Divemedic

Rent Control

The Democrats in Florida are losing their shit because rents are increasing so much. Now they are putting forward a plan where they accuse landlords of price gouging. They are also wanting to pass a law that implements statewide rent control. They themselves are the ones to blame for increasing rent.

For a year and a half, renters lived in homes without paying rent, and there was nothing landlords could do about it. During that time, those same tenants received government checks and many of them didn’t pay a single dollar of it in rent. This increased the risk of investment for landlords. As anyone with a lick of economic sense knows, an investment with increase risk always comes with a higher price tag.

That’s exactly what we see happening all over the country- rents have increased by as much as 25% per month. I’ve been warning that this was coming for over a year and a half.

Communism always begins by vilifying landlords. I raised my rent by 7.3 percent this year. I could have raised it more. I am keeping a close eye on this, because a statewide law capping increases will force my hand. The exact wording of this proposed law can cause all sorts of reactions. For example:

  • If the law caps increases at 10%, I will simply raise rent by 10% every year.
  • Rent on my property currently includes lawn maintenance. If such a law passes, it no longer will. That cost is the same as a 4% increase in rent.
  • If it’s too onerous, I will simply sell the property and take the equity out in profit, as many others will. My rental property has increased in value by more than 32% since I bought it. Now there will be no rentals at any price.

Nice job, commies.

By Divemedic, ago

Staples

I recently became aware of a Supreme Court case from 1994, Staples v. United States. This case involved a man who had been arrested for having an AR-15 with more than a few components of an M-16 fire control group installed inside of it including the selector, hammer, disconnector, and trigger.

Suspecting that the AR-15 had been modified to be capable of fully automatic fire, BATF agents seized the weapon. The defendant was indicted for unlawful possession of an unregistered machinegun in violation of the NFA.

At trial, BATF agents testified that when the AR-15 was tested, it fired more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger. It was undisputed that the weapon was not registered as required by the NFA. The defendant testified that the rifle had never fired automatically when it was in his possession. He insisted that the AR-15 had operated only semiautomatically, and even then often requiring manual ejection of the spent casing and chambering of the next round. According to the defendant, his alleged ignorance of any automatic firing capability should have shielded him from criminal liability for his failure to register the weapon.

The trial court disagreed, and the man was convicted and sentenced to five years’ probation and a $5,000 fine. He appealed the conviction, and the appeals court agreed with the trial court, affirming his conviction. It was appealed and wound up at the SCOTUS level. Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion, and let me tell you, there are some great quotes in that opinion.

The opnion says that the language of the statute provides little in the way of guidance in this case. The NFA is silent concerning the mens rea (intent) required for a violation. It states simply that “[i]t shall be unlawful for any person . . . to receive or possess a firearm which is not registered to him in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record.”

Nevertheless, silence on this point by itself does not necessarily suggest that Congress intended to dispense with a conventional mens rea element, which would require that the defendant know the facts that make his conduct illegal.

Staples v. United States, 1984

The Government argued in that case that Congress intended the NFA to regulate and restrict the circulation of dangerous weapons. Consequently, in the ATF’s view, this case fits in a line of precedent termed “public welfare” or “regulatory” offenses, in which SCOTUS understood that Congress sought to impose a form of strict criminal liability through statutes that do not require the defendant to know his conduct was illegal.

One money quote that I saw was this one:

The Government does not dispute the contention that virtually any semiautomatic weapon may be converted, either by internal modification or, in some cases, simply by wear and tear, into a machinegun within the meaning of the Act. 

Give the case a read, and see what you can find.

By Divemedic, ago

Follow the Science

Twittter says that people who claim that vaccinated individuals can spread the virus can be penalized for spreading misinformation:

When tweets include misleading information about Covid-19, we may place a label on those tweets that includes corrective information about that claim. We may apply labels to tweets that contain, for example… false or misleading claims that people who have received the vaccine can spread or shed the virus (or symptoms, or immunity) to unvaccinated people.

I wonder if that applies to the CDC?

If you’ve been fully vaccinated:

You can resume activities that you did prior to the pandemic.
To reduce the risk of being infected with the Delta variant and possibly spreading it to others, wear a mask indoors in public

By Divemedic, ago

Secret Police

Marsalee (Marsy) Ann Nicholas was stalked and killed by her ex-boyfriend in 1983. Only one week after her murder and on the way home from the funeral service, Marsy’s family was confronted by her daughter’s murderer. Having received no notification from the judicial system, the family had no idea he had been released on bail mere days after Marsy’s murder. Marsy’s family was not informed because the courts and law enforcement had no obligation to keep them informed.

