If voting actually changed anything, it would already be illegal

According to Bloomberg, the fix is in, and Hillary will win the nomination, regardless of how voters cast their ballots. There are a total of 4,491 delegates who will decide the nominee for the Democratic party's presidential run. Of these, there are 713 superdelegates, who are unelected and accountable to only the leaders of the Democratic party.

So 16 percent of the party's votes are cast by delegates who do not answer to the voters, even though this is the party that claims that each and every person should have a vote, even convicted felons and illegal immigrants. By securing those superdelegates, Hillary ensures that there is a built in margin that any challenger must overcome.

Now don't think that I am in any way saying that the Republicans are any better. The Republican party doesn't use superdelegates. Instead, they have a system where there are "hard" and "soft" delegates. Hard delegates are required to vote for the candidate on the first ballot cast at the convention. After the first ballot, they may vote for whomever they choose. Soft delegates may vote for any candidate they choose, even on the first ballot they cast. There are complicated and vague rules that make this about as clear as Obama's foreign policy.

At the republican convention, there are a total of 2,380 delegates.

There are 126 delegates, about 6 percent of the total, who are complete free agents. These are party leaders and elected officials, three per state or territory, who will go to the convention unbound to any candidate.

Then there are 84 delegates, or 3.5% of the total, who will be selected at state conventions, or appointed by a committee of Republican officials in the state, with no direct or indirect relationship to the popular vote in these states. States like Pennsylvania, Illinois and Louisiana select some of their delegates trough this method, for instance, even though they also pick some through their primaries. These 84 delegates are officially unbound. However, influential Republicans within each state will have some say about just who they are and about which candidate they are most likely to prefer.

Another group of 188 (7.9% of total delegates) who are picked through a caucus process but are officially unbound to any candidate. In addition to being unbound, these delegates are usually also picked in a way that is separate from the popular vote that is held in each state.

...and the rules go on and on. In short, the voters of each state actually have very little say in who the Republican nominee is,  because 16.7% of the delegates are selected by the party leadership, just like the Democratic party does at their convention.

This is why we get the same candidates in election after election, because the leaders of each party want it that way. Our choice between the Democrat or the Republican really isn't a choice at all, because the real choice has already been made in the boardrooms of the ones controlling the purse strings of the two political parties.

Since the rules are set up to deny any new parties to the arena, and the number of Congressional seats has been fixed at a maximum of 411 for over a century, even though the US population has more than tripled in that time span, meaning that we are less represented now that at any other point in history, your vote literally doesn't count.

Which brings me back to the title of this post: "If voting actually changed anything, it would already be illegal"

Global warming alarmists

Back in 2000, the global warming people were predicting that by the year 2015, there would be no snow anywhere in the world, and that the ice caps would be gone.

From a news report in 2000:

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. "We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time," he said.

Yet the US had a record amount of snowfall last winter:

Top 10 snowiest cities through March 21:

1. Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. — 158.7 inches 

2. Marquette, Mich. — 157 inches 

3. Bangor, Maine — 131.5 inches 

4. Caribou, Maine — 129.4 inches

5. Syracuse, N.Y. — 118.5 inches

6. Worcester, Mass. — 116.8 inches

7. Boston, Mass. — 110.3 inches 

8. Buffalo, N.Y. — 109.3 inches 

9. Erie, Pa. — 104 inches 

10. Gray, Maine — 103.7 inches

The latest prediction:

According to Steven Nerem of the University of Colorado, we are "locked into at least 3 feet of sea level rise, and probably more."... This is startling news if you are one of the 150 million people on Earth who live near the ocean. Even if you don't live close to the sea, you likely use goods that are manufactured in plants near the water, or vacation at the beach.

Another piece of propaganda

Here is another Brady hit piece: BUSTED: The NRA EXPOSED as the Greedy Lying Fear-Mongerers They Really Are! 

I wonder if this crosses the line into defamation territory, and would allow an NRA lawsuit. Reasoned discourse is being enforced there, as there are no comments allowed on the page OR the video, because shut up peon!

Simplisafe advice

Simplisafe has this to say about coping with a burglary that is in progress while you are home. If you don't want to read the whole thing, it is summed up by Han Solo.

Read on:

Fortunately, unlike movies, most burglars are looking to steal your belongings, not harm you.

