Science corrupted

So there was a study that found gun ownership rates had a direct correlation to teen suicide rates. They found that for every 10 percent increase in household gun ownership, the youth suicide rate increased by 26.9 percent. There are so many flaws in this logic that it is laughable.

The first is that they compared Alaska and South Dakota's high gun ownership rates and high suicide rates to New York and New Jersey. They ignore population density as being a factor. When you compare New York and New Jersey to Alabama and Mississippi, the rates are closer. Perhaps the lack of access to timely EMS and trauma centers means that an attempted suicide is more likely to be a successful suicide.

Nah, it's easier to blame guns.

Why I carry

I carry a weapon all of the time, even while walking or jogging. The fact that a woman in Central Florida was attacked by a coyote seems to prove me correct.

DIAS

A 19 year old mechanical engineering student from UCF was arrested with several DIAS equipped AR's. The press gets it wrong, though: Drop in auto sears have been illegal to manufacture since 1986.

Bad advice

This is making the rounds of Florida social media:

They are saying that having a medical marijuana card won't affect your CCW permit. That is probably true. However, note that they are advising people to lie on the 4473. That is most certainly bad advice.

Ingenuity

Explain to me one more time how gun control disarms criminals

Electric action

I've been thinking:
Since a semiautomatic rifle is defined as: "any repeating rifle which utilizes a portion of the energy of a firing cartridge to extract the fired cartridge case and chamber the next round, and which requires a separate pull of the trigger to fire each cartridge."

There is a workaround. Eliminate the recoil springs and most of the firing mechanism. Replace them with a small servo set that cycles the bolt and then re-locks it after each shot. The weapon would not be a semi-automatic at that point, since the energy to extract and chamber would not come from the energy of the fired cartridge.

The magazine of such a weapon could contain the battery and be recharged between firings, the battery could be in the weapon, or both.

True Republican

Today, Donald Trump proved that he is a true Republican. Having learned nothing from George HW Bush and his famous "Read my lips, no new taxes" pledge, Trump caved in to Democrats and, going back on his word, agreed to reopen the government without any funding for his wall. 

Between this and the bumpstock ban, Donald Trump just ensured that he will not be reelected. 

Shutdown woes at the IRS

The IRS is shutdown, and that is going to be a significant problem for me. The IRS made a major mistake with one of their tax forms. The problem is that there is a lawful deduction that I am eligible for because it is still in the tax code, but the IRS screwed up and didn't leave any way to legally file for that deduction. The IRS can't fix the mistake because of the shutdown. In fact, they can't even be notified of the mistake, because no one is there to answer the phone.

If I file my taxes without taking the deduction, it will cost me an extra $150K plus in taxes that I am not legally required to pay, an amount of money that I simply do not have.

Even if I DO take the deduction, I am going to owe the IRS more than $150,000. Don't tell me that the rich don't pay taxes.

Florida closer to blue

John Morgan, the ambulance chasing personal injury attorney that made his fortune using his tagline "for the people," has gathered signatures to put a constitutional amendment to the state constitution on the ballot. That amendment would raise Florida's minimum wage to $15 an hour. Since Disney has already taken this step, the biggest player in the state will likely back the measure in order to level the playing field.

Morgan appears to be making a play to run for public office in the future. You may remember that he was the force behind legalizing medical marijuana and decriminalizing recreational marijuana in the state.

A major hole

Nearly all assault weapons bans define assault weapons in terms of being semiautomatic. The proposed 2019 ban is no exception. It defines "assault weapon" like so:

The term `semiautomatic assault weapon' means any of the
following, regardless of country of manufacture or caliber of
ammunition accepted:
            ``(A) A semiautomatic rifle that has the capacity to accept
        a detachable magazine and any 1 of the following"

There is a huge hole that can be exploited.

Federal law defines semiautomatic rifle thusly:

 The term “semiautomatic rifle” means any repeating rifle which utilizes a portion of the energy of a firing cartridge to extract the fired cartridge case and chamber the next round, and which requires a separate pull of the trigger to fire each cartridge. (emphasis added)

The same definition of semiautomatic applies to pistols and shotguns under that same AWB.

The weakness here is obvious. All you need to do is have something other than the energy of a firing cartridge eject and load the next, and the weapon is no longer subject to the AWB. It seems like Franklin Armory is trying to do just that. 

Shutdown: Day 33

This is hitting the Coast Guard especially hard

St Lucia

Here is an interesting article about crime in the island nation of St Lucia. The money quote:

Many people who are inclined to defend the tourism industry in St. Lucia may say things like “crime happens everywhere” or point to violent U.S. cities like Chicago.  But the fact is that St. Lucia as a country has a per capita murder rate in 2017 of over 33 homicides per 100,000 (up from around 20 per 100,000 in 2012) and around 24 homicides per 100,000 in 2018 whereas an admittedly deadly city like Chicago has a 2017 per capita homicide rate of around 24 per 100,000. The U.S. as a country has a per capita homicide rate of less than 5 per 100,000.

New minimum wage demand: $33

New York City has passed a minimum wage of $15 an hour. The demand has been there for years. I first blogged about it in 2013. Now here we are, a bit more than five years later, and that is no longer enough. Now they are demanding $33 an hour.

This nation is rushing straight into a Marxist future. I wonder how long we have until the camps open.

Found

Hogg deserves Harvard

According to the Orlando Sentinel, despite the fact that he is completely unqualified academically,  because of the movie Risky Business.

