By spiders. The frigging spiders are driving me crazy.  I guess the IR lights attracts them at night and they decide it is gonna be cool to weave web in front of the camera.  The good news is that the camera does not see the web, the bad news is that the camera does see the frigging bug pottering all over the damn place and that trigger alerts.

I have covered the lens and sprayed repellant on the camera, but it seems not to affect them.

Any ideas?

I missed this one when it happened because I haven’t been keeping up with the local news as much as I should.

Man accused firing shots outside a Huntsville club stopped by security officer

Remember when we were told it is impossible for someone armed with just a handgun to go up against a shooter armed with an assault rifle, which is why it was fine that Chicken Shit Scot Peterson ran away and we need a new AWB?

Apparently a security guard armed with a handgun stopped a potential mass shooting at a club by someone with an AK.

Also, the security guard is a black woman, and her interview is AMAZING.

She took cover and engaged the potential mass shooter as soon as she saw him.

She had a trauma kit with her and went to retrieve it.

Her only mistake (and I don’t want to sound like an armchair general here) is that she didn’t secure the guy before she went to get the medical supplies so he had a change to escape.

The potential shooter is a convicted felon, recently released from a 14 year prison sentence, so is a prohibited person.  He has been arrested but there is no news yet how he managed to obtain his rifle.

Huntsville police are calling this guard a hero.

So we have a felon with an illegally obtained weapon trying to shoot up a club – presumably because a particular rapper was doing a show there – armed with an assault rifle, taken out by a civilian good gal with a gun, who is probably not some crazy white supremacist carrying a gun because of penis size issues.

I guess this is why this hasn’t been touched by any national news network.

And fuck it if they don’t like me.  Sure as hell they aren’t doing shit themselves other than whine.

It is because spaghetti is a food, not welding equipment. Right? So simple even your average gun rights advocate can get it?

So please, by the love of all that is holy, explain to me why you say you hate so much the NRA and therefore your only support will be for the Second Amendment Foundation. I cannot understand the train of thought that led you to that decision. Was there ever a train or you just went Thomas out of stupid outrage.

The NRA takes care of the Legislative and the election side. Tries to do its job in the hall of Congress and in election time, trying to guess which candidates will support. We are talking their area of operations is mostly the  Executive and the Legislative.  The Second Amendment Foundation deals almost in exclusive with the Judicial part. Lawsuits and challenges in court. And although sometimes they will offer opinion and help at legislative level, their strength is on the court battles.

So, when I hear somebody foaming at the mouth against the NRA (90% is because they read a third-party article telling them it was bad) and saying that they only support the Second Amendment Foundation from now on, I have to question how really dense this person can be. For all his talk about Civics and the meaning of this and that, does he understand what are the different branches of government?

And hey, I know NRA has tried its hand in lawsuits and has not fared well or deep. In fact in some they plain sucked which is why they should stay away from courts unless is a direct challenge to something to do with the organization like Cuomo pressuring banks and insurance companies against the NRA.

I know you are having mental hemorrhoids, but please, don’t say stupid shit just because it is the latest Keyboard Warrior fashion. Use your brain, it will appreciate it.

“It will never happen to me/us.”

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” ― Archilochus

I read and re-read Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission official report and my mind keeps coming back to the two quotes I used above.

This is not the smoking gun, it is not the “Aha!” moment in a courtroom drama, it is just simply one of the links in the catastrophic chain of events that lead to the Parkland Shooting. The sad [art is if any of the vicious links had been broken, this massacre may had not happened.

From what I read, if you go with what is on paper, The staff of  Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was properly trained on Code Red events and Scot Peterson had more than enough training to face a horde of barbarians. But the actions and what came out in the interviews show the training was probably just a nice paid day of chatting over coffee and donuts.  What the report shows was a staff unevenly prepared and probably whatever training they got was more to check a box saying they did it than actually learning what do tp in a Red Code event.  We go from personnel who knew what and who could call a Red Code to people who did not think it was their job and did not know who could call it and what even meant. It took over three minutes of Cruz shooting for the first Red Code call to go on the air. Mind you, there were personnel who already knew something bad was happening and had radios, but nothing was called for those three minutes.

Some of the people (teachers and security) acted bravely but the lack of a proper plan of action and prior preparation still led to deaths.  For example what is called “Hard Corners”

In regard to school safety and security, a safe zone or hard corner is an area of the classroom that cannot be seen by someone looking through a window(s). It does not mean the area is reinforced with any protective materials or barriers. The fire code does not prohibit or reference safe zones/hard corners. On February 14, two of the 30 classrooms in Building 12 had defined hard corners where teachers had placed tape on the ground to identify the safe areas. There were also multiple classrooms with obstructions in the hard
corners, such as student and teacher desks, bookshelves and audio/video equipment. The two classrooms with identified hard corners were obstructed with unmovable objects that prevented the denoted hard corners from being effective. (Pages 45-46)

In IDPA, I learned the difference between Cover and Concealment: Cover is a barrier that will stop incoming rounds from hitting you. Concealment is a barrier that only blocks vision but rounds can go through.  What is defined as “Hard Corner” according to Florida Schools is at best an area that cannot be seen from the windows in the doors. As you can see by the report, not only these very basic areas were not defined in the majority of classrooms, but the only two that had them defined had them used as dump sites. The only reason the body count was not higher was that Cruz never thought about spraying the drywall walls of every classroom to get the students inside. I am sure that the next shooter will not make that mistake.

