This right here is why voters are selecting Trump. When the Republican party cannot even oppose a lame duck President’s election year SCOTUS appointment of a liberal anti-gunner, they have become indistinguishable from the Democrats.
Voters are fed up, and they are preparing to nuke the site from orbit.
It’s the only way to be sure.
In Florida, there were no Presidential primaries before 1972. The turnout in primaries has been spotty at best, with voter turnout not being more than 45% since 1980, the year that Reagan was in the race. In fact, the last primary where there were candidates running in both parties was 2008, with a turnout of 42%.
This year, turnout is estimated to have been 46%. That is more remarkable, considering that Republican turnout was 103,288 in Orange County, putting Republican turnout at 51.3%. Democrat turnout was 104,441, putting Democrat turnout at only 35.8%.
Trump seems to be energizing the Republican base. Hillary does not.
According to psychologists, scents are the most powerful of triggers for memory. This happens due to the anatomy of the brain: the olfactory bulb, which processes scents in the brain, is located right next to the amygdala and hippocampus, which are the parts of the brain that control emotion and memory. There are no other senses whose signals pass through these parts of the brain. This means that the memories the we have that are attached to a particular scent are the most emotionally powerful memories that we have.
I have known this for years, but I got to experience it for the first time today. My fiance and I were shopping to buy me some new after shave, and she had me smelling different ones that had been sprayed on sample cards. I smelled one, and I had an immediate flashback. It was the most powerful and stunning memory that I have ever experienced.
A true out of body experience. In an instant, I was no longer standing in the store. I was standing in my boyhood home, I was 12 years old, and I was hugging my father. The smell of my father tickled my nose. The experience was complete: the smell, the sounds, the sights. I was once again a 12 year old boy who was hugging his father. My father has been dead for more than a decade.
I looked to my right at where I knew my fiance was standing, and I remember croaking out, “It’s my father.” Then I was back. the flashback was over, and it had only lasted for 2 or 3 seconds, but it was emotionally stunning. I broke out into tears, and it took me a minute or two to come to my senses and realize that it was not really happening. I left the store shaking.
This flashback was by far the most powerful memory that I have ever experienced, and it was all triggered by the smell of an aftershave. My fiance asked me if I wanted that one, and I told her no. I will be sure to avoid that one in the future.
In the spirit of our ongoing discussion about the ATF classification of AOW, and largely because I am bored because I cannot watch the news for fear of hearing election news, I wanted to touch base on some of the more outrageous rules that will have you run afoul of the NFA, mostly because ATF rulings can be confusing and arbitrary, to say the least.
There was a case where a man was accused of illegal possession of a machine gun for having an M-14 rifle that had been modified to make it into a semiautomatic rifle. The ATF agent testified that he was able to readily convert the rifle into a machine gun. Read on:
I examined (the firearm) and determined that it was originally manufactured as a machinegun by the Winchester Company in New Haven, Connecticut. (The rifle) can accept machinegun components and has machinegun components installed, but the engagement surface of the sear release has been removed, and the sear release has been welded to the selector shaft. In this condition, (the rifle) is functional as a semi-automatic firearm, but the machinegun parts have been locked in place by the welded sear release/selector shaft.
To determine if (the rifle) could be readily restored to shoot in an automatic manner, I used a multipurpose rotary tool with a cutting wheel to cut through the sear release. I then removed the sear release, selector shaft, and selector-shaft lock from (the rifle) and installed a sear release, selector shaft, selector spring, and selector from an M-14 machinegun.
The technician did not modify the receiver during all of reassembly, and then fired the gun to see if it would fire full auto. At that point, he wrote, “I discovered that the sear … did not have an engagement surface for the sear release.” So, he replaced the trigger group of the rifle with another trigger group which contained the sear with an engagement surface and eventually got the rifle to fire three rounds with a single press of the trigger.
