Cops

Shooting

A Walmart in Poinciana Florida, an unincorporated community that spans Osceola and Polk County, had been hiring off duty Sheriff’s deputies as security. One of them confronted a group of “teens” who had been shoplifting. That’s when one of the youths decided to pull a gun on the Deputy, thereby changing his crime from misdemeanor larceny into armed robbery, a forcible felony.

The Deputy conducted an impromptu ballistics test of his .45 ACP caliber Glock, which performed as expected. The crowd became a bit irate because the deputy shot a “kid,” so another off duty deputy, along with an off duty firefighter, both of whom happened to be in the store and were armed, assisted the original deputy in securing the crime scene until others could arrive. I can’t post the link to the tweet with the video, because it’s been restricted. Click on the tweet below and take a look.

By Divemedic, ago

Pull Them Out

Yet again, we have a case where the American public is told that cops don’t have to protect you. The school resource officer from the Uvalde school shooting was just found not guilty of all charges for standing outside of the school and hiding while the shooter massacred the students that the cop had a duty to protect.

It turns out, the cops don’t have a duty to do a damned thing except collect a pension. This echoes the case where the coward of Broward, Scot Peterson, was allowed to retire with his pension intact, even though he hid during the Parkland School Massacre and as the School’s Resource Officer, it was his job to protect the school’s students.

If police don’t have a duty to do anything, then why do we even have SROs in school in the first place? In shooting after shooting, we know that the police are cowardly pussies who will take cover while our children are slaughtered. That’s how we know that they aren’t about to go door to door to take shit.

Pull the cops out of the schools and cut police and school budgets by an appropriate amount. School resource officers are a horrendous waste of money.

By Divemedic, ago

FBI Reenters the Caliber Wars

Listen to the below video:

There are 9mm projectiles out there that are doing the same thing the forties are doing, but we can take the full power nines that are still less recoil impulse, high magazine capacity…

I own handguns in all of the major self defense calibers, including a few .40S&W and about three times as many 9 millimeters. I can’t tell you the last time I carried, or even shot, a forty caliber. When the FBI decided to use that caliber, they did so by neutering the 10mm. Why? Because female and limp wristed beta male Federal officers can’t handle the recoil of full power handguns.

I’m just going to say this: The 9mm has been a go to carry piece for me because of capacity and ease of concealment. If I were a Fed and could carry what I wanted without fear of printing or accidentally flashing, I would carry a full sized handgun.

He says it, but in a roundabout way:

I asked the guy at Hornady, why are we seeing huge gains in 9mm performance, but not in the other calibers? His answer was “you allowed us to increase velocity.”

This is a fundamentally misleading statement. The 10mm had plenty of velocity, but you forced the industry to slow it down and called it a .40. That’s why the “S&W” at the end is said to stand for “slow and weak.” The heart of the issue is at 12:45 (paraphrased just a bit):

10mm was fine for some agents, but you can’t hand that to a “Fleet” of 13,000 agents. The 180 grain bullet generates too much recoil, so let’s slow it down. Well, if you slow it down, you might as well go to a 40.

The other issue was the handgun chosen for the 10mm: The model 1076. He says half of the guns bought had to go back to the Performance center to be reworked because the gun didn’t function correctly. That’s a firearm, not a caliber problem. Still, recoil was and remains an issue.

All handguns are tradeoffs. Still, let’s be honest here- the FBI went back to the 9mm because women and soyboys are recoil sensitive, and the 1076 was just a crappy gun.

By Divemedic, ago

Assist

As a paramedic, I have opened dozens of cars for medical emergencies, pets, or even children locked in cars. A person who is in a car and isn’t responding is a medical emergency until proven otherwise. Our policy was to try and wake the person while knocking on the window. If no response, the person was showing signs of distress, or it was a child, we would then gain entry to the vehicle. If the temperature outside was less than 80 degrees Fahrenheit, we would take the time to open in without damaging the vehicle, if possible. We had tools for that, but they take a bit of time. If the temperature was more than 80 degrees, our policy was to immediately gain access using the fastest possible means.

The people commenting on this post have a problem with what the cops did. I don’t.

By Divemedic, ago

Weed, Guns, and Prostitutes

In a move that signals just how much of a fascist tyrant he is, Trump signed an executive order reclassifying marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III on Thursday. Schedule III drugs are things like Ketamine, Testosterone, and Codeine. That sets in motion a number of things that are important. The most obvious of these is that users of medical marijuana are no longer unlawful users of the drug, which also means that those with a medical marijuana card are no longer prohibited from buying a firearm, and can now legally put no on a 4473. It also means that BATFEIEIO will have to revise and rewrite their form 4473 questions.

