Hello everyone. It’s Laredo, and I have been moving into a new house. I apologize for vanishing without a word. Just as well, I have been thinking a lot about what to write about. I don’t want to write a bunch of blogs just to be active. I want to write material that is thought out and provides what I see as usefulness. So today I want to go over a little bit of the most common problems with gun debates that I see: misinformation.

First and foremost, assault rifles are actually rifles that have the capability of fully automatic fire, or at least just burst fire. These assault rifles have a switch that will have a few options for firing. Safety, single shot, burst shot, and full auto. This ability is called “select fire”. (Thanks to the comment below for the clarification)

Gun violence. This phrase gives the notion that guns cause violence, which is misleading and false. When a person is beat to death by someone’s hands and feet, we do not hear about physical violence. Aside from that, I am not likely to use my guns for harm. I would only use my guns to shoot a human being if he or she is an immediate threat to me or my own. Owning a firearm does not make me want to rob a store.

Gun free zones. These zones follow the notion that anyone who carries a gun is a danger to society. Look to the Texas Department of Public Safety HCL conviction rates to see that most people who carry are not a danger to society. These zones will make law-abiding citizens be disarmed. At the same time, someone looking to break the law is usually not physically restrained from carrying a gun into the zone. A courthouse would be extremely difficult to get into with a gun not being noticed. A college campus, which is usually made up of multiple buildings and allows entry from any direction, would be easy to get into with a gun unnoticed.

Mandatory classes for permits. If you do not want to go to a class, then you might not learn much when you go. You can’t learn much in one session anyway, especially when it won’t be a one-on-one experience. People should practice with their firearms often, and I would suggest learning about the laws of their states and what to do after using a firearm for self-defense. Someone might argue that what I said means that mandatory classes should be taken often. However, that would be further intrusion upon the right to bear arms. Such an action would see strong opposition. It would also

This will be all for today as I have a busy day ahead. I hope you all are doing fine, and I will be back tomorrow.

No, I do not have an internal memo from somebody. It is just simply the truth. Members of the Gun Control camp can break Firearms laws with impunity because they know they will not only be spared prosecution but celebrated. David Gregory was caught live on TV with a knowingly forbidden magazine and nothing was done even after many called for prosecution. Bloomberg sent detectives to buy gun across state lines and we never saw anybody being indicted and never will. Are you seriously expecting that the administration that provided an unknown number of firearms to Mexican Drug Cartels will actually do something about firearms crimes committed by their PR machine? Wake the fuck up.

You and me? The smallest assumption of violation of firearms laws and we get burned inside our homes by the Federales.

In Miami-Dade, there have been consistently more injuries, more fatalities, and more cyclist crashes each year since 2005. According to FDOT data, the total number of crashes involving cyclists in Miami-Dade nearly doubled from 2005 to 2013 — from 234 in 2005 to 458 in 2013, a 95.7 percent increase. The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles reports 18 cyclist fatalities and 928 injuries in Miami-Dade in 2014. Data points to areas such as Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Little Havana, Little Haiti, Overtown, and downtown as areas with high crash counts.

Source: What Is Being Done to Make Miami Safer for Cyclists? | Miami New Times

Let’s start with the title: What Is Being Done to Make Miami Safer for Cyclists? Out of the gate, it places all safety responsibility on somebody else but those who you think should be interested in being safe. Sounds familiar?

The chief complaint that cyclists have is that car drivers do not pay attention to them and eventually they get run over even if they are riding on designated bike lanes. And I do believe it is true, but we have this problem of other vehicles also on the road which (sorry to say this) are a bigger threat to our safety and big enough to be noticed. Cyclist are small enough and “grey” enough that do not call our attention until it might be too late.

In the past 10 years, most of my driving has been at night and had some nasty close call with cyclists because they were not visible enough or at all. Something as simple and cheap ($20-$30) as a safety reflective vest in orange or yellow can make the difference between arriving home safe or ending up in the ER. The problem is that those things are not cool looking. Look at the picture above: it is daytime and you those wearing bright colors immediately pop out and call your attention.

