Finals Are Over

I have been offline for a couple of days because I just took the final exam for my last class to get (yet another) Bachelor’s Degree. This time, it was a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. When I went to campus to take those exams, I carried a can of pepper spray and an expandable baton on my person and a firearm locked in my truck. Why? Because of the behavior in the video that JKB over at GFZ posted. Watch the video on the right:

As I posted in the comments there, Florida law says:

A person is justified in using or threatening to use force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. A person who uses or threatens to use force in accordance with this subsection does not have a duty to retreat before using or threatening to use such force.

Assault doesn’t include a physical touch:

An “assault” is an intentional, unlawful threat by word or act to do violence to the person of another, coupled with an apparent ability to do so, and doing some act which creates a well-founded fear in such other person that such violence is imminent.

What is battery? While assault is defined as the threat to cause physical bodily harm, battery is the actual act of doing so. it is the crime of battery if you touch another person against his or her will or deliberately cause an injury to another person, however temporary or minor that injury may be. From the state statute:

The offense of battery occurs when a person:
1. Actually and intentionally touches or strikes another person against the will of the other; or
2. Intentionally causes bodily harm to another person.

Under section 784.03 of the Florida Statutes, indirect contact, such as throwing an object, can constitute battery if the indirect contact was intentionally caused by the accused and was against the other person’s will. Even spitting can constitute a battery. Mohansingh v. State, 824 So.2d 1053 (Fla. 5th DCA 2002) For that reason, I believe that shining a strobe in someone’s eye is either battery (the strobe is causing pain and disorientation), or assault (shining the light is intended to temporarily blind the victim and make it impossible for that victim to detect or defend against an attack).

Note that the law requires intent to touch, strike, or cause injury. That is referred to as mens rea.

All the law requires for nonlethal self defense is that you be in a place where you lawfully can be, and are the recipient of someone else’s imminent delivery of unlawful force. So:

  1. Are you where you can lawfully be? Yes. I am a student here to take an exam.
  2. Is the other person threatening to imminently use, or are they using unlawful force?
  3. Would a reasonable person believe that the attacker intended to touch, strike, or injure you in any way?
  4. Would a reasonable person believe that the person was about to (or was already attempting to) carry out that intent?

This meets the absolute lowest threshold for self defense. The real issue here is that you probably will get arrested, and it will cost you some money to defend yourself in court. Make sure that you have good CCW insurance, so it will pay for your legal defense.

I want you to note that there are perhaps half a dozen people that are assaulting him. That means the attackers will likely gang up on you, and that will likely mean that someone will be shot by the end of the fight.

Think about where this is headed.

Thought Exercise

Imagine that the US is in a second civil war. The left thinks that the military would simply use jets, tanks, and nukes to wipe out its own citizens. We all know that nukes are useless against your own people. Jets and tanks are only useful if the opposition is stupid enough to stand around in large groups, waiting to be wiped out.

What if instead, those opposition forces are doing things like this? The cops are not going to catch the people who did it. The fact that airports are “one of the most heavily surveilled areas possible” doesn’t matter, because the wires that were cut are more than 2 miles from the nearest terminal. Surveillance doesn’t extend that far in most cases.

Imagine that there was a simultaneous cutting of similar lines at four or five major airline hubs all over the nation. It would cause nationwide delays that could stretch for days.

This sort of action is something that the military calls a “force multiplier.”

Still True a Year Later

From a post last May:

What we are watching here is the death of the country that we grew up with.

It’s mathematically and historically certain at this point- our government and the nation it is nominally in charge of are about to fail. There is nothing that can prevent that. Do you think the American citizens will sit idly by while Conservative militias tell them that their social security and welfare are a thing of the past? How large will the riots be when the free money machine stops flowing?

  • We would still be living under a government with $30 something trillion in debts and another couple hundred trillion in as yet unfunded liabilities. Those over 45 or so are going to demand their Social Security, which we cannot afford to pay. Any one who thinks otherwise is foolishly deluded. The entire world is on the verge of an economic collapse caused by profligate spending and loose fiscal policy.
  • The bloated bureaucracy that is the Federal government. What to do with it? What are all of those workers going to be doing while you are telling them that they are fired? Sure, the government may have fallen by that point, but you still have a large number of now unemployed Feds who will be fighting for power. It will make the Somali warlord faction fight small by comparison.
  • With all of that going on, the Chinese and Russians are not going to stand idly by and do nothing. Likewise, neither are the Mexican cartels. As soon as the US government is weak, expect those who are strong to take action. So any new government will have to deal with that while also trying to get the domestic house in order.

You aren’t going to fix those problems with a charge up Bunker Hill, Capitol Hill, or any other hill. To try and do so would be an exercise in futility and a waste of your life. Even should you survive that battle, what of the next? and the next? and the one after that?

What SHOULD we do? Exactly what we are doing, that’s what. Watch, make sure that you, your families, and your like minded neighbors are in as good a position for weathering the coming storm as you can be. Have food, water, and shelter taken care of. Make sure you have skills in as many fields as possible: know some medicine, how to grow food, how to repair things. Those skills you don’t have, make friends with those locally who do have them. Make sure you aren’t a freeloader- bring skills to the table that those others will need. Store your wealth in things that aren’t measured in dollars. In other words, don’t put all of your eggs in the stock market, in cash, or the bank. When the economy collapses, all of that will become worthless. Instead, own land, own tangible things that are useful like a home, precious metals, tools, ammunition, canning supplies, and other things that are useful in trade.

So my advice here is to recognize that securing your own position through this is the best course of action. Understand what you can and cannot change, learn to tell the difference, and adapt to that which you cannot change. Governments fall, but the people remain. Make sure that you are one of the ones who remain. I know that some of you will think that this sounds defeatist, and maybe it is. I just don’t think that there is any way to change the course that this nation is on. It will play out, and my objective is to still be around to see what comes after.

Everyone Gets Paid for Everything, or Nothing

People have lost their minds and think that they should get money because they want it. Now some stupid whore has decided that, because she got cream pied by some random dude at a college frat party kegger, that businesses or someone should pay her because she is having to care for her crotch fruit.

“I think that at the very least, stay-at-home parents should earn the equivalent of working full-time on minimum wage,” she tells Yahoo Life about what inspired her to make the video. “In Michigan, this would be about $1,600 a month. However, I think to really make this work you should offer all parents either a monthly [stay-at-home parent] stipend or a voucher for free daycare. This would allow parents to have more freedom to make the decision that will work best for their family without sacrificing their career, if they would like to continue working.”

Say what? Then she doubles down:

Whether working outside the home or inside the home, we are all raising our children. However, only the parents working outside of the home are being compensated for the time spent working.

I just can’t fight the stupidity any longer.

Why not $250 an hour?

Then we would all be rich.

Our politicians are morons.

However, I fully support this. As a nurse, I can currently get a 10 week travel contract to California paying $3k a week plus per diem for expenses. Under this plan, nursing contracts would go up to $10k a week or more. I could take one contract a year and be retired for the other 42 weeks a year.