Gun Free Zone

In 1888 the reward for killing a royal tiger was raised to 200 florins. It appears also that the immunity of the tiger is in part due to superstition, for it is considered wrong to kill one unless he attacks first or otherwise does injury.
Moreover, guns were always very rare in this particular district, and, since a rising a few years ago, have been taken away by the authorities.

Sixty one people killed by tigers in 1887. That is  steep price for Gun Control.

I tried to figure out a way to calculate the monetary cost of killing the beasts, but the best I could find was that the Florin was made out of 3.5 grams of pure gold so 200 Florins come about to 700 grams of gold per animal killed.  The price of gold today is $41.39 and that comes to $28, 973 per tiger.

Predators, be it biped or quadruped, seem to migrate to the locations where they can do killing unopposed. That the message has been ut there for centuries and still not learned will be forever mystifying.

Update: I used an inflation calculator and I got 1890 $1,000 aprox. is about  200 Florins.

Most of the coverage of the Colorado STEM School Shooting that I have seen has been around the anti-Gun political rally that was billed as a vigil, and the student response to being used by adult politicians and activists.

What has fallen through the reporting cracks, or maybe been totally ignored by the wider media is the disturbing similarity between this shooting and the Parkland shooting.

That disturbing similarity is the red flags thrown up and ignored by law enforcement and the school administration.

One of the first things that I saw, and it took a while to confirm, was a threat made on the school’s Wikipedia page.

Ominous note on STEM Wikipedia page a possible warning of school shooting

Nine days ago, someone added chilling notations to the Wikipedia page of the STEM School Highlands Ranch which was the site of a multiple victim school shooting on Tuesday.

Two comments were placed on the school’s page next to a 2018 article labeled “Anti suicide programs are implemented to help lower chances of suicide and school shootings.”

At 5:48 on April 29, someone added the words: “Do they work? We shall see” in the notation area.

The police are still looking into who edited the Wikipedia page, but this is a very specific and ominous threat and is something that should have warranted further investigation before the shooting.

Then there was this news article:

Suspected Colorado STEM shooter was a bully, made jokes about school shootings, students say

One of the students accused of opening fire at a Denver area STEM school, killing one student and wounding eight other people, bullied younger kids and would make jokes about shooting up the school, students said.

The suspected shooter, Devon Erickson, “would whisper, like get really close and kinda put his arm around you, and whisper in your ear, ‘don’t come to school tomorrow,'” said Kevin Cole, a former student of STEM School Highlands Ranch, during an interview on “Today.”

Erickson, 18, and a juvenile, who police identify as a girl but who prefers male pronouns, are accused of entering the K-12 school with handguns Tuesday. NBC News is not identifying the juvenile suspect.

That is very bad, especially in the wake of everything from Columbine to Parkland.  This is the kind of thing that should be taken very seriously.  Remember that Nikolas Cruz stated the he wanted to be a “professional school shooter” and later killed 17 people.

Why is there no evidence of an investigation or disciplinary action taken as a result of this?

Two major reed flags thrown way up in the air about this school shooting before the shooting and yet not enough was done to prevent it.

I’ll admit that this is no where near the magnitude of the incompetence and fuck ups that occured under the disgraced Scott Israel or the chicken shit coward Scot Peterson, but considering that this was 15 months after Parkland, the school and the police should have been much more attentive to this sort of thing.

What this goes to show you is that no number of red flags and warnings can prevent a school shooting – or any other mass casualty event – if the people in charge trusted to maintain the safety of the people are not paying attention and do not follow through with a response to these warnings.

Like Miguel says, security happens in layers.

We need people to keep a better eye out for red flags and we need a more thorough response to those red flags, but we can’t just rely on a prophylactic address, something will always slip through the cracks.

Having people trained and ready to respond when the shit does hit the fan is critical, especially if the red flags only get noticed after the fact.

One of the few instances where the book is worse than the movie.

That left a bloody nose, I am sure.

Once again, here is the video.