And by the way, slapping a three or four inches of reflective stickers and adding a couple of LED lights barely reaching the double-digit Lumens to the bike does not make you safe at night either.  I know some will think as vandalizing to add more to their very precious and very expensive bikes, but I figure having your toy crushed by a truck is a bigger case of vandalism.
You as a cyclist, cannot expect that more laws or bike paths will keep you safe. Being highly visible is what will increase your chances to avoid being transformed into a road stain.

PS: Also, don’t be dicks.

Feel free to steal and share.

Do it for them!

Via Borepatch:

The NYPD is developing new “sensitivity rules” for police officers to deal with mentally unstable individuals.

NYPD cops are about to become street shrinks, under new rules that require them to use calming phrases when they have to subdue dangerous disturbed people, The Post has learned.

The NY Post describes the new initiative as “touchy-feely.”

Then I went and read the comments at the Weasel Zippers post where I caught the NY Post article.  The comments are terrible.  I can’t stand when polarizing politics gets in the way of a good idea.

Now I will say, I don’t know just yet how effective the NYPD mandade will be.  How they implement these new mandates is something we will have to see.  But at face value, I completely support the push to make officers more sensitive to people’s mental states.  To dismiss that is beyond stupid.

When my dad was dying, he was delusional.  He had no idea where he was.  His blood sugar was out of whack.  His kidneys were failing.  He talked to people who weren’t there and about things that didn’t make sense.

When my wife’s grandfather was at the end of his days, we visited him in the old folks home.  He flirted with my wife, because he had no idea who she was, what year it was, and seemed to think he was at a church dance.

Disease and illness does strange things to people’s awareness and cognitive abilities.  The police are often called out to deal with people who are acting strange.  Sometimes those interactions go badly.

A few years ago a Park Forest, Illinois, police officer killed a 95 year old man with a bean bag round.  The man had dementia and was delusional and dehydrated.  Yes, the man had a knife, but he was 95 and thirsty.

There have been several accounts of police shooting  or tazing diabetics who are having a diabetic crisis and acting erratically because their blood sugar was way off.

These people didn’t need to get shot.  They just needed a cup of juice.

There was a have been similar incidents of police shooting and tazing elderly people with dementia.

There has been an increase in police having to interact with the mentally ill.  Police, psychiatrists, and medical doctors all have proposed ways that police can improve their response to people with mental illness.

The motto of the police is to “protect and serve.”  Saving the lives of the mentally ill, rather than shooting them should be a priority.  I’m not asking the police to treat the mentally ill.  But for a police officer to be able to assess if a person is suffering from a mental or emotional problem and de-escalating the situation in a way that does not involve harming a person that is not fully cognitive is a critical.  Even if the tactic is to contain the person until medical personnel can better handle the situation is a step forward.

This is not an unreasonable position to take, given that as the baby boomers get older, the number of people with diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other problems will increase.  If this saves one grandparent who is having a medical crisis from being shot unnecessarily, it’s a good thing.

But a good portion comments to this article seem to cheer on the idea that the police should just shoot and or taze people who are having problems and that this is a case of liberalism run amok.

This why we can’t have nice things.  Because if a good idea does manage to come out from the other side of the aisle, it’s immediately quashed.  Liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican – I don’t care who comes up with the idea, if it saves lives and reduces the financial burden on cites by reducing the number of wrongful death suits, I will entertain the idea.

Maybe, just maybe, a policy of teaching a cop how to identify and deal with someone who needs an MD more than a JHP is more important than the letter after the name of the person who  created the policy.

First: I spent easy 30 minutes looking for confirmation on the “being despondent about grades” and could not find a reliable or even a non-reliable source. You decide on your own what to think.

Second: They really do not see the contradiction, do they? UCLA, in California, prime example of gun control laws including a prohibition of guns in campus which they assure us is the perfect recipe so events like today never happen again!

Yet, somehow the shooter managed to walk into campus with a gun and kill the professor and himself.

Once again, good wishes and printed paper do not stop evil actions.