This is why I can't lock up ALL of my guns

The Democrats want me to keep all of my guns locked up and separate from my ammunition. My gun safe is on the other side of the house from my bedroom, and the kitchen is between them. So what am I supposed to do when an 11 foot long, carnivorous dinosaur breaks into my house?

Orlando goes ecofascist

The city of Orlando is about to ban plastic straws, bags, and containers from all city property.

"This covers ... public right of way like food trucks," Castro said.

Ironic last name aside, will this result in traffic stops if you are seen on the public right of way with a McDonald's cup? There is also a city ordinance about scooping your dog's poop. Maybe you can use bags made from a liberal chick's underarm hair.

May issue guardians

Florida recently passed a law which expands the "Guardian Program" to include teachers. The program is designed to arm select school employees to receive special training. Any school district that establishes a guardian program gets additional funding and grant money in order to implement the program.

Now that the students are finished with their school year, teachers are in the midst of what is known as "post planning days" and learning about planned changes for the next school year. Thanks to the fact that the school district gets to pick who is a guardian, the system is going the way that ALL "may issue" programs go. What teachers are hearing about the Guardian Program is:

Although they can legally take part in the Guardian Program, teachers will still not be permitted to take part. Instead, administrators will be the only ones permitted to take part. Principals, superintendents, and some county level office staff will be the only ones permitted to take part. Anyone who is taking part will get a free gun, ammo, training, and a stipend for having the extra certification.

The school districts have turned this "may issue" system into a cash cow for earning grant money and redistributing some of that grant money to select, politically connected individuals. The guardian program has been corrupted to the point where it is completely useless.

Wrong Amendment there, sport

Billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, one of the (seemingly) fifty 2020 Democrat Presidential Candidates, and former Hillary 2016 supporter, has a supposed "compromise" way that he would like to rewrite the Second Amendment. Here is a quote:

I would go to change the Second Amendment in ways that people probably wouldn't expect. One, every American citizen has the right to own a gun. Two, the federal government will never be allowed to ever confiscate that gun from an individual. Next, he said states should have wide latitude to determine gun policy within their borders. States have the right to manage the ownership—the purchase, ownership, and management—of guns owned and held within their borders.

In other words, he wants to outlaw firearms at the state level by not applying the Second Amendment to the states. He is looking at the wrong Amendment. What he REALLY wants to do is get rid of the Fourteenth Amendment. That would open a HUGE can of worms for him and the rest of the Communist Democrat party. Once the Fourteenth was gone, Roe v. Wade is gone. Slavery would be up to the states. So would every other item in the Amendments: voting rights, Religion, free speech, and even jury trials.

Good luck with that. 

Not worth it

Here is a story about a philanthropist paying off the student loans of an entire graduating class. While that is nice, it isn't the point of this post. What really stunned me was this quote:

In the weeks before graduating from Morehouse on Sunday, 22-year-old finance major Aaron Mitchum drew up a spreadsheet to calculate how long it would take him to pay back his $200,000 in student loans - 25 years at half his monthly salary, per his calculations.

Why would you go to college and select a major where your career would cost you half of your salary for the next 25 years? This proves to me that this college doesn't teach its finance majors very well. There are a few ways that this quote can be taken, but each of them shows a lack of financial knowledge on the part of Mr. Mitchum.

A simple calculation on a student loan of $200,000 yields a payment of $1400 a month. That means his salary is expected to be about $48,000 a year. If he was hired to work at WalMart for their minimum wage of $15 an hour and started work the day that he would have started college, he would be 55 years old before the college degree put him ahead.

Instead of demanding free college, perhaps graduating high school seniors should be looking at trade school.

NSA?

Officials said they received a tip that a device at Darrin Williams' Mount Dora home was accessing suspected child pornography. 

I wonder if this tip came from the NSA?

