A year ago, I reported on an incident at a Target where a group of “teens” were stealing from a Target store. The store contacted police, who just happened to be conducting training nearby, and the cops attempted to take the young criminals into custody. The criminals, who were illegally armed with at least one firearm, tried to ram the responding deputies, whereupon the cops fired multiple shots into the car, killing one and wounding two others.
The reason I mention this is because the criminals are now suing Target for the cops shooting them, claiming that Target allowing the cops to use their parking lot for training was some sort of conspiracy to use the criminals as training subjects, so the police could use vehicles and guns on live subjects.
One of the claims is that Target knew, through their video surveillance, that the three thugs were stealing. They also knew that the cops were outside. The lawsuit claims that Target has a duty to warn all of its customers of hazards that may be present on the premises, and therefore has a duty to warn shoplifters that the cops are outside waiting to arrest them.
This is the kind of thing that lawyers should be penalized for doing. Our courts are overworked as it is, and this is the kind of money hunting, ambulance chasing behavior that needs to be discouraged. There are plenty of companies out there that are total jerks and need to be dragged into court. This case isn’t one of those.
The money is gone. They spent it. Like a dad who is angry because when you sent your kid off to college, you gave him your credit cards to use in the event of an emergency, and he maxed them all out on unnecessary bullshit, it’s our fault for giving them essentially unmonitored access to the credit cards. Yep, I said it- it is our fault for not watching what they were spending the money on. So now we have $200,000 in maxed out credit cards, and nothing to show for it. Except in this case, it’s $35 trillion worth of useless treasury notes, and a bunch of promises.
So yeah, everyone is getting screwed. Take a moment to let that sink in. Now feel the anger? You pissed off? Well, so was I, when I first began to realize just how fucked we are.
The time to complain about that was when the Congress spent DECADES throwing money around like a Frat boy with his dad’s credit cards. And yes, it was spent on bullshit.
$190,000 by Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) for digitization of the New York Historical Society’s photo collection.
$200,000 by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) for the Providence Holy Cross Foundation tattoo removal violence prevention program in Mission Hills.
More than $220 million to build a bridge between Gravina Island, an island that was home to 50 residents at the time, and the Ketchikan Airport.
Don’t think that the holy grail of the Republicans, the defense budget, was immune from this waste. Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Ca.) resigned and pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in kickbacks from military contractors for steering billions of dollars worth of defense budget dollars their way, using his positions on the Defense Appropriations subcommittee and the Intelligence Committee to insert earmarks for military spending.
$500,000 in federal funding for the construction of a very unique museum in Sparta—a town that had a population of about 18,000—the Sparta Teapot Museum of Craft and Design.
$14.8 billion to Boston for a tunnel (The Big Dig) that was the most expensive highway project in history.
$3.4 million for a tunnel in Florida that would allow turtles to cross Highway 27 safely.
Decades of wasteful project after wasteful project, adding up to hundreds of trillions of dollars in spending. Every single President since Eisenhower has been a part of it. Who is blame? We are. We let them do it. Let the anger soak through you, then take a deep breath. Let it out. I agree with you. It sucks.
The money is gone. There is no way that it will ever be paid back. We owe more money than physically exists. That right- add up all of the money in the world: Dollars, Euros, Yen, Yuan, all of it. Now send it all in. That doesn’t even pay what the US owes, much less the debt of all of the other nations in the world. Now you begin to see just how fucked we all are. Yes, I am using the word “fucked” even though profanity is not used here very often. Why? Because no other word really begins to describe just how bad things really are.
There is no way out of this. The bill is going to come due, and we are the ones who will be stuck with it. That pension you are owed? Gone. The Social Security fund that took from you a third of every dollar that you earned for your entire working life? It’s been spent. I’ve been warning you about this since I figured it out, back in 2007.
Again, the time for us to have fixed this passed some time ago. I became an adult during the Reagan administration. It was probably already too late at that point. My generation inherited the problem, but we certainly didn’t even try to fix it. So yeah, I blame the Boomers (and my own parents, who were part of the silent generation) for creating the problem, but the generations since then certainly didn’t try to fix anything. That makes all of us responsible.
Lacta alea est. It’s too late to cry over spilt milk. You can be mad, but that is like the old man yelling at clouds: it doesn’t change anything.
All we can do now is try and save what we can, and in my opinion, all we can do is try and save our local area. Be ready, band together with as many like minded neighbors as you can, and try to weather the storm. Sauve qui peut.
Get skills. Stockpile tools, gear, food. Learn to garden. Plan. Make friends with neighbors who have complimentary skills. Stockpile stuff that you can trade to people with skills who may compliment your own. For example, extra guns for neighbors who may not have one. They can use it to stand watch while you sleep, or cover your backside.
It’s coming. We don’t know when, but at this point, it’s undeniable.
First, let’s look at this video of a woman in Palm Beach Gardens, who was caught stealing from a store. She then decided to use a weapon (pepper spray) to further her crime.
A woman at Palm Beach Outlets in Florida was caught stealing clothing and pulled out mace in defense. pic.twitter.com/fKPxcxfmKP
In Florida, a person is justified in using or threatening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.
