LOL

Revolving door

Jamal LaFortune began his criminal career just two months after his 18th birthday, when he was arrested for  First Degree Misdemeanor Battery. It is entirely possible that his criminal career began before that, but the state of Florida doesn't release the criminal records of minors.

Over the next six months, he would be arrested 4 more times for crimes including prowling, grand theft of a motor vehicle, possession of burglary tools with intent, and trespassing. After that, he progressed to the big boy crimes. Before his 20th birthday, he would be arrested twice for aggravated assault and aggravated assault with a firearm. He was a convicted felon before he was even 21.

He was arrested seven more times in the next year for a list of felonies including armed robbery, drug offenses, credit card fraud, and theft. 

Less than a month after his 21st birthday, he entered an Orlando area theme park and opened fire on the crowd. Only the fact that he had bad aim prevented him from becoming another national news story.

In three years, he had amassed a total of  10 arrests that included 5 felony convictions- three of those included aggravated battery with a firearm, yet he was still walking around, a free man. At the time of this shooting, he was out on bail after being arrested for multiple armed robberies in the Orlando area. The last felony arrest for which he was convicted included possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, 5 counts of possession of ammunition by a felon, 2 counts of possession of drugs, and grand theft of $5000 or more. Each of those felonies could have carried a penalty of 15 years. Additionally, he qualified to be a habitual violent felon.

Yet, he was out on the streets, committing more violent crimes, while out on bail. Again and again. Even after his conviction, he was out in less than three months. 

Tell me again how firearms are the problem.

How?

How can you hope to reason with a philosophy that believes so strongly that their deity wants you dead, that they are willing to strap a bomb to their own 7 year old children in order to kill a few of you?

The answer is: you can't. The only thing that you can do is kill them before they kill you.

But, according to the President, all they want is jobs.

TANSTAAFL

A free helicopter costs Newark more than 2 million tax dollars. The helicopter belonged to the city for just 5 years, and was then turned over to the state police. It is time for police to stop spending tax money on trifles like a drunken sailor.

Universal checks?

Two criminals were arrested with stolen firearms in their car.

Raymond Leroy Leonard, 55, of Lake Panasoffkee and Jessie L. Pereida, 27, of Webster, were traveling in a vehicle in the vicinity of Catfish Johnny’s restaurant in Lake Panasoffkee when a deputy noticed the vehicle had an expired registration tag.
During the traffic stop, a deputy confirmed that Leonard is a convicted felon. The deputy also saw firearms in the back of the vehicle in plain sight, the arrest report said. A check confirmed that some of the guns had been reported stolen in Lake County.

This is why laws requiring background checks do not work. 

LOL

What makes a killer?

A police officer in England is alive today, simply because her attacker chose not to kill her. In the video below, a man in handcuffs attacks the Sergeant, knocks her to the ground and pounds her head into the ground, knocking her unconscious. Watch the video:



If you listen carefully, the officer's breathing changes as she goes unconscious, and remains that way for almost a full minute. During that minute, the man could have simply strangled her to death, if he had wanted to do so.
One commenter said:

Damn good job the officer didn't have a gun or a tazer as it could have been much worse!

Which is ridiculous. The only reason that the officer is alive is because the man who attacked her wasn't a killer. He had the means and the opportunity, but not the will. having a weapon doesn't make a person into a killer, having the mindset of a killer does.

As for me, I am not willing to bet my life that a person who attacks  me is not a killer, so I carry a gun, and hope like hell that I never have to use it.

Try it

I just tried explaining the law concerning the possession of weapons on school property in the state of Florida. The teacher in question wants to carry pepper spray in her purse. The laws are confusing, convoluted, and almost impossible to understand, let alone explain or follow. Here is what I had to say:

Can you verify if what I found is correct… thank you 

If it contains more than 2 oz of the chemical then she can not carry it at the school even with a CWFL or openly.

790.115
2(a) A person shall not possess any firearm, electric weapon or device, destructive device, or other weapon as defined in s. 790.001(13), including a razor blade or box cutter, except as authorized in support of school-sanctioned activities, at a school-sponsored event or on the property of any school, school bus, or school bus stop.

790.001
(13) “Weapon” means any dirk, knife, metallic knuckles, slungshot, billie, tear gas gun, chemical weapon or device, or other deadly weapon except a firearm or a common pocketknife, plastic knife, or blunt-bladed table knife.

790.001
(3) (b) “Tear gas gun” or “chemical weapon or device” means any weapon of such nature, except a device known as a “self-defense chemical spray.” “Self-defense chemical spray” means a device carried solely for purposes of lawful self-defense that is compact in size, designed to be carried on or about the person, and contains not more than two ounces of chemical.

