Divemedic

My recent post on being armed at Disney got linked to from Reddit. That link resulted in over 1,000 unique page visits, making it the second most popular post that I have ever written. That got me to thinking: I have been entering non permissive locations for years now, and I think that I am going to begin writing up reports on the security of non permissive locations. Here are the ground rules that I am setting up for this series:

We are becoming more and more of a third world country every day. A building inspector charged a business owner $300 to inspect their business. I am sure that this is not the first time.

Mordida.

I detest security theater. The security measures that have been put in place at various public venues have not done a thing to actually make us safer, and actually make us less safe. All these measures have done is make people FEEL safe, while providing no real safety. There is a lot of crime on the property of the theme parks, even being perpetrated by the very employees of the parks themselves, and not just a few times, either.

For at least the past ten years, I have tested the supposed security at local theme parks by entering the parks while legally armed. Year after year, they tighten procedures and make searches of the people entering these parks more an more intrusive, even to the point of using dogs. I have entered the theme parks while armed over 100 times, and I have only been caught once, and that was entering a Penn and Teller show in the Hard Rock Cafe at Universal Studios while armed with a 1911. I have since found out how to beat the security measures in place that night, and have routinely done so on more than a dozen occasions.

The theme parks began by conducting bag checks. That was trivial to beat: just carry a weapon on your person, and have no bag to check. Even so, carrying a gun in a bag was easy as well. For example, the bag checks at Universal Studios only checked people as they left the parking garage. People who valet parked, arrived by bus or taxi, or who entered the park by taking a water taxi from one of the  on property resort hotels were not subjected to the search.

Disney was no better.

Then last year, the parks announced that they would be adding magnetometers to the bag searches. I thought for sure that this would make entering the parks far more difficult, if not impossible. I was wrong. It proved to be a trivial exercise in getting past security with a firearm on my person. They began by randomly selecting people to walk through the metal detectors. I have entered the theme parks since they began using magnetometers on no fewer than 15 different times, and was only  selected to pass through the magnetometers three times, and they only caught the fact that I was armed once. This means that there is an 80% chance than an armed person will not be screened at all, and if he is, there is only a 33% chance that he will be caught, an overall 7% success rate in detecting firearms. Think about those odds.

This weekend was no different. I went to the Disney parks to test the security. I was wearing khaki shorts, a polo shirt, and sneakers. I was carrying a Smith and Wesson Bodyguard with a spare magazine in a belly band, a 4 inch boot knife in a back pocket, and a container of pepper spray in a front pocket. This is 100% legal, since I have a concealed weapons permit.

At the Magic Kingdom, there was a bag inspection, but since I was not carrying a bag, I bypassed it. Beyond that, there were three magnetometers, but only one of them was being used. People were occasionally being pulled from the line and forced to walk through it, but the selection process was not random. Watching it for just a few minutes, it was obvious what was happening: anyone with a large untucked shirt, any sort of 511 pants, or other typical CCW clothing were being selected for the supposedly random searches. Since I have been carrying for a long time and do not wear clothing that obviously gives me away, I guess I am not suspicious enough to be selected.

Those who set off the magnetometer were then forced to go through secondary screening where they were checked with a hand wand. I have gone through this magnetometer three times, and set off the machine twice. The first time, I was caught and had to go out and leave my firearm in a locker in order to enter the show. I have not been caught since.

Why? Because the second time that I set it off, I was wearing the firearm in a Thunderwear holster, and when I was wanded, the guard noticed that I was wearing a large belt buckle. (Show them what they expect to see, and they will usually buy into it) They are not cops, and do not have qualified immunity against lawsuits, so cannot ask you to disrobe or frisk you without incurring some significant legal liability. Most of them are either mall ninjas, or idiots who are not all that motivated to do more than make a few bucks while doing as little as possible.

This is where I do have a question. As a backup to the unarmed security at Disney, there are off duty Orange County Deputies who are working there on the Disney payroll as armed security. They wear their county issued uniforms, carry county issued badges, radios,  and guns, while carrying out private employment. What can they legally do or say in the support of this private regulation?

This is why I have a real problem with Disney. They are both a private entity and a local government. The Deputies in this case are both acting a cops and as security, and all parties here change hats in order to take advantage of the powers and rights of both, while neatly dodging the legal responsibilities, restrictions, and constitutional protections of both. This is fascism, pure and simple. I will continue to resist it as much as I possibly can.

A man decides to get drunk and engage in target practice in the backyard of his suburban neighborhood.  Bullets fly into his neighbors’ homes. The usual suspects line up to protest guns. It turns out that he is a Democrat.

This film actually illustrates one of the fundamental problems that I have always had with the Libertarian party.

They are called illegal immigrants because they broke the law when they immigrated. The term has exactly nothing to do with race or ethnicity. Whether it was illegal decades ago or not doesn’t matter. They immigrated in an illegal manner, and just because you happen to disagree with the law doesn’t make someone a racist for using the term.

Many parents are tempted to try and solve all of their child’s problems, but in some cases doing so is actually harmful to the child, as they never learn to do things and solve problems for themselves. Let me explain:

One of the most difficult things for high school chemistry students to learn is how to set up conversion problems. To make learning this method easier, I begin by showing them how to do it, and then over a period of weeks I assign them practice worksheets with sample problems. For the first few weeks, the problems are very easy. They start off with problems like converting a $5 bill into quarters, progress to converting grams to kilograms, and then once they have mastered the easier problems, we begin the more difficult ones. Each problem must use the proper number of significan figures, and all problems MUST be in scientific notation.

I require that each student show their work, so that I can monitor their learning progress and offer guidance when they make mistakes. Points are taken off for various mistakes, with the largest deductions coming for not showing your work, or setting the problem up improperly. Minor math mistakes result in small deductions, because I am more concerned with mastering the methodology than whether or not a student can tell me how many quarters he can get for $5.

Every year, I get a student who either decides that he can take shortcuts like simply moving the decimal point, or using a calculator to do the entire problem. Each of those methods work on the easier problems they face in the beginning, but they do not work with the more difficult problems, and as those problems get more difficult, the student falls behind his peers and grades begin to slide.

This year was no exception. I had a child who simply turned in a 7 problem homework assignment without showing work on three problems, showing the incorrect method on two problems, and a host of other, more minor errors such as failing to show units in the answer, and failing to use proper scientific notation. His  parent argued vociferously that those errors don’t matter as long as the student gets the correct numerical answer. I spend two hours typing up an explanation of my grading system, and pointing out that this homework assignment was less than 0.05% of the student’s overall grade, and the grade on this assignment was merely a feedback mechanism for the student.

The parent was having none of it. He insisted that I give the student full credit “for making an honest attempt” at completing the homework, and that listing the answer without showing his work should be good enough, because in the business world, it is results that count. I told him that his feelings on this were immaterial, and further told him that the grading system in my class would not change. He then became hostile, and said that as a parent, it was up to him how his child would be educated, called me “obtuse” and then said he was going to the authorities (principal, school board) to have me fired.

He then transferred his child to a much easier, less challenging class, where this child will be bored out of his mind.

But at least they aren’t my problem any longer.

Recently, the national organizer for a student movement that is demanding free college, forgiveness of all student loans  and a $15 an hour minimum wage appeared on Fox news. You should watch this:

In reference to my post of the weekend about people from the north not understanding Florida summer: