Divemedic

Employers

I don’t think arresting her for refusing to return the vest goes anywhere. They are arresting her under the claim that she was stealing her company vest. She didn’t steal it, they gave it to her. The easiest way for an employer to get the vest back is to hold her paycheck until it is returned. This is a bullshit charge that goes nowhere. Since they gave her the vest, this is purely a civil matter and not a crime. I am willing to bet the charges don’t ever get filed over this.

Back when I was a firefighter and a much more outspoken person than I am now, I had a job at a theme park on my days off, working as a life guard. I caught the manager altering time cards to eliminate the other lifeguards’ overtime. To be fair, we had a history because I was busy dating my way through the female lifeguard staff, and he was angry because I had been spending some quality time with one of the lifeguards he had been dating. We had a heated discussion, and I told him I was going to HR. He told me that the argument had made me late coming back from my 30 minute lunch, so he was suspending me and wanted my employee ID. I told him “No problem, but the paragraph on the back of the ID says I owe $20 if I lose it, so I want a receipt.”

He refused to give me a receipt, and tried to snatch it from my hand, so I stuck the ID in my wetsuit. I then went to the locker room to retrieve my belongings. He followed me in there, calling for security on the radio and demanding I also turn in the wetsuit. I told him he wasn’t getting the wetsuit because we were forced to pay for it through payroll deduction. (they took the cost of the wetsuit out of our pay in 4 equal payments) He replied that this didn’t matter, because the company logo on the wetsuit meant it was company property. I grabbed my stuff from my locker, including the bag that had my Glock 19 in it.

I laughed at him and turned around to leave, only to see a company security guard standing in front of the exit to the locker room with his arms folded. The guard told me I couldn’t leave without turning in the wetsuit and my ID. I told him to get out of my way, or he would regret it. It was at that moment that the manager jumped on my back. As I tried to get rid of him, the security guard jumped in. So I did what I thought I needed to do while being attacked by two grown men- I drew my handgun and told them to get the fuck off of me. That worked.

As I walked to the exit of the park, security followed me. By the time I got to my car, I could hear the sirens. I locked my gun the car and waited. When the cops showed up, I told them everything. They went to talk to the manager. I was soon called over, and in front of the manager, the Sergeant asked me if I wanted to press charges. The manager couldn’t believe it as the cop explained to him that attacking me for what was obviously a civil matter was illegal. I was honestly surprised I didn’t get arrested.

I didn’t press charges. I was fired. I didn’t care, it was a shitty job anyhow. That manager only lasted another few months, then he left as well. Quit, fired, I don’t know. I still have the wetsuit and it still has the company logo on it. That incident was more than 20 years ago, and the wetsuit no longer fits. Oh, and the lifeguard I was dating? We broke up about that same time. I later found out she spent some time on the wrong side of the law for establishing a fake charity and scamming people out of money.

So yeah, I have had some shitty bosses. Being my boss doesn’t make you my owner, nor does it make you my boss when I am off the clock. I can be a stubborn asshole like that.

By Divemedic, ago

Third Gen Smiths

I’ve had exactly two accidental discharges with firearms. Both involved Smith and Wesson handguns, and the last one happened more than 35 years ago. It’s an interesting story.

My first firearm was a Winchester Model 250, a .22LR lever action with a tube feed. My first handgun was a Smith and Wesson Model 59. It had one dangerous flaw that I discovered once to my dismay- when you dropped it, it could go off. I dropped it once and shot a hole through my dresser and into my wall. That’s how it came to be that, when the Third Generation Smith and Wessons came out, I bought one. My first Third Gen Smith was a 4506. Without looking it up, it was, I think, the heaviest carry pistol I’ve owned. Made out of solid stainless, it was a giant boat anchor. Over the next few years, I accrued a couple of other Third Gen Smiths: a 5906, and a 4566. I ran into an issue with them.

I would take the pistol to the range, flick off the safety, and squeeze the trigger, and

nothing.

The hammer stayed back, the gun didn’t even go click. Each of my Smith and Wesson Third gens did that. I never did find out why. I just couldn’t trust them, and they stopped being carry pieces. I would have nightmares of drawing my handgun to defend my life, and my gun wouldn’t fire. I’m sure Freudians would have a filed day with it, but I think it was a fear instilled in me by three different non-functioning handguns. It was odd- they did it more often when new, they did it rarely, but it would happen every couple of hundred rounds.

Then came the day in 1991 when the 4506 didn’t fire, I pulled the trigger several times, nothing. I turned the pistol 90 degrees clockwise and attempted to see what was going on, and that is when it fired. Into the ceiling of the indoor range. My second ever AD with any firearm.

I bought a Sig Sauer 226, and eventually sold the Smith and Wessons. I didn’t buy or own another S&W for decades after that. In the interim, I owned Taurus, Beretta, Ruger, Glock, and other brands, but I was mainly a Sig Sauer guy for the next 20 years.

Looking back, the Third Gen Smiths were fun to shoot, but I just couldn’t get over the lack of reliability.

By Divemedic, ago

Attacks

Antifa was attacking people in an LA Starbucks by dumping blue paint on them. They get away with it because they are in California. If you attempt to dump any sort of liquid on me, especially while wearing a disguise or mask, I will award you and your accomplices with a free helicopter ride to the nearest trauma center. This is a forcible felony, and will be met with lethal force.