Leave your family behind, retreat from your home, hide down the street, and hope your kids meet you there:

Have a plan before anything occurs—call a family meeting tonight! How many people live in your house? Can they all ambulate to a designated meetup space? If they can, great—pick a spot down the street where you'll all meetup in case of any emergency that requires you to get away from the house (this is good for more than just break-ins, it’s a great plan to have in case of a fire).

Hide in a closet with a deadbolt on the door:

Do everyone's bedrooms lock from the inside? If no, this is also a great piece of work for your to-do list. Consider also putting a lock on the inside of a closet, such as a deadbolt. Charge your cell phone. Never go to bed with a dead cellphone. Charge it and make sure it's either close to your bed or in the closet with the deadbolt on it

Don't make any noise, and maybe they won't notice that you are home:

we don't know what the burglar wants, and we don't know how he or she will react. Yelling simply gives away your location and will allow the burglar to find you faster. Instead, get up and lock your door as quietly as possible. Listen very closely to see if you can guess how many intruders there are. Do you hear speaking? Is there any auditory evidence of a weapon? 

But if they DO want to hurt you, and they DO have a weapon, you are royally fucked. Why? Because of this next piece of advice:

Unless you are a trained professional, don't grab a weapon. This includes firearms, baseball bats and pepper spray. They all sound like a good idea, but again, we don't know how the burglar will react to seeing an armed person.

Ouch, the truth stings

If it saves one life, let's do it...

How many times have you heard this argument when it comes to guns?

"But heck, if it's one person we stop and it's one life we save, why not. That one life may be yours, your kid, your mom, or someone else you know."

What anpit the other side of that? What if it costs one life? As long as we are dealing with hypotheticals, what if one person had been armed with a weapon, and had stopped any one of the past spree shooters sooner? Would that have saved a life? A dozen lives? Two dozen?

That isn't a hypothetical situation: It happened in Kileen, Texas on October 16, 1991 in Luby's cafeteria. A man drove his pickup truck into the front wall of the restaurant, killed 23 people and wounded 27 with a firearm before killing himself. In that restaurant was a woman named Suzanna Hupp, and was having lunch with her parents, who were both killed by the shooter that day. Ms. Hupp had a pistol in her purse, but had left it in the car, because it was illegal at the time for people to carry concealed weapons in Texas. She later said that this decision was one she would regret for the rest of her life.

Her father, Al Gratia, feeling he "needed to do something", tried to rush the gunman and sadly was fatally shot in the chest instead. Hupp, eventually seeing an escape through a broken window (broken by the shoulder of another horrified, fleeing victim), grabbed her mother by the shirt telling her "Come on, we have to go now!" As Hupp moved toward the only escape, she believed her mother to be following behind. However, upon reaching the safety of outside, she then realized her Mother, Ursula Gratia had stayed behind to be with her mortally wounded husband. Hupp was told soon after the incident that her mother had instead watched her daughter get to safety and then turned to be with her husband of over 40 years. Ursula stayed by the side of her mortally-wounded husband, cradling him as his life slipped away. Al Gratia died almost instantly. Ursula Gratia had time to glance up at the gunman afterward and back down at her husband before the crazed man then shot her in the head at point-blank range, killing her instantly.

Had Hupp been able to legally carry her pistol armed that day instead of being forced to leave it in the car, she would have saved as many as a dozen people from death. The laws against ramming a building, carrying a weapon, shooting people, and committing murder did not save a single life that day. The law abiding woman left her gun in the car, in compliance with the law. The criminal broke the law, and two dozen people, including the parents of the law abiding gun owner, paid for that with their lives.

If it saves just one life, shouldn't we try it? More guns may not be the answer, but there is one thing that has been demonstrated over and over: More gun laws that disarm the law abiding are not the answer.

Victim disarmament zone fails. Again.

Proof that checkpoints leading to gun free zones just move the target rich environment from inside the sterile area to the queue outside the checkpoint. I would also point out that New York's laws against guns, as well as Federal regulations against carrying firearms in Federal buildings and post offices failed to work. Again.

How many times do gun free zones have to fail before people realize that they do not work?

There are those who will claim that the armed guard had a gun, and that did not work either. I would answer with this: Simply standing around with a gun is no guarantee that you won't be ambushed and killed. You need to be willing, able, and prepared to use that firearm, or all it means is that you will carry around a hunk of metal that is used only for decoration.

