Gun Free Zone

Where a Hispanic Catholic, and a Computer Geek write about Gun Rights, Self Defense and whatever else we can think about.

Month: April 2020

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Give them an inch and they will take a mile – Lockdown edition

Apr 11, 2020 J. Kb 6 comments

Miguel covered how the Michigan Governor used her authority to tell Home Depot to shut down “non-essential” areas of the store like gardening and flooring, and how cops in Philadelphia were pulling non-masked riders off public transportation.

It seems that social distancing is working to control the spread of the virus.

At the same time, it’s helping to exacerbate the spread of massive government overreach.

Case 1:

Former police officer arrested in park for throwing ball with daughter due to coronavirus social distancing rules

In an incident caught on video, a former Colorado State Patrol trooper said he was handcuffed in front of his 6-year old daughter on a near-empty softball field Sunday by Brighton police officers enforcing social distancing rules.

The park was closed.

He also refused to hand over ID, which always makes things worse, and he was eventually released, but that playing catch at a nearly empty park initialized a police response to begin with, is a problem.

Case 2:

Video shows sheriff’s deputies on boat chase down paddle boarder off Malibu after he defied lifeguards’ orders to get out of water as California beaches are closed due to coronavirus

A paddle boarder was arrested by authorities in Southern California after ignoring lifeguards’ orders to get out of the ocean for at least 30 minutes despite statewide beach closures due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Bystanders recorded video of the incident near Malibu Pier on Thursday.

It showed a man on a paddle board glide inside the choppy waters while lifeguards were telling him to come back ashore.  The man was arrested on suspicion of disobeying a lifeguard and violating a stay-at-home order issued by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Images posted to social media show the man being led in handcuffs by at least two sheriff’s deputies who also confiscated his board.  The suspect was booked at a sheriff’s station in Calabasas and released on a promise to appear in court, according to the sheriff’s department.  If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of six months in jail or a $1,000 fine.

 

Because being a hundred feet from shore, alone, on a board puts him at risk for catching and spreading the virus.

So the cops made contact with him, arrested him, and presumably took him to jail where he’d be infected or would infect other people.

He’d be in less trouble if he walked into a store and shoplifted $950 in masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper.

Case 3:

Kentucky to record license plates of those attending services this weekend and require them to quarantine for 14 days

The state of Kentucky is taking new action to discourage individuals from participating in mass gatherings, such as church services, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Friday.

The state will be recording the license plates of those who show up to any mass gatherings and provide that information to the local health departments, who will in turn order those individuals to be quarantined for 14 days, according to Beshear.

Beshear said the state is down to less than seven churches state-wide that are still “thinking about” having an in-person service this weekend.

It’s only Easter weekend.  The holiest few days in the Christian calendar.  Of course the government will punish those who are caught going to church on Easter Sunday in the middle of the Bible Belt.

I don’t want a second spike in the virus.  I don’t want more people to die.  But can we agree that arresting dads at empty parks with their kids, paddle boarders alone on the water, and people going to Easter Sunday Mass is a pretty overbearing thing to do?

It seems that what is being enforced has less to do with the virus than it does with capricious officious bureaucracy.

You can’t un-ring a bell.  Once politicians and police get the big idea that they can get away with this level of crackdown because of a virus, it’s not difficult to believe that they will be willing to flex that muscle over anything else they deem is an emergency.

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Bill Maher gets one right

Apr 11, 2020 J. Kb 2 comments

Bill Maher is a liberal, and on those grounds, I usually disagree with just about everything he says.

But I will praise him for being right when he is right and as a liberal, he is morally consistent.  He has supported Israel against Islamist terrorists and called out Leftists who support BDS and defend the Burkah.  He also has called out the PC police who try to destroy people over jokes.

He gave a monologue from the end of his filmed-at-home show that hit the nail on the head.

Sure, he had to throw in a couple of digs at the US, but overall his message is spot on and worth the watch.

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Being a POS is a bigger pre-existing condition

Apr 11, 2020 J. Kb 6 comments

This post was inspired by my last post about the virus in New York City.

I saw this Tweet from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Then I saw this headline from the New York Post:

NYC park-goers threaten to spit, cough on cops enforcing social distancing

Several officers told The Post on Tuesday that some park-goers are so angry over being called out about social distancing amid the coronavirus that they threaten to spit or cough on them if they try to enforce the safety rules.