First Amendment

Assange is being charged with espionage for publishing information that the government deems sensitive. The government responds by insisting Assange is “not a journalist.” I disagree. The government does not get to decide who is and who is not a journalist. For the government to have such power would render the First Amendment meaningless. Imagine a President who can simply declare that some news organization or another is not the press that is entitled to First Amendment protections, and simply shuts them down. 

Teacher arrested for gun in class

A Pinellas county teacher was arrested for having a gun inside of her backpack, which was in her classroom. She had recently been told that her contract for teaching with the county would not be renewed for the coming school year.

When she was asked why she had the weapon, she replied, "Ask your Governor." The woman has a concealed weapons permit, so she was charged with carrying a firearm in an unauthorized location, a misdemeanor. Read the comments. The readership of the anti gun Tampa Bay Times is all over this, saying that this is why the law arming teachers should never have been passed. So a woman who was breaking the law by illegally carrying a weapon somehow means that the teachers who want to do so lawfully are to blame?

It seems that, like all anti gun media, the entire story is not being told. As far as I know, this is not being reported anywhere else.

1 She is registered to vote with no party affiliation.
2 She is the membership director of a left wing, racist socialist group called the "Black is back coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations," whose motto states: There is no peace: Africa and Africans are at war! U.S. to the world Comply or Die!" Here is a screenshot from their Facebook page:

3. This group (Soto is on the steering committee)  has a list of demands that includes:

We declare our human right to armed self-defense from the violent attacks by white citizens and the assaults and murders by the domestic military occupation forces that include various police organizations. We fully recognize that in a struggle for self-determination any act of resistance by the oppressed is an act of self-defense. (emphasis added)

This, in my opinion, is a domestic terrorist organization, and this arrest may very well have prevented a terror attack on that school.

4. The group recently had a meeting where they had this to say:

Our Coalition has concluded that elections are not the only method of struggle and we have responded to the 1963 declaration by Malcolm X of “the ballot or the bullet,” with the timely refrain that it will be the ballot and the bullet.

5. Soto has been the owner of a Florida corporation since 2012. That corporation is listed as a non profit and is doing business as USB HOOD APPRENTICESHIP ACADEMY FOR GIRLS and is apparently doing business out of Soto's house, which is located a block from the school.


There is a lot of suspicious activity here.

Sexcapades

Kim has posted on his blog about a scandal involving Navy sailors' ranking female sailors on their sexual desirability. During my six years in the US yacht club, there were quite a few incidents along these lines. We referred to women as "split tails" and nothing would ruin a career faster than having a woman report you for harassment.

There was a scandal in 1988, I think it was on the USS Yellowstone, where more than 30 female crewmembers were engaged in lesbian relationships with other members of the crew.

We had a reserve unit onboard my ship once, and that unit had females aboard. We avoided them as much as possible, because they were nothing but courts marshal bait. For example, we had to post a sentry outside of the berthing space that had been assigned to them, whose job was to prevent any males from entering the space unless they were on official business. One of these sailors was standing his watch when a buddy walked by and asked him what he was doing standing in the passageway. The sailor replied, "I am on the pussy watch." A female overheard him through the door, and reported him.

When he went to his Article 15, the Captain asked him why he said that. The sailor replied: "When I am guarding the brow, I am the brow watch. When I am watching the ship's generator,  I am the ship's generator watch. I was guarding the pussy, so I was on pussy watch." The man's naval career was ruined when the Captain threw the book at him.

On 1988, there was the famous "Tailhook" scandal where a bunch of pilots were accused of debauchery that some women found offensive. I spoke with a couple of people who were there. The women who were there were not blameless. In one case, several women were competing in a "bikini line shaving contest" where the judges would run their tongues down the bikini lines of the competitors to see who had the smoothest, closest shave.

This is what happens when you pile thousands of healthy young adults in close proximity to each other. It isn't unique to the military.

