Where a Hispanic Catholic, and a Computer Geek write about Gun Rights, Self Defense and whatever else we can think about.
Somehow I don’t expecting kicking doors anytime.
I love the “If we people decided” excuse. It has always been the way to violate rights everywhere in the world.
I have some old and new examples of when “people decided” it was OK to violate people’s rights.
And it is for those moments when “the people decided” that we own guns.
If the politicians close one door, technology eventually finds another one and that plays specially true with guns. In 1969 the term Saturday Night special was coined and affixed to cheap handguns that could be afforded by those in a vert tight budget like the poor or minorities. Politicians went out of their way to make them look like metallic spawns of the devil and states and cities banned their ownership.
Truthfully they were cheap guns in both price and construction. sometimes even downright dangerous for the owner as they could sustain a catastrophic failure and you would end up being called Leftie for the rest of your life.
A great example of these guns of the past was the Rohm RG-10 revolver. Check this ad from 1960:
Now fast forward to the 21st century. I just got an email from Tombstone Tactical on a sale they are having. One of the guns is the Ruger LCP 380, a tried and tested small pistol that is several orders of magnitude above the RC-10 and its fellow cheap guns of the day. Look at that price.
I went to the Inflation calculator and figured how much a Ruger LCP 380 at $173.99 would have been in 1968 dollars.
Event though $20.56 was not peanuts, it was an acquirable sum in those days. And we are talking about today’s technology that produces a reliable small pistol that will go bang every time without fear of blowing up in the owner’s hand.
Then I went the other way around, how much an RG-10 revolver would cost today:
That would be a hard “pass!” for me anyway.
It does not matter how hard they try to contain the genie called guns, it will always find a way to escape and come back stronger and modern. May it be 3D printing a gun at home or pure capitalistic technology that allows a company to manufacture a high quality & low-cost firearm, that genie will never get back to the bottle.
From the Miami Herald.
Paramedics wanted to enter Parkland school where kids were dying. BSO said no.
During the chaos of the Parkland school shooting, paramedics from Coral Springs-Parkland Fire Department were desperate to go inside the building where students were wounded and dying.
Michael McNally, deputy chief for Coral Springs fire-rescue, asked six times for permission to send in specialized teams of police officers and paramedics, according to an incident report he filed after the Feb. 14 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that left 17 people dead.
But every time McNally asked to deploy the two Rescue Task Force teams — each made up of three paramedics and three to four law enforcement officers — the Broward Sheriff’s Office captain in charge of the scene, Jan Jordan, said no.
Coral Springs asked to go into MDS six times. SIX FUCKING TIMES!!!
How many kids were killed between the time when Coral Springs FD/PD first got there and the shooting ended?
We know it was at least the entire third floor of the school.
The fact is that 15 of the 17 victims died at the school.
Instead of having extra paramedics in the building, law enforcement officers brought injured victims — sometimes on golf carts — to a medical staging area hastily assembled nearby. Then they were sent to hospitals. Fifteen of the 17 mortally wounded victims died at the school. Another 17 people survived their injuries.
How many of those deaths were kids bleeding out in hallways that could have been saved if paramedics had gotten to them sooner?
It wasn’t just the scene captain that is responsible for this. Keeping the Coral Springs FD/PD from responding was Sheriff Israel’s call.
“The [BSO] incident commander advised me, ‘She would have to check,’ ” McNally wrote in the report released Thursday by Coral Springs. “After several minutes, I requested once again the need to deploy RTF elements into the scene to … initiate treatment as soon as possible. Once again, the incident commander expressed that she ‘would have to check before approving this request.’ “
This was not the first time shit like this happened.
In his report, McNally, who had been ordered to act as a liaison between Coral Springs fire command and BSO, also claimed BSO’s command post was severely dysfunctional. Communication was difficult, McNally said, because he often could not locate Jordan, BSO’s district commander for Parkland.
“The command post was inundated with too many people and made it impossible to establish and function,” McNally wrote, echoing criticisms of the disorganization and lack of a unified command structure that plagued BSO’s response to a deadly shooting at the Fort-Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport last year.
At least three additional fire-rescue incident reports released Thursday by Coral Springs confirmed that BSO had denied requests to send in the rescue teams. Coral Springs provides fire service in the city of Parkland. BSO provides law enforcement.
So why was the Coral Spirngs FD/PF not allowed in?
Veda Coleman-Wright, a spokeswoman for BSO, said in an email Thursday evening that medics are only sent in “after it has been confirmed the threat is mitigated.”
That’s a pretty fucking awful idea, especially since the BSO didn’t go in. But the actions of the BSO directly contradict the whole fucking purpose of the RFT.
Thirty-four people had been shot inside the school’s freshman building. Gunshot wound victims can bleed out quickly, meaning fast action is necessary. The special RTF teams allow paramedics to treat victims under the protection of police officers in situations where a shooter has been pinned down or fled but has not necessarily been captured.
They have a team equipped and trained for exactly this type of scenario and the Sheriff an his hand picked Captain kept them out.
BSO Sheriff Scott Israel has faced criticism for his leadership since the shooting. He handpicked Jordan, a former colleague from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, to head the relatively trouble-free Parkland district.
Failure occurred at so many levels it is unbelievable.
When Jordan arrived on scene, her only recorded command was for deputies to form a perimeter around the school, although BSO says that’s because her radio failed as the county’s communications system overloaded.
The excuse for not going in is that her radio failed? So BSO policy is “when in doubt, stand around with your thumbs up your asses.”
Because the BSO was busy trying to fit both thumbs into their assholes instead of confronting the shooter, this happened.
Medical air rescue was also denied because Cruz, who would be arrested off campus more than an hour after the shooting began, had not yet been captured.
