I wanted to make a comment on Miguel’s last post but as I thought about it, the subject became more of a post in and of itself.

Pinellas County is a rather safe county in Florida, home to St. Petersburg and Clearwater.  It’s a tourist and retirement county, below the national average on unemployment and crime rate.

So why would it have such a murder happy sheriff?  I call it the “Rambo theory of Law Enforcement.”  Remember the movie Rambo: First Blood.

What was the plot:  Rambo, an ex-Army special forces vet, is passing through small town in Washington state.  The sheriff (played by Brian Dennehy) doesn’t like the look of Rambo, thinks he’s a drifter, and drives him out of town.  Rambo says he wants to get a meal before moving on and the sheriff arrests him for vagrancy and tortures him.  Rambo escapes and goes on a rampage.

The “Rambo theory of Law Enforcement”  is that you get sheriffs or police chiefs in power in (usually) low crime areas, and they get it into their heads that “this is my sleepy little town and I’m going to keep is that way with an iron fist.”  They become the kings of their little domains.  I’ve experienced this in Florida a number of times.  I grew up in a little town near South Miami called The Village of Pinecrest.  It had one of the lowest crime neighborhoods in Miami-Dada County.  Pinecrest police patrolled in SWAT gear.  Bal Harbor is a tiny town on Miami Beach, known mostly for having some of the most expensive condos and the most high-end shopping in the state.  Bal Harbor police are Nazis.  They will arrest you for doing 5 over the limit.

It’s not that the Sheriff of Pinellas County is oblivious to the insult he done to his officer’s intelligence or the people of the county.  He doesn’t care.  He is the law.  Nobody is make waves in his county.

But this brings me to my next point.

Is Rambo: First Blood the best Second Amendment supporting movie ever?  I know fans of the 2A love Red Dawn, and the idea of American citizens fighting off in invading army.  But our founding fathers put the 2A in place for the people to defend themselves from tyrannical government.

So… if you have a sheriff, who arrests, tortures, and tries to murder an American citizen, was Rambo exercising his 2A rights as envisioned by our founding fathers?

The CSGV likes to make the idea of “gun owners want a rebellion” against the federal government.  What if it’s just against a sheriff that threatens to murder his own constituents?

Keep in mind, this happened twice before in 20^th century America, the Battle of Athens (1946) and the Battle of Blair Mountain (1921).

In an interview, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said “What I’m observing is that it’s tragic that in the immediate aftermath of a series of high-profile mass shootings people feel like they have to go out and purchase a gun.”

It’s not tragic.  It’s the act of the light bulb going on in the heads of thousands upon thousands of Americans.  Not just are Americans scrambling to buy guns, they are applying to carry them in record numbers.

Most Americans don’t pay attention when the government argues in open court that they have no duty to protect us.  They still trust that the police and federal law enforcement will come running to save us.

But attacks like those in Paris or San Bernardino show that the government can’t protect us.  Not all the time.

Farook and his wife were operating an IED factory out of their home.  They were radicalized overseas and had radical profiles online.  Despite warnings and intelligence, nothing was done to prevent the shooting.

To be fair to the government, the government is comprised of people and people make mistakes.  Doubly, It is hard to protect Americans from other Americans and respect civil liberties at the same time.  Pledging allegiance to ISIS online isn’t exactly a crime, it’s a 1st Amendment protected act (I’m pretty sure that it qualifies as right of association).  Our country was set up to make it difficult for the government to punish people for political or ideological beliefs.

But the point still stands.  The government can’t protect us all the time.  They can never make us 100% safe against attack.  So it is up to us to be our own last line of defense.

Every terrorist attack, every mass shooting, proves that to more and more Americans.  Every single new gun owner.  Every single new carry permit holder.  They are all proof that we can only rely on the government so much, no matter what they say.

They call it tragic.  I call it self reliance.

But Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, a staunch opponent of open carry, said the four amendments wouldn’t make the bill acceptable to him — or safe for people who openly display their guns. For instance, he said, if an officer arrives at the scene of a crime and sees someone with a weapon, “At a minimum, they’re going to be thrown down on the ground with a gun pointed at them — or worse.
“And if good citizen with a concealed weapon walks into, say, a bank during an armed robbery, Gualtieri added, “he’s going to take one in the chest because he’s a threat.”

Source: Florida Police Chiefs Will Back Revised Open-Carry Bill | WLRN

I always felt that people like the Sheriff are so afraid of losing their perceived power that they go to the extremes shown above without realizing that they are insulting their own officers or acknowledging that the training in their particular departments is less than optimal.

