Liberals don't understand economics

Liberals in Florida have put a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour on the ballot. In a news article on that topic, I posted a comment:

Divemedic: The real minimum wage is zero. Once the minimum wage reaches a certain point, businesses simply stop hiring. They do so either by not expanding or by eliminating jobs by automating.

In the meantime, they will simply increase prices to cover the extra expenditures.

A liberal responds: when wages increase, people on the bottom spectrum spend it (unlike tax breaks for wealthy, who find ways to save it or invest it in multinational organizations that don’t impact us). If poor people spend it, the question is, where? They like to eat out, go to the movies, hit the arcade, bowling, and buy crap at local stores. This is well established.

So if a local business doubles its sales, why would they stop hiring?

Divemedic: Because the cost per unit has increased. If you increase wages, the labor cost, which is the largest expense of any business other than cost of goods sold, is higher. A worker is limited in how many units they can produce per hour, so increasing hourly wage results in a higher unit cost. The business must respond by either increasing prices or decreasing costs, in order to stay profitable.

Increasing prices can only be done to a small extent if the company is to remain competitive. The only option left is to reduce costs. This is where automation comes in- once labor costs are more than the cost of automation, the company will automate jobs out of existence. Automation decreases unit cost by increasing the number of units an employee can produce. We are already seeing that with the ordering kiosks and self checkouts in stores. Some companies will resort to hiring illegal immigrants who will work for less than minimum wage. Either way, the American worker suffers..

Your comparison of increased labor to tax cuts is invalid- a business has very little option of cutting its own taxes.

Liberal: That's why I feel there should be a cap on prices or else everything will continue to go up and we’ll be back in the same boat as before except at a higher priced level.


Sigh.

Free speech

Now the left is claiming that they can predict mass shootings based upon the social media posts of individuals- even when those posts are not considered threatening. It seems that they are matching speech patterns of people to see if they match speech patterns of mass shooters. Right now, police are arresting people for saying things like:

3 more days of probation left then I get my AR-15 back. Don’t go to Walmart next week

Which most people recognize as being a real and immediate threat. However, they are proposing that the use of phrases like: “I,” “me,” and “mine.” indicates a person who is more likely to do violence than a person who uses words like: “great,” “happy,” and “amazing.” They go on to claim that a person can be diagnosed with personality disorders or depression, based on nothing more than their social media posts. They claim that that people who become violent are more likely to use emotionally laden words like “shit,” “hate,” “you” and “they.” while being less likely to use words about the external world, such as “people,” “world,” “state” and “time.”

This is pure pseudoscience, of course. Using this hypothesis, a person would be considered unlikely to commit violence if they said something like: "The people of the world would be happier if we took time to make the state safer by executing everyone who owns weapons of war. Wouldn't that be amazing?" While the person who replies with: "I think your idea of killing people is bullshit. I hate it. You have no right to take my guns, they are mine." would be considered a killer in waiting.

The scary part is in the last paragraph:

we are optimistic that these words can offer a window—and a warning—about individuals’ intentions. This work is by no means a standalone solution to gun violence or terrorism, but it might help, even as predicting and preventing these sorts of attacks remains incredibly difficult.

Gun bloggers and social media posters beware: Your words will soon be used against you.

Police shoot sleeping woman

During a "well being check" that may well have been a SWATing, the police broke into a home without a warrant, woke up a sleeping woman, then shot her, because a woman asleep in her bed at night is a threat.

Now she is being charged with three counts of attempted murder of a LEO. But red flag laws won't ever be abused.

Groundwork

When the Democrat mandatory buyback goes into effect, it will be done without any money being paid to the owners of their formerly legal weapons. This court case will be used as the precedent.

Data mining

UK gun myth

So here we go again, from a discussion on another web site, where "reasoned discourse" broke out, and I was blocked from responding. So, I will respond here instead:

