Gun Free Zone

I have to apologize. I read one of my go-to bloggers this morning about the Violence Policy Center infamous database titled “Concealed Carry Killers!” (cue dramatic fanfare) but I forgot who was it. He was mentioning an article published in Newsweek.

So I decided to drop by VPC and check the latest permutation of the report and see if for once, they dared to be truthful. As usual they were not.

VPC titles its work as Concealed Carry Killers hoping that you do not realize they are not using the legal term “murderers.” Why? because it would cut drastically in their statistics and reputation.  If you never read about this, hold on, it will be clear soon.

This is the splash page of Concealed Carry Killers:

Florida will always have a nice place of hate in the heart of VPC since we were responsible for the Concealed Carry movement across the nation.  Since we have the most carrier of concealed licenses (over 2 million), we are bound to be the biggest bunch of bloodthirsty murderers out there, right?  That is 84 people killed this year! How’s that for gun crazy people? Wait… not this year? Last year then….No? then when? All “killings” since 2007? 12 years? That comes to 7 killed per year or what they call Tuesday night in Chicago.

But like in any good infomercial: Wait, there is more!  Remember the use of the word “Kill”? It is because they cannot say Murder for one little reason: A lot of cases have not had a legal determination (trial) yet and they keep them as “Pending.” Does VPC understand the concept of Innocent till proven Guilty?  Maybe yes, but as I mentioned above, it would screw with the stats as by my count and in their page covering Florida, there are  13 cases with the tag “Pending” with at lest one case going back to 2008.  So now, we no longer have 84 people “Murder/Killed” but 71.

And they actually included one case in which the person committed suicide and one in which the victim was a CWL holder and was shot with his gun by somebody without a CWL. That brings the numbers down to 69.  But not happy with that, they included 10 unintentional/accidental shootings because padding is necessary and we are down to 59 killed in 12 years or 4.91 killed per year.

And I am bored already with the math, so I am going to do one last calculation so I can show how ridiculous VPC’s outrage is. I don’t know exactly how many people with CWL were in 2007, but the sake of calculation let’s place it at a low even number: one million. So 5 killers per million CWL carriers ends up being 0.0005%.

0.0005% chance that you will be killed by somebody with a Concealed Weapons License Holder in the State of Florida. Or to make it simpler:

Chances of being killed by Concealed Weapons License Holder in the State of Florida: 1 in 200,000

Chances of being hit by lightning in the State of Florida: 1 in 3,000.
(Via FSU)

Basically, we are safer than Mother Nature and by far.

PS: I think I got the math right, but double checking is always appreciated.

From Twitter:

.@RepBarbaraLee: “I pesonally want to ask the U.N. to come in … we need election monitors from all over the world” to stop Republican “voter suppression” in 2020. pic.twitter.com/WPfArnr598

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 24, 2019

Congresswoman Barbara Lee represents California’s 13th district, which is mostly Oakland and the Bay Area.

She believes that the Republicans are going to try and cheat their way into victory in 2020, because projection.

So she wants the UN to oversee our elections like third world shit-hole nations.

Who would oversee our elections in 2020 from the UN?  How about Sudan, Libya, Venezuela, Somalia, nations with a record of reliable elections and peaceful transfers of power.

Who would be the boots on the ground for this poll watching?  The uniformed and unaccountable serial child rapists of the Pakistani UN Peacekeeping Forces.

Lee can want the UN to patrol polling stations and intimidate voters, the way Democrats got the Klan to do back in the day.

I just think she underestimates the Americans I know.

The only thing they would love more than voting for Trump to piss of some California Democrats is to have to shoot their way through a bunch of Blue Helmets to cast their  vote.

SB 634: Lawful Ownership, Possession, and Use of Firearms and Weapons
GENERAL BILL by Powell

Lawful Ownership, Possession, and Use of Firearms and Weapons; Prohibiting a person from owning, possessing, and lawfully using firearms and other weapons, ammunition, and supplies while engaging in certain lawful uses if he or she is within a specified distance of the real property of certain locations, etc.

If you listen carefully, you will hear the howling of outrage from the Florida OCIs. It seems that they never expected that the Opposition would bring a bill against the little Open Carry we have left to the Legislature.

Dear OCIs: this one is 100% all on you.  How’s that “Normalizing Open Carry” is coming along?

Found in the Book of Feces. Hilarious and true.