Republicans are incensed because police unions have long opposed such a move, as busting people for weed is a huge source of police employment and a great way to conduct warrantless searches: “I smelled weed.” As evidence to support their ire, Republicans made the following points:

  • Reclassifying marijuana as a Schedule III drug will send the wrong message to America’s children, enable drug cartels, and make our roads more dangerous
  • According to a recently published fifteen-year review of medical research, marijuana has no real medical value, and 30% of medical marijuana users have an addiction to the drug
  • Under Schedule III, pilots, truck drivers, and other safety-sensitive professions will not be tested for marijuana.
  • Marijuana is already imperiling safety: over 40% of fatal car crashes today involve THC. Rescheduling will exponentially worsen this crisis

First, let me say that I am one of the only people that I know that has never even tried the stuff. I have no interest in it, and I just never felt the need to try it. My only oppositions to marijuana are practical ones.

  1. I hate the smell when it is smoked. It reeks. I don’t care if they legalize it, as long as I don’t have to smell it. Make it an edible, or make patches. Do that, and I won’t care.
  2. Pass limits beyond which someone is considered impaired, and come up with a test that can reliably determine if someone is beyond that limit. I don’t want someone flying my plane or surgeons operating on people while they are impaired.

Now that that is out of the way, let’s address the Republican claims:

America’s children aren’t sitting there saying “Oooh, Trump said doctors can now prescribe weed. I think I will go out and smoke it now.” Ridiculous. Anyone who wants weed gets it now. I know that it’s anecdotal, but I would say that half of the people under the age of 30 who come to the ED test positive for marijuana, and probably 1 in 5 who are over 30 do as well. The patients I don’t test smell like weed a good bit of the time, too. Your policies aren’t doing shit to prevent people from using.

Half of the states (almost- it’s 24 now) have already legalized marijuana in some form or another. The Federal government is just catching up with what the states are doing, and what the citizens obviously want.

Marijuana DOES have medical uses. The fact that studies are showing that it doesn’t is a reflection of science being for sale. The government pays someone to conduct a study on marijuana to prove it has no legitimate use, and what do you know, the preexisting opinion of the study’s sponsor is confirmed. Far too much of what we call “science” is actually paid propaganda. Most “scientists” are actually whores who sell the weight of their credentials to the highest bidder.

Truck drivers, pilots, and the like can still be tested for weed as a Schedule III drug. They are tested for intoxication on things like alcohol (no scheduled at all), Schedule IV drugs like Xanax, Ativan, and Valium, as well as other Schedule III drugs like Ketamine and Codeine. This is just a stupid and downright untruthful argument that I classify as fear mongering, no different than “every traffic accident will result in a gunfight.”

In my several decades as a paramedic, I can say that nearly every traffic accident occurring after midnight involves an alcohol impaired driver, and we aren’t making alcohol illegal. If fatal accidents involve a driver with marijuana in their system 40% of the time, I ask how many people have marijuana in their systems. Correlation doesn’t imply causation. I could easily say that 60% of people who die in a traffic crash eat sandwiches, but that doesn’t make sandwiches the cause of traffic deaths. Keep in mind that current testing for marijuana doesn’t test for intoxication, it tests for presence. Because they are fat soluble, the metabolites of marijuana stay in your system for up to 90 days. That doesn’t mean that you were intoxicated at the time you were tested, which is my second point, above.

Overall, I think this issue is a loser for Republicans, and I support the action Trump took here. I just wish I didn’t have to smell that stuff everywhere I go.

By Divemedic, ago

Guns Aren’t Probable Cause

A man is pulled over by the police for a minor traffic infraction. He notifies the cop that he is carrying a firearm and hands over his concealed weapons permit. The cop said: “Once I knew he had a gun, that gave me reason to search for more contraband.” Note that the cop had no reason to believe that there was any crime being committed- after all, the man had a permit and had notified the cop that he was carrying. Still, the cop used that information to pull the man from his car, handcuff him, and leave him locked in the back seat of his patrol car for more than 30 minutes while the cop tore through and searched his vehicle.

I had a similar run in back in 2001 with an Orange county deputy in Orlando, and he threatened to kill me. That’s why I don’t tell cops shit. In this case, the victim of this roid raging idiot sued. Anyhow, here is a lawyer’s take on this case.

Some of the things that this lawyer says, and I grant that they are sensible pieces of advice, is upsetting to me. They are:

  • Keep your hands visible
  • Don’t make any sudden moves
  • Don’t reach for anything, not even your wallet

Because cops are nervous, they tend to overreact, and will assume that you are about to use a weapon.