A masked person unexpectedly pouring an unidentified blue liquid over someone’s head creates a legitimate concern that it could be acid, bleach, poison, an irritant, or another substance capable of causing blindness or permanent injury. The victim need not wait for burning, identify the chemical, or suffer injury before using reasonable force to stop continued exposure.

By Divemedic, ago

Comments

As a reminder for people who haven’t been here for long. When you comment, the comment goes into the moderation queue and waits for me to approve it. If I am busy, sleeping, or at work, it may be a little while before I get a chance to approve it. You don’t need to post it more than once if you don’t see it right away.

That’s been done here for two reasons:

  • Prevention of SPAM. Between 50 and 200 spam comments a day are attempted on this site. The SPAM filters get most of them, but 20-30 of them a day wind up in the queue and have to be deleted.
  • Enforcing the rules of the site. There were people who came here with no other intention but causing hate and discontent. Those people were banned, but they simply changed names and used a VPN. My choices were either require registering an account with an email, or go to moderation and approval of all comments. I chose the latter. There were benefits and drawbacks to either method, and I decided moderation was the best one for this site.

So wait, if your comment hasn’t been approved within 24 hours, then it was either sucked into the SPAM filter, or it ran afoul of the site rules for comments. You can always ask me.

By Divemedic, ago

Facebook Jail

I’m sure many of my readers found themselves in Facebook jail or suspended from various social media platforms. I remember when some woke whore tried to get me fired by calling hospitals in Central Florida to find out where I worked, all because I said I don’t use made-up personal pronouns. I’ve been suspended from platforms dozens of times for opposing lefty viewpoints. Now watch this and ask why the same isn’t true of this guy:

By Divemedic, ago

Deer Hunters

In a suburb of Chicago, groups of “Teens” display firearms and cash.

I wonder if all of them have an Illinois FOID. The local police have this to say.

The money quote?

While this video is disturbing, there does not appear to be any direct threat to the general public.

I’m guessing the claim here is these “teens” are using these guns for deer hunting and not for criminal gang activity.

EDITED TO ADD:

Law abiding people in these same states freaking out over every sight, mod, stock, or grip because any one of them might turn the **exact** same gun into 5 years in federal prison on 1st offense, with the cops coming over to shoot their kids and pets when they storm the house to arrest them over a barrel that is a quarter inch too short, but these “teens” can literally walk around like this, knowing police do not care in the slightest and won’t do a thing to find or prosecute them. The criminal gang members know those laws exist, they simply do not care because there are no consequences.

By Divemedic, ago

Dropping the Slide on Empty 1911s

Read this post from Nighthawk Custom, a company that provides customized 1911s at a price tag between $4,000 and $6,000 each:

I tried to use and carry 1911s, I really did. They are gorgeous handguns. They are also finicky out of the box. After spending a kilobuck each on four of them, I got some beautiful handguns that looked great in a holster. They were also unreliable safe queens because they couldn’t reliably digest whatever ammo I put through them.

They told me to break the pistol in for 500 rounds and that would fix it. It didn’t. I was accused of “limp wristing” by people who hadn’t even watched me shoot. I was told to change ammo, because some 1911s are finicky. I was told to lube them more, and was also told to lube them less. Other advice was change the springs, get more gunsmithing done, and tons of other things.

Even after you spend $5000 on a custom from one of these high end gunsmiths, you end up with a pistol that still doesn’t work as well as a modern handgun. I was even looking at an Ed Brown. I finally decided that, if I were going to spend thousands of dollars, I might as well get something fun that won’t be a safe queen. Here is my experience from 14 years ago:

So this past weekend, I thought that it had been awhile since I had taken the Pro Carry for a spin, so I took it to the range. I brought 100 rounds with me, and I stopped after firing only 50 rounds because I had already had about 6 failures of the pistol to go into battery. I had the gunsmith there look at it, and he told me that the recoil spring was in need of replacement. It had been replaced at the factory only about 300 rounds before. I pointed that out, and he told me that Kimber 1911s needed new springs about every 500 rounds.

The design of the 1911 is over 100 years old, and firearm technology, metallurgy, and other technologies have come a long way since then. I just can’t trust my life to a firearm that won’t go bang every time you press the trigger, and the only way to reliably get a 1911 that will do that is to spend multiple thousands of dollars, only to wind up with a handgun that is made to such tight tolerances that dropping the slide on an empty chamber will ruin it and require more money to repair.

I have bought M&Ps for less than $500 that haven’t had a single malfunction in more than 10,000 rounds. Not one of my 1911s went more than 500 rounds between malfs, and a couple of them couldn’t get through an entire 50 round box without some sort of issue. They just aren’t reliable without thousands of dollars of custom work.

Instead of spending that kind of money on a handgun because it’s accurate or because you like the trigger, spend less than $1,000 on a decent factory handgun, then spend the rest of that cash on a class, a couple of cases of ammo, and year of taking weekly trips to the range. You will find it more beneficial than buying an unreliable safe queen.

By Divemedic, ago

Thirteen

My tax notice came through for the year 2026. My property taxes are increasing by thirteen percent over 2025’s taxes, but I am not receiving one single service improvement over last year.

This is why I am voting yes on Amendment 3. The local and city governments are making more and more money each year, all while giving taxpayers like me the finger.

By Divemedic, ago