An hour after losing my job and promising the wife that I won’t spend any money until I start getting paychecks again, I get an email from Sportsman’s Warehouse that looks like this:
I asked my readers whether or not I should give 2 weeks’ notice. Giving two weeks’ notice doesn’t mean anything, and when it comes time to get rid of employees, employers are quick to point out that Florida is an “at will” employment state where you can be terminated at any time, for any reason. I gave a month’s notice to one job when I left for PA school in a different state, and left on what I thought were good terms. They even threw me a going away party. I am on the “no rehire” list.
Well, I gave two weeks’ notice last week. I drove into work and had a very cordial conversation with my manager. I told him the story about how the HR director wouldn’t even offer to pay more in order to keep me. His response was that the HR director should not have been so unprofessional, and that he would be mentioning it to the Chief of Nursing. He then told me that I would like working at my new hospital, because he has heard a lot of good things about them. I am the third nurse this month to head over there, just from my department. He told me that I was great at my job, and the department would be worse off without me. It was very cordial.
So what happened next? My current employer fired me this morning. By text message. This is the text message I just got from my manager:
We are removing you from the schedule for this week and next week. So now you can move forward with your new position.
Cowards. They didn’t even have the guts to tell me I was fired, or to do it to my face. Instead, I get “removed from the schedule.” This proves is that the old standard of giving a two week notice is no longer the norm in the United States. It would have been better for me if I had simply worked to the end, then told them on the way out the door at the end of my last shift that I wouldn’t be returning. Doing the “right” thing just cost me two weeks’ pay.
Today, I wanted to take a look at this article from the Washington Post. They are attempting to make the case that the Second Amendment allows for the banning of the AR-15, because it isn’t a weapon “that ordinary people carry on an ordinary basis for self-defense.” This article is as dishonest as usual when discussing the Second Amendment. What they have done here is said that the Second Amendment applies to weapons that the militia would carry, then twisted it to say that the modern interpretation doesn’t apply to any gun that you can’t carry concealed, meaning that you can’t carry hand grenades and rocket launchers, or AR-15s.
Logically, it should also exclude AR-15s, which are not commonly carried for self-defense.
Washington Post
Of course, the Heller decision never said that “common use” was restricted only to weapons that were carried for individual defense. It said used for common defense. That decision also glossed over what we are supposed to do when a law creates its own “common use” restriction. That is, what if a weapon isn’t in common use because an otherwise unconstitutional law has eliminated that weapon from being in common use? For example, machine guns might very well be in common use, if it weren’t for the fact that they have been restricted for a century, and outright banned for the past 37 years. It’s this sort of circular argument that the Bruen decision is addressing: Would the founding fathers have banned machine guns? I don’t think that they would have. After all, there were cannons and even entire warships that were in private hands at the time of ratification.
What’s really interesting about the Post article is that it signals a shift in anti-gunner philosophy. It looks as though they are finally giving in to the SCOTUS decisions. Sure, they take the time to trash talk the decision:
Modern gun rights jurisprudence began in 2008, when Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a Supreme Court opinion called District of Columbia v. Heller. That opinion featured the astonishing act (astonishing for an originalist, at least) of reinterpreting the original meaning of the Second Amendment. This took some jurisprudential jiu-jitsu. Scalia discounted the introductory clause that explains the purpose of amendment as ensuring a well-regulated militia. He shifted the meaning of the right to bear arms to personal self-defense.
Along the way, Scalia made up a new limitation for the newly created right.
Washington Post
The point here is that they are beginning to recognize that they have lost this part of the fight. What’s funny is that they go on to claim that the right doesn’t apply to hand grenades or tanks. I beg to differ. The law permits the private ownership of armored vehicles. We see them every day: they deliver money to your local grocery store. Granted, those are not armed with cannons and belt fed coaxial machine, guns, but they are currently owned.
I would argue that hand grenades would be permissible to own. I could easily see that using a hand grenade in a crowded subway would be just as illegal as emptying an entire handgun into a crowd. After all, indiscriminate weapon use that strikes six innocent people in order to hit one mugger is a bit ridiculous. However, using that same tactic against four armed men in your downstairs living room that are waiting to ambush you as you come down the stairs could easily be justified.
Similar cases can be made for owning a Javelin AT missile. There aren’t many cases where one would be useful to use in self defense, but that is a different story than simply owning one. It is important that we not conflate owning a weapon and actually firing it. Just as there is a difference between owning a 1911 and firing one at someone, a similar distinction exists for nearly any weapon, whether that weapon is a single shot .22, a missile launcher, or a hand grenade.
I would argue that the Second Amendment as it is written also permits nuclear weapons. If only there was a way that we could rewrite the Constitution to account for new technology… Perhaps a way to modify it. We could call it an Amendment. Perhaps we could, say, get a 2/3 majority of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures, and we could amend the Second Amendment to say: “shall not be infringed, but in no case will this permit the private ownership of nuclear weapons.”
But then, several decades from now, the left will be arguing that the AR-15 is actually the same as a nuclear weapon.