So as long as it contains less than 2 oz of chemical it is legal but if it contains more than that it is a "weapon" and is prohibited on school property.

Here is my reply:

The definition says “NOT MORE THAN 2 ounces” of chemical. If it has less than 2 ounces, it is a “chemical weapon or device.” If it contains more than 2 ounces, it is a “destructive device.”

Then she asked:

School property?

 Then it gets confusing:

That is where things begin to get a bit muddy. First, look at 790.115(1), which prohibits the DISPLAY of a weapon in a rude, careless, angry, or threatening manner (not in lawful self defense) at a school-sponsored event or on the grounds or facilities of any school, school bus, or school bus stop, or within 1,000 feet of the real property that comprises a public or private elementary school, middle school, or secondary school, during school hours or during the time of a sanctioned school activity. This is important, because it separates school facility and school grounds, proving that the law considers them to be two different things.

Then you look at paragraph (2), which says:

(2)(a) A person shall not possess any firearm, electric weapon or device, destructive device, or other weapon as defined in s. 790.001(13), including a razor blade or box cutter, except as authorized in support of school-sanctioned activities, at a school-sponsored event or on the property of any school, school bus, or school bus stop; however, a person may carry a firearm:

1. In a case to a firearms program, class or function which has been approved in advance by the principal or chief administrative officer of the school as a program or class to which firearms could be carried;

2. In a case to a career center having a firearms training range; or

3. In a vehicle pursuant to s. 790.25(5); except that school districts may adopt written and published policies that waive the exception in this subparagraph for purposes of student and campus parking privileges.

For the purposes of this section, “school” means any preschool, elementary school, middle school, junior high school, secondary school, career center, or postsecondary school, whether public or nonpublic.

So, the answer is no. UNLESS the person has a concealed weapons permit, then the answer gets a little different. Paragraph (3)(e) says:

(e) The penalties of this subsection shall not apply to persons licensed under s.790.06.

So, we refer to 790.06, which says:

(12)(a) A license issued under this section does not authorize any person to openly carry a handgun or carry a concealed weapon or firearm into: (irrelevant parts omitted)

9. Any school, college, or professional athletic event not related to firearms;

10. Any elementary or secondary school facility or administration building; (again, irrelevant parts omitted)

(b) A person licensed under this section shall not be prohibited from carrying or storing a firearm in a vehicle for lawful purposes.

This seems to indicate that a person with a concealed weapons permit may lawfully possess a concealed weapon on school property, as long as it is not at a school sponsored athletic event, in a school facility or building, and, if a firearm, it is kept in a vehicle. A person may also store weapons in a vehicle in a school parking lot if the school district permits it, but no district in Florida has done so. Additionally, since (our school) is used as a community learning center after hours, it is not legally a school for the purposes of this law after hours, unless there is a school sponsored event going on (like a football game).

Even more confusing, a swim meet at the community pool would constitute a school sponsored sporting event, meaning that anyone at the community center would also be prohibited from having a weapon, even if they were not affiliated with the sporting event or school.

As usual, I am not a lawyer, this is just my opinion, etc.

How is the peace going?

When Obama was a candidate in 2007, and had yet to win his Nobel Peace Prize, he said that he would waste no time in brokering peace in the Middle East. In his inaugural address, he stated that he would usher in a new era of peace. He vowed to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Six years later, we are still in Afghanistan, we are sending troops back to Iraq to counter the ISIS threat, Russia is again rattling nuclear sabers and invading European countries, China is threatening to arm a Hawaiian secessionist movement to overthrow the US government in Hawaii, and he is now using petty grievances to cut Israel out of nuclear talks with Iran.

This can have only one of two ultimate outcomes: Israel will either have to take unilateral action to stop Iran, or there will be a nuclear exchange in the Middle East.

Can anyone say that the world is a more peaceful place because of our Nobel Laureate President?

The crazy years

A theater in the Orlando area was overrun by 900 or more teenagers. Gunfire was reported in the parking lot, and at least one person was robbed. Then hundreds of the teens went across the street and robbed a store. It took police from at least 4 different law enforcement agencies to control the mob. Multiple arrests were made.

Friday the 13th

Here is my traditional Friday the 13th post:

Have you ever wondered why Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day? The short answer: Greed, the French Monarchy, and the Catholic Church. Like most stories, the long version is more complicated. This is the legend as I heard it:

"The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon" were a military order of men who were living in Jerusalem in 1099 AD, at the tail end of the Crusades. There were nine of them at the time, and they were so poor that they were living in a stable and begging for food. Legend has it that they discovered some of King Solomon's treasure while digging in the area.