I think that Sheriff Gualtieri does not realize that if a tragic case does indeed happen and a citizen Carrying Openly gets shot and killed for doing nothing more than minding his own business, he is setting the county to be on the losing end of a multi million dollar lawsuit. Or maybe it is a fellow officer in plainclothes who “gets one in the chest” because the Sheriff gave a tacit consent to his troops that it would be OK.

Just in case, I am planning on staying the hell out of Pinellas County since they seem to be way too trigger-happy for my taste.

PS: Read the article as it has this juicy beginning:

Acknowledging “momentum” behind a proposal that would allow people with concealed-weapons licenses to openly carry guns, the Florida Police Chiefs Association said Thursday its board of directors had voted to back the controversial measure — as long as changes designed to protect law-enforcement officers are included.

I am not quite in agreement with all the changes, but I can live with them and the idea is to insert the Camelus bactrianus proboscis inside the wigwam.

The Missus and myself were watching some TV show where the wife was gravelly ill and in her deathbed, she begs the husband to continue living to the fullest. You know the script.

I turned to my bride and said:

“I am dying first. I know you can survive without me. You are stronger.”

She says nothing, so I continue:

“Besides, if you die first, I would probably follow soon.” pause, she smiles. “I’d probably die in a tragic washroom accident by mixing the wrong stuff and the washer explodes.”

She barely cracks a smile, I press on:

“And love of my life, I would try to reach you in the afterlife anyway. I’d get a Ouija board and summons you ‘Honey, are you there? Give me a sign. I need to know where the light-bulbs are and what’s the password for the Amazon Prime account.”

I forgot she packs a mean right hook.

The governor of Connecticut has decided not to issue gun permits to people on the no Fly list.

I can’t wait for this to go to court.

The Supreme Court punted on the Highland Park AWB case.  I’m glad they did.  The court has bowed to too much public pressure recently.  I think SCOTUS woukd have upheld the AWB because of San Bernardino and not the law.

But this is to far beyond the pale I don’t think it can be ignored.  Denial of a right without due process.  But there is another issue here.  Having to apply for a permit and pay money to exercise a constitutional right is wrong.  I see permits to own no different than a poll tax.  If this goes to court, it might likely be the end to permits to own.  

This is a fight worth fighting.

Checking the news over lunch I see that the legislature of Illinois is trying to figure out how to fire Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  This is in response to protests calling for his resignation.  This comes only a week after the firing of Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy for covering up criminal activity by the CPD.

Chicago is not the only city that has suffered recently.

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has set NYC back more than 20 years, bringing back the homeless, crime, and squeegee men.

Detroit is bankrupt.  It takes an hour for police to respond on a good day.

Baltimore is besieged by a record crime wave.

The major common characteristic of each of these cities is that they are Democrat strongholds, run by Democrats, some for 50 years or more.

We are watching in real time the failure of Liberal policies.  It’s like watching the slow collapse of the Soviet Union.

What amazes me is that these local failures don’t stick to national candidates.  From what I can tell Hillary and Bernie want to do at the federal level everything that the mayors of these cities did locally.  Hillary is Emanuel.  Sanders is de Blasio.  The Democrat presidential candidates need to be made to own the failure of Democrat cities.

I keep getting dragged to the SicFi/Fantasy books. Most I do not enjoy since they are too chirpy and touchy/feely and mostly annoyingly optimistic (That is what happens when you first futuristic books were A Brave New World and 1984.)

Her Brother’s Keeper was just a blast. Mike Kupari did not try to engulf you with philosophical questions on how future worlds should be, but just provided me with a fun interesting set of worlds with different philosophies that just are , warts and all and you get to like them or not.

The book touches on both the bonds of blood by family and spilled in combat. No over dramatic statements are needed to explain them: You either get them because you’ve been there or you wish you could. The book is also devoid of amazingly complicated twists and turns that a lot of lesser authors enjoy doing because somehow they makes them looks smart…which is a conceited way to say their readers are dumb. The story here is pretty straight-forward and with enough chaos to cover the old adage of “no plan ever survives first contact.”  You root for the good guys and hope the bad guys die a fiery and painful death, what else is there to ask?

So, if you are looking for a Sci-Fi book that delves into the morality and social consciousness of the interstellar travelers as they meet their prejudices at First Contact, this is not the book you are looking for (waves hand).

If you are looking for a Sci/Fi book to sit and enjoy, this is the one.

Her Brother’s Keeper is available in Paper, Electrons and Soundwave forms at Amazon.

And don’t forget to get Mike Kupari’s other books with Larry Correia: Dead Six and Sword of Exodus.