Laser Weapons


I would find out how much damage a 5 watt laser would do to a camera’s CMOS or CCD. You can buy one for about $400. That camera would be transmitting video of my house only until about 5 minutes after the UPS guy delivers my new purchase. I bet that he runs out of cameras before I run out of photons.

Or you could always call the cops, but it wouldn’t be as much fun.

In Florida, such an act would be illegal under 784.048:

A person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows, harasses, or cyberstalks another person commits the offense of stalking, a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082 or s. 775.083.

Police Substations

The new hotness among governments in light of the Bruen decision is expanding places that are off limits to carrying concealed weapons. Make the entire city a special carve out of areas that are sensitive, and therefore off limits to carrying concealed weapons, and you can back door your way into a general gun ban.

It isn’t a new concept. Disney tried it by claiming that their license to import fireworks made the entire Orlando theme park complex off limits, and Universal Studios claimed that the presence of the “Digital Audio Visual Effects (DAVE)” college on the grounds of their studios made the entire theme park that was on the same property off limits to carry.

For the last several years, the one that appears to be spreading in Florida is the “Police Substation.” It works like this: a business agrees to let police sit inside of their establishment to do paperwork and take a break, and in exchange they get to put stickers on the entrance claiming that “This is a police substation for XXX police department” and viola- the business is now a police station and is thus off limits for legal concealed carry. The Lauderhill Mall is doing it– so is the Central Baptist Church in Sanford. The Westgate mobile home park in Largo has allowed police to use one of the vacant trailers on the property as a substation. Many hospitals are doing this as well. I have seen at least three of them in the past six months that have posted signs just like this.

I can’t find an answer in the statutes or in any Florida case law on this. Is a business location off limits to carry if they allow police officers to occasionally use a portion of the property as a resting or public relations base, if the property is primarily used as a business or other location, and the police are usually not there? I am writing emails to several prominent attorneys who do firearms rights advocacy to get an answer on this one. Anyone else here have any authoritative information in this?

Figures Don’t Lie, but Liars Figure

In this editorial piece disguised as news and statistics, Yahoo tells us that there are only about only 16.7% of Americans actually own firearms.

the top twenty percent of all gun owners actually owned 55% of the guns. In terms of absolute figures, ten million people owned 105 million guns – for an average of ten guns per person, and the remaining 87 million guns were owned by 34 million people – for an average of 2.6 guns per person. The population of the U.S. was 263 million in 1994 – indicating that only 16.7% of Americans had actually owned a weapon.

So their claim is that 44 million people own all of the guns. That is complete and total bullshit, and I can prove it. Let’s use concealed weapons permits as an estimate of the number of gun owners. Florida alone has approximately 2.6 million active concealed weapons permits. With 12% of all Florida residents having a concealed weapons permit, this would mean that three in four gun owners have a CWP. That would be a very high percentage, indeed.

How many people in Florida have weapons but no CWP? That is impossible to know, but what we do know is that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement conducts 1.5 million instant background checks for firearm purchases per year. The anti-gunners are claiming that all of these firearms are being sold to the same people over and over.

I just don’t see it. It is far more likely that, when called by some random “survey taker” that the person answering the phone either says, “Guns? We don’t have any guns here,” when asked, or they simply refuse to take the survey. I just don’t think that surveys are a reliable means of “research” on any topic like firearms. I might as well take a survey of high school boys, asking them about their number of sexual partners. I’m equally as likely to get an accurate count in either case.

These estimates of gun ownership rates are simple guessing. In fact, the Rand corporation estimates that as many as 28 percent of Floridians are firearm owners, and Florida is outpaced in ownership rates by at least 9 other states. According to that study, rates range from 3.4% in Massachusetts to more than 33% in Mississippi. Even with this method, these “studies” are little more than guesswork.

Just in the 20 years between 1999 and 2019, over 42 million rifles were manufactured (pdf alert). Between 20% and 50% of all rifles manufactured in the USA are AR-15 pattern rifles, including all of the variants like the AR-10, and all of the miscellaneous caliber variations.

What we DO know is that there have been 460 million background checks run through the NICS system since it went online in December of 1998 (pdf alert). Just in the year 2020, there were 39.6 million NICS checks done. Now granted that NICS isn’t a complete count of gun ownership because it fails to capture sales done between private parties, guns stolen from dealers and common carriers, and multiple firearms sold in one transaction. Some sales will likewise be overcounted because checks are occasionally done through NICS for CWP permits that don’t result in a transfer, but NICS is the closest thing that we have to counting the number of firearms transfers in the US. Are we to believe that the number of firearms sold in the US from 1900 to 1998 is only 35 million, when Americans are busy buying more than 30 million firearms a year? Those guns sold in the 1980s aren’t going away. Guns last a long time. I myself own firearms that are over 100 years old.