Church as a business

This church has mandatory tithing as a requirement of membership. They kick out a 92 year old woman who is an ill shut in, and has been a member for 40 years, because she didn't pay tithes. I think if a church requires membership for which people must pay, they are no longer a church, but a profit making business like any private country club, and should lose their tax exempt status.

Anti gunners are so violent

Why are anti gun people so violent? From a comment on a recent post:

MORE bullshit from gun nuts!!! You claim there is REPORTS that Lilly has done this before, show it to me. Where's the proof. The only person who made that claim was the asshole that shot Lilly. You believe him why??? Stupid people need to stop posting crap when they are clearly clueless. OK, go check my spelling now asshole.

The full police report can be found at the end of this post. The wife of the man who shot the dog said in her statement to police:

“This dog has attacked us in the past, and previous complaints have been placed with the city,” she said in a sworn written statement. “The dog never injured me or any family member but always charges us.”

Carabin said her husband intended to “scare the dog away.” Burdock, who called Animal Control concerning Lilly about a year ago, recently underwent back surgery and was carrying the gun for protection.

The wife was not the only witness to corroborate the shooter's story. Here  are some more facts:

witness Richard Blake Frazier said "She did not have (the dog) under control nor was she close to the dog. The dog was well out of arms reach." The officer said had she had her hands as close to the collar as she said she did, she would have been shot. She was not shot. The short barrel of the gun would allow the pellets to expand as they exited from the barrel, and with her not receiving any injuries from the shot shell or being hit by the shot shell (approximately 135 pellets in one shell) she was not as close to her dog as she believed. 

To illustrate, here is what the shot pattern looks like from a .38 Special revolver fired from 8 feet (courtesy of the Box O Truth):

If you look closely, you will see that the shot pattern covers most of an 8x12 piece pf paper. I count at least 38 hits in the area of that paper. If this woman's dog were really 12 feet from the shooter, and she was less than 2 feet from the dog, it would not just be the dog's eye that was hit. The dog's entire face, and the dog's owner, would have caught a few dozen of those pellets. Looking at the Xray on the news page, it looks as though the dog got about 45 pellets to the area around its eye. This indicates that the dog was closer than 8 feet from the muzzle of the weapon.

On top of the other two witnesses, there is a third. Zachary Blair (witness) said she was 5 feet away, while the shooter claimed the dog was 6 feet away. The officer stated in his report that he believed the dog was closer than 12 feet due to the dog receiving her injury in one localized area. If it had been further away, the BBs would have covered a larger area of the dog's body.

The dog's owner herself admitted that the dog was not within her control and was not on a leash, as Winter Park law requires: On the night of the shooting, the owner of the dog, Ms Christensen, stated that she didn't put the leash on before she let Lily out of the house. She did't put the leash on while standing in the street talking to Blair. She claims she only tried to put the leash on when Burdock and Ioana approached.

According to the statement of the owner, this is a rescue dog. Dogs that have been rescued from abusive homes are frequently aggressive towards people who remind them of their former owners. Just because this dog was gentle with some people, does not mean that it was gentle with everyone.

Notice that the commenter uses the word "gun nut." This is obviously a case of people just not liking the fact that a CCW holder can carry a gun in Florida.

Here is the police report:

Page 2:

Page 3:

Page 4:

Prediction

You heard it here first. My prediction is that Hillary won't spend a day in prison, because if it comes down to that, Obama will issue a Presidential Pardon.

I am speechless

I am at a loss for words:



This is where we are as a nation. "He didn't do no wrong, he just shot a cop."

Here is the article. Let the implications of this sink in for a bit...

Stupidity

Read this petition on Whitehouse.gov:

We the people of the United States demand that George Allan Burdock be charged with animal cruelty for is gross sordid & deplorable actions. On Thursday August 13th around 8:30pm according to the witness George Burdock of Winter Park,Florida shot his neighbors harmless beautiful dog named "Lilly" with a loaded 38 pistol. Allegedly on the evening of the 13th Mr. Burdock was walking the neighborhood with a gun allegedly scaring the neighbors. Allegedly Allan Burdock claims he thought his safety was in jeopardy by Lilly whome was a neighborhood favorite pet for the past 14 years according to the witness. The witness alleges lilly is a great dog and harmless. This was a hanice act of aanimal cruelty. The Winter Park police department have not charged George Allen Brdock and we demand justice!

