Divemedic

Figures Don’t Lie, but Liars Figure

In this editorial piece disguised as news and statistics, Yahoo tells us that there are only about only 16.7% of Americans actually own firearms.

the top twenty percent of all gun owners actually owned 55% of the guns. In terms of absolute figures, ten million people owned 105 million guns – for an average of ten guns per person, and the remaining 87 million guns were owned by 34 million people – for an average of 2.6 guns per person. The population of the U.S. was 263 million in 1994 – indicating that only 16.7% of Americans had actually owned a weapon.

So their claim is that 44 million people own all of the guns. That is complete and total bullshit, and I can prove it. Let’s use concealed weapons permits as an estimate of the number of gun owners. Florida alone has approximately 2.6 million active concealed weapons permits. With 12% of all Florida residents having a concealed weapons permit, this would mean that three in four gun owners have a CWP. That would be a very high percentage, indeed.

How many people in Florida have weapons but no CWP? That is impossible to know, but what we do know is that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement conducts 1.5 million instant background checks for firearm purchases per year. The anti-gunners are claiming that all of these firearms are being sold to the same people over and over.

I just don’t see it. It is far more likely that, when called by some random “survey taker” that the person answering the phone either says, “Guns? We don’t have any guns here,” when asked, or they simply refuse to take the survey. I just don’t think that surveys are a reliable means of “research” on any topic like firearms. I might as well take a survey of high school boys, asking them about their number of sexual partners. I’m equally as likely to get an accurate count in either case.

These estimates of gun ownership rates are simple guessing. In fact, the Rand corporation estimates that as many as 28 percent of Floridians are firearm owners, and Florida is outpaced in ownership rates by at least 9 other states. According to that study, rates range from 3.4% in Massachusetts to more than 33% in Mississippi. Even with this method, these “studies” are little more than guesswork.

Just in the 20 years between 1999 and 2019, over 42 million rifles were manufactured (pdf alert). Between 20% and 50% of all rifles manufactured in the USA are AR-15 pattern rifles, including all of the variants like the AR-10, and all of the miscellaneous caliber variations.

What we DO know is that there have been 460 million background checks run through the NICS system since it went online in December of 1998 (pdf alert). Just in the year 2020, there were 39.6 million NICS checks done. Now granted that NICS isn’t a complete count of gun ownership because it fails to capture sales done between private parties, guns stolen from dealers and common carriers, and multiple firearms sold in one transaction. Some sales will likewise be overcounted because checks are occasionally done through NICS for CWP permits that don’t result in a transfer, but NICS is the closest thing that we have to counting the number of firearms transfers in the US. Are we to believe that the number of firearms sold in the US from 1900 to 1998 is only 35 million, when Americans are busy buying more than 30 million firearms a year? Those guns sold in the 1980s aren’t going away. Guns last a long time. I myself own firearms that are over 100 years old.

No, they say. It’s because a few people are busy buying dozens of gun and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition every year, they claim. The left would have you believe that there are just 34 million people buying those ~40 million guns in a year- more than one per person on average, year after year, while 6 out of 7 Americans aren’t buying any guns at all. Sorry, but that is complete bullshit. I wrote about this in June of 2016, and I guessed at the time that there were somewhere between 400 and 500 million firearms in the US. Since that time, there have been another 219 million NICS checks.

Looking at ammunition sales, American citizens (all civilian sales, including the cops) are buying around 10 to 12 billion rounds of ammunition- about $11 billion dollars worth- in a year. In fact, the American civilian market buys a third of all ammunition manufactured worldwide to all consumers- including the world’s militaries. To put that in perspective, that is more ammunition than was used by the entire US military during each year of World War 2, when the average was just over 10 billion rounds a year and the US armed forces had more than 15 million personnel.

My guess (and mine is just as valid as theirs) is that there are somewhere between 700 and 800 million firearms in the US, and I would also guess that the southeast US is seeing household gun ownership rates that are somewhere near 70%. What all of this means is that, outside of the major antigun metroplexes of NYC, Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, and LA, more than half of households have at least one firearm, and more than a quarter of those households own at least one “assault weapon.” I would be willing to bet that my guess is closer to reality than the 17% figure that they are waving about. I’m not alone in that opinion. Even in 2016, there were bloggers guessing that there were more than 600 million guns in circulation.