No, they say. It’s because a few people are busy buying dozens of gun and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition every year, they claim. The left would have you believe that there are just 34 million people buying those ~40 million guns in a year- more than one per person on average, year after year, while 6 out of 7 Americans aren’t buying any guns at all. Sorry, but that is complete bullshit. I wrote about this in June of 2016, and I guessed at the time that there were somewhere between 400 and 500 million firearms in the US. Since that time, there have been another 219 million NICS checks.

Looking at ammunition sales, American citizens (all civilian sales, including the cops) are buying around 10 to 12 billion rounds of ammunition- about $11 billion dollars worth- in a year. In fact, the American civilian market buys a third of all ammunition manufactured worldwide to all consumers- including the world’s militaries. To put that in perspective, that is more ammunition than was used by the entire US military during each year of World War 2, when the average was just over 10 billion rounds a year and the US armed forces had more than 15 million personnel.

My guess (and mine is just as valid as theirs) is that there are somewhere between 700 and 800 million firearms in the US, and I would also guess that the southeast US is seeing household gun ownership rates that are somewhere near 70%. What all of this means is that, outside of the major antigun metroplexes of NYC, Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, and LA, more than half of households have at least one firearm, and more than a quarter of those households own at least one “assault weapon.” I would be willing to bet that my guess is closer to reality than the 17% figure that they are waving about. I’m not alone in that opinion. Even in 2016, there were bloggers guessing that there were more than 600 million guns in circulation.

Now I know what you are thinking- you had a lot of guns before the boating accident, and don’t think that millions of “super owners” is out of the question. Keep in mind that those of you reading this are most likely in the “gun culture” and are among the upper 1 or 2 percent of gun owners. I know people who own 100 or more firearms. Still, the most common gun owner has his dad’s hunting rifle in the closet, or a single handgun in his nightstand drawer and hasn’t been to the range in years, if ever. Even in the south, only about a quarter of gun owners regularly visit the range.

If even one percent of the gun owning public decides to respond in kind to being called an enemy of the people, there will be somewhere around 1.8 million people who are armed, pissed off, and know how to shoot. Many of them spend their weekends hitting small targets at thousands of yards, because they think it’s fun. They will not be lined up in neat ranks out in a field somewhere, just waiting for you to nuke or drone strike them.

The US police cannot even begin to control the gang problem in our inner cities, and the membership of those gangs is only around 800,000 or so and the gang members aren’t actively hunting cops, no matter what the cops try to claim. This is a fight that cannot be won, but they don’t care because liberals are not the ones who will be getting killed. Or so they think. That is dangerous thinking indeed. The people of each side who are the least stable will be the ones who decide when the violence begins and how far it goes.

Florida Legislature Leaves a Mess

As a follow up to yesterday’s post on hospitals and businesses prohibiting carry in the wake of the new constitutional carry law that went into effect in Florida on Saturday, we will address the next two claims:

  • Concealed carry isn’t allowed in police stations, and our hospital contains a “police substation”
  • Concealed carry isn’t allowed in hospitals

First, let’s look at the claim that concealed carry isn’t permitted in hospitals. There are two laws that can be applied here, with the first of them being 394.458:

Except as authorized by law or as specifically authorized by the person in charge of each hospital providing mental health services under this part, it is unlawful to introduce into or upon the grounds of such hospital, or to take or attempt to take or send therefrom, any of the following articles, which are hereby declared to be contraband for the purposes of this section:

1. Any intoxicating beverage or beverage which causes or may cause an intoxicating effect;

2. Any controlled substance as defined in chapter 893; or

3. Any firearms or deadly weapon.

Note that this is uncharted territory. The law as it existed in 2022 specifically says “except as authorized by law” and Florida’s 790.06 does authorize one to carry a concealed weapon, and paragraph (12) gives a specific list of places off limits to carry. The addition of constitutional carry (PDF alert) also states that a person who is otherwise qualified for a permit may carry a weapon under the same conditions as a person with a permit.

