors — especially those who previously donated to the NRA Foundation — should be asking legitimate questions about spending, governance, transparency and financial stewardship.
Takeaway
Trust is earned, and the NRA learned that lesson at great cost. The 1791 Foundation should expect to have to earn that same trust.
For donors, the issue is not whether the organization calls itself the NRA Foundation, the 1791 Foundation or the Committee to Keep and Arm Bears. The issue is whether contributions are advancing the mission donors intended to support.
The firearms community has already paid a steep price for years of misplaced trust. Before writing the next check or attending a “Friends” banquet, members should make sure they know not only where the money is going but also who is controlling it once it gets there.
The courts will eventually decide who wins the lawsuit. Donors should decide who earns their trust.
When Virginia State Police announced last week that it would resume enforcing the commonwealth’s universal background check requirement for private firearm sales — in direct defiance of a Lynchburg Circuit Court injunction that halted enforcement of the law — gun-rights groups didn’t wait around to see what would happen next. They went straight back to court.
On June 3, the court delivered exactly the response Virginia’s executive branch should have expected.
Judge F. Patrick Yeatts ruled that his statewide permanent injunction remains fully in effect and that Virginia law enforcement is expected to comply with that order. The ruling shut down Attorney General Jay Jones’s apparent theory that an executive branch officer can effectively dissolve a court injunction by deciding it no longer applies — and confirmed what gun-rights groups had been arguing since the State Police announcement: that the executive branch doesn’t get to unilaterally override court orders just because new legislation passes.
What just happened
As TTAG reported earlier this week, the dispute began when the Virginia Attorney General’s office informed the Virginia Citizens Defense League that Virginia State Police would resume universal background checks for private firearm sales — despite Judge Yeatts’s October 29, 2025, permanent injunction halting enforcement of that exact law.
Gun Owners of America and VCDL responded immediately with a contempt of court motion. The motion’s framing was unusually direct:
“It appears that the Commonwealth’s Executive Branch of government no longer has any respect for the rule of law. From the same Attorney General who brazenly sought to usurp his predecessor’s constitutional role before he even assumed office, Attorney General Jay Jones now informs this Court that its October 29, 2025, Final Order means nothing, and that Jones, as an executive branch officer and officer of the court, may unilaterally determine that a court’s order is no longer in effect.”
The court didn’t take long to agree.
The ruling
Judge Yeatts confirmed on June 3 that his permanent injunction remains fully in effect and that Virginia law enforcement is expected to comply. The court has called both parties back later this month for further proceedings in the ongoing case.
Within hours, Virginia State Police updated its website to reflect the court’s ruling. The page now states the agency is “in compliance with the injunction” and “currently cannot provide criminal history background checks for the private sale of firearms.”
That’s a quick reversal from the position Virginia State Police took last week. It’s also the correct one — the position the agency should have been taking all along, before the AG’s office decided that new legislation gave the executive branch authority to ignore court orders without going back to court first.
What this means
The ruling matters beyond the specific background check question because it confirms something fundamental about how court orders work in the American legal system. An injunction remains in effect until the issuing court dissolves it. Executive branch officers — including state attorneys general, governors, and law enforcement agencies — don’t get to decide on their own that an injunction no longer applies. If the state believes the injunction should be lifted because circumstances have changed (new legislation, new facts, whatever), the proper procedure is to return to the court and seek dissolution.
Virginia tried to skip that step. The court told them no.
A South African hotelier is believed to have been eaten by a 15ft crocodile after human remains were found inside the swollen reptile.
The animal was shot from a helicopter and airlifted from the crocodile-infested Komati River in a daring police operation before a post-mortem examination was carried out.
A ring was found inside the belly of the 500kg apex predator and is thought to have belonged to Gabriel Batista, 59.
The businessman was swept away in floodwaters while trying to drive across the Komati River in the north-east of the country a week ago.
Investigators will carry out DNA tests on the bones and flesh found inside the crocodile.
. . .
As well as the body parts, six different types of shoes were found, according to Capt Potgieter.
There’s more at the link, including images.
The comments from friends and acquaintances in the USA have been amusing. A surprising number are absolutely horrified that a man who’d just escaped drowning had promptly been eaten by a wild animal. It’s almost as if it was unfair, somehow.