Now I know what you are thinking- you had a lot of guns before the boating accident, and don’t think that millions of “super owners” is out of the question. Keep in mind that those of you reading this are most likely in the “gun culture” and are among the upper 1 or 2 percent of gun owners. I know people who own 100 or more firearms. Still, the most common gun owner has his dad’s hunting rifle in the closet, or a single handgun in his nightstand drawer and hasn’t been to the range in years, if ever. Even in the south, only about a quarter of gun owners regularly visit the range.

If even one percent of the gun owning public decides to respond in kind to being called an enemy of the people, there will be somewhere around 1.8 million people who are armed, pissed off, and know how to shoot. Many of them spend their weekends hitting small targets at thousands of yards, because they think it’s fun. They will not be lined up in neat ranks out in a field somewhere, just waiting for you to nuke or drone strike them.

The US police cannot even begin to control the gang problem in our inner cities, and the membership of those gangs is only around 800,000 or so and the gang members aren’t actively hunting cops, no matter what the cops try to claim. This is a fight that cannot be won, but they don’t care because liberals are not the ones who will be getting killed. Or so they think. That is dangerous thinking indeed. The people of each side who are the least stable will be the ones who decide when the violence begins and how far it goes.

By Divemedic, ago

Asylums

When it comes to Red Flag orders and laws against felons carrying firearms, it’s often said that if a person can’t be trusted with a gun, they can’t be trusted without a custodian. That’s driven home when you hear about the guy in Nashville who has been arrested over 200 times in the last 5 years, but has been released every time without charges. Why? He isn’t competent to stand trial.

He’s known to steal hundreds of dollars of merchandise and services at a time. In all, he has cost Nashville area businesses tens of thousands of dollars. It’s only a matter of time before he injures or kills someone. It’s the mental health version of “diplomatic immunity.” There are some businesses where he has eaten 4 or 5 times and refused to pay. (Although why wouldn’t you trespass the guy after the first or second time?) There are more than 200 people in Nashville alone who are in the same exact situation. They offend over and over again, only to be released to do it again. It happens all over the country- most of the nation’s homeless are people with substance abuse and mental health problems.

Asylums were once used to house these individuals, but the system was abused by towns and families that wanted to avoid taking care of people who were incapable of caring for themselves by redefining what was then termed “senility” as a psychiatric problem and sending these men and women to state-supported asylums.

When I was running calls as a street medic, I was on a first name basis with dozens of homeless people who had all sorts of mental health issues. Even this week in the ED, I had a patient that was combative with mental health and substance abuse issues. We had to put her in 4 point restraints and a waist belt and then drug her with Haldol and Ativan. She will be discharged within a day or two, and then we will see her back at the ED in a couple of days or a week, wash, rinse, repeat.

Today, only a small number of the old psychiatric hospitals exist. Psychiatric care and treatment are now delivered through a host of services including crisis services, short-term and general-hospital-based acute psychiatric care units, and outpatient services ranging from twenty-four-hour assisted living environments to clinics and clinicians’ offices offering a range of psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments. Untold thousands of people with mental health issues fall through the cracks and wind up homeless, in jail, or simply wandering around, a drain on society.

The quality and availability of these outpatient services vary widely, making me wonder if “asylums,” in the true sense of the word, aren’t the best way to handle this. The issue here is that I don’t trust the powers that be to avoid doing what they did before- simply redefine things as being “mental illness” and using the asylum to lock people away for opposing climate change, trannies, or something else that they want to use as a cudgel.

By Divemedic, ago

Back to 45ACP or .40?

I began carrying 9mm several years ago because modern bullet design has made the difference in energy transfer between handgun rounds of different calibers virtually identical when striking internal organs, and I wanted the higher ammunition capacity of 9mm. However, with JKB over at Gunfreezone pointing out that increasing numbers of opponents are wearing body armor, that it is becoming necessary to aim for the pelvis. Shattering the pelvis in such a situation carries certain benefits: it immobilizes the target (a person with a shattered pelvis can’t stand, much less walk or run) and with the major arteries that are located there, bleeding out is a definite advantage.

The heavier bullets of .40S&W and .45ACP are better suited to shattering bone. I may be doing a bit of research into this to see if my choice of EDC needs to be updated. I might even take a real look at getting me a 10mm. Always good to have an excuse for a new gun…

By Divemedic, ago

This Is Stupid

The left is claiming that so much ground water has been pumped out of the Earth, that it is causing the planet’s rotational axis to tilt and is contributing to global warming/climate change. This is absurd, for multiple reasons.