Another thing that caught my attention was the personnel not accepting that what they were hearing was shots but defaulted to the less-dangerous concept of firecrackers. This goes to the “It will never happen to me/us/here.” mindset that we have seen in other events. It is the insidious “Bad stuff is what happens to others, not to me and mine.” which leads not only to a terrible preparation mindset but a lack of interest in how to avoid an event and how to respond if it happens. But when the facts came loud in the form of gun shots, it was impossible for some to accept it and they went for a more palatable explanation and less harmful to the mental picture they had formed in their minds all those years.

And now, let me scare you if you have kids anywhere in the Florida Educational System: The mistakes that happened in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have been repeated in all schools across the state. Mind you, Broward screw it up atrociously, but that does not mean your school board is absolved from sin. There is not a concise plan across the State of Florida and its schools on how to deal with Code Reds, in fact, there is not even a standardized definition of Code Red and how they apply.

The shooting at  Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was simply a failure of mindset, or a least a very important link of the chain: Not believing it would ever happen to them led to dismiss proper training and preparation. Once the shooting started, the lack of a plan and training o how to react led to chaos and paralysis of action due to doubts/ignorance on what to do.  And the only person who was supposed to know Deputy Peterson), did not act. I chose not to address him in this post, but I should have added that maybe part of the passive mindset was that they knew there was an armed School Resource Officer present and that would be enough to have a happy ending. “I don’t have to do squat, we have an armed cop in the premises!”  We need to add the possibility this is also part of the problem as we have seen how many people are pissed off at suddenly finding out about No Duty to Protect.

I think I am better off leaving you with the findings of the commission and save me the time to get you even more upset. There is more stuff there than what I just covered.

Findings (pages 50-51):
1. The lack of a called Code Red on February 14, 2018—because there was no policy, little training and no drills—left students and staff vulnerable to being shot, and some were shot because they were not notified to lockdown. This was most evident on the third floor of Building 12.
2. The lack of a formal Code Red or similar active assailant response policy and training in the Broward County Public Schools led to school personnel not knowing or clearly understanding the criteria for calling a Code Red, who could
call it or when it could be called.
3. The District did not have and still does not have a formal, written and
disseminated Code Red policy.
4. Even after the hour-long emergency code training with Al Butler in January 2018, teachers and MSDHS staff were still unsure as to the correct procedure required to call a Code Red and who could call a Code Red. As recently as late fall of 2018 during interviews of current MSDHS teachers and other staff, they indicated they are still unclear as to who can call a Code Red and under what circumstances.
5. There were no Code Red drills at MSDHS in the year preceding the shooting.
6. Multiple teachers stated that Butler’s training in January 2018 was useful because they did not have any prior Code Red training. After the training, administrators and campus monitors found most of the teachers locked their classroom doors. However, administrators and campus monitors did continue to find some doors around the campus unlocked and even propped open. These teachers were reminded to keep the doors shut and locked.
7. All teachers in Building 12 who sheltered in place did so because the first thing they heard was gunfire, not because they were notified of an active shooter on campus. This was especially true on the second floor.
8. All teachers in Building 12 who evacuated their classrooms did so because the first thing they heard was the fire alarm and had not been notified of a Code Red.
9. Not one teacher in Building 12 stated that they heard the Code Red being called over the PA. The teachers reacted to the sound of gunfire or the fire alarm. (The Code Red announcement over the PA was not made until Cruz had finished shooting all his victims and was entering the third-floor teacher’s lounge, which was too late to meaningfully notify anyone.)

My wife was given a 30 ounce yeti tumble which is almost as big as her.  But since she already has the 20 Oz from Walmart’s Ozark Trail (Pretty much the same thing at 1/3 the cost) she gave it to me.

But I had not forgotten what Yeti pulled and rather than using as target practice, I went ahead and defaced it.

I managed to finally use another NRA sticker from the stack I have collected over the years.  I may add one or two more, just to be tacky.

Ken Jenne back when  the incoming sunset of the AWB was about to happen and conspiring to produce one of the most clear Gun Control lies ever shown on national TV.

It was the beginning of Jenne’s downfall. BSO was found fudging crime reports badly and other things like federal tax evasion and mail fraud charges to which he plead guilty and had to resign. He was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison.

And then we have our dear Scott Israel also in CNN

Now, don’t forget that by the time the Town Hall/Lynch Mob meeting happened, sheriff Israel already knew his deputy had acted cowardly and refused to go after Niki Cruz. Yet he acts all mighty and morally superior against Dana Loesch.

We only hope that Jenne’s story is repeated with Israel and we get to see him in handcuffs or at least in a very nice walk just like Jenne.

To paraphrase certain movie:

“You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is ‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia,’ but only slightly less well known is this: ‘Never go Gun Control on CNN when it can be proved you are lying.’ “