Laugh of the day

Something big crashed into Uranus and changed it forever

Breweries and the shutdown

Back on January 10, I had posted that breweries could not release any new brews during the government shutdown. It turns out that this is because the labels must be approved by ATF. The breweries, with the help of Alan Gura, have decided to sue ATF claiming that the restriction on new labels is a violation of the First Amendment rights of the brewery and stating that just because the government is shut down for lack of funding does not eliminate the rights of the citizens.

The complaint can be found here.

Bad Law

The family of Adrian Diaz, an 18 year old man, is pressing the state to prosecute people for not calling 911. It seems that the 18 year old illegally obtained alcohol, became heavily intoxicated, and went for a swim in a pond where he drowned. The man's grandmother is blaming a witness who says that he saw Diaz lying in the grass near the pond, apparently drunk. No word on how much blame she places upon her grandson for illegally obtaining alcohol and getting drunk, nor is there word on the blame she places upon the "friend" who provided that alcohol.

State Representative Jon Cortes has filed House Bill 147, which will require bystanders render aid in an emergency. The text of that bill can be found here. If you read the text, I don't think that this bill would have helped in Diaz's case, but who knows how the state will look at it. This is a bad law.

Notwithstanding subsection (2), a person who is at the 16 scene of an emergency and who knows that another person is exposed to or has suffered serious bodily injury shall, to the extent that he or she can do so without causing danger or peril to oneself or others, provide reasonable assistance to the exposed or injured person. Reasonable assistance includes contacting, obtaining, or attempting to contact or obtain aid from law enforcement or medical personnel. For purposes of this subsection, the term "serious bodily injury" has the same meaning as provided in s. 790.155. A person who violates this subsection commits a misdemeanor of the second degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.

What is reasonable? It says it includes calling for aid, but note that it does not say ONLY calling for aid. I am a paramedic. Will it be reasonable for me to render medical assistance? Do they really intend on making it a requirement to call 911 every time I see a drunk? I don't like this at all.

Legally purchased?

One of the reasons that antigun forces give for demonizing gun owners is the statement that all guns start out as legally owned firearms until irresponsible gun owners or unscrupulous dealers sell them to criminals.

In October of 2018, sixteen pallets of Ruger handguns were stolen from a UPS shipping facility. Hundreds of handguns were stolen in what the ATF described as one of the largest single gun thefts the agency has investigated. Two guys pulled a UHaul up to a UPS facility, loaded it up with hundreds of handguns and drove away.

Their only mistake was in trying to sell them out of the back of the truck in a store parking lot on a Sunday afternoon. With rocket science like this going on, they must have had inside information or help.

The rich don't pay taxes

There is a lot of hot air being blown about, claiming that the rich don't pay taxes. That is completely false.
The top marginal rate in 1960 was 91 percent. However, there were so many tax deductions that the effective rate was much lower at 42 percent.

Compare that to today. The richest 1 percent make an adjusted gross income of about $435,000 or more. My wife and I are in that one percent. For 2018, we are paying an effective rate of 30 percent, even though my marginal rate is 37%.

Compare this to a couple that each earn the national average income, thereby having an AGI of $80,000. Their marginal rate would be 12%, but the taxes paid would be $24,500, making their effective rate 16 percent.

Now compare this to a married couple making just over Florida's minimum wage. Their annual income would be about $35,000 a year, and their marginal rate would be 10 percent, resulting in about $3,800 in taxes. That means their effective rate would be just under 11 percent.

I pay a tax rate that is 3 times higher than minimum wage, and in total dollar amount, my wife and I are paying more than 60 times as much.

Don't tell me that we are not paying our fair share. 

Government shutdown: Day 26

Dumb

Isn't a home made firework wrapped in aluminum and powerful enough to blow off a person's fingers called a bomb?

Breweries affected by shutdown

So the story goes that breweries can't release new brews until the ATF reopens after the government shutdown. It seems to me that, if the ATF is closed, there isn't a whole lot they can do if you just release the beer anyway, and if they CAN stop you from releasing the beer, that simply proves that the government shutdown is a kabuki theater farce.

Government shutdown: Day 19

This is the nineteenth day of the government shutdown.
Still have electricity and water, no purge. no looting, no cool gangs of gangs wearing colanders as face shields. I still have to go to work. Worst apocalypse ever.

Maybe if this shutdown goes on long enough, people will finally see that most of government is a waste of money, and we can make this permanent.

Visitors from behind the Iron Curtain

My brother in law came to see us for the holidays. He brought along his girlfriend and her parents. What makes this unusual is that her parents are from Slovakia and don't speak English. The girlfriend and her parents grew up in East Europe under the Soviet Union. 

We went on a Caribbean cruise for Christmas, and then we all came back here and spent a week touring Central Florida with them. The four of them went to the Kennedy Space Center, but we didn't go with them on that trip.

With the youngest of the three translating, I learned a lot about Slovakian culture, and life in the Soviet Union. They told stories of nationwide drills involving the wearing of gas masks. We took them shopping, and they were amazed at the selection of goods and groceries, as well as the prices. One of the things that surprised me was them telling me that we have more available clothing sizes. Apparently, sizes are hit and miss, and as long as you get something that even remotely fits, you should grab it. Another surprise for them was that the clothes for sale came from all over the world. 

We took them to Bealls department store, which is a Florida chain store that carries a lot of lightweight clothing and other goods that are styled for Florida. They bought $400 of clothes on sale (they didn't even know what coupons are). We had to get them an extra suitcase to carry the stuff.

We then went grocery shopping and they posed for pictures in the store, standing in the aisles next to all of the food. They had never seen that large of a selection of produce, and were amazed by the number and size of turkeys on sale.

Eastern Europe still suffers from the after effects of more than 4 decades of Soviet rule. Remember that this is what the Democrats want for this country.