People like you claim that gun laws wouldn't work because criminals don't obey the laws. Criminals don't obey the laws in other similar countries that have gun control, but they have significantly fewer murders (see eg UK). The reason? Most illegal guns in the USA start as legal guns - they are stolen, sold, etc and end up in the hands of criminals. Since there are so few LEGAL guns in the UK, its very very difficult to obtain illegal weapons (that's why the 3 terrorists in the London Bridge attack used a van and knives - as a result the 3 of them only managed to kill 7 people - a single mass shooter in the USA can easily kill 10, and the record is 59).
In fact, gun control works in the USA too. The AR15 is the weapon of choice of the mass shooter, despite the military M16 being a more deadly weapon (and hence preferred by the military). Why would a mass-shooter opt for the less deadly AR15? Because its very difficult to obtain the M16, as its illegal in most states. The fact that law abiding citizens can't obtain the weapon makes it virtually impossible for criminals to obtain it.
Anyone who thinks gun control doesn't work hasn't looked elsewhere. The UK is so safe that most police officers aren't armed. In the USA there are calls to arm school teachers! People scratch their heads and pretend they don't know what can be done about these regular school shootings - even more guns perhaps? The last school shooting in the UK was in 1996. Gun control does work.

1 Yes, MOST guns in the US start off as legal guns. Most liquor starts off as legally consumed, but then a person uses it in a criminally negligent manner. It isn't whether or not an object starts off being legally purchased, because it isn't the object that commits the crime, but the person using it.

2 Using one single crime (the London Bridge attack) to "prove" that criminals can't get guns is misleading. 23 people were killed in the bombing of the Ariana Grande concert, even though bombs are illegal in the UK.

3 The AR15 is not the weapon of choice of mass shooters. Let's use ABC's list of 21 mass shootings in the US this year. Only 4 of the shootings listed were carried out by a person armed with a rifle, and only two of those were AR clones (Odessa and Dayton). Overwhelmingly, criminals favor handguns, for the simple reason that carrying around a rifle makes one stand out.

4 That is the same reason why the M16 isn't used by criminals. It is difficult to hide a full sized machine gun. The vast majority of crimes committed by criminals armed with firearms is committed by handguns.

5 There aren't calls to arm teachers. The call is for people to stop believing that creating zones where a shooter can depend on his intended victims being disarmed. We are simply asking you to stop disarming teachers, which is totally different from actively arming them.

6 UK police are armed. 

7 Gun control doesn't work to stop crime, but it does work in creating people who can be easily controlled.

Gun buyback

Central Florida cops had a gun buyback today. Orange County had 58 guns turned in. Three were criminals trying to dispose of stolen firearms. Maitland police got three long guns and two handguns.

Look at what got turned in and reflect on the weapons that will be turned in when there is an AR15 "buyback."

Some rights are more important than others

The same people who want to force businesses to bake wedding cakes for gay weddings have no problem with asking banks to refuse to allow money transfers for the sale of firearms.

Only one

Remember the School Resource officer who had an ND at school back in May? He has been fired.

Like you and me

When a citizen kills a police K9, he is charged with killing a police K9. Killing a law enforcement canine is a third-degree felony charge that carries a prison sentence of up to five years.

When a cop does it, he is charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty.

This just in

Beto O'rourke announced that, in the even a gun owner doesn't comply with his confiscation scheme, the police will  visit to recover that firearm and to make sure it is purchased, bought back, so it cannot potentially used against somebody else.

Well, as a service to the Democrats, here is a video of what this will look like, once they begin door to door confiscation, courtesy of ABC news:

Believe in something

Warning

Recently, many bloggers have noted that media outlets published footage of the Knob Creek machine gun shoot and tried to pass it off as if it was a battlefield.




Let this be a warning to the politicians who are wanting to confiscate firearms: Gun people go out and, in one single range session, unleash an amount of firepower that scares the media into thinking it is a warzone. How are you going to take that on? Nuking a US city? Seriously?

Gitsum

Some music for those who want to repeal the Second Amendment from the group 'No One Special:'

And a second one from Hogjaw:

Heinlein was a prophet

As I read yet another article about trannies taking over women's sports, I realize that we really are living in the 'crazy years.'

Definitions matter

Graybeard commented on my last post:

Unless they specifically address it, if there's an assault weapon buy back, all you sell back is the serialized lower, because that's the gun. Get some 80% lowers and get them ready to assemble or swap them out in advance and sell back stripped lowers.
Uppers are not guns, stocks are not guns, trigger groups or drop-ins are not guns.