First, the amount of water humans have pumped out is claimed to be 2.15×10^12 tons. The entire planet has a mass of 5.97×10^21 tons. The mass pumped is equal to 0.00000000036% of the mass of the planet, or 3 parts in 10 billion.

However, that mass didn’t simply disappear- the water is still here. In fact, with the exception of a couple of thousand gallons that went into space on spacecraft, man hasn’t removed any water from the planet. That isn’t what the idiots interviewed for CNN had to say:

In 2016, another team of researchers found that drift in Earth’s rotational axis between 2003 and 2015 could be linked to changes in the mass of glaciers and ice sheets, as well as the planet’s reserves of terrestrial liquid water.

In fact, any mass change on Earth, including atmospheric pressure, can affect its axis of rotation, Seo told CNN in an email.

The water that has been pumped out of the ground, the ice sheets, the glaciers, all of that mass is still here. It didn’t disappear.

The redistribution of groundwater tilted Earth’s rotational axis east by more than 31 inches (78.7 centimeters) in just under two decades, according to the models. The most notable driver of long-term variations in the rotational axis was already known to be mantle flow — the movement of molten rock in the layer between Earth’s crust and outer core. The new modeling reveals that groundwater extraction is the second most significant factor, Seo said.

31 inches in 20 years. That works out to 1.55 inches per year, with the circumference around the poles of about 15,800 miles, or just over 1 million billion inches. This means that the “shift” in the rotational axis is one part in a million billion. They use the position of Quasars to measure the position of Earth’s rotational axis. (this paragraph was edited to correct the error you see as a strikethrough)

The current gold standard for measurements of Earth’s rotation vector comes from very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), which involves radio receivers around the world. The receivers use the slight differences in the times at which they detect sudden changes in the microwave emissions from very distant quasars to precisely determine their own positions. This information allows them to monitor small changes in Earth’s orientation with respect to these far-away objects. But it can take days to translate VLBI observations into the final, useful results. A rotation sensor at a single location could provide an independent measurement and could allow the data to be available continuously.

It’s a pretty precise measurement. They claim that they can use that to determine shifts in the rotational axis going back to the 1800’s.

Future models can use observations on Earth’s rotation to illuminate the past, Seo added. “The data is available since the late 19th century,” he said. With that information, scientists can peer back in time and trace changes in planetary systems as the climate warmed over the last 100 years.

Since quasars weren’t discovered until 1960, the means of measuring the rotational axis were limited until that time, and precise measurements of the Earth’s rotational axis were impossible to within 1 part per million, which is the precision needed to detect a 1 inch per year shift. In fact, the first measurement of the change of the rotational axis of the planet wasn’t made until 2011.

This is junk science.

By Divemedic, ago

Lawsuit

If my employer made me sit through a lecture where I was called a racist simply because I am white, I would leave that training session and be sitting in a lawyer’s office within the next 24 hours.

In this class, Ms. Shackelford is teaching a roomful of white people that not only are all white people racist; they will always be racist, or as she so eloquently put it, white people will always be “subhuman-demons.”

Normally, I would say “So what?” Except that one of the names that is being bandied about as a future President is a black woman who has this to say about white people:

There are white people who are not as powerful as the system of white people — the caste system that’s been put in place — but they still, no matter where they are on the rung, or the ladder of success, they still have their whiteness […] (Whites have a) leg up.

You still have your whiteness. That’s what the term ‘white privilege’ is. It means that whiteness still gives you an advantage, no matter. It is the fundamental issue.

Who is this person? Oprah-

White privilege is the concept that Jayden Smith, Sasha Obama, and these children of billionaires are some how at a disadvantage when compared to me, because I am white. Nevermind that they are obscenely rich and the children of American royalty, the color of their skin makes the difference.

By Divemedic, ago

He Isn’t Your Problem

A guy got arrested for attempted murder because he found the man in bed with his wife. The guy you gave the beating to? He isn’t your problem. There are millions of dudes out there that will do your wife. It is your wife that made the promise to you, to always have your back. Your problem is that your wife has no respect or love for you, or she wouldn’t be lying in bed with other men. Whether sex actually took place or not, no one who respects and loves the person that they are married to would engage in an act of disrespect like this.

the victim told deputies that he and a coworker had gone out for drinks prior to coming back to the apartment, which was rented as an Airbnb.

She is your problem. How do you deal with it? You don’t. Even if it were legal to beat her, what would it solve? Not a thing. You can’t make someone love or respect you. Once your spouse is alone in an AirBnb, lying in bed with someone else, your marriage is over and all that is left is the paperwork. The only thing that you can do is walk away and salvage what you can.

