Molestation

There is an 18 year old woman by the name of Kaitlyn Hunt who has been arrested for two counts of lewd and lascivious behavior on a child between the age of 12 and 16. Ms. Hunt was engaged in a lesbian relationship with a 15 year old girl.
There are many who are claiming that Ms. Hunt’s crime is that she is a lesbian. Wrong. Her crime is that she is a CHILD MOLESTER. She began her relationship with a 14 year old girl.A sexual relationship between an adult (18) and a child under the age of 16 cannot be consenting. A minor under the age of 16 cannot legally give consent for sexual activity.
The people who are defending this would not be defending this if it were an 18 year old boy having sex with a ‘consenting’ 15 year old, the Huffington post would not be coming to his defense. As long as homosexuality is involved, there is no limit to what they will defend.
The parents of Ms. Hunt (the 18 year old) have this to say:

They are trying to send an innocent young girl to prison because they
are full of hate and bigotry. These girls are teenagers in high school,
who had ONE mutual consenting sexual experience. My daughter isn’t a
criminal, she isn’t a predator.

 Actually, she IS a criminal. Florida law (800.04(5)) says:

A person who intentionally touches in a lewd or lascivious manner the breasts, genitals, genital area, or buttocks, or the clothing covering them, of a person less than 16 years of age, or forces or entices a person under 16 years of age to so touch the perpetrator, commits lewd or lascivious molestation…An offender 18 years of age or older who commits lewd or lascivious molestation against a victim 12 years of age or older but less than 16 years of age commits a felony of the second degree

The law goes on to say:

PROHIBITED DEFENSES. Neither the victim’s lack of chastity nor the victim’s consent is a defense to the crimes proscribed by this section. 

This is not about lesbian sex. People are getting their undergarments in a twist because the perpetrator’s life will be ruined. Guess what? She was an adult, and the law says that adults can’t have sex with children. The same people who are crying about ruining the girl’s life for this would have no problem ruining her life if she were being arrested for having a shotgun in the trunk of her car that was in the parking lot.

Advice to paramedics

The difference between training and education is this: we train to know how to do something and educate to know why to do something. Training is therefore easier than education, but remember that the man who knows how to do a job will always have a job, while the man that knows why he’s doing that job will eventually be the other man’s boss.
Too many paramedics want to be trained, and not educated. This is because training is much easier than education. This is the main reason why paramedics must fight so hard NOT to be called “ambulance drivers,” and a large part of why the rest of the medical profession doesn’t give them more respect.
Strive to know the why. Don’t just learn how to intubate, learn why. Learn the why not. Too many paramedics brag about how good they think they are at intubation, but very few of them can explain WHY they are intubating.
That goes for many of the skills that paramedics perform. Do yourself and your patients a favor: don’t train yourself, educate yourself.

No due process

So it is the law of the land in Florida that “mentally defective” people who have been adjudicated as being a danger to themselves or others cannot own a firearm. Hey, most folks will support this law, if asked about it. After all, we don’t want crazy people to have guns, right?
Until you start to redefine what “adjudicated” means. Now, thanks to a change in Florida’s law, if a cop takes you involuntarily to a mental facility for evaluation, and you allow the doctor to voluntarily admit you for treatment, the doctor can have your right to ever own a firearm taken away. So a doctor gives you a choice: be involuntarily admitted and be declared incompetent, thus losing the legal ability to make your own decisions, or voluntarily submit yourself to outpatient treatment and merely lose your right to own a firearm.

The bill amends the definition of “committed to a mental institution” … to include persons who have had an involuntary examination under the Baker Act and who have voluntarily admitted themselves for outpatient or inpatient treatment

But hey, a judge reviews the paperwork. So much for due process.

It seems to me that the only way to avoid this is not to let yourself be Baker Acted. Here is how: Cops, like most people, are lazy. They want to get back to whatever they were doing, and voluntarily going to the hospital keeps them from having to do all of the paperwork of performing a Baker Act. Simply agree to go to the hospital voluntarily, rather than make the cop take you into custody and Baker Act you.

Mental illness

so CJ, in a thinly disguised attempt to say that supporting laws that restrict people with mental illness from firearms ownership proves that the Second Amendment is not absolute fails to overlook the obvious portion of my reply:

We are a nation of individual rights, and it doesn’t matter if everyone else committed a certain act yesterday, I didn’t.

 Today, there is a story from CBS Atlanta that proves my point: 1 in 5 children in the US has a mental disorder, according to the CDC. Now this doesn’t mean that our kids are any different than we were, or even than our grandparents. What it means is that the definition of what constitutes a mental disorder is being expanded to include nearly everyone. That is why trying to predict who should have their rights preemptively removed is wrong and will result in a short ride to tyranny.