The problem here is that one could make the argument that 790.06 authorizes (by law) carry in places except those listed in 790.06(12), and 790.06(15)(c) specifically says:

This section does not modify the terms or conditions of s. 790.251(7).

Meaning that the legislature means for this law to supersede others in restricting carry at certain locations, and when they don’t want it to do so, make it clear in the statute. The issue with this argument is that it can only be made in court after you have been arrested. Since no one has yet done so (as evidenced by the fact that there is no case law spelling out the limits here) this is an issue that has not yet been tested in the courts, so you do so at your own peril.

What is interesting is the second law that affects hospitals: 790.145. That law specifically says:

Unless otherwise provided by law, any person who is in possession of a concealed “firearm,” as defined in s. 790.001(6), or a “destructive device,” as defined in s. 790.001(4), within the premises of a “pharmacy,” as defined in chapter 465, is guilty of a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.
(2) The provisions of this section do not apply:
(a) To any law enforcement officer;
(b) To any person employed and authorized by the owner, operator, or manager of a pharmacy to carry a firearm or destructive device on such premises; or
(c) To any person licensed to carry a concealed weapon.

Since a person who is carrying without a permit under Florida’s constitutional carry law -IS- carrying without a permit, and most hospitals are or contain pharmacies, is it still illegal for a person who is otherwise legally carrying a concealed weapon without a permit to have a firearm while inside of a pharmacy? Is this one of those cases that I mentioned above, where the legislature exempts a law when it intends to? Or has the legislature left a legal mess that the courts will have to deal with later? In my opinion, this is another case where the law is confusing and unclear, and the courts will have to deal with it after someone is arrested and charged with the crime, whereupon his lawyer will have to make this argument.

So to sum up the answer to the claim that you can’t carry in a hospital in Florida: The answer is maybe. It is specifically illegal to carry a firearm into a hospital or pharmacy in Florida, but not if you are authorized by law to do so. The law is unclear on whether or not people can carry into a hospital, or whether those who are carrying under constitutional carry may do so into a pharmacy. This question will not be cleared up unless the legislature cleans up the law, or until the courts rule on this one way or the other.

The legal issues here are quite a mess, and the only people who benefit from what the legislature has done here will be lawyers and those who write books about what the law means (in many cases, lawyers who are also authors). It will be interesting to see Jon Gutmacher’s take on this when my copy of Florida Firearms book gets here later in the week. That book is the bible for those who carry or use firearms in Florida, and there are more than a few judges who have his books on their bookshelf. If you own or carry a firearm in Florida, you should have a copy of it.

We will address the last of the three claims tomorrow when we look at “Concealed carry isn’t allowed in police stations, and our hospital contains a ‘police substation'” I think that this post is long enough already.


Now, the disclaimer: I don’t advertise, and receive nothing for my reviews or articles. I have no relationship with any products, companies, or vendors that I review here, other than being a customer. If I ever *DO* have a financial interest, I will disclose it. Otherwise, I pay what you would pay. No discounts or other incentives here. I only post these things because I think that my readers would be interested.

In this case, I have had a relationship with the author of the book that I mention in this post. You can read about it here. I wrote an email to Mr. Gutmacher at the time, letting him know that the property records of Florida showed that the property licensed for explosives manufacture and the resorts were two different pieces of property, as they must be, because under the fire code, you can’t have a hotel on the same property with an explosives factory. He was interested in my point, but I don’t know if he made that point in his legal case or not.

I do not make any money from the book, or from Mr. Gutmacher, but I still want to disclose the relationship, however tenuous it was.

Cops Are Lying in Florida

I was at work last night and the supervisor of security came wandering through the ED. One of the nurses asked him if Florida’s new concealed carry law was going to make his job more difficult. His reply was that many people in Florida don’t realize that concealed carry doesn’t apply to the hospital. When I asked him why the law didn’t apply, his reply was that there were three reasons:

  • Concealed carry isn’t allowed on private property in Florida, unless the owner allows it
  • Concealed carry isn’t allowed in police stations, and our hospital contains a “police substation”
  • Concealed carry isn’t allowed in hospitals

When I told him that most of those statements weren’t what the law says, he told me that he and the police likely know more about the law than I do, so I should just stay in my lane. Let’s tackle his claims one at a time, with this post addressing the “property owner” argument:

The police are the ones circulating the “carry isn’t allowed on private property” trope, and I am not sure where it’s coming from. I searched the social media pages of every sheriff’s office in central Florida, along with a sampling of city police departments. This is what I found:

Hillsboro County and Tampa Police
Lake County Sheriff
Columbia County Sheriff’s Office
Sarasota Police

It’s being pushed by a fair number of law enforcement agencies all over the state. The problem here is that the law says nothing of the sort. The new law says that a person who doesn’t have a permit but would otherwise be eligible for one may still carry a concealed weapon or firearm wherever they could carry that weapon if the DID have a permit. There is a list of places off limits to carry that can be found in 790.06(12). Property owners prohibiting carry is not anywhere on that list.