Walking away

This past weekend, my wife and I were in Orlando for a bit of a staycation. We were staying at a hotel in the tourist district. We were about to cross a busy street and pushed the button for the crosswalk. The button causes lights embedded in the street and on roadside signs to begin flashing. There is a sign right there that says that all cars must stop while lights are flashing. The cars that were approaching stopped, but as we got halfway across the street, a car started to jet by and almost hit us, except that he jammed on the brakes at the last second. My wife pointed at the sign.

The man leaned out of his window and yelled "I stopped to be nice. You don't have to give me attitude."
I replied, "No, you HAVE to stop, it's the law."
Driver: "Fucking asshole tourist. Come over here and I will kick your ass, you fat fuck. You and your fat assed fucking wife."

There are those who claim that every traffic disagreement will result in a shooting. They claim that "Stand your ground" is a license to kill. I proved them wrong. I replied, "I am not going over there, and I am not going to fight you." The guy may have been armed, but I definitely was. My pride at being called names is not worth someone getting shot. The wife and I both walked away.

Nearly all concealed weapons permit holders feel the same way.

Mass shooting

Here is another one of those mass shootings that anti gunners claim only happen in the US. 

This time, the shooting was in Brazil and left 11 dead.  The gun laws are very strict. You need a license to own a gun. That license expires every three years and you must be 25 to get one. Handguns are illegal. Most firearms in Brazil are illegally owned.

Brazil has a homicide rate that is 6 times higher than the USA. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns. This is why gun laws don't work.

A Florida Secret

When a nuisance gator is caught, they always say that it was relocated. The truth is that they are killed. The trappers are not actually employees of the state. They are contracted to serve a certain area, and their pay is that they can legally sell the meat and hide any nuisance gator they catch. If the relocate the animal, then they have just given away their fee.

Not just a meme

Guns DO get lost in canoeing accidents.

Teacher pay

Another popular legend is that the average teacher makes $48K a year in Florida. It amazes me that there are so many gun owners who claim that the press lies, but then take this pile of garbage as gospel. Let me show you why this is wrong:

Here is Lake county's teacher payscale. Note that a teacher needs 18 years on the job in order to get to $48k. I doubt that the average teacher has been teaching for 18 years. The same story is in Polk county, where a teacher needs 15 years on the job to hit $48K.

I initially thought that this $48K number was caused by the counties down south making more. However, looking at the page, they claim that the average pay for Lake and Polk counties are $44,600 and $45,200, respectively. Classroom teachers don't come close to that.

Teacher workdays

One of the things that I hear all of the time about being a teacher, is how nice it must be to get summers off. Then the conversation usually drifts into how teacher pay is so great, because we get paid a full year's pay, and how summer is basically a paid vacation. Let's take a look at that:

Teachers are contracted to work 196 days per year. In addition, we are also required to be at school for events outside of the 196 days of the contract. Events like graduation, open house, and even to staff the different extracurricular events like sports, grad bash, prom, and school dances. 

During those summer breaks, teachers are required to do things. One of them is training to comply with Federal and state law. For example, I have to attend 120 hours of training on educating students who do not speak English as a primary language. Last year, it was 60 hours on special needs students, and another 24 hours on school security. On top of that, many schools have training requirements of their own. My wife (who works at a different school) has a reading list of books that each teacher must read during the summer. For example, last year's book was "Find a way." 

It can be difficult to add up the hours, because teachers are salary, and each school and teacher has different requirements. Here in Florida, every teacher has a contract of what they must do, and this contract lays out the minimum. My wife and I are high school teachers, so I am going to use that as an example.

To begin, each teacher is contracted to work an 8 hour day for 196 days a year. That covers the 6 classes per day that we are with students, plus the planning period. That comes to 1568 hours.