I did not correct the absolutely atrocious spelling, but I did add emphasis on a couple of phrases.

Here is the News article from WESH TV in Orlando, which as anyone who saw their coverage of the Zimmerman trial, is not exactly friendly to gun owners:The man who shot the dog has been identified as George Burdock, 70. Burdock was not arrested, police said, because he was defending himself and was licensed to carry a concealed weapon.
According to a police report, Burdock said he shouted a warning to the owner, Ann Elizabeth Christensen, to get the dog, Lilly, under control or he would shoot it. The responding officer said, based on witness reports, Burdock, due to his age, physical condition and prior experience with the dog, acted in self defense and was in fear for his safety and that of his wife and small dog. Christensen said she was about to put Lilly on her leash around 8:30 p.m. when she broke away and started walking towards another dog.

There are multiple witnesses to the events, and conflicting statements from them as to whether or not the dog was being aggressive. There are a number of problems that I have with the petition:

1 The petition is on Whitehouse.gov. This is a purely local matter. The President has no say in the matter.

2 This petition isn't even close to what reportedly happened. They make it sound like the man was running through the neighborhood while brandishing a firearm. and just how would he have shot a dog with an unloaded 38 pistol?)

3 There is a Winter Park ordinance, Section 5-33, parts 1 and 3, which reads:

(1) No domestic animal owner or person having charge, care, custody or control of any domestic animal shall permit, any domestic animal to run at large, upon any public property, or off the premises of the owner.
(3) No domestic animal at-large shall be permitted to cause injury, or threat of injury, to any person, or cause property damage.

According to local news reports, this isn't the first time this woman meant to put the dog on a leash and failed to do so. The man who shot the dog has complained to animal control about the dog being aggressive towards him and his dogs in the past.

There are now protests outside of the man's house.

If you read this article, the woman admits that the dog was being taken for an off leash walk, and the owner was "just about to put her on a leash" when she began running towards the man and his dogs:

Ann Christensen took her fluffy white dog outside for a walk on Kenwood Avenue.She saw a neighbor, who had just returned from shopping at IKEA, and they started chatting.Lilly noticed a couple of small dogs across the street and took off toward them just as Christensen says she was trying to put her on a leash.The man walking the smaller dogs, George Burdock, took out a pistol and shot Lilly in the eye.

There are so many people here going nuts over this, I cannot understand it. Irresponsible dog owner is violating the law by not securing her animal.

EDITED TO ADD: This is the first time I have done this on this blog, but I am locking comments on this post.

Gainseville police shooting footage

A man robs a post office in Gainesville, Florida. Two Alachua county deputies arrive on scene shortly thereafter, and encounter a male suspect matching the description of the perpetrator. He refuses to comply with instructions, reaches into his pocket, and produces a handgun. He is shot by both deputies. Here is the dashcam footage of the incident, watch how quickly it all unfolds:





They make contact with the man at 15:18:23
The deputy tells him to put his hands on the car at 15:18:27
The suspect doesn't comply and begins to back away at 15:18:30
The suspect reaches in his pocket at 15:18:32 and the deputy orders him to stop, saying "I will f--king kill you!"
The hand comes out of the pocket with the gun at 15:18:33
The shots begin one second later.

The cop has less than a second to decide shoot or no shoot.

That is how quickly things play out.

The officers were suspended with pay, and the case was turned over to FDLE, as it is in all cases where an officer uses deadly force. The FDLE declared that the shooting was proper on August 13th.

The cops have to decide whether or not to shoot in one second or less, on penalty of death. Those who review their actions get three months to review the shooting from the comfort of their safe office.

There are still those in the #blacklivesmatter community that will use this shooting to disparage police officers, and claim racism. There are those in the anti-gun rights community that will use this shooting to say that the law abiding should be disarmed.

Do those sound like rational people to you?

Statistics are like bikinis:

 Statistics are like bikinis: what they reveal is interesting, but what they conceal is vital.

There is a study that states there are more police officers dying from gunfire from 1996 to 2010 in states with higher gun ownership rates. I want to fact check this article, so let's get started. The article claims:

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Mississippi and Montana were the states with the highest rates of both gun ownership and for law enforcement killings. Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island had the lowest per-capita rate for both.


I will be using the "Officer down memorial page" to list officer deaths.

