There’s a question I’ve been asking for a year and a half. It was sparked by this Sun-Sentinel news report.
Nikolas Cruz was investigated after cutting himself on Snapchat, state report shows
[…]
“The DCF investigation came four days after Cruz’s 18th birthday, meaning he could legally purchase a rifle.”
[…]
“Cruz came under DCF’s supervision and care because he was classified as a vulnerable adult due to mental illness.”
Dear Mr. Guttenberg,
Yes, your daughter was murdered. That’s very sad, and it should never have happened.
But that does not justify you advocating for the large-scale violation of the human/civil rights of tens of millions of people who didn’t do it.
universal background checks, laws that will allow police to confiscate guns from people deemed dangerous, banning ‘high-capacity’ magazines and raising the age to purchase long guns from 18 to 21.
The bucket o’ chum who killed your daughter passed a background check. The courts and law enforcement failed to take his guns (as they could have done under the laws at the time). Law enforcement failed to arrest him for multiple reports of assault, vandalism, and felonious threatening. The FBI failed to investigate multiple — credible — reports that shooter was planning a school shooting. Reports have it that chumboy used low-capacity 10-round magazines, not “high-capacity” standard magazines. Age restrictions don’t stop criminals who buy illegal guns in blackmarket deals (also bypassing background checks) to shoot up schools.
Mr. Guttenberg, if you wish to play the victim card, lay it on the Coward County Sheriff’s Office — which pretty much failed to perform any part of their jobs — and the FBI (ditto), not millions of innocents.
And you might ask why DCF claims the shooter was a “vulnerable adult due to mental illness,” which would mean that he had been adjudicated mentally deficient, meaning that he was a prohibited person. If that’s the case, he should have been reported to NICS, and not allowed to purchase a gun. When authorities became aware that he possessed a firearm, he should have been arrested on felony prohibited-person-in-possession charges.
Your daughter wasn’t murdered because of a lack of laws infringing the rights of those who didn’t do it. She died because courts, law enforcement, the school, and DCF failed to enforce existing laws.
At this point in a gun control discussion, I tend to wonder what makes you think criminals will obey new laws any more than they did previous law. This time…
What makes you think the authorities will enforce new laws any better than currently ignored laws.
Gun advertisement’s front-page placement shows poor judgment
We are alumni from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.We write this letter to express our enormous disappointment for the front-page edition of your newspaper, printed on May 2, 2018 (Vol. 59. No. 7). On the page you published three different stories reporting on the direct effects that gun violence has had in our community in just the past year and a half: one about the Fort Lauderdale Airport shooting, one about the money raised for the victims and survivors of the MSD shooting, and a tribute to Alyssa Alhadeff, whose celebration of life took place yesterday on what would have been her 15th birthday.
Our disappointment in your poor judgment spurs from the ill-placed advertisement for the Fort Lauderdale gun show, offering discounted admission and concealed permit classes, placed immediately below the aforementioned stories.
The correct response from the paper should be, “Fuck you. Read the Constitution, twits.”
Nope.
We deeply regret placement of a gun advertisement on our front page Wednesday morning.
It is against our policy to run gun and other types of controversial advertising on our front page.
We understand how the juxtaposition of certain ads and news stories can appear extremely insensitive, and we failed to prevent such a juxtaposition today.
We are taking steps to ensure this does not happen again, and the Sun Sentinel now has a moratorium on gun advertising.
Ghu forbid a newspaper run anything “controversial” where it can be seen.
New lawsuit against the “pusillanimous” Peterson of Parkland.
Shooting victim’s dad sues deputy who didn’t enter school
The father of a student killed in a mass shooting at a Florida high school is suing the armed officer who stood outside the building as people were massacred within.Meadow Pollack was among the 17 killed on Valentine’s Day in a freshman building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Her father, Andrew Pollack, said Scot Peterson, the former sheriff’s deputy and the school’s resource officer, is his main target in the wrongful death lawsuit filed Monday in Broward County.
“He let my daughter get shot nine times at point-blank range,” Pollack told the Miami Herald. “He had the opportunity to go in and instead, let all those people get murdered.”
I need a link to the filing, to see the exact language. Warren v. District of Columbia and Bowers vs. DeVito, among others, pretty much established that the police have no duty to protect individuals; they “protect” society as a whole. Throw in “sovereign immunity” and I can’t see Pollack winning a suit against a cop for letting his girl be killed. Any real lawyer who wants to weigh in is very welcome.