The only way this could get any worse is if we found that the BSO sent in deputies to shoot the wounded to put them out of their misery.
No wonder Sheriff Israel was so happy to show up on CNN and blame guns and the NRA.
In his own words, he has shown “amazing leadership.”
His “amazing leadership” caused four deputies to form a perimeter around MSD high school rather than go in and confront the shooter, in violation of everything we know about active shooters and police policy.
He and his hand picked captain kept police and paramedics trained to respond to an active shooter out of the school.
He prevented the wounded from being air lifted to the hospital.
Of course, he can’t say he fucked up, he showed “amazing leadership.” So someone had to be blamed for this, and that someone is Marco Rubio, Dana Loesch, and the law abiding members of the NRA.
What we should see, instead of petulant children having a “die in” at Publix, parents and concerned citizens having a die in at the BSO office. But that will never happen. Why?
This is fucking why:
And
Here is my recommendation. Florida needs to get rid of qualified immunity.
Anybody who is angry about this and lives in Florida should run for state office on ending qualified immunity. The gubernatorial candidates should be asked to end qualified immunity. The legislation should be petitioned to end qualified immunity.
When a fuck up of this magnitude and enormity occurs, those in charge of it should be held personally liable.
For ever death that happened after the first BSO deputy failed to respond, Sheriff Israel, Captain Jan Jordan, and Deputy Scot Peterson should be charged with negligent homicide.
The FL legislature already collectively punished millions of law abiding citizens. It’s time that the people who allowed this to happen get punished too.
USA Today did an article on Colorado Marijuana. This is the picture that went along with it.
Here is what pisses me off.
It’s one thing for a single graphic artist to make a mistake. But this had to make its way past at least one reporter and editor.
USA Today is based in McLean, VA, adjacent to the most expensive Zip Code in the South, as it is home to lobbyists, Congressmen, and the political glitterati who work in DC.
So when some journalists who grew up in Manhattan, went to Columbia, then went to work in the suburbs of DC see America, they see this.
This isn’t just a mistake.
This is a lazy contempt of the great plains states.
They can’t even be bothered to tell one big rectangle from another, and they don’t really care that they can’t.
It’s like when they call their maids Maria instead of Marta. It’s close enough and they don’t give a shit about the peons beneath them.
This is a very important article to read and process.
American policing today is in a state of slow-motion collapse, struggling mightily to attract new officers — no matter how low standards are dropped.
Under sustained assault by the City Council, pundits and self-styled civil-liberties advocates, a new generation of New York City cops is being conditioned to avoid showdowns with civilians, especially where coercion or force is called for. We could have saved the costly investment in body cameras by explicitly telling the cops two words: “Do nothing.”
…
In many parts of the country, the police have gone to ground.
…
In Chicago, the street cops’ ethos is “go fetal, stay fetal.” In Philadelphia, as murders soar, cops are the ones in prosecutors’ crosshairs. It is crystal clear what was long suspected: Costly Justice Department intervention in local police departments expedited the end of hands-on policing.
…
String together a series of adversarial videos, and almost every officer can find him or herself fast-tracked to trouble.
The new-era calculation for the police is: Conflict is the quickest path to extinction.
Some of this was wholly predictable when people who harbor disdain for the police and resent law enforcement are allowed to pose as reformers.
I have seen this article referenced in other blogs under something we already know: You are on your own when shit hits the fan (A.K.A. You are your own First Responder.) We have known this for quite a while and it is a state of mind you should be prepared for or else you have been wasting your time.
But What I have not seen is the amazing political opportunity this presents for the Second Amendment. The same political wave that hates guns, hates the second Amendment and hates you enough to have you killed is the same wave of Leftie assholes that hates cops. You have read here examples of Moms Demand siding with Black Lives Matter and crapping on cops. Their hate for Law Enforcement is obvious.
We need to extend our hand and have cops come to our side. And yes, there are people in our side that may have issues with the way certain departments conduct business and need to be changed. But to get that change, the old adage of attracting flies with honey apply here and even you take advice from those who are friendly to you than those who are openly hostile.
Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emmanuel said “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Let’s not be dumb and waste this crisis, a crisis created by our common enemies who wants both sides run to the ground.
That pesky Fifth Amendment.
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Double jeopardy has been a principle of these United States since 1789.
Technically, double jeopardy applies only to a single jurisdiction, but New York has a double jeopardy law that says if the Federal Government attaches jeopardy to you, the state won’t come at you for the same crime.
It is a matter of principle.
In Trump’s America principle doesn’t matter anymore.
https://twitter.com/NewYorkStateAG/status/1002267137287835650
See, when Trump pardons someone you don’t like, why not take a crack at the guy at the state level. Never mind one of the oldest and most sacred principles in American jurisprudence. We have to throw a guy in prison because Trump.
But what else can you expect from people who have been raging on for years about the gun show loophole.
These people consider the entire Bill of Rights a loophole.
Here’s what will happen if the likes of Barbra Underwood get their way. They’ll get 51 chances to try you. If they can’t nail you in Federal Court, they will go state by state until they can secure a conviction or you plead guilty because you ran out of money to defend yourself.
Those are the one type of loophole they like, the little technicalities that allow them to oppress you.
I saw this ugly thing this afternoon.
After some in-depth search (I aske in Facebook if anybody had seen this animal before) I found out it is called Anhinga, also called devil bird, the snake bird or water turkey.
I checked some other pictures of anhingas and they don’t look that bad. In fact most of them look spiffy, smooth and come in two-tones. This one looks like it just got up from bed and has not been to the hairdresser in months. Actually looks like a junkie of sorts.
Meth, not even once 😀