They returned to Europe, and invented what was essentially the first international banking society. They were involved in shipping, banking, and other money making ventures. They formed a large society, which at its peak was comprised of over 20,000 members. Members held different ranks, with the highest being called Knight Templar. A Knight Templar was similar to what a full partner or a member of the board of directors would be today. The 'board meetings' only took place at night, and this was because of the need for secrecy. Remember that this was in the age of pure monarchy, when no one who was not a King could own anything without the King taking a large cut of it.

One odd thing about them was that they practiced elaborate rituals that were designed to ensure secrecy. Since it was a crime punishable by death at the time to engage in any ritual not endorsed by the Catholic Church, any person who took part in such a ritual was bound to keep the secrets of the others, or he himself would be killed.

The Knights Templar hired many men of the free masons' guild to build large structures, such as the Cathedral at Notre Dame. At the time, the free masons were not especially liked by the Church, mostly because the masons were teaching that mathematics ran the world, and not a deity. The Church had to put up with this to a certain extent, however, because God was not in the business of building the Church's cathedrals, and the free masons were.

The free masons, having built many buildings for the order, needed to be sworn to secrecy. So they were sworn in as minor members of the order, and were taught many of the Templar rituals. 

All went well until October 13, 1307, when the King of France at the time, King Philip IV, entered a partnership with Pope Clement V and decreed that all of the Knights Templar would be declared to be Satan worshipers and would be put to death. The king charged the Templars with usury, credit inflation, fraud, homosexuality, heresy, sodomy, immorality, and other abuses.

Many of the Kinghts Templar were killed at dawn that Friday the 13th, so that their wealth could be confiscated while at the same time eliminating the possible threat that the military order might pose to Philip's quest for more power. The ones who weren't killed were tortured into 'confessing' to their crimes. The Pope, in order to avoid the military action that Philip had threatened to take against the Church, issued arrest warrants for all of the Templars worldwide, which allowed the Church to confiscate their assets. The arrested members of the order were burned at the stake in 1314, and the remainder of the Templars went underground and became a secret society.

King Phillip and Pope Clement both died before the end of 1314, after being cursed by one of the Templars they burned at the stake. According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. His actual words were recorded to be: "Dieu sait qui a tort et a péché. Il va bientot arriver malheur à ceux qui nous ont condamnés à mort" (free translation : "God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death").

No one really knows if this is the true account of what happened, but that doesn't surprise me. History is a fiction that is written by the winners. Even this morning's newspapers are seldom an account of what actually took place yesterday, but are instead an account of what the powerful want the public to hear.

Brazil

From Brazil comes the story of a prison break where some women seduced prison guards and drugged them while having sex. The women then released 28 prisoners from the jail. The prisoners raided the police armory on the way out.

The inmates took three 12 caliber rifles shotguns, two 38 caliber revolvers and munition

Layers of editorial oversight, indeed.

Guns are very strictly controlled in Brazil, and have been since 2002. That hasn't solved the problems.The escapee who planned the prison break:

the escape was planned by the boyfriend of one of the women, Bruno Amorim, 18, was was serving time for attempted murder, robbery and firearms possession.

The obvious flaw with gun control is that stupid, inept, and corrupt government officials still have access to weapons, and are frequently the source of illicit items.

Brazil has the dream gun laws that the anti-gun forces here in the US claim will work, with less than nine firearms per 100 residents, compared to the US, where there are 90 firearms per 100 residents. With the US having ten times the rate of firearm ownership, one would expect, if it were true that more guns equals more crime, that the US would have a significantly higher crime rate.

The opposite is true: even though there are ten times more guns per capita in the US than in Brazil, Brazil is ranked 18th in homicide with an intentional homicide rate of 25.2 per 100,000 residents. The US has a rate of 4.7 homicides per 100,000 residents, and is ranked number 111.

Brazil's homicide rate has risen 132% over the past 30 years, from 11.5 per 100,000 people in 1980 to 27 per 100,000 in 2011. Among those aged between 14 and 25 the rate in 2011 was around double that -- 53 per 100,000. Each year, an average of 50,000 Brazilians are murdered- more than 3 times as many as in the USA.

It isn't the guns.

All your laws now belong to me...

Nebraska has a problem with its citizens legally buying marijuana in Colorado and illegally bringing it into Nebraska. What is Nebraska to do? Sue Colorado for the behavior of Nebraska's citizens so you can prevent all of the people who aren't breaking the law, of course.