There have been 29 New York officers killed by gunfire and 3 by accidental gunfire during those years.
4 in Connecticut. One of those four was shot by another cop, who was off duty and illegally hunting at the time.
5 in Massachusetts. One of them was shot in 1988, and died in 2001.
11 in New Jersey. One of them was killed while off duty and working as a security guard. 2 other cops had their cause of death listed as gunfire (accidental) because they shot themselves by accident while performing maintenance on their own weapons without unloading them.
In Rhode Island, 1 officer was killed by gunfire. 2 others were killed by accidental gunfire.

In those same years, there were 3 officers killed in Montana.
7 in Alaska
22 in Alabama
12 in Arkansas
20 in Mississippi

Population figures were obtained from the US Census Bureau. It is impossible to track population at the time of each murder, so we will use the less accurate method of simply using the 2000 figures, which would be the Census year closest to the halfway point of the period. We must use the geeral population of each state, rather than the number of police officers, because there are no available, reliable figures to show the number of law enforcement officers in a given state.

The rate of death of police officers per 1,000,000 residents in each state:

New York: 1.76
Connecticutt: 1.21
Massachusetts: 0.80
New Jersey: 1.58
Rhode Island: 3.00

So let's look now at the states that they claimed had high gun ownership rates:
Montana: 3.00
Alaska: 10.71
Alabama: 4.88
Arkansas: 4.61
Mississippi: 7.14

So what does this mean? Does it mean that they are correct, that higher gun ownership rates means more police deaths? Not exactly. There is a bit of subterfuge here. By cherry picking the states that have small populations, the death rates look much higher than they really are. For example: the rate of police killed by traffic accidents is also higher in these states. For example, the rate of police officer death was 3.57 in Mississippi, and 0.939 in New York.

TO make the comparison more fair, let's look at Florida. Florida has the highest number of concealed weapons permits in the US, with over 1.3 million people legally carrying concealed weapons.

Florida had 38 law enforcement officers killed by gunfire during the period. This means that there is an officer death rate of 2.5 per one million residents. Washington, DC, where guns were illegal for all but two years of the period, and where there were almost NO guns legally owned during that period, lost 6 officers, for a rate of 11.47. Washington DC has a population approximately equal to that of Alaska.

Mass murderers

If you claim that guns are the reason for mass killings, you are ignoring that the largest mass murders in the USA did not use a gun. Here are a few of them:

1 On 911, there were 2,996 dead and over 6,000 injured. The weapons used were box cutters.
2  The Oklahoma City Bombing. There were 168 dead and over 680 injured. The weapon used was a bomb made from fertilizer and diesel fuel.
3 The Bath School massacre of 1927: 45 dead, and 58 injured. The weapon used were a pair of bombs.
4 New York Bombing of September 1920: There were 40 killed and several hundred injured. The weapon was a bomb.
5 The Upstairs Lounge Fire in New Orleans on June 24, 1973 was an arson that was intended to kill the patrons of a gay bar. It worked, killing 32 and injuring dozens.
6 The LA times is attacked with a bomb in 1910, killing 20.

Columbine and Sandy Hook don't even make the top ten.

The fact is that guns have nothing to do with spree killings. The first mass murder in US history happened in 1780, and was committed by a man named Barnett Davenport. He killed an entire family (all 5 of them) during a pre-planned burglary. He used blunt instruments to beat the adults and one of the children to death, and then set the house on fire to kill the other children.

Sweet, sweet irony

Ikea, the company with the sign at the door to all of its stores proclaiming that it is a "weapons free environment" to the point where even police officers are prohibited from carrying weapons, has an incident where two people are killed and a third seriously injured in a mass stabbing attack.


I'm sure that the dead and their families are happy that they did not die from senseless gun violence.

Why are anti-gunners so violent?

Barvetta Singletary (pictured, below), special assistant to the President, was arrested for domestic violence after attempting to shoot her boyfriend, a Capitol Police officer, after stealing his duty weapon from his overnight bag.

Prior to becoming the President's assistant, she was the Deputy Chief of Staff for Jim Clyburn, who, as the House Assistant Democratic Leader, is a huge anti-gun lawmaker.

Anti-gunners. Why are they so violent?

We have Kings on the bench

A judge orders a man to get married or go to jail...