We are also required to provide course materials like power points, worksheets, and tests. You either create them or pay for them out of your own pocket. I also have to grade student papers. I have 140 students a year, so any time there is an assignment, those papers take time to grade. My school requires that I have my students complete a minimum of 3 graded assignments a week. Some classes are harder to grade papers than others. Essays and complicated physics problems take longer to grade than a multiple choice quiz, for example. A new teacher spends about 4 hours each of the 180 workdays where we have students on this. More experienced teachers can do it in about 2 hours. There goes another 360 hours or so.

In addition, we are required to attend 5 events each year. Those events include prom, sporting events, etc. On top of that, you have to attend the awards banquet for your students. There are two of them (9th & 10th grade, and another for 11th & 12th). There is also graduation, baccalaureate, and others. In all, these events add up to another 40 hours or so.

Last year, every teacher in the state had to attend a 120 hour class on sensitivity to illegal alien students. That was in addition to our regular in service training. Same goes for the 60 hour special needs training we did this year, and the Guardian training that will be required, if they ever establish that. If you want summers off, then you have to find a way to take those classes at night or on weekends during the school year. These trainings usually come to another 100 hours or so,on average.

Total it up: 1568 + 360+ 40+ 100. That is about 2068 hours. That pretty much equals the 2080 hours that you work in a 40 hour a week job. 

Too much

I donate to pro gun causes. The NRA, Second Amendment Foundation, and I even used to give money to Florida Carry. About two months ago, I gave a modest donation to the Firearms Policy Foundation, I can't even remember how much and I am too lazy to go look it up. I know it was between $100 and $250.

Ever since, I have been getting an email EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. asking for more money. I am about three emails away from putting them in the SPAM filter.

This is the kind of behavior that makes me believe that progun organizations are in favor of gun control because it increases profitability.

Free ride

Florida state law says that any student who moved to the US from a non-English speaking country is "sheltered" for the first two years. A sheltered student may not fail any class in a public school, solely because of their lack of proficiency in English. The county where I teach takes that one step further: teachers of any student who is sheltered MUST award that student a 'C' regardless of any other circumstance. Any teacher who refuses not only gets fired, but loses their state teaching license for being an anti-immigrant racist.

I have a student in one of my classes who was living in Connecticut and was not going to be able to graduate. The reason for this, is that he is lazy and misses a lot of school. To remedy this, he and his family moved to him Puerto Rico and he stayed with family for a few months. He then came to Florida, and gets a C in every class, as well as a pretty much automatic diploma. He was in my class for 70 school days, but was absent for 24 of those days. He completed exactly one assignment and failed every test and quiz. I had to add 42 percentage points to the 28 percent that he "earned" in order to get him to that C.

Nothing to see here, pt 2

So there are more reasons why the Colorado school shooting has seen so little outcry from the press. Not only were the shooters trannies and Democrats, but the father of the elder shooter is an illegal immigrant who has been arrested for weapons offenses, and has previously been deported twice.

Not only that, but a parent at the school warned the school in January that the pair were planning on a school shooting. The school hired an attorney in February and were planning legal action against the parent who warned the school.

Police as security

The theme parks in the Orlando area use police officers as security guards. They wear their department issued uniform, carry a department issued firearm and radio, and are paid by the department that they work for. The theme park then pays their department for the service. Depending on the situation, they are considered to be security guards or police.

If they want to search you but don't have a warrant or probable cause, they are security guards. If they ask you a question and you lie, they are then cops and you have broken the law. If you resist them in any way, they are cops. They get to have things however it works out best for them. As this great grandmother found out, when Disney security searched her bags as a part of a security check and she was arrested for having CBD oil. The charges were later dropped, but this illustrates the problem I have with cops as security. They can search you, and you have no constitutional protections. But let them find something illegal, and they instantly can use the fruits of what would otherwise be an unconstitutional search and arrest you.

Nothing to see here

Wonder why yesterday's school shooting in Colorado was swept from the news cycle so quickly? Two hours after the story broke, the national media had already returned to talking about the 2020 election. 
The two shooters were a tranny and an 18 year old gay man who is a registered Democrat. They used a handgun. The shooters didn't match the media's agenda of making guns owners look like racist white Republican males who are using "assault weapons" to butcher kids and minorities.