This is the same logic we see applied to gun laws: one group of nanny staters doesn't like what someone is doing, so we pass laws and assign blame on everyone, and not just the lawbreakers.

 and before you begin quoting Federal law to me, show me the part of the Constitution that grants the Federal government the power to restrict the production and sale of a product wholly within the borders of a single state. Yes, the people smuggling are involved in interstate commerce, but that does not mean that Colorado has to stop EVERYONE from selling and buying marijuana, it means that the people who are smuggling can be prosecuted.

The concept of controlling everything using interstate commerce as the excuse didn't begin until 1942, when a case titled Wickard v. Filburn went to the Supreme Court, and the court essentially held that everything affects interstate commerce, thus everything can be regulated by Federal law.

Tragedy

Stories like this one are why, when military recruiters were sniffing around my children in 2004, I did everything that I could to keep them out of the military. I served myself, and I see no honor in having my children fight for men such as these.
Our military is being run by political hacks who will destroy a man for doing his job, while they themselves are chasing prostitutes and guzzling taxpayer funded liquor.
I love this country and the ideals upon which it was founded, but I no longer feel that our military or our government are safeguarding those ideals. The men that serve have my respect, but the men that command them do not.

Food for thought

First, let's compare King Hussein of Jordan to our own leader...

King Hussein just flew a strike mission against ISIS himself. Then compare his wife, Queen Rania:

with our own first lady:

Framing

Remember how people are always saying that the police are the only ones who can be trusted to carry or own guns? When I point out that we are becoming a police state, people almost always tell me that we are nowhere close, because the police aren't as bad as country X. My point is that waiting until it is as bad as some random totalitarian nation, it will be too late to stop it.

Let me give you some examples of a our police state:
In June of 2014, Lakeland, FL officers arrested Michael Burns for public masturbation. It appears that the police got an anonymous complaint to their non-emergency number, stating that Burns was masturbating in public. When Burns filed a public information request for the police call system, he traced the anonymous call to one of the police officer's cell phone. That's right, the cops provided their own reasonable suspicion by making an anonymous call, so that they could harass a citizen.

What did he actually do? He was filming the officer performing his duties, which is not a crime in Florida, so they had to invent one. According to the police, this is not the first time he has done this.

Why is filming police officers such a major problem? Because even when they know they are being filmed, because they are the ones doing the filming, they say stupid things:

Alexandra Torrensvilas of Broward County, FL was the target of cops who pinned a DUI on her in 2009 for an accident one of them caused. The officers were caught on tape making up an intricate story to cover for a traffic accident involving a cop car.Officers Joel Francisco, Dewey Presley, Karim Thomas, and Sgt Andrew Diaz were caught falsifying evidence, conspiring to lie on official reports, and arresting the innocent woman, all to that Francisco wouldn't receive discipline for getting in the accident.Throughout the tape, the cops acknowledged what they are doing is illegal, but when you are the law, there is nothing wrong with bending it for a fellow cop, one is heard saying. "I don't lie and make things up ever because it's wrong, but if I need to bend it a little bit to protect a cop, I'll do it," Pressley tells Francisco after reassuring him no one will ever find out. "She's freaking hammered anyway."
In 2012, Officers Francisco and Dewey Pressley each received 90 days in jail, but none of the others were even charged. Sure, they were suspended, but were back on the job, free to frame others, within days.

We see this time and time again. In 2011, and NYPD detective admitted that New York detectives were arresting people because they had quotas to meet.

 A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas...Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as "flaking," on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low. The city paid $300,000 to settle a false arrest suit by Jose Colon and his brother Maximo, who were falsely arrested by Anderson and Tavarez. A surveillance tape inside the bar showed they had been framed.
A federal judge presiding over the suit said the NYPD's plagued by "widespread falsification" by arresting officers.

 You get that? It happens so often that police actually have a word for it! The judge even said that the conduct is "widespread."

 In 2013, a lawsuit accused NYPD detectives of again arresting people on false charges, so that they could meet a quota.

One study found that 10,000 innocent people a year are convicted for crimes that they did not commit.

There is the one thing that the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" protesters have gotten right: police need to wear body cameras. That way, the good cops will be protected from false charges, while the bad ones will have to face some accountability.

I know police have privacy rights while off duty, on breaks, and other times. I get that, but they don't have that right while performing their jobs. Everything that I say in their presence can be used against me, so I don't see why the things that are said cannot be used in my favor. So, my proposal is this: pass a law that any time a police recording is not available for any reason, including technical problems, the police are assumed to be lying. After all, why hide something, if there is nothing to hide. Turnabout, as they say, is fair play.