If you are so mentally ill as to be a danger, then you are too mentally ill to be out in public. If you cannot be trusted to own a firearm, then you can’t be trusted to have gasoline, fertilizer, matches, or pointy sticks. In other words, you can’t be trusted to be without a custodian.

Authority, responsibility, and accountability

I was a part of the fire party when I was stationed onboard the USS Dwight D Eisenhower during the years of 1987-1992. One of the major events that occurred when I was stationed on her was when we collided with another ship that was sitting at anchor. (PDF warning) At the time of the collision, I was standing less than 100 feet away on the flight deck. I was a fire team leader of a pair of impromptu hose teams that put out a small fire, and I was reassigned to do a damage investigation by a Lieutenant that had taken over damage control. Even though several compartments were damaged, and opening one watertight door revealed that the compartment beyond was GONE, the Navy called the damage to the ship “minor.”

The Navigation Officer and Commanding Officer’s careers both ended that day, even though the Captain was not present on the bridge when the collision took place. The reason for this is simple: When you are in charge, you get to take credit for what your subordinates accomplish, but you also have to take the ultimate blame when your subordinates screw the pooch.

That is why I don’t begrudge the fact that President Obama gets to bask in the reflected glory of SEALS finally bagging Osama Bin Laden. They did the job, and the guy at the helm gets some of the credit. That is what it means to be in charge. At the same time, the IRS fiasco, the Beghazi disaster, and the other problems that we see unfolding are 100% laid at Obama’s feet.

When I was in the military, we were taught the principles of leadership. There are three of them, and leadership cannot exists where any one of them is missing: Accountability, responsibility, and authority. One cannot lead if they do not have the authority to change things, be held accountable for the results, and take responsibility for the outcome. It seems that Obama has mastered wielding the authority, but has not learned a thing about responsibility. One can only hope that he will be held accountable.

Youtube and Google

Screw you. I can’t post comments on Youtube videos without using my real name any longer. There is no longer an option to use a screen name. Couple that with the fact that Reader is gone, and I am going to have to find another place to host this blog, or I will be shutting it down. I will also soon be moving away from a gmail address for my email.

Individual rights

In comments to this post, CJ wants to know:

 what happens if someone comes out with statistics that say people with
blue eyes are 87% more likely to use a gun to commit a crime, or some
other ridiculous ‘fact.’

 We already have facts like that. Black Americans are statistically 4 times more likely to commit a violent crime than any other segment of the population. That does not mean, however, that we pass laws restricting the activities of all blacks. We are a nation of individual rights, and it doesn’t matter if everyone else committed a certain act yesterday, I didn’t.

DUI limits

One night while working as a firefighter, I was serving as the company officer of a truck company when a call came in to the neighboring company’s response area for an accident. During the dispatch, it sounded pretty serious. The Battalion Chief, who was at my station, told me to be ready to be dispatched to set up a landing zone for a medical helicopter, because he had a funny feeling that we would be needed.

Well, we wound up at the scene, treating a woman who was seriously injured, while the first unit to arrive on scene was busy doing CPR on her baby. Being the only paramedic on the truck full of EMTs, I was incharge of her care. I tried everything, every trick that I had in my knowledge base, but the woman died. So did her baby.

It turns out, according to her own family members, who were driving in the car behind her, she ran the stop sign, and was hit by a pickup truck that did not have a stop sign. The accident was clearly and unequivocally her fault, and that mistake cost her life, and her child’s life.

The problem here is that the State of Florida requires blood samples of every driver involved in a fatal crash. The driver of the truck, who did not seem impaired to me, had a blood alcohol of 82. He did admit on scene that he had 2 glasses of wine with dinner. I know what you are thinking- but his BAC did support the fact that he had only two. The State limit is 80. He was charged with and convicted of two felony counts of DUI manslaughter, and sentenced to twenty years in prison, and the accident wasn’t even his fault.

Why the long story? Because the government is cutting the DUI limits again. From 100, where it was thirty years ago, to 80 in 1999, and now to 50. After the limit was reduced from 100 to 80, traffic fatalities actually went up the following year, not down. My guess is that the law is working to reduce drinking and driving, and the amount of income that the government is getting from DUI fines is declining, and the number of paying customers that DUI attorneys is getting is falling. Perhaps the cops aren’t getting enough opportunities to earn free vacations for DUI arrests.

The truth is that the DUI law changes have had no discernible effect on the rate of traffic fatalities. Of course, the fact that the government uses traffic offenses as a cash cow, with Florida making $100 million a year  and Virginia doing the same from traffic tickets, has nothing to do with it. In California, it was recently discovered that 1,600 DUI checkpoints yielded only 3,200 DUI arrests (two per checkpoint), but resulted in $40 million in traffic tickets and 24,000 vehicle confiscations. Cops also won, being paid $30 million in overtime to staff the checkpoints.