Divemedic

Mass shooting

Here is another one of those mass shootings that anti gunners claim only happen in the US. 
This time, the shooting was in Brazil and left 11 dead.  The gun laws are very strict. You need a license to own a gun. That license expires every three years and you must be 25 to get one. Handguns are illegal. Most firearms in Brazil are illegally owned.

Brazil has a homicide rate that is 6 times higher than the USA. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns. This is why gun laws don’t work.

By Divemedic, ago

Teacher pay

Another popular legend is that the average teacher makes $48K a year in Florida. It amazes me that there are so many gun owners who claim that the press lies, but then take this pile of garbage as gospel. Let me show you why this is wrong:

Here is Lake county’s teacher payscale. Note that a teacher needs 18 years on the job in order to get to $48k. I doubt that the average teacher has been teaching for 18 years. The same story is in Polk county, where a teacher needs 15 years on the job to hit $48K.

I initially thought that this $48K number was caused by the counties down south making more. However, looking at the page, they claim that the average pay for Lake and Polk counties are $44,600 and $45,200, respectively. Classroom teachers don’t come close to that.

By Divemedic, ago

Teacher workdays

One of the things that I hear all of the time about being a teacher, is how nice it must be to get summers off. Then the conversation usually drifts into how teacher pay is so great, because we get paid a full year’s pay, and how summer is basically a paid vacation. Let’s take a look at that:
Teachers are contracted to work 196 days per year. In addition, we are also required to be at school for events outside of the 196 days of the contract. Events like graduation, open house, and even to staff the different extracurricular events like sports, grad bash, prom, and school dances. 
During those summer breaks, teachers are required to do things. One of them is training to comply with Federal and state law. For example, I have to attend 120 hours of training on educating students who do not speak English as a primary language. Last year, it was 60 hours on special needs students, and another 24 hours on school security. On top of that, many schools have training requirements of their own. My wife (who works at a different school) has a reading list of books that each teacher must read during the summer. For example, last year’s book was “Find a way.” 
It can be difficult to add up the hours, because teachers are salary, and each school and teacher has different requirements. Here in Florida, every teacher has a contract of what they must do, and this contract lays out the minimum. My wife and I are high school teachers, so I am going to use that as an example.
To begin, each teacher is contracted to work an 8 hour day for 196 days a year. That covers the 6 classes per day that we are with students, plus the planning period. That comes to 1568 hours.
We are also required to provide course materials like power points, worksheets, and tests. You either create them or pay for them out of your own pocket. I also have to grade student papers. I have 140 students a year, so any time there is an assignment, those papers take time to grade. My school requires that I have my students complete a minimum of 3 graded assignments a week. Some classes are harder to grade papers than others. Essays and complicated physics problems take longer to grade than a multiple choice quiz, for example. A new teacher spends about 4 hours each of the 180 workdays where we have students on this. More experienced teachers can do it in about 2 hours. There goes another 360 hours or so.
In addition, we are required to attend 5 events each year. Those events include prom, sporting events, etc. On top of that, you have to attend the awards banquet for your students. There are two of them (9th & 10th grade, and another for 11th & 12th). There is also graduation, baccalaureate, and others. In all, these events add up to another 40 hours or so.
Last year, every teacher in the state had to attend a 120 hour class on sensitivity to illegal alien students. That was in addition to our regular in service training. Same goes for the 60 hour special needs training we did this year, and the Guardian training that will be required, if they ever establish that. If you want summers off, then you have to find a way to take those classes at night or on weekends during the school year. These trainings usually come to another 100 hours or so,on average.
Total it up: 1568 + 360+ 40+ 100. That is about 2068 hours. That pretty much equals the 2080 hours that you work in a 40 hour a week job. 
By Divemedic, ago

Too much

I donate to pro gun causes. The NRA, Second Amendment Foundation, and I even used to give money to Florida Carry. About two months ago, I gave a modest donation to the Firearms Policy Foundation, I can’t even remember how much and I am too lazy to go look it up. I know it was between $100 and $250.

Ever since, I have been getting an email EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. asking for more money. I am about three emails away from putting them in the SPAM filter.

This is the kind of behavior that makes me believe that progun organizations are in favor of gun control because it increases profitability.

By Divemedic, ago

Free ride

Florida state law says that any student who moved to the US from a non-English speaking country is “sheltered” for the first two years. A sheltered student may not fail any class in a public school, solely because of their lack of proficiency in English. The county where I teach takes that one step further: teachers of any student who is sheltered MUST award that student a ‘C’ regardless of any other circumstance. Any teacher who refuses not only gets fired, but loses their state teaching license for being an anti-immigrant racist.

I have a student in one of my classes who was living in Connecticut and was not going to be able to graduate. The reason for this, is that he is lazy and misses a lot of school. To remedy this, he and his family moved to him Puerto Rico and he stayed with family for a few months. He then came to Florida, and gets a C in every class, as well as a pretty much automatic diploma. He was in my class for 70 school days, but was absent for 24 of those days. He completed exactly one assignment and failed every test and quiz. I had to add 42 percentage points to the 28 percent that he “earned” in order to get him to that C.

By Divemedic, ago

Nothing to see here, pt 2

So there are more reasons why the Colorado school shooting has seen so little outcry from the press. Not only were the shooters trannies and Democrats, but the father of the elder shooter is an illegal immigrant who has been arrested for weapons offenses, and has previously been deported twice.

Not only that, but a parent at the school warned the school in January that the pair were planning on a school shooting. The school hired an attorney in February and were planning legal action against the parent who warned the school.

By Divemedic, ago

Police as security

The theme parks in the Orlando area use police officers as security guards. They wear their department issued uniform, carry a department issued firearm and radio, and are paid by the department that they work for. The theme park then pays their department for the service. Depending on the situation, they are considered to be security guards or police.

If they want to search you but don’t have a warrant or probable cause, they are security guards. If they ask you a question and you lie, they are then cops and you have broken the law. If you resist them in any way, they are cops. They get to have things however it works out best for them. As this great grandmother found out, when Disney security searched her bags as a part of a security check and she was arrested for having CBD oil. The charges were later dropped, but this illustrates the problem I have with cops as security. They can search you, and you have no constitutional protections. But let them find something illegal, and they instantly can use the fruits of what would otherwise be an unconstitutional search and arrest you.

By Divemedic, ago

Nothing to see here

Wonder why yesterday’s school shooting in Colorado was swept from the news cycle so quickly? Two hours after the story broke, the national media had already returned to talking about the 2020 election. 
The two shooters were a tranny and an 18 year old gay man who is a registered Democrat. They used a handgun. The shooters didn’t match the media’s agenda of making guns owners look like racist white Republican males who are using “assault weapons” to butcher kids and minorities.

By Divemedic, ago