FBI show

My wife loves watching shows like "FBI." The agents on the show infuriate me, but my wife tells me that I need to stop analyzing and just watch. I disagree. People watch this stuff and it changes attitudes. Let me give an example:

They were investigating some threat or another, and walked into a grocery store where their suspect had bought a drop phone. They asked the shop owner for his sales records. He refused. Then they asked for the video from his surveillance cameras. He told them he would turn it over if they had a warrant. The agents immediately replied by claiming they had seen rats the size of badgers in his store, and would turn him into the health department if he didn't comply.

Later in the show, they made statements that only people who are guilty or who have something to hide need a lawyer, therefore if you ask for a lawyer, you must be guilty.

I was incensed. The shop owner who was being extorted for his video certainly needed a lawyer. The FBI agents in that show were acting like the mafia or like secret police in a third world dictatorship. People who know nothing about enforcement, the law, or their rights see stuff like this and it colors their attitudes and beliefs. The CSI effect is real, the government knows it, and they manipulate it to their advantage.

Meanwhile, in the UK

Subway has stopped selling any pork products because of Muslim demands. This Islamic takeover of the UK is going to become a problem for the United States.

Stop playing with it

A Pasco county SRO recently had an ND in the cafeteria of the school he is assigned to. They are claiming his gun, which was in a level 3 retention holster, went off while the SRO was leaning against a wall.

Pasco county deputies carry Sig Sauer P320's in a level 3 retention holster. Simply leaning against the wall with a level 3 holster is not going to pull the 5.5 pound trigger on the P320, since the holster should cover the trigger. He was playing with it. There is no other possible answer.

Useless gesture

The law to allow teachers to volunteer for the guardian program has been passed and is expected to be signed by the governor into law. That means exactly nothing. Not a single school district will approve allowing teachers to be armed.

I became a teacher after I retired from over 20 years as a firefighter and paramedic, where I spent part of my career working with the SWAT team. I spent years as an IDPA competitor, and I am a military veteran. I have carried a concealed weapon for more than 25 years. A permit that has allowed me to carry a weapon into McDonald's, Disney, public parks, streets and sidewalks. Not once have I used that weapon in a threatening or illegal manner. I have not even had a traffic ticket in more than a decade.
I have spent more than 30 years wearing one uniform or another, defending the people who could not defend themselves, saving lives, and helping others. In that time, I have had dozens of background checks for security clearances, teaching, firefighting, and paramedic licenses, as well as for concealed weapons permits. Again and again over the past three decades, I have proven my character, my devotion, and my trustworthiness.
I would, if necessary, lay down my life in defense of the children that have been placed in my care. Even in Kindergarten. Possibly YOUR children, if you are reading this.
Except the politicians have declared that I am not permitted to do so, because they don't trust me. So instead, I must sit in the dark, unarmed, unable to protect those children, hiding and waiting for the lunch lady to come rescue us while the deputy takes cover outside.

Fake news again

At the time of this post, the headline reads: "4 deputies shoot man playing loud music at Sweetwater Country Club," which is misleading because it makes things sound as if playing music is the reason the man was shot. Reading the article:

Orange County Sheriff John Mina said deputies were called to the home early Wednesday because loud music was coming from a home on Majestic Oak Drive... Mina said a 49-year-old man, whose name has not been released, pointed a gun at deputies, who opened fire, striking him. The man was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center in critical condition.

The news media is not in the business of selling facts. They are selling advertising space. The facts sometimes get in the way of that.

Another gun control failure

Tell me again how universal background checks or making it illegal for 18-21 year olds to purchase a firearm would stop a 16 year old criminal from killing a 14 year old criminal because he didn't want to pay for the stolen gun that the 14 year old was trying to sell.