The only statement that could be construed as allowing a property owner to prohibit carry is the general property rights that any property owner has. If you are in a place not specifically mentioned in the law as being prohibited for concealed carry, but it has posted “no guns” signs, and they ask you to leave, you must leave. If you refuse to leave then you are breaking the law and can be charged. Even if the property is not posted and you are asked to leave you must leave, but that is different from claiming that the “law doesn’t apply” to private property. If they don’t ask you to leave, it is legal to carry right past a “no guns” sign.

Since this is being widely pushed by some (but no all) police agencies all over the state, I can’t help by believe that this is an intentional misstatement by law enforcement to enforce a law that doesn’t exist.

Next, we will take a look at carry in hospitals and police stations.

Wrong

When I was a teacher, I layered the security for my classroom and my students. First, I installed a Nightlock on my door.

I have Level IV body armor that I kept in my classroom. It had a blowout kit, 4 TQ’s, a huge label on it that said “PARAMEDIC” and a sewn on badge with my blood type. The file cabinet between the door and the blind corner where I planned to shelter my students in the event of a shooter had been modified by me. It has a 1/4″ aluminum plate lining the inside of the sides of the cabinet. With us behind the cabinet, the bullet would have to go through the cabinet, through the first plate, through whatever was in the cabinet, then through the second plate, and the backside of the cabinet.

Dude, use your head.

Senator Terrorist

Have you heard about the Rhode Island state senator that physically attacks people and destroys their property for exercising their right to free speech? No? Well, whatever you do, don’t have a bumper sticker on your car that supports RKBA or opposes Joe Biden.

He keyed a person’s car for having a bumper sticker that said “Biden Sucks” then when the police arrived, he tried to avoid capture by changing his appearance.

This isn’t the first time that he has shown contempt for the rights of his constituents. In 2014, Miller was caught on video at the Rhode Island State House telling a Second Amendment supporter “go fuck yourself.” He then released a statement explaining his actions:

Last Tuesday a vast group of Rhode Islanders gathered peacefully in the State House rotunda to voice their concerns about gun violence in our state and in our country. They also gathered to support sensible gun legislation that would ban the sale of assault weapons, ban the sale of high capacity magazines, ban weapons on school grounds and deny firearm access to individuals who have been convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors.

At the end of a press conference in which I participated, an individual representing a website notorious for conspiracy theories started berating members of the coalition and intimidating elderly veterans, members of the clergy and victims of violence.

It quickly became a highly charged atmosphere, which required the presence of the Capitol Police. The individual in question is not new to the State House and is known for his aggressive and intimidating manner. He also was interrupting legitimate members of the media who were attempting to conduct interviews.

After watching him antagonize an elderly veteran he swung his camera my way, which produced a very human and guttural reaction. I respect both the Second Amendment and the First Amendment. It is important to note that the individual in question was physically removed from a committee room by the Capitol Police later that evening.

Regardless of the emotions and atmosphere of the moment, it does not justify the language I used that day. Out of respect for the decorum of the State House and the constituents I represent, I offer my apologies.

You get his attitude? A website with which he disagrees asks questions, and they are accused of being intimidating and pushing conspiracy theories, as compared to those media outlets that treat him with kid gloves, who are referred to as “legitimate members of media.” He is the arbiter of what is and is not allowed, and anyone who disagrees will be attacked.

I will cheer for any person that fucks him up, and I will donate to their legal defense fund. We all know that this is the only way that this authoritarian tyrant will see justice, because this arrest won’t lead to him seeing a prison cell.

Random Thought on the Second Amendment

The argument that the 2A is only for the militia is still being pushed by the anti-forces, even in light of Heller. If they won’t believe SCOTUS, perhaps they can believe the version of the 2A that was originally passed by the House of Representatives on August 24, 1789:

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the People, being the best security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.

Note that being a member of the Militia didn’t require that a person be a member of an exclusive, limited membership military. It merely required that you be a part of the body of the people.