Divemedic

In the state of Florida for the year 2012, there were a significant number of cases where prescription painkilling drugs were the cause of a person’s death.

The drug that caused the most deaths was alprazolam, commonly known as Xanax, which was responsible for 323 deaths. Xanaax is prescribed for anxiety disorders and panic attacks. No one ever died of a panic attack, and anxiety is not in itself a fatal condition. The drug that is most often used to treat it kills 323 people a year in Florida alone. Benzodiazepines, which is the family of drugs that include Xanax, killed 2,622 people in Florida in 2012.

Oxxycodone, which is prescribed by doctors as a painkiller and is sold under the name Oxycontin, kills 392 people in Florida each year. Pain is not a fatal condition, and doesn’t kill anyone.

Prescription drugs account for 80.9 percent of all drug deaths when alcohol is excluded. The CDC reports that 46 (almost 17,000 per year) people die every day from prescription painkiller overdoses.  The rate of death for prescription painkillers is 11.1 per 100,000 for Florida in 2012.

Compare that to homicide: in 2012, there were 721 homicides in which a firearm was used as the murder weapon, for a firearm murder rate of  3.8 per 100,000. (In 2014, there were 687, a rate of 3.4 per 100,000)

I am not saying that we should make prescription drugs illegal. I am saying that we should look at the issues with firearms using a bit of perspective.

For more than two years, I have warned that a race war appears to be coming. At least some blacks have decided to declare war on whites. Here is a video from one such person:

This is a domestic terrorist who has openly stated on the internet that he has declared war on all white people, and that his goal is to “kill crackers.” The race war has begin, at least for some, and since this video is out there, anyone who winds up having to use deadly force in self defense against this man should produce this video and his website as evidence.

Whether or not you or I want there to be a race war, it appears as though there are some who have decided to start without us. Why isn’t the Federal government investigating these groups as domestic terrorists? Why isn’t the Southern Poverty Law Center listing them as a hate group?

According to Bloomberg, the fix is in, and Hillary will win the nomination, regardless of how voters cast their ballots. There are a total of 4,491 delegates who will decide the nominee for the Democratic party’s presidential run. Of these, there are 713 superdelegates, who are unelected and accountable to only the leaders of the Democratic party.

So 16 percent of the party’s votes are cast by delegates who do not answer to the voters, even though this is the party that claims that each and every person should have a vote, even convicted felons and illegal immigrants. By securing those superdelegates, Hillary ensures that there is a built in margin that any challenger must overcome.

Now don’t think that I am in any way saying that the Republicans are any better. The Republican party doesn’t use superdelegates. Instead, they have a system where there are “hard” and “soft” delegates. Hard delegates are required to vote for the candidate on the first ballot cast at the convention. After the first ballot, they may vote for whomever they choose. Soft delegates may vote for any candidate they choose, even on the first ballot they cast. There are complicated and vague rules that make this about as clear as Obama’s foreign policy.

At the republican convention, there are a total of 2,380 delegates.

There are 126 delegates, about 6 percent of the total, who are complete free agents. These are party leaders and elected officials, three per state or territory, who will go to the convention unbound to any candidate.

Then there are 84 delegates, or 3.5% of the total, who will be selected at state conventions, or appointed by a committee of Republican officials in the state, with no direct or indirect relationship to the popular vote in these states. States like Pennsylvania, Illinois and Louisiana select some of their delegates trough this method, for instance, even though they also pick some through their primaries. These 84 delegates are officially unbound. However, influential Republicans within each state will have some say about just who they are and about which candidate they are most likely to prefer.

Another group of 188 (7.9% of total delegates) who are picked through a caucus process but are officially unbound to any candidate. In addition to being unbound, these delegates are usually also picked in a way that is separate from the popular vote that is held in each state.

…and the rules go on and on. In short, the voters of each state actually have very little say in who the Republican nominee is,  because 16.7% of the delegates are selected by the party leadership, just like the Democratic party does at their convention.

