Check this video I found in reddit:

The question and title of the thread is “Whats the legality of giving this guy the room temperature challenge if you also had your ccw?“

Two thirds of the people commenting on this video saw no problem ventilating the fat drunk and were convinced that no consequences would come to them.

That is scary. It also means an amazing pool of clients for Andrew Branca is out there waiting to happen. I am sure he won’t mind a few extra motorcycle trips around the country. And with that, I am issuing my IANAL warning.

Let me share my opinions one by one, shall we? Now, after watching an incomplete video for sure, but it does not matter what happened before because the only thing we have is a drunk on the street tussling a bit with his possible girlfriend.  And we have to refer to the old “what a reasonable Person would do in this situation?” which is what a jury would be asked to do. Let’s begin:

1-“Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.” I forget who said that, but it is right on the nose.
First assumption: “You are on my property” apparently are magic words that should have made the drunk idiot suddenly come to his senses, apologize and leave. Oops! It did not work.
Second assumption: Thinking he was in private property. He was not inside the house/apartment but on the steps. The sidewalk and street are also NOT his private property so he was not saying anything logical or legal but trying to be macho. I think even the drunk guy figured that out or simply did not give a damn.

2-“Do not escalate the encounter.” Addressing an obviously drunk idiot who appears to want to fight by insulting him with “You look ridiculous” and repeating the phrase as in taunting is not a smart strategic decision.  That was 100% pure Ego aided by the use of the camera and IMHO the thrill of having a viral video in the internet.

3-Discovering that sober and young is not superior to drunk and armed. That one got erased pretty quick when the guy seems to have pulled a gun after he got jumped by the friends. And in case somebody missed it, that was escalation again.

I have no more information after that. But if fat drunk went to jail and the stupid kid only took that love tap to the forehead, I am happy with the results.

So, what was the correct course of action in this case? In my opinion, shut the hell up, go inside, lock the door and call the cops. Fat drunk guy was not a imminent danger of death or grave bodily harm till he pulled the firearm you did not know he had after you and you buddies escalated the situation. Pulling your own gun and shooting fat drunk when you are also responsible for the problem will not allow you to claim self defense.

So once again, I will copy/paste the following:

Your number one philosophy for personal security should be a life long commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.

Avoidance: The act of avoiding or keeping away from (Three Stupid Rule.) If you can safely retreat from the encounter, by all means do so. For instance, if you are out for a walk and feel threatened or intimidated by an occupant of a car, you should retreat in the opposite direction that the car is traveling.

Deterrence: The act of discouraging someone from taking hostile action against you by being aware of them and their possible intent.

De-escalation: The act of decreasing in intensity. To not let your ego or emotions get the best of you, to refrain from escalating the problem into more than it already is. As a CCW you may need to back down from non-life threatening, argumentative encounters in order to not allow things to spiral out of control.
When these things do not work, then and only then may you need to show or use the gun. Just because we are carrying does not mean that we need to use the gun. You want to do whatever is reasonably possible to avoid using the gun. But when your well researched, well thought out “line in the sand” has been crossed you need to act without hesitation.

The “Three Stupid” Rule

“Do not go to stupid places, with stupid people, and do stupid things”

We all know that nobody wants thugs to dictate where they can or cannot go. Put there are simply some places, people, and things that you should avoid if you want to lower your risks. You can cut down on your risks by a good 95% if you just follow the three stupid rule.

Roger Phillips

 

From ABC7 in California:

Gov. Gavin Newsom wants investigation of state’s high gas prices

California’s governor has asked the attorney general to investigate why the state’s gas prices are so high, pointing to a new report suggesting big oil companies are “misleading and overcharging customers” by as much as $1 per gallon.

Name brand retailers – including 76, Chevron and Shell – often charge more because they say their gasoline is of higher quality. But a new analysis from the California Energy Commission could not explain the price difference, concluding “there is no apparent difference in the quality of gasoline at retail outlets in the state.”

The commission said California drivers paid an average of 30 cents more per gallon in 2018, with the difference getting as high as $1 per gallon in April of this year. The result is California drivers paid an additional $11.6 billion at the pump over the last five years.

“There is no identifiable evidence to justify these premium prices,” Newsom wrote in a letter to Attorney General Xavier Becerra. “If oil companies are engaging in false advertising or price fixing, then legal action should be taken to protect the public.”

Becerra’s office said in an email it had received Newsom’s request and “will handle accordingly.”

See, it must be those greedy capitalist oil companies squeezing the money out of California’s residents.

Except it’s not.

First of all, gas stations in California can’t sell regular gasoline.  They have to sell California approved Reformulated Gasoline (RGF).  The only refineries that produce that are in California, no new refineries can be built and many have been shut down in recent years.

