Divemedic

Referencing my last post: I used to laugh at people who believed in conspiracy theories with regards to the government staging or encouraging mass shootings in order to enact more gun control. I was even willing to believe incompetence was the cause of “Fast and Furious.” However, start looking at the incompetence involved: 

The recent church shooting has everyone fortifying their positions on gun control. The would be mass murderer used a shotgun, despite the fact that he was apparently a prohibited person. However, there is a monkey wrench in that theory.

Under Texas law, a convicted felon may possess a firearm in the residence in which he lives, once five years have elapsed from the date his sentence was discharged. What this means is that, while he may not have been able to buy a firearm from a dealer (who would have had to follow 18 USC 922) there is no problem with him having a shotgun in his home.

Now suspicious me seems to notice that every time the gun control debate heats up, there is a mass shooting that seems to happen at the most opportune (for the Democrat gun banners) time. I am going to predict that this shooting, had Wilson not shot the bad guy in the face, would have been the poster child for nationwide UBC.

Virginia, Texas, and whichever state is convenient for the next time, are being used to push the narrative.

Reading about this interview between Crowder and this professor, the biggest problem that I have is that major universities have professors of hip hop. Yes, even Harvard. If you are majoring in hip hop, you are wasting your time and your money. (Hint: Dr Dre isn’t a real doctor.)

The saddest part of all of this is that most of those who would major in rap music are doing so using taxpayer funds in the form of Pell grants. You and I are paying our taxes so that some aspiring rapper can hand $150 to $500 per credit hour over to this guy. Once they get their degree, the graduate has spent tens or even hundreds of thousands of tax dollars and are now just as qualified for employment as they were before they started college.

I recently got into an argument with a cop about firearms safety courses. I suggested that a basic gun safety course for people who have never fired or handled a gun before should not be taught using live firearms or ammunition. Instead, blue guns should be used to teach the basics of safety.

(The basis of the argument was that teaching firearm safety should be done in high school. A parent came on and said she didn’t think it was a good idea for children to handle guns in school. I suggested that the course could be taught using blue guns, and that way the basics could be taught without exposing students to undue risk.)

He responded by being an insulting ass, and telling everyone that HE is a 20 year New York cop, and that makes him an expert. He then told me that all of my certifications in shooting and firearms instruction are useless because the most important thing to be taught is how to load and unload firearms while keeping your finger off the trigger.

I told him that firearms and ammunition should NEVER be handled by students anywhere in a classroom, and that ammo and guns should never even be in the classroom together- this kind of thing should be restricted to range sessions only. Having guns and ammo being handled together, especially by novices, is just asking for an ND.

He then told me that I should stick to hoses. Since he was the cop, and everyone seems to defer to them on all topics related to guns, the crowd all nodded and gave me the stare down. I left the conversation at that point.

So, here is my request: Do any of my readers have a link to a best practices page from a reputable training organization that supports either position? I want to see who is correct…

This is the part where I tell you about my trip. Las Vegas is my favorite US city to travel to for a number of reasons: It is easy to get there, it is relatively cheap, and there is a lot to do, especially if you are travelling without kids.

First, when we go we usually fly there on a nonstop flight, even if we did drive once. It’s a six hour flight going west and a three hour flight coming back. We usually leave Orlando at around 5 and arrive in Vegas some time around 8 o’clock. Coming back, we leave at the same 5 o’clock and get to Orlando around midnight. Two round trip tickets usually cost around $600.

We stay in MGM owned resorts on the strip. Our favorite is NY-NY. The reason we stay with MGM is that our four days of our stay is usually comped, and we only pay taxes. They usually also give us a $150 room credit, so by the time you count taxes, they actually pay us to stay there.

This time, we stayed at the Bellagio for the first three days. The total cost was $153 for the three nights, but they gave us a $100 credit that we applied to meals, so the final cost was actually $53. For the next three nights, we stayed at the NY-NY. That one was entirely free, plus they gave us a $150 room credit. In all, the total for both hotels was a $97 credit.

Meals we ate out, and most of them were fairly cheap. We ate Christmas dinner at an upscale Italian place, and we had the Bellagio buffet one night. The total cost for two of us to eat both of those meals was about $200. Other nights, we ate cheaper meals. Our total meal bill for the entire week was about $800.

We rented a car on Christmas day and drove half an hour to the top of Mt Charleston so we could play in the falling snow. We walked the strip. We did some gambling, and we also caught a couple of shows. We also rode the “High Roller.”

The gambling was great fun, and as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I love to play CRAPS. I had lost a total of about $600 up until Saturday, bu I had a big night at the table on Sunday, winning about $1600 when one of the shooters at the table went on a roll. My wife also wound up winning a couple of hundred. (Sometimes, we come home winners, sometimes not.) So we came back to Vegas with about $1200 in cash more than we left with.

What all of this means is that our week-long Christmas trip to Las Vegas (air fare, meals, gambling, plus all entertainment) wound up costing us less than $700.

The two big takeaways:

1 CARRY A GUN
2 Practice. Not just marksmanship. Practice your draw. It appears like the first guy shot was too slow on his draw and paid the price.

For years, we have been hearing about “common sense” with regards to carrying concealed weapons. Some of those things that “common sense” told us have been put to rest. Even though some facts are yet to be released, and other facts out there may turn out to be incorrect, the entire incident was live streamed and put out on Youtube. There are a number of things that are known to be accurate at this time. So….

From now on, I will use this morning’s incident in Texas to shut down any of the following arguments:

1 Good guys with guns don’t stop mass shootings.
2 You are paranoid if you carry in a church, because nothing happens in church
3 If you carry and engage a mass shooter, all of the concealed carriers will just shoot each other.
4 If a concealed carrier engages a mass shooter, people will die in the crossfire.

My wife and I love to travel. We travel a lot, flying, driving, cruising, you name it. In the six years since we have met, we have traveled to 48 states and 18 foreign countries. We take an average of 4 cruises, 3 plane trips, and 6 road trips of at least 200 miles each year. We are the high level tiers of frequent customer clubs with one cruise line, two hotel chains, a rental car company, and two airlines.

Everyone we know thinks that we are vacation experts, so much so that our friends and family constantly asked us for travel advice. This happened so often that we thought it would be a good idea to open a travel agency. This business cost us several thousand dollars to set up. To be a travel agent in Florida requires that you be licensed. To get a license, you must be bonded and insured. So we formed a corporation, got our license, bonds, insurance, and went through training with cruise lines, airlines, and other travel companies so we could use their booking systems.

We thought it would be an easy way to make money. Our friends and family asked for our advice already, so all they had to do was book with us and the cruise line, airline, and hotel would pay us our commission at no extra cost to our friends and families. Everybody wins.

 A few people continued to ask for advice, but when it came time to book did not book through us, even though it cost them nothing. In essence, getting our advice and using our expertise for free.

We finally decided that we were losing money, so we shut down the travel business (those of you who booked, thank you- we will continue to service all of our current bookings) and moved on to other ventures.

The odd part is that the people who sought our advice but never booked through us continue to expect our help and advice. For free. They even then complain when they didn’t get the best deal possible, wanting to know why we didn’t help them book the cheapest price, get cheap upgrades, or find better deals. Again, for free.

You basically put us out of business, and you still demand freebies. Whoever you are booking your trips through is the one making money off of you. Go ask them for advice. I am done.

To my readers: If any of you provide a service, like doctors, plumbers, electricians, attorneys, handymen, barbers, etc.,  do your families expect your services for free?