The jury disagreed that replacing the entire fire control group fit the definition of “readily convertible” and found the man not guilty.The man’s name was Albert K. Kwan
Now that I am safely in my new job as a physics and chemistry teacher, I can share a few more facts about my old employer. I am still somewhat restricted for other reasons, but let me share:
My old school has a very high turnover rate in the core subjects: Science, English, and Math.
There are 22 teachers in those subjects.
22 classrooms filled with 34 teachers in the past two years. That equates to an annual turnover rate of 40% for core subjects, and a whopping 100% annual turnover rate in the Science department. There has not been a single Science teacher who has been there longer than 5 years and the average is less than two years.
Florida has a big problem retaining teachers. Average teacher turnover in the nation is 20 percent, with this school doubling that in the core subjects. Reading the link you can see that students getting teachers fired is not a problem that is unique to my previous employer.
High turnover is expensive. One study claimed that taxpayers in Florida paid out $130 million in additional costs due to the teacher retention problem.
As for me and my new job, I have my work cut out for me. My students have been with substitutes for the past two months, and are woefully behind. There are 60 school days left in the year, and I will be spending them trying to get my students caught up to where they should be and having to make up for them losing nearly a quarter of the school year’s instructional time.
I posted the other day, asking if the Cell phone gun is an AOW. SiliconeGrayBeard asks this:
I don’t see why it would be an AOW. The bizarre shape? Foldable grip? I don’t see why that’s different than guns like the North American holster grip 22/22Magnum.
I seem to have misplaced my copy of those rules, though.
The rules are arbitrary and stupid, as I posted about in this post here. The difference is that the North American Holster Grip pistol leaves the action and barrel exposed. In other words, it is obviously a handgun. What earns you a classification as an AOW is manufacturing a firearm that doesn’t LOOK like a firearm. This is why Cane guns, pen guns, and previous cell phone guns have been declared to be AOWs.
When contacted, the company claims that it is not an AOW, and that they have classified the weapon as a pistol with a folding grip. The problem is that they do not have anything from the ATF stating that they agree with the manufacturer.
Some claims I read in comments made by the company on their Facebook page:
* working prototype expected in May 2016
* production hopefully begins July 2016, sales shortly after
* was originally conceived as a 3-barrel .22WMR, then changed to .32, then ultimately, .380 acp, which is what the production model will be
* they classify this as a pistol with a folding grip, which they say keeps it out of AOW territory
I think I’d like to see the ATF agree before dropping any money on one of these. I would hate to get a visit from the ATF after buying one.
This is what happened at a Toronto hockey game when the sound system cut out during the US National Anthem.
This is why we don’t need to build a wall on our northern border.
Is this device a handgun, or is it considered an “any other weapon” under the NFA? If it is an AOW, then I do not think that it is legal to carry, even with a CCW.
Who NOT to Vote For: Adam Carolla isn’t going to tell you who to vote for. But he is going to tell you who NOT to vote for. And in a time when candidates running for office promise the moon, one of America’s funniest comedians shares a few tips about how to spot the candidate that you should run from.
It seems like 2016 is the year of celebrity deaths. There are many names that I recognize who have passed on this year. The year is nor even a quarter complete, and it seems like many talented people are leaving us…
George Kennedy: Star in dozens of films
Tony Burton: Man who play Apollo Creed and Rocky Balboa’s trainer in the Rocky series
David Bowie: Singer
Harper Lee: Author of To Kill A Mockingbird
Glen Frey of The Eagles
Alan Rickman
Natalie Cole
Craig Strickland of Backroad Anthem
Cara McCollum: Miss New Jersey 2013
Vanity: Singer from the 80’s
Justice Scalia
Maurice White of Earth, Wind, and Fire Feb 3.
Abe Vigoda
Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship/Starship
Richard Libertini
David Margulies
Pat Harrington Jr.
Wayne Rogers of MASH
Dan Haggerty – American actor, Grizzly Adams
George Gaynes, best known for his role as Commandant Lassard in the Police Academy movies
Joe Alaskey, voice of many Looney Toons characters
Otis Clay R&B legend