As a result, voters in seventeen states have passed Marsy’s law, with Florida voters passing its version of the law in 2018. The law was sold as a victims’ rights bill, but it wasn’t long before the law of unintended consequences showed itself.

Since police who use force against someone are only doing so because they claim themselves to be victims of a crime, they can refuse to allow their names to be released. A cop can claim that someone threatened them, use force against that person, and then demand that their names be withheld because they are a victim.

That is exactly what happened here when a police officer shot and killed a man on the campus of a Melbourne college. The odd part here is that the same law doesn’t appear to apply when a private citizen does the exact same thing.

When the voters of this state voted on the amendment, it was intended to give victims of crimes a bit of privacy. It wasn’t intended to give police a means of becoming secret death squads with no public accountability.

By Divemedic, ago

Iranian Situation

Israel today warned that Tehran is not being very cooperative in diplomatic talks about its nuclear program. Israel’s lead diplomat on Iran, Joshua Zarka, said that they “have reached the last stretch of diplomacy.” Even the UN says that:

There’s no other country other than those making nuclear weapons reaching those high levels” of uranium enrichment

That is because Iran now has a large stockpile of 60% enriched uranium, and is just a short step away from having enough 90% enriched uranium for several nuclear weapons.

Iran has never really hidden the fact that they want nuclear weapons, and will not hesitate to use them on Israel as soon as they acquire them. It is my belief that Iran is merely stalling with all of the talk, talk, talk so that the US won’t do anything until it is too late and Iran has a couple of deliverable weapons.

Proving me to be correct, that potato that we have sitting in the Oval Office reportedly received a briefing by Pentagon leaders on a full set of military options available to ensure that Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon. Of course, they decided to talk instead.

Not only talk, but take steps to ensure that Israel won’t have a way to strike the weapons plant by depriving Israel of the refueling tankers they need to carry out the long range strike.

This, in my opinion, is a short sighted and stupid move. If Iran winds up with nuclear weapons, which seems more and more likely each day, they WILL use them. Whether it is against the US or Israel is yet to be seen, but the smart money is on Israel.

Tel Aviv is preoccupied by the fear that an adversary might one day attempt a first strike to destroy its nuclear missiles and strike planes on the ground before they can retaliate. So preoccupied, that they have developed a second strike capability.

Israel does not have a choice but to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, because she cannot live with it. The suggestion that Israel could simply outsource her deterrence to the US, even if the US were led by someone more dependable than the man who called the rout of American forces from Afghanistan “an extraordinary success,” is more than stupid – it is suicidal. This is one of the reasons why countries all over the region are watching the situation with the Ukraine so closely.

It is known that Israel’s 3 Dolphin and 3 Dolphin 2 class submarines are armed with long range cruise missiles that are each capable of delivering a 200 kiloton warhead to targets at least 950 miles away. In fact, Israel has already carried out strikes using submarine launched cruise missiles armed with conventional warheads.

The land based missile is the Jericho, which Israel has a few of. The Jericho 2 and 3 are each capable of striking any target in Iran.

Israel is believed to have somewhere between 65 to 200 or even as many as 400 nuclear warheads. No one really knows for sure. I think Israel likes it that way- they want everyone to know that they HAVE some, but not necessarily how many, what sizes, or what delivery method.

A nuclear armed Iran will almost certainly end in a nuclear exchange. I don’t think that Iran will get a nuke any time soon. Israel has a long history of finding unexpected solutions to problems, and this is a big one.

By Divemedic, ago

On Stupidity

Back in April of this year, Biden decided to take aim at the so-called “Ghost Gun” industry. This is what he had to say:

So the ATF decided to take aim at the DIY gun kits like the GST-9. As a result of this, they declared that selling an 80 percent firearm frame complete with all of the parts needed to turn that frame into a firearm is constructive possession and violates Federal law.

As a result, kit makers can’t put everything needed to turn an 80 percent frame into a firearm into the same box. So now they put them into two boxes, meaning that the rails for a Glock frame can’t be included in the same box as the rest of the (unfinished) frame. So now the rails come with the jig, which you must order separately.

Due to recently changed ATF regulations, we cannot legally include the jig or frame rails with the GST-9 frame. The jig and GST-9 frame must be purchased on our website as two separate items. Each jig includes one set of GST-9 frame rails. You will need to purchase one jig for every GST-9 frame you plan to build. Frame rails are ONLY included with the jig, not with the 80% lower itself.

https://www.80percentarms.com/products/gst-9-80-pistol-build-kit/

The jig with the rails can be in the same order as the frame and even ship at the same time, thus proving that efforts to control this industry are doomed to failure.

By Divemedic, ago