This is why we get the same candidates in election after election, because the leaders of each party want it that way. Our choice between the Democrat or the Republican really isn’t a choice at all, because the real choice has already been made in the boardrooms of the ones controlling the purse strings of the two political parties.

Since the rules are set up to deny any new parties to the arena, and the number of Congressional seats has been fixed at a maximum of 411 for over a century, even though the US population has more than tripled in that time span, meaning that we are less represented now that at any other point in history, your vote literally doesn’t count.

Which brings me back to the title of this post: “If voting actually changed anything, it would already be illegal”

According to Steven Nerem of the University of Colorado, we are “locked into at least 3 feet of sea level rise, and probably more.”… This is startling news if you are one of the 150 million people on Earth who live near the ocean. Even if you don’t live close to the sea, you likely use goods that are manufactured in plants near the water, or vacation at the beach.

Here is another Brady hit piece: BUSTED: The NRA EXPOSED as the Greedy Lying Fear-Mongerers They Really Are! 

How many times have you heard this argument when it comes to guns?

“But heck, if it’s one person we stop and it’s one life we save, why not. That one life may be yours, your kid, your mom, or someone else you know.”

What anpit the other side of that? What if it costs one life? As long as we are dealing with hypotheticals, what if one person had been armed with a weapon, and had stopped any one of the past spree shooters sooner? Would that have saved a life? A dozen lives? Two dozen?

That isn’t a hypothetical situation: It happened in Kileen, Texas on October 16, 1991 in Luby’s cafeteria. A man drove his pickup truck into the front wall of the restaurant, killed 23 people and wounded 27 with a firearm before killing himself. In that restaurant was a woman named Suzanna Hupp, and was having lunch with her parents, who were both killed by the shooter that day. Ms. Hupp had a pistol in her purse, but had left it in the car, because it was illegal at the time for people to carry concealed weapons in Texas. She later said that this decision was one she would regret for the rest of her life.

Her father, Al Gratia, feeling he “needed to do something”, tried to rush the gunman and sadly was fatally shot in the chest instead. Hupp, eventually seeing an escape through a broken window (broken by the shoulder of another horrified, fleeing victim), grabbed her mother by the shirt telling her “Come on, we have to go now!” As Hupp moved toward the only escape, she believed her mother to be following behind. However, upon reaching the safety of outside, she then realized her Mother, Ursula Gratia had stayed behind to be with her mortally wounded husband. Hupp was told soon after the incident that her mother had instead watched her daughter get to safety and then turned to be with her husband of over 40 years. Ursula stayed by the side of her mortally-wounded husband, cradling him as his life slipped away. Al Gratia died almost instantly. Ursula Gratia had time to glance up at the gunman afterward and back down at her husband before the crazed man then shot her in the head at point-blank range, killing her instantly.

Had Hupp been able to legally carry her pistol armed that day instead of being forced to leave it in the car, she would have saved as many as a dozen people from death. The laws against ramming a building, carrying a weapon, shooting people, and committing murder did not save a single life that day. The law abiding woman left her gun in the car, in compliance with the law. The criminal broke the law, and two dozen people, including the parents of the law abiding gun owner, paid for that with their lives.

If it saves just one life, shouldn’t we try it? More guns may not be the answer, but there is one thing that has been demonstrated over and over: More gun laws that disarm the law abiding are not the answer.

Proof that checkpoints leading to gun free zones just move the target rich environment from inside the sterile area to the queue outside the checkpoint. I would also point out that New York’s laws against guns, as well as Federal regulations against carrying firearms in Federal buildings and post offices failed to work. Again.

How many times do gun free zones have to fail before people realize that they do not work?

There are those who will claim that the armed guard had a gun, and that did not work either. I would answer with this: Simply standing around with a gun is no guarantee that you won’t be ambushed and killed. You need to be willing, able, and prepared to use that firearm, or all it means is that you will carry around a hunk of metal that is used only for decoration.