RINOs

I keep hearing people call Republican politicians "Republicans in Name Only" or "RINOs" for short, and claiming that these politicians and candidates are somehow not true Republicans because they support socialist positions. However, it seems to have gotten to the point where pretty much every politician from the GOP is leaning to the left, and the majority of them seem to be falling into the "RINO" category.

At some point, you begin to realize that the mainstream of the party's leadership is moving to the left. I will point out that I have not called myself a Republican for years. I didn't leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me.

Loophole

We need to pass a law requiring background checks to close the "break into the gun show and steal guns while the gun show is closed" loophole.

Orlando police have made another arrest in the theft of nearly two dozen guns from the Fairgrounds Gun Show. Surveillance video shows several juvenile suspects forcing their way into the gun show at the Central Florida Fairgrounds on the Fourth of July and making off with 24 firearms, police said.

Macadamia crusted Mahi with Vanilla Rum Butter Sauce

Ever since I retired, I have picked up cooking as a new hobby. Here is one the better recipes I have come up with:

Nut Crusted Mahi with Vanilla Rum Butter Sauce

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 40 minutes
Serves: 4

Nut Crusted Mahi

4- 4 ounce pieces of Mahi
1/2 cup Roasted unsalted Macadamia nuts
Sesame oil
1/4 cup Panko Breading
1/2 cup Flour
salt
black pepper


Grind Macadamia nuts in a food processor, and mix with Panko, salt, pepper, and Flour

Rub fish with sesame oil, and then roll the fish in the breading mix. Place on a baking sheet, and bake for 35 minutes at 375 degrees. Fish coating should be brown.

Vanilla Rum Butter Sauce

1 shallot sliced thin
2 tsp vanilla extract-pure
1/8 cup white wine (cheap will do)
1/4 cup Rum (cheap rum will do)
¼ cup granulated sugar
1cup heavy cream
1- 4oz stick of unsalted butter (room temp)

Place the rum, shallots, white wine, sugar and vanilla extract into the sauce pan and stir
Place the pan on the stove with high heat and bring to a boil
Reduce heat, simmer until the mixture starts to thicken
Add the heavy cream and reduce by 1/2
Turn off the heat and whisk in the softened butter

Mashed potatoes:

5 medium sized potatoes, peeled and chopped

1/4 cup of sour cream

2 table spoons of butter

1 cup raw spinach 

Boil potatoes for 10 minutes. With hand mixer, stir in sour cream and butter.

Boil Spinach for for 2 minutes in salted water. 

To serve:

Place mashed potatoes on plate, cover with cooked spinach. Spoon several tablespoons of rum butter sauce on top. Place a piece of Mahi on top of that, and top with another tablespoon of rum butter sauce.

Bluffing

I teach classes on my days off at various health care facilities around the state of Florida. This brings me to quite a few of our states' hospitals. When I entered Winnie Palmer hospital (part of Orlando Regional Medical Center), this is the sign that they have posted outside each of the entrance doors of the hospital:

If you look, they have made an attempt to make the sign appear to have the force of law by placing a statute number at the bottom of the sign. That particular statute is the guns in parking lots statute and has exactly nothing to do with carrying a weapon through the door.

Then, at a hospital in the Ocala/Gainesville area, there is this sign on the door:

The statute referred to here is the statute for trespassing and burglary. There is no provision in the law for conditional access. That is, a business is either open to the public, or it is not. There is no case law which allows a business to place conditions on the people who they allow to enter. In a business that is open to the public, a person must be personally asked to leave. This sign means nothing.

LOL

Boyscouts

Three men, two of whom are convicted felons, shoot a cop who attempts to pull them over. This will be used as an excuse for certain people to claim that I cannot be allowed to have a weapon, or as an excuse to some other restriction on my rights.

Just in Orange County, Stephen Dantzler, has been arrested/convicted three times for operating a motor vehicle without a license, once for leaving the scene of an accident, once for petty theft, and once for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (charges dropped). There are more records out there somewhere, because he is a convicted felon, and there are no felony convictions on record for this guy in Orange or Osceola counties.

I see that he followed the law about carrying a weapon just as diligently as he did the laws about having a drivers' license, proving that more laws will not fix the problem.

Destroying a hero's career for daring to defend life

A Navy officer and Marine reportedly returned fire at the shooter who killed five service members in Chattanooga, Tenn., even though current policy does not permit military members to carry firearms on facilities such as those where the attack occurred. That officer will now face a court martial for possessing a weapon in a gun free zone.