Government

SB Tactical Gets Pwned

A company that makes pistol braces gets its customer database breached. There are four possibilities here:

  1. ATF was doing a little illegal sneak and peek so they know whose dogs to shoot
  2. ATF had one of their partner informants do it for them
  3. A freelance SJW is planning on outing everyone
  4. Criminals are just doing what they do

I am betting that the incident is either 2, above. Some lefty is going to anonymously notify the ATF that they have a list of lawbreaking owners of SBRs. Since the new rule outlawing unregistered pistol braces was published today, you have 120 days to register your (now) SBR or become a felon. Isn’t that a sweet little coincidence?

The miscreants got away with each user’s credit card number, expiration date, CCV code, cardholder name, address, phone number, and email address. If you have ever done business with SB tactical, you should consider all of that information as being compromised and in the possession of people who mean to steal your money, your life, or your freedom.

We know that the feds are now enlisting people in the private sector to do their unconstitutional dirty work. It can’t be too much longer before the informers are everywhere and people become vzyali.

On a side note, as of today I will no longer be in possession of a pistol brace equipped firearm. I am not registering shit.

By Divemedic, ago

Eat Your Gun

The Uvalde Police Chief was interviewed the day after the school shooting. During that interview, he admitted that – well, you can read it for yourself:

When I opened the [school] door, I saw the smoke,” he recalled, saying “shots started firing” again as he and a colleague started nearing the classroom where Ramos was holed up with kids and teachers. “Obviously, I backed off and started taking cover,” the lead officer said, which CNN noted was in clear defiance of training that insists officers risk their own lives to “neutralize” active shooters.

“I know there’s probably victims in there and with the shots I heard, I know there’s probably somebody who’s going to be deceased,” he acknowledged of the room he backed away from.

But he felt the “priority” was the “preservation of life” of those not under the “immediate threat.”

“Once I realized that was going on, my first thought is that we need to vacate” the rest of the school, he said, telling arriving officers that “we’re taking [other] kids out first.”

You know what else would have saved the lives of those who weren’t under imminent threat? Enter the room and shoot the murdering bastard in the fucking face!

If he had any scruples at all, he would eat the barrel of his service pistol. Then again, if he had any scruples at all, this would never have happened.

Sorry, but cops are seldom heroes and when push comes to shove, they back out and hope someone else will take care of it. Parkland, Uvalde, and others have proven this to be the case.

By Divemedic, ago

Violence at Work

I firmly believe that no employee should have to sit at work and be threatened with physical violence. While at work, I am threatened with violence against my person and family several times per week. Since I was suspended for the patient’s accusations the week before Christmas, I have been threatened at least three more times.

  • A Baker Act said that she would follow me home to see where I lived, then return to my home while I was at work to murder my entire family. She kept saying “you just wait until I catch you out in public.” I demanded that management call the cops. They did, but the police did nothing but take a report. That’s fine. At least there is a record if I have to smoke the crazy bitch at the end of my driveway. I carry nearly everywhere when I am not at work. “Catching” me outside of work and attacking me would be a critical, terminal failure in her victim selection process, but still expensive and time consuming for me.
  • The very next day, a patient came in with a complaint that aliens mutilated his genitals and he wanted them removed. When the Doctor discharged him, he said that if I didn’t let him stay, he would kill me. I had security remove him. He came back in 3 hours later and security refused to do a thing about it. Finally, four days later, he was Baker Acted and sent to a mental health facility.
  • Later that same night, a man came in and demanded to be permitted to see his wife, who had been brought in by ambulance and was off at radiology getting an X ray. I told him that she would be back in about 10 minutes, but he wanted to be taken to her NOW. I told him to have a little patience, and he replied that if I didn’t take him to her, we were gonna have a problem. I told him that if he wanted to issue threats and cause a scene, I would have security remove him. He kept yelling, so I had him tossed out.

One of the nurses that I work with told me that I have too short of a fuse when it comes to threats, and I need to understand that most people are just venting and don’t really mean it. I agree that most people don’t mean it, but how do you really tell the difference? Why should I have to? If a person has so little impulse control that they can’t stop themselves from issuing threats of death or physical violence every time something doesn’t go their way, when does it stop?