HOW TO PLAY AND SING THE BLUES
1. Most Blues begin with: “Woke up this morning…”
2. “I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the Blues unless you stick something nasty in the next line like “I got a good woman with the meanest face in town.”
3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes, sort of: “Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yes, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pound.”
4. The Blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch. There ain’t no way out.
5. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Blues don’t travel in Volvos, BMWs, or SUVs. Most Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and state-sponsored motor pools ain’t even in the running. Walkin’ plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin’ to die.
6. Teenagers can’t sing the Blues. They ain’t fixin’ to die yet. Adults sing the Blues. In Blues, “adulthood” means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.
7. Blues can take place in New York City but not in Hawaii or anyplace in Canada. Hard times in Minneapolis or Seattle is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City are still great places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues anyplace that don’t get rain.
8. A man with male pattern baldness ain’t the Blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg ’cause you were skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg ’cause a alligator be chomping on it is.
9. You can’t have no Blues in a office or a shopping mall. The lighting is wrong. Go out to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster.
10. Good places for the Blues:
a. highway
b. jailhouse
c. empty bed
d. bottom of a whiskey glass
Bad places for the Blues:
a. Nordstrom’s
b. gallery openings
c. Ivy League colleges
d. golf courses
11. No one will believe it’s the Blues if you wear a suit, ‘less you happen to be an old ethnic person, and you slept in it.
12. Do you have the right to sing the Blues?
Yes, if:
a. you older than dirt
b. you blind
c. you shot a man in Memphis
d. you can’t be satisfied
No, if:
a. you have all your teeth
b. you were once blind but now can see
c. the man in Memphis lived
d. you have a 401K or trust fund
13. Blues is not a matter of color. It’s a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a leg up on the blues.
14. If you ask for water and your darlin’ give you gasoline, it’s the Blues. Other acceptable Blues beverages are:
a. cheap wine
b. whiskey or bourbon
c. muddy water
d. nasty black coffee
The following are NOT Blues beverages:
a. Perrier
b. Chardonnay
c. Snapple
d. Slim Fast
15. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another Blues way to die. So are the electric chair, substance abuse and dying lonely on a broken-down cot. You can’t have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction.
16. Some Blues names for women:
a. Sadie
b. Big Mama
c. Bessie
d. Fat River Dumpling
17. Some Blues names for men:
a. Joe
b. Willie
c. Little Willie
d. Big Willie
18. Persons with names like Amber, Jennifer, Tiffany, Debbie, and Heather can’t sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.
19. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit:
a. name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.)
b. first name (see above) plus name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, etc..) c. last name of President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.) Examples: Blind Lime Jefferson, Jackleg Lemon Johnson.

From the New York Post:

Dad died in burning Tesla because its futuristic doors wouldn’t open, lawsuit claims

A Tesla driver burned to death after a crash because the “futuristic handles” on his car trapped him inside and rescuers couldn’t open the doors, it is claimed.

Dr. Omar Awan, 48, lost control of his car, skidded across a road and smashed straight into a palm tree in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in February.

Smoke and then flames engulfed his blue Model S Tesla shortly after the crash.

A police officer arrived almost immediately, and crowds gathered outside the vehicle, but no one was able to save the father of five because of the “inaccessible door handles,” a lawsuit claims.

The car’s retractable door handles are meant to “auto-present” or pop out when they detect a key fob nearby.

But it malfunctioned, stopping first responders from opening the doors and saving Awan, it is claimed.

This post touches on two things I’ve written about before.

First, is the Tesla is the Apple iPhone of cars.  It is designed (poorly) with all the features and gewgaws that Silicon Valley phone makers love to stuff into their products, with no intent on device (or vehicle) longevity, or ease of service and maintenance.

This reliance on digital thinking causes these Silicon Valley-type engineers to forget to build in manual overrides.

When your laptop gets the blue screen or spinning rainbow of death, you don’t die.

When your car has a software hiccup and faults, you do.

It could be your door handles don’t work or your drive by wire steering and breaking cut out at highway speeds.

It doesn’t matter, you die because those wonderful, slick features don’t have a manual override.

I am a meat space engineer.  I want to make sure than when I pull on my door handle my door opens.  The battery can be dead, the engine on fire, I don’t give a shit.  I want an all-metal linkage to connect my door handle to a lock that works when I tug on it.

Also, buy a Zak Tool window punch, a Lifehammer, or just keep a good of fashioned axe within reach of when you sit in the driver’s seat so you can manually extricate yourself out of your vehicle.

I have a Zak Tool clipped to my first aid/blowout bag in the center console and a Fiskars hatchet in the driver’s door pocket.

Call them a portable manual override.

Teen Uber passenger says she was accidentally shot by driver

A 15-year-old Uber passenger was mistakenly shot by her driver as he moved his gun, authorities said.

Bailey Braun was struck in the ankle during an Uber ride with her boyfriend Sunday afternoon in Hollywood, Fla., NBC Miami reported.

Police said the driver, 27-year-old Adrian Harper, had stopped to pick up two other passengers.

When he moved the firearm from the seat to the holster, it accidentally went off inside the vehicle and stuck Braun, officials said.

Braun said Harper then jumped out of the car to her aid and apologized to her.

“He ran around the side and was like, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’” Braun said. “And when I asked him what happened, he said that it went off.”

Unless he had one of those shitty Taurus 24/7s, a gun doesn’t just “go off.”

Why was the gun sitting on the passenger seat when he went to pick up passengers?

My guess is that he was in a hurry, fumbled the re-holstering, and squeezed the trigger.

The driver was arrested on suspicion of culpable negligence inflicting harm.

Uber said drivers and passengers are prohibited from carrying firearms. The company confirmed that Harper has been suspended. It was not immediately clear what kind of gun the driver had.

So he lost his job, may face some jail time, and will pay what is technically known as “an ass-load” of money in legal fees, and potentially a lawsuit,  because he was careless.

Also, this is one of the reasons I won’t drive with Uber.  I don’t like the idea of letting strangers into my car without being able to conceal carry.

Let us go over the rules of gun safety one more time:

1. ALWAYS KEEP YOUR FIREARM POINTED IN A SAFE DIRECTION.

2. TREAT ALL FIREARMS AS IF THEY WERE LOADED.

3. KEEP YOUR TRIGGER FINGER OUTSIDE THE GUARD AND OFF OF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO FIRE.

4. BE CERTAIN OF YOUR TARGET, YOUR LINE OF FIRE, AND WHAT LIES BEYOND YOUR TARGET.

5. ALWAYS WEAR APPROPRIATE EYE AND EAR PROTECTION WHEN SHOOTING AND MAINTAINING YOUR FIREARM.

This driver here violated Rule No. 3 and now he will be paying for it and some poor girl will have to have her ankle rebuilt.