IANAL, but there might be a case if the filing alleges a failure to protect the school, if Pollack claims that the school resource officer, assigned specifically to provide school security did not perform specific duties in his job description. The news story suggests he is making a claim of failure to protect his daughter specifically, but it would hardly be the first time reporters got legal details wrong. Hence my desire to see the filing.
But that still seems to leave sovereign immunity to deal with.
Emma “Ripley” Gonzalez, as expected, is dancing in the Tennessee Waffle House victims’ blood to…
… I can’t really say “make a point.” She tweeted:
“Removing the assault and semi-automatic weapons from our Civilian society, instituting thorough background checks and mandatory waiting periods (and raising the buying age and banning the production of high-capacity magazines) are the ways to stop shootings in America. >
Lessee
She also notes that James Shaw Jr. managed to stop the shooter without a gun of his own, proving that teachers don’t need guns. Yeah, and he got shot. Come to think of it, so did unarmed faculty at her high school. Go figure.
You know who didn’t get shot? The AR-armed man who stopped the Sutherland Springs shooter. Go figure that, too. And I wonder why cops bother with those “unnecessary” guns.
The chumbucket may also have been under indictment for his informal White House tour last year, which make him a prohibited person… ummm, just like the Parkland shooter (according to FL DCF), not to mention the aforementioned Sutherland Springs killer … so in Ripley’s pink unicorn world, he shouldn’t have been able to get guns at all.
Funny how criminals keep doing that.
ETA: I thought the shooter might be under indictment from the White House escapade, but it looks like that case was cleared. He had also been taken in for involuntary psych evaluation at one point; I don’t know if that included an adjudication of mental illness that would make him a prohibited person.
…(close enough that I hit the floor). With for-real fully automatic weapons.
When do I get on the cover of Time?
QoD: “I was somewhere near a shooting once and so now I’m a stainless steel saint” edition…
I’ll just shut up and let Dullhawk have the final thousand words…
Law enforcement failed 42 times to do anything about the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School murderer. The school failed to do anything about him. DCF failed, despite an apparent adjudication of mental incompetence. In turn, someone in government neglected to report him to NICS, so he was able to buy a gun from an FFL.
The Coward County Sheriff’s Office ignored an impassioned plea from a family member. (Several, really, including one from the suspect himself.)
The FBI ignored TWO reports of concern about the shooter-to-be. One of those reports was very detailed; including that the suspect was armed and wanted to shoot up his former school. The other report was that the suspect wanted to be a famous school shooter.
Coward County Sheriff’s deputies… cowered outside, and let the shooter kill. (Peterson now claims that he heard shots, but thought they came from outside, therefore he hid… outside. Ignoring screaming kids pouring out of the building.)
So you blame…
The rifle. And every honest gun owner in the country who didn’t commit the crime.
There are an estimated 16,000,000 AR-pattern rifles alone in America. The Parkland shooter used one of those, which government should have prevented him having in the first place.
There are at least 265,000,000 firearm of all types in America. Some estimates reach 750,000,000.
Your shooter used one.
You want “assault weapons” banned. Yet you have no constitutionally specific definition of such. As a result honest gun owners reasonably wonder if you plan to take them all.
Estimates of gun owners range from 55,000,000 to over 120,000,000.
Your shooter was one PROHIBITED PERSON.
But you blame all gun owners — whom, I repeat, didn’t do it — for the criminal acts of one prohibited person whom the government allowed to kill. You negligently throw out the term “NRA” as shorthand for all gun owners and accuse us of murder, which sounds like slander/libel to me.
As many as 120,000,000 honest people armed with as much as 750,000,000 small arms are watching you accuse and threaten us; watching you attempt to sic the forces of government on us for crimes we did not commit, in a mass 18 U.S. Code § 241 conspiracy against constitutionally-protected human/civil rights.*
“Forces of government” seemingly too incompetent to stop one crazed killer.
Is it wise to piss off that many armed people with only the Browardly backing of government?
Try it. Try us.
* What? You believed CNN when they told you only “NRA” money keeps politicians from doing YOUR bidding? No, it’s 55,000,000 to 120,000,000 VOTERS who will — and have in past — toss their oathbreaking posteriors out of office.
If only because they are too young to recall how it used to be.
Parkland survivor suggests Florida spring break boycott until gun control law passes
“Let’s make a deal DO NOT come to Florida for spring break unless gun legislation is passed,” David Hogg wrote on Twitter. He says the politicans aren’t listening to students and others calling for gun control, “so maybe they’ll listen to the billion dollar tourism industry in FL. #neveragain.”