They weren’t comforted by my assurance that in large parts of Africa, that sort of thing happens on an almost daily basis. As for the “six different types of shoes” . . . yeah, I’d say Mr. Batista was far from the only human meal that croc had enjoyed. Local tribespeople were doubtless greatly relieved by the news that it had been caught.
Rural Africa remains a very dark continent, filled with very deadly animals. Actual examples:
- A man visits a neighboring village, gets drunk, and decides to walk back to his village along a deserted path at night. Halfway there, a passing leopard finds him and decides that he’ll make a satisfactory supper.
- A man goes looking for a lost cow along a river bank. A hippo, grazing on long grass a short distance away, decides that she doesn’t want him (or anyone else) getting between her and the water, which is her security blanket. She bites him in half.
- A hunter gets too close to an elephant, which promptly tramples him into pink slush in the mud. He isn’t able to shoot her in time to save himself, and in the stress of the moment, only wounds her.
- While she’s recovering from the bullet wound, she kills several local villagers who get too close to her, on the general principle that if a man did this to her, she’s going to presume that any man she sees is going to try to do likewise.
- An armored personnel carrier is driving through thick brush and trees. The vehicle commander is standing with his head and shoulders outside the turret, trying to see through the thick growth to plot his course.
A boomslang (tree snake) is jarred off its branch by the APC as it brushes against the tree. It falls onto the vehicle commander, bites him (injecting a full dose of poison, which proves fatal) and then falls through the turret hatch into the interior of the vehicle, biting two other soldiers before it’s killed by a rain of rifle butts. - The two survive, but only because it had already injected much of its venom into the vehicle commander. They’re sick for several weeks.
All those incidents were personally known to me. I was nearby when they all happened. That’s the norm in wild rural Africa.
The cities can be a lot tamer, but not always. A few decades ago, I remember two leopards who set up house in the concrete basement and utility spaces of the biggest soccer stadium in Soweto, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people.
They lived off local cats and dogs. When their presence was deduced (due to the rapid decline in other local pets and wildlife, and the presence of their tracks after rain) the local police were asked to hunt them down and shoot them.
Freely translated and interpreted, the local cops’ reply was along the lines of, “You want us to go into a concrete labyrinth, with no light at all, to hunt two big cats that can see in the dark? Oh, hell, no! Here, take our rifles and show us how it’s done. We’ll watch. In fact, we’ll sell tickets on pay-per-view!”
I’m very sorry for Mr. Batista, and for his family, of course . . . but that’s Africa: and in Africa, the good guys don’t always win. It goes with the territory.
If you needed yet another reason not to move to California, a new proposal in the state legislature should make the growing list.
According to a report at CalMatters, Senate Bill 948 would require gun owners moving to California to complete a four-hour course with live-fire training in order to receive the state-required Firearm Safety Certificate — and to register their firearms within 180 days of their arrival. The measure would also require existing state residents to complete the training and obtain the certificate before purchasing any firearm in the future.
Current law requires only a written exam for the Firearm Safety Certificate.
The measure, introduced in a state that already has among the most restrictive gun laws in the nation, was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on a party-line vote, with no Republicans supporting it. The only silver lining: the training requirement was cut in half from the eight hours originally proposed earlier in the session.
State Sen. Jesse Arreguin, who authored the measure, said the bill is critical for the safety of California citizens.
“Firearm safety is essential in preventing firearm-related incidents, especially those involving children,” Arreguin said during a legislative hearing. “By strengthening training requirements and closing gaps in current law, SB 948 will ensure responsible gun ownership to keep Californians and the community safe.”
What Arreguin didn’t present was any evidence that firearms accidents among new state residents have actually been a problem. That’s because no such evidence exists. The proposal is yet another solution looking for a problem.
Opponents called the bill what it is. Adam Wilson, speaking for Gun Owners of California and Gun Owners of America, called it “a misguided piece of legislation that masquerades as gun safety, but in reality wreaks an insurmountable barrier to exercising a constitutional right.”
“This bill will transform California’s existing FSC into a de facto licensing scheme,” Wilson said at the hearing.
Wilson also noted that SB 948 would saddle license applicants with an estimated $400 cost, disproportionately harming women, people of color, and lower-income residents — many of whom live in higher-crime neighborhoods where the right to self-defense matters most.
“SB 948 is a modern-day poll tax on the Second Amendment, and at its core, SB 948 raises serious constitutional issues,” he said.
Having cleared the Senate Appropriations Committee, the measure now heads to a vote on the Senate floor.