One of the things in south Florida is that many homes have doors that open outward, so the concept of kicking in a door is laughable and impossible. Rather than one point of support at the lock, you have a full frame embossed in the structure making the resistance against kicks, rams, etc.

There is one drawback: the lock latch are exposed. But the solution is simple and not expensive: A latch guard plate.

There are variations on the theme and length for business and home.  The other complain I heard was that the hinges are exposed and can be taken out, something I have not heard ever happening but in the movies. But if you are paranoid enough, you can pin the pin and make sure it takes death and an anvil to remove it.

I have seen police serving a search warrant on a home with an out-opening door and using a Halligan bar. It took them a lot of time and made a racket which is the point if you are considering a Home Invasion response: Warning of people coming in and time enough to implement a defense.

And yes, with the proper amount of power tools, an out-opening door can be defeated, but I doubt your average Home Invader is carrying a van full of Makita to go ron your TV and laptop.

Security has to be done in layers, not one system alone does the trick. Motion Sensor lights, surveillance camera also with motion sensor warning alarms, out-opening doors and even the family chihuahua on meth are  layers that the bad guys need to defeat to reach you and our family. It may happen, but chances are you will be ready to apply the last layer of defense and that can get very final for them.

I was doing some shopping when I came across this young lady and loved her T-shirt.

And for the record, she is lying with that message. She is a delightful stranger with a beautiful personality who made my morning.

Seen today in the New York Post:

Teen allegedly kills man wrongfully accused of sexually assaulting his sister

A teenage boy fatally attacked a man after the teen’s younger sister told her brother that she was sexually assaulted by the man on a public bus in Utah — an incident that investigators say never happened, according to reports.

Police say the 16-year-old girl told her 17-year-old brother that she was sexually assaulted aboard a Cache Valley Transit District bus around 3 p.m. April 23, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

The brother immediately sprang into action and tracked down 62-year-old Michael Fife — the man his sister accused — as the man was exiting the bus in the city of Logan, according to the news outlet.

The teen then attacked Fife, who suffered head injuries and was beaten unconscious.

Fife fell to the ground and was left lying on the sidewalk as the teenage boy fled, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Later that night, the boy’s sister reported the sexual assault to police, who discovered that surveillance footage from the bus showed that the assault never happened.

“Logan Police detectives reviewed the video footage of the alleged assault,” authorities said, according to the news outlet. “The video showed Mr. Fife walking past the girl, but no sexual assault occurred.”

Fife died from his injuries four days after the attack.

The Logan Police issued a press statement on their Facebook page that gives more details.

The more I look into these one punch kills, the more I see this trend.

Now, I am not a medical expert or a coroner, and this is not a scientific study by any means, but it seems that in quite a number of these cases, the victim loses consciousness with the punch and falls and hits their head on something hard – e.g., concrete or cement – and that impact does enough damage to be fatal.

Also, many of these deaths take days to occur as swelling of the brain and brain damage are not immediately fatal but respond poorly to treatment.

Going through the comments left online, it seems that a lot of people believe that the girl that made the false accusation should be charged in the death of Mr. Fife as well.

I wholeheartedly agree.

I will also say this.  It is time that the law is changed.

I am going to start writing my state legislature in Alabama, and I encourage others to do it in your states as well.

We need to alter disparity of force laws.  I have covered too many of these one punch fatalities.  When a grown man takes a swing at your head, that has every potential to be lethal.

The punch may kill you, or you fall down and crack your skull on the sidewalk and that may kill you.  Either way, you die.

It time that the law recognize that a punch isn’t like in the movies where the hero blacks out just in time to wake up for plot advancement.  A punch in real life lands a person in the hospital where they take a couple of days to die as their brain swells and dies from choking off its own blood supply.

Considering that, it is not unreasonable to respond to a man trying to clobber your skull with his fist, by shooting him.

The law needs accept that.

Let’s change disparity of force laws to recognize how dangerous its is when an angry man takes a swing at your head.