He’s made it clear he isn’t familiar with stuff as old as the Constitution. But recent history remains unmastered as well.
Once upon a time, Florida had what Pencilneck here would consider “stronger” gun laws.
It also had a little tourism problem.
It seems that wily criminals figured out that tourists were basically disarmed by state law. Tourists were getting mugged and murdered left and right. After a particularly nasty murder of a German national, Germany issued an advisory for its citizens to avoid Florida.
Florida finally did a few things about the problem. One was not letting car rental companies conspicuously mark their cars, making tourist ID a little tougher for criminals. That’s a little silly, since folks not in rental cars were getting hit.
Florida then allowed nonresident concealed carry.. They recognized several other states ‘CCW licenses, and they will issue Florida licenses to qualified nonresidents..
And suddenly tourism crime dropped to… well, I hate to put it this way, but normal levels.
So go right ahead, pencilboy. “Toughen” your laws. And watch the tourism stay away — again — because you want helpless victims for your criminal buddies.
Some people need to put down the smart phone and face reality.
A gentle reminder that all we are aiming for here is stricter gun laws that make it harder for people to get guns (because it shouldn’t be easier than getting a drivers license) and the removal of Military Grade Weapons from Civilian Society. #BanAssaultRifles #GunContolNow
— Emma González (@Emma4Change) February 25, 2018
Why, bless your heart.
I’ll take that one by one.
Are you stupid, or an outright liar, buzzcut?
Have you considered blaming the lunatic who shot up your school, who lied on his 4473? The Sheriff who admit admits his agency took 23 calls on chumbucket, and only handled 16 of them “correctly” even by his apparently nonexistent standards? The state and local agencies that blew off a total of 42 pre-shooting calls on chumbucket, including one from the perp himself? The FBI which admits to ignoring 2 very specific warnings by name?
Have you considered blaming whoever was responsible for reporting to NICS that bucketboy had been adjudicated a “vulnerable adult die to mental illness,” meaning he was a prohibited person, and should have failed his multiple background checks?
Have you considered blaming the four deputies who refused to enter and face a shooter, demonstrating tinier testicles than your unarmed coach?
And who do you blame for your own ignorant call for the violation of human/civil rights?
If anyone is on Twitter, or has this snowflake’s email address, please forward these questions to her. I’d really like to see her answers. She can reply by the same route, or post a comment here.
Lesson 2: The Constitution. You may have heard that word.
Lesson 4: “A Hunting We Will go”
Lesson 5: “Voting for Dummies Democrats”
Lesson 6: Supplementary Reading: Remedial Journalism 100
Lesson 7: Declaration of Independence 4 Dummies
Remedial Practical Civics 100, Lesson 1
A bunch of teens in Florida skipped school and went to Tallahassee to demand more of the same gun control that failed to save their classmates. Like petulant two year-olds, they whined and screamed when they weren’t given what they want when they want it.*
In short, they failed their civics class.
OK, kids. Here’s the down and dirty on what your teachers should have taught you about how the legislative process works…
David! Take the Tide Pod out of your mouth!
First, you were likely told (if told anything) that a citizen tells a legislator what he wants, the legislator drafts a bill, the bill is entered in the house/senate/whatever (this generic, as it depends on locale), it gets voted on, and the governor signs it into law.
Emma! Do not stick that fork in the electrical outlet!
Believing that to be the case, it’s… slightly understandable why the poorly educated public school victims didn’t understand their rejection. Here’s the reality.
1. Citizen wants something.
He either spends months or weeks (and sometimes years) working his way through staffers until someone brings it to the legislators attention with a recommendation to submit a bill.
Sometimes there are ways to bypass the staff filters. It helps if you’ve made large campaign contributions in the past, or can make a credible suggestion that such are forthcoming.
The other way is to get the media on your side. In your case, CNN et al used you to push their preexisting agenda. You didn’t use them. If you’d used them, your class president would have created an astroturf “media” association, instead of a long time CNN producer pretending to be a stay-at-home mom and organizing you.
2. So the legislator knows what you want. He doesn’t write the bill. He doesn’t have the time. You have to write, annotations to appropriate state statutes and all. (And that’s how come the NRA’s fingerprints are sometimes on legislation you don’t like; they remembered to do what you forgot or never knew.)
3. Congratulations, you have a proposed bill. Now Honorable Joe Blow’s staffers are going to throw it on the slush pile of other proposed bills. If they can get to it in time for the next session, they’ll scour it for booby traps like “pi equals 3.1” or legalizing naked Jello hamster/human marriage (people try that sometimes).