Once you know, don’t say a word. Act like everything is normal while you empty the bank accounts. Spend the money so that it is unrecoverable (at least on paper). Wait a month or two, then divorce the bitch. If you don’t already have kids, make damned sure that you don’t get her pregnant on the way out.

By Divemedic, ago

Supply

The military supply system is stupid and messed up. Everything has a stock number and a description. They frequently don’t make sense. For example, a flyswatter is referred to as “Exterminator, Insect, Manual.” When I was a new E-4, I was forced into the role of Supply Petty Officer for the workcenter by the E-4 who was previously the most junior. He was glad to be rid of the job. I was soon to understand why.

On July 1, 1941, a requisition was submitted for 150 rolls of toilet paper by an officer aboard the submarine USS Skipjack (SS-184). As the boat patrolled the Pacific, the requested item never arrived. In March 1942, Lieutenant Commander James Coe took command of the Skipjack. As Coe settled into his new role, he learned of the missing toilet paper. On June 19, Coe received a canceled invoice for 150 rolls of toilet paper. The request was the original from July 1941 and was stamped “canceled-cannot identify.” Coe wrote a response that is famous within the Navy today.

1. This vessel submitted a requisition for 150 rolls of toilet paper on July 30, 1941, to USS HOLLAND. The material was ordered by HOLLAND from the Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island, for delivery to USS Skipjack.

2. The Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island, on November 26, 1941, cancelled Mare Island Invoice No. 272836 with the stamped notation “Cancelled—cannot identify.” This cancelled invoice was received by Skipjack on June 10, 1942.

3. During the 11 1/2 months elapsing from the time of ordering the toilet paper and the present date, the Skipjack personnel, despite their best efforts to await delivery of subject material, have been unable to wait on numerous occasions, and the situation is now quite acute, especially during depth charge attack by the “back-stabbers.”

4. Enclosure (2) is a sample of the desired material provided for the information of the Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare Island. The Commanding Officer, USS Skipjack cannot help but wonder what is being used in Mare Island in place of this unidentifiable material, once well known to this command.

5. Skipjack personnel during this period have become accustomed to use of “ersatz,” i.e., the vast amount of incoming non-essential paper work, and in so doing feel that the wish of the Bureau of Ships for the reduction of paper work is being complied with, thus effectively killing two birds with one stone.

6. It is believed by this command that the stamped notation “cannot identify” was possible error, and that this is simply a case of shortage of strategic war material, the Skipjack probably being low on the priority list.

7. In order to cooperate in our war effort at a small local sacrifice, the Skipjack desires no further action be taken until the end of the current war, which has created a situation aptly described as “war is hell.”

J.W. Coe

Coe’s letter caused quite a stir and was circulated throughout the fleet. When the Skipjack returned to Australia after her patrol, she was greeted by quite a sight. The pier was stacked seven feet high with boxes of toilet paper instead of the usual crates of fresh fruit and ice cream. Toilet paper streamers decorated the dock, and a band greeted the boat wearing toilet paper neckties and toilet paper flying out of trumpets and horns. The men of the Skipjack would not have to do without toilet paper again, as they were greeted upon every return with cartons of the precious paper.

Back to my story: we had an upcoming deployment, and I had to order supplies to get us through the first six months. I was told to order some superglue and some wooden handled cotton swabs. I looked them up, and the superglue was listed as “adhesive, cyanoacrylate” with a unit of issue of CS (meaning case) and a unit cost of $1.44. The cotton swabs were listed as “applicator, cotton tip, wood handle” with a unit of issue of BG (bag) and a cost of $0.29. No mention in either case of how many were in a case or a bag. At the time, the military was known to be paying $400 for a hammer, so I had to guess.

I guessed that there were at most 2 tubes of superglue per case, and ordered 12 units of superglue, and that there were at most 10 swabs per bag, so I ordered 100 bags of them. What it turned out was that there were 144 tubes of glue per case, and 100 swabs per bag. I wound up with 1,700 tubes of superglue and 10,000 cotton swabs. This mistake was legendary. I caught shit about it for the entire deployment.

When I passed the job on to the newly promoted guy a few months later, I was evil about it. We sent him down to supply to get a can of eh-eye-arr. He came back to supply with a bottle marked “Air, room temperature.” He got the best of me.

By Divemedic, ago