Cops are basically scared little boys with weapons and carte blanche to use them to kill you. That’s a bad combination, and something that speaks volumes about American law and American policing. You are the enemy and a threat- despite the fact that there are 20 million traffic stops per year and only about 120 of them result in cops being shot. (That’s a 0.000006% chance that any given traffic stop will involve cops being shot.) Cops are more likely to have a heart attack on duty, yet they don’t go around shooting people that sell fatty food.

By Divemedic, ago

Neighbor Glows

I was at my rental property, getting some work done, since its vacant. One of the neighbors approached me. I have hardly spoken to the guy. All I know is that he is some kind of golf instructor. He does have Trump stickers all over his pickup truck.

He says to me that he has heard that I do some hobby machine work on guns. Then asks if I am willing to convert his AR or at least teach him how to convert his AR into full auto.

I told him that he was misinformed. I don’t do anything like that and don’t know how.

This is the third time someone has asked me to do something like that.

By Divemedic, ago

NY and GOA: A Larger Issue?

There is a case in NY that is important, where the U.S. Northern District Court ruled in Higbie v. James that New York’s concealed carry laws are violating the Second Amendment rights of nonresidents by making it nearly impossible for nonresidents to obtain a concealed carry license. It was sponsored by Gun Owners of America.

The plaintiffs in this case argued that they each have firearms licenses which permit them to bear arms in public in their respective states “and across most of the country.” They also claimed that New York does not permit them to carry their firearms while they are in New York solely because they are not residents or employees of the State. They argued that New York’s licensing scheme is an extreme outlier among the states because at least 27 states do not even require a permit to carry a concealed firearm in public, while the vast majority that do require permits will issue permits to out-of-state residents. The US District Court agreed, and struck down NY’s complicated and overly onerous regulations as being unconstitutionally designed to deny nonresidents their constitutional rights under the Second Amendment. The court ruled that state lawmakers can not restrict concealed carry licenses to maintaining residency, property ownership, or business interests in the state.

The tyrants of NY government attempted to make the argument that their licensing measures were not entirely prohibitive for non-residential applicants, saying certain guidelines allowed for those who owned habitable property or a business stake in the state to apply for such a license. In essence, they claimed that, because they allowed one nonresident to have a permit, this excused violating the rights of the rest of them. In essence, they are relying on the “token negro” defense. The court rightly called them out on this. 

Look, this case will have no direct impact upon the reality of CCW for nonresidents in New York. We all know that, because those ass clowns will simply find another way to violate the rights of US citizens while bleating loudly about the rights of illegal immigrants to take a dump on New York city streets. Even those residents who have permits nominally have to have criminal background checks, a mental health professional sign off on the permit, and multiple references.

The reality is that New York’s scheme is all about who you know and political payoffs when deciding who gets a permit. I know someone who has a New York carry permit. He also has a state police license plate, which starts with 1SP. He began telling me that the state police union had a series of special plates made, and they are only available through Hamilton county in New York. He claimed that this plate was given to “friends” of the police union, and the lower the number was that followed the 1SP, the more important you were to the cops. He said that this plate routinely gets him out of traffic and parking tickets. Not because he paid for it, nor did he jump through hoops. It’s because he knows someone, or as he puts it, “I’ve got a guy.”

This sounded like a lload of BS to me, so I activated my Google skills. What I found was that handing out special plate numbers is a common practice in New York. and I quote:

To some recipients, special license plates issued by the Saratoga County clerk are a symbol of county pride. For others, they are an inherited treasure passed on by a family member or loved one.
For many who have them — a list that ranges from county workers to state Supreme Court judges — an unwritten rule is that a lower number may indicate a special driver.
Indeed, an examination of the recipients of the special plates, which carry an “SP” prefix, shows they are coveted by a select group of government employees and elected officials, including judges, prosecutors, town supervisors, attorneys and political party leaders. The spouses and children of those people are also among those, estimated to be in the hundreds, who have the plates.

Now the SP prefix goes to Saratoga County. The 1SP prefix, which I can find little about, belongs to the State Police. This is how things are done there, from Concealed Weapons Permits to License plates, corruption and special favors rule the day.

They claim it is for “county pride” but I am sure there are not that many people who believe that. This is a way of announcing to the police that you are politically well connected and should receive special treatment.

The real impact of the Higbie case is that the noose is closing. The era of violating people’s rights to bear arms is closing through the courts. That doesn’t mean the fight os over. Evil, corruption, and man’s quest for power to rule others never ceases. That’s why the fight can’t either.

Donate to the GOA or the FPC. They are doing the work of patriots.

By Divemedic, ago