He is rightly pointing out that the ATF has long held that the lower is a firearm and everything else that attaches to it is merely an accessory. With that in mind, is my stripped lower an assault weapon? After all, even using the new definition of "assault weapon":

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:
“(i) A pistol grip.
“(ii) A forward grip.
“  (iii) A folding, telescoping, or detachable stock, or is otherwise foldable or adjustable       in a manner that operates to reduce the length, size, or any other dimension, or        .         otherwise enhances the concealability, of the weapon.
“  (iv) A grenade launcher..
“  (v) A barrel shroud.
“  (vi) A threaded barrel.
(D) A semiautomatic pistol that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine and any 1 of the following:
“(i) A threaded barrel.
“(ii) A second pistol grip.
“(iii) A barrel shroud.
“(iv) The capacity to accept a detachable magazine at some location outside of the pistol grip.
“(v) A semiautomatic version of an automatic firearm.
“(vi) A manufactured weight of 50 ounces or more when unloaded.
“(vii) A stabilizing brace or similar component.
“(E) A semiautomatic pistol with a fixed magazine that has the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds.

Since a stripped lower doesn't have a pistol grip or stock, doesn't have a barrel at all (thus no barrel shroud or threaded barrel), weighs far less than 50 ounces, and without any of the accessories like the upper, cannot be classed as semiautomatic, there is a significant legal case to be made that applying this to a stripped lower is rather vague and over inclusive. That is what you get when you base laws on cosmetics rather than function. 

Hype

While researching AR-15 parts, I discovered that the liberal (redundancy alert) antigun media has managed to find out that the El Paso shooter was seeking ammo referred to as 8M3 ammunition because his WASR-10 wasn't as deadly as an AR-15. As near as I can tell, the 8M3 number is merely a designation for a hollow point 7.62x39mm bullet. It became legendary among people who claimed that it was some sort of super bullet. More hype from Internet chairborne commandos. So much for this source being a reliable source of information. That leads me to:

That same source talks about how much a so-called buyback of "Assault Weapons" would cost. They claim that there are 265 million firearms in the US, with 33% of them being rifles. That number is ridiculously low. Since the NICS system was put in place, there have been more than 325 million NICS checks. Even assuming that, on average, each NICS check symbolizes one firearm transaction, that would mean that there are many more firearms in the US than they claim.

The article then goes on to claim that a mandatory buyback would mean that the government would take your property and reimburse you a percentage of its market value. So I would be reimbursed, according to them, $200 for each AR-15. In an Op-Ed that they link to, Swallwell claims that his bill would pay $200 to $1000 for each AR-15. Even the cheapest AR costs more than that. I would argue that you will not get many rifles turned in for only $200. The select fire version of the AR-15 is the M-4 rifle, which costs the US Military more than $600 each would be a heck of a buy for them at $200 a unit. I would argue that this would make a mandatory buyback at anything less than $600 an unconstitutional taking, violating the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Further, there are a couple of important points here:

1 No one can even define what an "Assault weapon" IS. I own some stripped lowers. Since they have not yet been made into weapons of any type, they are NOT assault weapons under any of the proposed definitions.
2 No one knows how many there are. There is no way to know, and that is without taking homebuilt lowers into account.
3 There is no way to gauge compliance with any sort of buyback, since you don't know what or where all of the objects that you wish to "buy back" are.
4 Even if you did, now what? Who is going to go door to door when compliance rates are low? There are tens of thousands of gun owners that would use this as the trip wire event that would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths of both cops and citizens.

How to be rich

Be related to someone who can hand out government largesse

This is why

Here is the reason why the Democrats need a disarmed American public:

 If the Constitution prohibits Democrats from doing what they want, they should simply shred it and do what they want anyway? This is why they want to ban guns- banning guns allows them to do what they want without fear of what the public will do about it.

It also shows me that HRC is a major player behind this attempt to overthrow the legitimately elected government.

Like you and me, only better

School resource cop who pled guilty to molesting a 14 year old girl gets probation and will not have to register as a sex offender.

Common hand signal for hate?

The hand signal for "OK" has been declared to be a hidden signal for racism, so much so that people are getting fired for it. This likely had nothing to do with racism. Teens have been playing the hand signal game for over a decade.

This racism craze has gone beyond ridiculous.

I have no idea what the SCUBA community is going to do now.

Obama is a racist:

So is GQ and Denzel Washington:

Even Jesse Jackson is a secret racist. How deep does this conspiracy go?

Red Stripe

Reading between the lines: A deputy from Orange County, Florida didn't take his finger off the trigger of his Glock when putting it back in the holster, and earned himself a red stripe.