Governor Gavin Newsom came into office and expanded the state’s Cap-and-Trade plan on carbon emissions.  This has added costs to refining by forcing refineries to buy more carbon credits.

California has the highest gas taxes of any state at $0.61.  Add in the 9% sales tax, Cap-and-Trade tax, and everything else, and it’s no wonder that Californians pay so much in taxes.

This is entirely the fault of California’s state government regulating and taxing gasoline.

“So what” you say.  You don’t live in California.

This same basic principle, the government regulates a commodity to death then acts shocked when it becomes egregiously expensive is the cause of the high healthcare costs in the United States.

Every single Democrat (including Tulsi Gabbard) has a plan to deal with high prescription drug prices… and that plan is to impose a price fix like the European nations do.

What has price-fixing done in Europe?  It has severely curtailed R&D on pharmaceuticals in Europe.  That has driven up the cost of drugs in the United States as pharmaceutical companies raise prices here to make a profit that they cannot make in Europe.

Much like how our military development was an indirect subsidy of the “European lifestyle” since they didn’t have to spend as much on defense knowing we’d protect them.  Americans have been paying at the pharmacy to indirectly subsidize the “European lifestyle” funding pharmaceutical and medical device R&D.

But I digress…

Limiting Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements have also driven up prices by forcing non-government healthcare beneficiaries to be the sources of profit for doctors and hospitals.

Then there are the various regulations on health insurance, everything from annual open enrollment to mandatory coverage, to prohibition on selling insurance across state lines and removed or limited every benefit of the free market system from healthcare.

The free market is the best system for reducing prices while increasing supply and quality.  When that is trampled on by government regulation the result is always higher prices, shortages in availability, and reduced quality.

Then these same people are always agog when prices go up.

The Soviets could never quite figure out why their economists and mathematicians were never able to plan the economy the way they had hoped.

What California has done to gasoline, the Federal government has done to healthcare.  If the Democrats in 2020 get their way, they will do it harder and make it infinitely worse.

From the Washington Examiner:

Texas father blocked from stopping gender transition of son James, 7, to girl called Luna

A jury in Texas returned a verdict on Monday that will prevent a Texas dad from intervening in the gender transition of his 7-year-old son.

Say those words out loud to yourself “gender transition of his 7-year-old.”

If an adult, after years of dealing with gender-related issues wants to transition, I don’t really care.  That is their life, they are free to live it how they want.

Children are a different matter entirely.  My son is almost six, just a little younger than this boy here.  Right now, he goes back and forth between identifying as a lemur and a jaguar, depending on which episode of his favorite animal show he just watched.

He has still yet to master pronouns.

Do NOT tell me that at his current age he is capable of engaging in the deep introspection necessary to make life-altering decisions about his gender identity.

Jeffrey Younger had petitioned a court in Texas to grant him sole custody of his twin sons, James and Jude, in part to avoid a plan to infuse James with female hormones. James, who would like to be called Luna, has been the center of controversy in the heated debate among his parents and others.

Anne Georgulas, the mother of the two boys, has advocated for James to transition into Luna and has strongly backed the idea of chemically castrating her son and beginning hormone replacement therapy. The ruling on Wednesday will prevent Jeffrey from having sole custody of his children and paves the way for Georgulas to proceed with the procedure.

Let us take a break from the Washington Examiner to turn to Legal Insurrection for a moment.

FDA: Drug Used as Puberty Blocker for Transgender Youth Linked to Thousands of Deaths

According to the FDA, Lupron, a drug created in the 80s to treat prostate cancer, has been linked to thousands of deaths. Lupron was later approved via prescription to treat endometriosis in women.

Now, Lupron is prescribed to children who have been diagnosed (accurately or not) with gender dysphoria as a hormone blocker.

Since 2012, the FDA has documented “over 40,764 adverse reactions suffered by patients who took Leuprolide Acetate (Lupron), which is used as a hormone blocker. More than 25,500 reactions logged from 2014-2019 were considered ‘serious,’ including 6,370 deaths.”

So back to the story in the Washington Examiner.  What sort of mother would want to put her seven-year-old on such a dangerous drug, in which one of the side effects is sterility?

Some of the more aggressive trans-activists have pushed the idea that denying children puberty blockers is tantamount to a death sentence, in essence, that teens who are not chemically and surgically transitioned will commit suicide.  This is a manipulative tactic, a person holding themselves hostage to get what they want.

To further complicate this matter, there is evidence that “puberty blockers used in child transgender treatment ‘increase risk of suicide and self-harm.’”

As the Washington Examiner reports, there is no evidence that this boy is likely to harm himself if he is not transitioned.

“Neither child appears to be depressed, anxious or aggressive … He [James] gave no indications of other significant psychological difficulties.”