“They will say, ‘Screw you, I hope you get coronavirus,’’ a Parks Enforcement Patrol officer said. “People do not want to listen.”

Another officer said, “You have situations where we are educating people about social distancing, and they are threatening to cough on you as a means to break the law and get away with it.

“There’s even people out there that are threatening to spit on you.”

The officers said the biggest problems occur at parks such as Washington Square in Greenwich Village in Manhattan and Astoria in Queens.

Queens, that’s one of the areas hardest hit, and Astoria Park is next to Jackson Heights, which is one of the worst-hit zip codes.

So when people are told by the police to maintain social distancing in one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in New York City, they threaten to cough on the cops and go back to doing whatever they were doing in a non-social distancing way.

Is being a stupid asshole also an effect of poverty or is poverty the effect of being a stupid asshole that publically disrespects authority and common sense?

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez also Tweeted this:

It’s interesting that I’ve seen this story covered in a few places.

From CNN: Black America must wake up to this viral threat

The Americans who were initially diagnosed with the virus were mostly white. At the beginning of the epidemic, the media understandably focused on affluent white people who had traveled overseas, especially to Asia. The impact of this news coverage had African Americans joking among ourselves that perhaps we were somehow immune to the virus. As crazy as it sounds, a rumor took off that this was a disease that kills only white people.

From OkayPlayer: Are Black People Immune To Coronavirus: How A Joke Turned Into A Believable Myth

A lot is already known about the virus courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): what it is, how it spreads, its symptoms, and ways to prevent it. Although there is valid information being shared about the virus through the media, there are also rumors surrounding it too, specifically the idea that Black people are immune to it.

Here’s what to know about the Coronavirus via the CDC, as well as break down how the notion of Black people being immune to the virus transformed from a joke to a believable myth.

Initially, this idea started off as a joke, likely through a report that came on March 1 about the low Coronavirus rate in Africa. Although cases have been reported in 11 countries since that initial report — it appears Egypt has been hit the worst by the virus with 59 cases — Africa’s rate still remains low. Searching “Coronavirus Black People” on Twitter will show how the jokes have persisted throughout the month, with the tweets mocking our over-reliance on ginger ale to combat illness, highlighting how Black people have given the virus more cool and less abrasive-sounding nicknames (“The Rona,” “The Roni”), and acknowledging that no one Black had tested positive for the virus yet.

Then came another misleading report from The Zambian Observer, who published the story “Chinese Doctor Says African Skin Resists Coronavirus” on February 16.

Still, the idea that Black people are resistant to the virus managed to circulate throughout social media, appearing on personal Facebook profile pages (one post, which has since been deleted, had been shared over 2,000 times since first being published on February 11) and Facebook groups, as well as Twitter and Instagram.

Going through social media, this rumor took off as a form of black-supremacism.

As I’ve said before, racial supremacism is emotional compensation for losers.  The biggest white-supremacists are white trash who glom onto racial superiority to make up for the fact that they are ignorant, impoverished garbage.

In this case, it seems that the rumor about black immunity and white susceptibility to Coronavirus came from the same underlying mentality.

As a result, a rumor spread through the poor black community that caused them to engage in less social distancing and more risky behavior that exacerbated other factors that made the virus spread in the poor black community even worse.

So much so that the Surgeon General had to address it himself.

I’m won’t deny that life is harder if you are poor.  Especially being poor in a high cost of living city like New York City.

But having a broken moral compass leading a person to believe in racist rumors and engaging in self-destructive behavior that makes it much more likely that they will catch the virus, spread the virus, and die of the virus can’t be blamed on outside forces.

Being a piece of shit also seems to be a pre-existing condition.

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I guess it’s the New York Virus now

Apr 11, 2020 J. Kb 2 comments

Remember when the media criticized Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for initiating a quarantine of New Yorkers trying to hide from the virus in Florida?

Yeah… turns out, DeSatins was right.

As the coronavirus exploded in New York City, leaders and residents of areas that are seasonal refuges and second homes for city dwellers called for outsiders to stay away. They feared that an influx of people could strain resources, from supermarkets to parks, and potentially overwhelm small exurban hospitals.

Yet preliminary data and anecdotal evidence does suggest that fleeing New Yorkers may have hastened the virus’s spread.

In Greene County, N.Y., home to the Catskill Mountains, the first four confirmed coronavirus cases were all people from New York City.