My hospital, like most employers, doesn’t permit concealed carry for employees. So what happens when one of these people who doesn’t mean it comes in and decides that they DO mean it? The one who pays the price for misjudging the idiot’s ill intent is me, but certainly not my employer.

It’s the attitude displayed by this fellow nurse that results in no one saying anything when a mass shooter turns out to have been saying all sorts of disturbing things, and people inevitably say “Why didn’t anyone report this before he snapped and killed half a dozen people?”

That’s my problem with the cop who threatened to kill me before physically attacking me. The police wouldn’t press charges because they said that the man had a medical problem and was delusional, therefore wasn’t responsible for his actions. OK, I can see that. But then why does someone who isn’t and can’t be responsible for their violent actions still permitted to carry a weapon under LEOSA because he is a retired cop?

It isn’t just my employer, it’s most employers. They have taken the attitude of “the customer is always right” to the extreme, and now we see attacks and threats by customers becoming commonplace. Why is that? Because our legal system absolves employers of liability for customers’ actions while at the same time punishing employers by making them liable for the actions taken by employees in self defense. It sets the stage for making employees more easily and cheaply being replaced than violent customers.

By Divemedic, ago

Illinois Makes All Semiauto Rifles Illegal

How did they do that? Because of the overly broad wording of their new assault weapons ban (edited to clean up the text to make it more readable, but not change the wording):

(3) "Assault weapon" means:

(snip of irrelevant sections A and B)

(C) A semiautomatic rifle that can accept or can be modified to accept a detachable magazine and has at least one of the following:
(i) A folding, telescoping, or collapsible stock.
(ii) Any grip of the weapon, including a pistol grip, a thumbhole stock, or any other stock, the use of
which would allow an individual to grip the weapon, resulting in any finger on the trigger hand in
addition to the trigger finger being directly below any portion of the action of the weapon when firing.

emphasis added

Now picture any semiauto rifle you can think of. Now tell me which one, if any, sees the pinkie finger of the trigger hand not being below the action of the rifle.

Thus, all semiauto rifles in Illinois are now legally defined as assault weapons and are thus illegal to possess, transfer, or own.

By Divemedic, ago

The Scope of the Problem

According to figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the US government spent a total of $6.8 trillion in 2021. Of that amount, $4.8 trillion was mandatory spending, otherwise known as entitlements. In other words, money that has to be paid out by law: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment Compensation, Refundable Tax Credits, Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), and other mandatory spending. Another $350 billion was interest on the debt that we already owe, bringing the total outlay for mandatory spending to $5.2 trillion. The government only collected $4 trillion in taxes. So without spending a dime on the rest of the things that the government must do: defense, courts, prisons, and all of the alphabet agencies, the government is already running a deficit of $1.2 trillion. Add in all of those expenditures, and the deficit rises to $2.8 trillion. Compare that to my post on this topic from a decade earlier.

What is most alarming is the deficit as a percentage of our GDP, which right now is 12.4%. Over the past 50 years, the deficit has averaged 3.5% of GDP. Think about how much spending has risen to expand the deficit to this point. The national debt is now 100% of our gross domestic product. A decade ago, it was 34% of GDP. Three years ago, it was 80% of GDP. That’s without accounting for the money we owe the Social Security trust fund. Add in that amount, and the debt to GDP ratio rises to 128%.

The US isn’t even in the worst shape. Take a look at the debt to GDP ratios of the world’s top 10 debtor nations:

  1. Venezuela — 350%
  2. Japan — 266%
  3. Sudan — 259%
  4. Greece — 206%
  5. Lebanon — 172%
  6. Italy — 156%
  7. Libya — 155%
  8. Portugal — 134%
  9. Singapore — 131%
  10. Bahrain & the United States (tie) — 128%

In contrast, here are the ten countries with the lowest debt to GDP ratios.

  1. Brunei — 3.2%
  2. Afghanistan — 7.8%
  3. Kuwait — 11.5%
  4. Democratic Republic of the Congo — 15.2%
  5. Eswatini — 15.5%
  6. Burundi — 15.9%
  7. Palestine — 16.4%
  8. Russia — 17.8%
  9. Botswana — 18.2%
  10. Estonia — 18.2%

Note that Russia is the only large, first world country in the bottom ten. The suspicious side of me wonders if that is why the Democrats are so keen on starting a war with Russia.