So there seems to be no reason to subject a seven-year-old to such chemical abuse.

But the story gets worse.  There is evidence that the boy isn’t fully committed to being a girl and that in all likelihood, his questioned gender identity is the product of abuse.

Expert witnesses expressed doubt that James was fully convinced that he was inherently female in testimony last week. “There is still some fluidity in his thinking,” said Dr. Benjamin Albritton in sworn testimony.

Granted, we are only hearing about this from the father’s side, however, let us be clear what the stakes are.  If the mother gets her way, her son will be subject to having his body poisoned with chemicals to prevent his natural growth until the age of 15, at which point his male organs will be amputated.

This is irreversible.

The risk of not chemically and surgically transitioning a child is that he grows up and decides on his own as an adult that this is what he wants and transitions.

The risk of chemically and surgically transitioning a child is that he grows up and completes his sexual, psychological, and emotional development and decides he’s not trans and can’t undo the damage done to him to ever lead a normal life.

When the risks are so lopsided, the principle should be “do no harm.”

Georgulas has additionally secured a letter of recommendation for transition for James from a woman associated with a gay children’s therapy center. “This is a letter of recommendation that my client, James Younger, aka Luna, begin the process of becoming a patient of the GENECIS clinic so that she can receive a full psychological assessment for gender dysphoria and potentially take hormone blockers,” said a letter from Rebekka Ouer from Dallas Rainbow Therapy.

The GENECIS clinic stands for “GENder Education and Care Interdisciplinary Support” and is more of an activist center that houses a medical operation than a medical center.  Dallas Rainbow Therapy is also an activist group.  Neither of these organizations are remotely impartial or have the best interests of the boy a heart.

There are no laws currently preventing a legal guardian from giving a minor puberty blockers or hormones.

This is perhaps the single most horrifying sentence in the whole article.

I am usually the first to say “no, there probably shouldn’t be a law” but when it comes to letting a child who still thinks Santa and the Easter Bunny are real decide to claim an alternate gender identity and then use that as evidence for chemical and surgical mutilation of that child, there should be a law against that.

This type of behavior is so egregious and ideologically driven that it would make Doctor Josef Mengele proud.

I cannot imagine a greater overreach by the government than to say “we’re going to mutilate your minor child’s sexual organs because of the testimony of ideologically driven activists.”

I know Miguel has strong feelings against mob violence, but as a parent, I can tell you, if dad ended up with both sons hiding out in a non-extradition country leaving a lot of spent brass behind him…. I can’t blame him for that.

The Florida Senate is scheduled for today at 2 pm to discuss and vote the removal or reinstating Scott Israel as Sheriff of Broward County.  I think it will be important because the during the Rules Committee hearing, one republican left the reservation, in fact he flounced.

How the vote goes today might be a forecast of what we can expect for approval or dismissal of Gun Bills (Good and bad) in the new legislative season. I have not pointed out two things: Next year, a lot of legislators term out, so they are not influenced by the threats of not being reelected. Second, we lost Greg Steube when he got elected for the US Congress and he was a relentless fighter for Gun Rights in Florida. I do not know if we have somebody who will fill his shoes.

It’s long been the practice among security-conscious firearms owners to obscure the serial numbers in any photographs of firearms they put up on the Internet.  This is because unscrupulous characters have been known to note the serial numbers, report “their” firearm stolen (with that same serial number), and claim the loss against their own insurance policies.  The insurance companies then keep the firearm on the stolen property lists, and if there’s ever an inspection (for example, you’re stopped while driving, and the policeman checks your firearm serial number against his database), you may find yourself in trouble.  It’s happened to two people I know.

Now it emerges that Google and Facebook (and possibly others) are using optical character recognition to index the serial numbers of firearms in photographs posted or stored on their services.

A serious warning about firearms security

I am one of those who will blackout the serial number of a gun when I post it (and posting pics of my guns  is something I pretty much stopped doing). I always thought serial numbers were something nobody but me needed to know about and only if they were stolen, I would share it with authorities and the insurance company. Peter mentions an insurance scam that I was ot aware it existed and which it should make anybody’s butt clench. If we are being SWATted by jackasses, I would not put it past them to file a false police report stating that one of your fully internet-identified guns belonged to them and was stolen, then a month later another asshole drop a fake dime on you and you are arrested for possession of a stolen firearm.

And from the comments I caught, the Kiwis are not happy about Americans meddling in their internal affairs. That is more than understandable because we told Aussie Rebecca  Peters more than once to go eff herself when she was at the UN pushing for the US to do the Gun Ban thing. Also, crapping on their Prime Minister may not have been the smartest thing. Not everybody in the world has a seething hate for their elected leader like US Liberals do.

I wonder who invited them or if they invited themselves.

I need aspirin.