Mr. Groden and other county leaders have emphasized how their county has no hospital, even highlighting that fact in an official statement warning New Yorkers and people from Westchester to stay away. He said that about 30 percent of the county’s residences are second homes, most of which appear to be occupied now.

Throughout the region, the virus seems to be mostly following a logical pattern of infection, growing outward from its epicenter of New York City. But there have also been small bursts of flulike symptoms in areas where New Yorkers have summer homes, like the Adirondacks, the Jersey Shore, the Catskills and the Hamptons.

“The second-home people think that it’s Fourth of July,” said Joseph Mancini, the mayor of Long Beach Township, N.J., which this week joined several other shore towns in closing its beaches to nearly everyone but residents. “They’re out riding, biking, playing on the beach — not social distancing.”

And in Cape May, where the 30-year-old man from New York City tested positive at a local health care facility while visiting, year-round residents regularly call the offices of elected leaders to report out-of-state plates, according to a government official familiar with the calls.

“Folks from out of state need to understand the critical need to follow stay-at-home orders,” said State Senator Michael L. Testa Jr., a Republican who represents New Jersey’s southernmost district, which cuts across Cape May and Atlantic Counties. “It’s up to them to save their fellow Americans.”

Note the bold text from above.  I have made note on this blog before, just how bad New Yorkers have been at social distancing.

Not just people going to work on the subway system, but people still engaged in recreational activities in public parks.

In some respects, I can’t blame New Yorkers.  When you have 8.4 million people packed into 302 square miles of land, and an average population density of 27,750 people per square mile, everyone is packed in assholes to elbows all the time.

Still, the way some New Yorkers have reacted to the call for social distancing is obscene.

NYC park-goers threaten to spit, cough on cops enforcing social distancing

So it as typical of the stereotype of the rude, arrogant New Yorkers as you can imagine, that someone from NYC flees the virus epicenter of NYC to hide out in a low population vacation town, then engages in all their normal non-social distancing vacation behavior.

If you want a solid answer to the question posed by Slate, “why hasn’t the US rallied around NYC because of the Rona like they did after 9/11?” this is your answer.

You know what?  I’m going to post this video again:

So the New York City government decided to encourage people to attend a parade in Chinatown and go out to bars and restaurants just to spite Trump’s call for a travel ban and concerns.  NYC Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said that not going to Chinese restaurants was racist.

When all that backfired and caused the virus to spread through the population of New York like a fire through central California, spreading just as fast, equally economically destructive and, even more deadly, wealthier New Yorkers took their virus on the road and spread it to sleepy isolated locations.

China’s mismanagement of the virus caused it to spread around the world.

New York’s mismanagement caused it to spread up and down the eastern seaboard.

If the writing on the wall is true, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is going to replace Joe Biden on the ticket in November, Trump and the rest of the GOP better make sure Cuomo is held to account for this.

The sheer, breathtaking arrogance of upper-class New Yorkers casually spreading the virus to places that they see as existing just to serve them is a grotesque.

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That did not go well.

Apr 11, 2020 Miguel.GFZ 4 comments

SEPTA is the  Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and they found themselves in a political and PR pickle by first ordering riders to wear mask and then went stupid enforcing their rule.

 

As you noticed, the man was not even arrested, just dragged out like a reluctant sack of potatoes and cats.

And then the sheer stupidity of somebody in authority demanding people to get off the bus for not wearing a mask while he is bare-faced himself.

The next pic shows what is supposed to be tyhe internal coms system in the buses indicating that mask are not mandated

Too much of a fuck up ended up with SEPTA backing down from its original orders.

SEPTA says it will no longer enforce a short-lived policy requiring riders to wear facial coverings after a widely shared video showing a man being dragged off a bus, allegedly for not wearing one, prompted confusion about whether masks were mandatory while riding public transit.
The video shows several Philadelphia police officers forcibly removing the man, who is later heard saying he was taken off the bus for not wearing a mask.

After a viral video shows a man being dragged off a bus, SEPTA reverses its coronavirus face mask requirement

It was a very dumb move by SEPTA. If you have not figured you are going to have a decent percentile of people being ornery if you force them to do something, you have no business doing anything that has to do with mass amounts of citizens.  They could have been smarter and plea/shame riders to wear mask to protect the life of both other riders, drivers and workers, and they have the ammunition to do so:

Again, dumb and unnecessary move.