What we are seeing here is that the entire world is on the verge of an economic collapse caused by profligate spending and loose fiscal policy.

By Divemedic, ago

Good For You

My opinion on the voting for Speaker of the House? Don’t keep voting for the same RINO assholes that have been selling us out for years and expect to get anything different. I’m sick and tired of voting for candidates who promise to protect gun rights and support Conservatives, only to watch them vote to go along with Democrats and increase their own power.

Of course sellouts Mark Levin and Sean Hannity are pissed that the party doesn’t come first because the important business of the people isn’t getting done. I call bullshit. What business of the people is getting ignored? Do these RINOs really think that they are going to impeach Biden? If they do, do they really think it will get past the Senate? What is it that you expect to accomplish, other than cutting more deals with the Democrats?

I don’t give a hairy rat’s ass if you never select a Speaker of the House, because until you do, the House won’t be able to do anything else. That’s fine by me, because the best that Americans can hope for at this point is gridlock.

Those 20 Republicans don’t have to pack it in, Hannity, you fucking sellout. The Republican party is now faced with a choice- you can either acknowledge the freedom loving wing of your party and give them a seat at the table, or you can show your true, power seeking RINO colors and cut a deal with Democrats. At least then we will know that you only pay lip service to conservative principles. How many of those 200 Republicans were OK with Trump being impeached? How many of them stood up and called the rigged election of 2020 for what it was? Not you, you pussy.

By Divemedic, ago

Licensed Vs. Certified

We began a conversation the other day about licensure being a grift. There is a difference between licensure and certification.

A license is a permit, issued by the government, that allows a person to carry out a certain activity. In order for licensure to exist, the government must first make it illegal to perform the activity, then issue licenses that permit those possessing those licenses to perform the activity.

Certification is where an entity certifies that a person meets certain standards. The entity issuing the certification can be a private business or a government. The value of the certification lies with the reputation of the entity that issues it. A certification can be issued without license- for example, UL laboratories. The government even issues licenseless certification- high school diplomas.

The issuance of a license can involve certification by the same agency that issues it- an example of this is a driver’s license. The DMV both ensures that the applicant for the license meets certain criteria and issues the license.

Alternatively, a government may require that another, outside entity certify that the applicant meets licensing criteria prior to issuing the license. Examples of this include lawyers and nurses. Passing the Bar exam or the NCLEX is a precursor to receiving a license to practice those professions.

A license can be issued without certification at all. Fishing licenses, for example. No one cares if you know how to fish- FWC just wants your license fees.

The only real reason for licensure is so that the state can control who can and cannot perform certain activities. The state always uses safety and quality control as the reason for requiring licenses, but this is the government we are talking about here. This means that politics eventually carry more weight than competence or safety.

This becomes a problem when the certification required to obtain a license is different for one group than it is for another. Say an American doctor or nurse has to pass certain hurdles while foreign doctors and nurses have different, lower standards. The oft quoted problem of a barber requiring more hours of training than a paramedic in Florida. (it’s true- Florida requires 1,200 hours of training in order to take the exam to be a licensed barber, but 1,112 hours of training and clinical time to be a licensed Paramedic)

Nursing is a great example of colleges grifting the system. In order to sit for the registered nursing exam, you must have at least a 2 year degree. That means 72 credit hours, but 30 of those 72 hours (42%) are courses like US History, English Composition, and Humanities that have absolutely nothing to do with nursing.

The reason that this happens is the people who are already practicing in that field want to make sure that there is a restricted supply of their skillset, so that pay remains high, or in some cases it is because colleges want to make lots of money. This is why Physician assistant programs also lobby so hard to have the degree requirements increased. There are a few colleges that teach PA as a 2 year associates degree, a couple that make it a 4 years Bachelor’s degree, while most schools make it a Master’s degree. In each of the preceeding cases, the PA applicant is still eligible to sit for the licensing exam. Making it a more rigorous educational requirements doesn’t make for better PA’s, but it does make for fewer PA’s, meaning that PA’s make more money.

So yes, licensing is nearly always a grift. In fact, I can’t think of a single time when it isn’t.

By Divemedic, ago