4. Your bill is clean. Interested legislator submits it to the calendar. Now the calendar will be checked to see if there are more bills than the legislature has time to address. If folks don’t think your bill is quite as important as another, you may not make the cut. Sorry; try again next session.
Or your bill is scheduled for consideration…
5. …in every committee that covers any topic covered by your bill: Crime/Judiciary, Finance (it’s going to cost something to implement, right?), and anything else. Any one of them can stall it, or kill it.
6. Kill it? How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
Judiciary: “Wait? We’re going to raise the age for rifles to eighteen because a chumbucket shot up his old school? Didn’t anyone tell these kids that it’s already illegal for a prohibited person to buy a gun, conceal it, carry it into a gun-free zone, and kill people? We don’t need this. Inexpedient To Legislate!”
Finance: “Umm… confiscate 100,000 AR-pattern rifles? Compensating the owner for the taking at $700 to $5,000 per gun? That’s as much as half a billion bucks we don’t have. If we raise taxes to fund that, none of us are getting reelected. ITL!”
Or even “One known, crazy, prohibited person murdered folks, and these darn kids blame the 120 million honest gunowners who didn’t do it? And the one AR, when there are roughly 16 million ARs out there that weren’t used? And maybe three quarters of billion other firearms? Did they confuse Pods for their Adderall again? ITL!”
“Wait. We banned “assault weapons” nationwide for ten years. It didn’t work then; why would it work now? ITL!”
I’ll give you a hint for improving your odds: All that lobbying and campaign-donating you did for Joe Blow? You’d better have greased up several more legislators as well.
And then there’s the amendment process to fix perceived flaws in your bill. Remember that.
But let’s say your bill, after months of wrangling, is scheduled for a floor vote. That brings us to Thursday’s scholastic fiasco..
Kinda.
7. Did I mention that you need a bill sponsor in the other legislative body, too? That your bill has to pass both houses? You were doing all of the above with Senator Jack Sucks, right?
But back to Thursday. You ignorant kids tried to jump the line. You don’t get to do that at Disney World, and it doesn’t work in the capitol. What you did was piss off a lot of other people who did bother to spend the bucks, and months or years, to get their own bills — equally or more important in their eyes. You told them that your bill isn’t important enough to work at, but tis more important than them.
You just blew off a lot of people, including potential allies.
8. So your bill makes to the floor. I’ll bet it was going to a vote. Sorry, kids; floor debate time. If you’re lucky, it might only take a day or two. But for something as controversial as the large-scale abrogation of human/civil rights, you could be looking at weeks of debate.
In both chambers.
But say the bill(s) finally get voted on, and somehow pass.
You thought it was going to the governor, didn’t you? Why, bless your hearts.
9. Now the house and senate bills go to reconciliation, because, what with committee changes and floor amendments, even if you got sponsors for identical bills in both chambers, it’s virtually impossible for both to have made it through with identical changes. Another committee has to iron out those differences. While procedures vary, expect the final markup bill to go back to the respective chambers for a final vote.
This politics shit ain’t as easy as you thought, huh, cupcake?
But in your happy-go-lucky world, the bill finally reaches the governor.
10. Will he sign or veto? Will he ponder, “Photogenic cry-on-demand kids backed by a CNN producer versus a really large opposed voting bloc. Can I still get reelected if I sign? Or will not signing get me tossed?”
I’ll guarantee that your opposition has been hammering the gov’s office with letters, faxes, emails, SMS, and phone calls the whole time. Did you?
A. The governor vetos. Back to the chambers, repeat most of above and hope you can bribe up the votes to override.
B. Happy, happy, joy, joy! He signs it. You now have a law and ARs magically evaporate, or whatever.
11. Well… No. Your shiny law may have an effective date on signing or in the future. Either way, it isn’t really enforceable until the law gets edited into state statutes. If you didn’t include an amnesty period for silly stuff like turning in firearms, you made instant criminals of 100,000 honest people.
But you have another problem. The courts.
What; you thought you were done when the gov signed your class tyranny project?
The fact is, very, very good lawyers are going to file suits against enforcement of your Intolerable Act. They’re going to bring up MILLER, LAMONT, CAETANO, HELLER, MCDONALD, and BOWERS vs. DEVITO. Do you even know what those are? Then WTF are you doing pontificating on firearms policy?
An attorney who really wants to ridicule you will cite HAYNES, and note that your law doesn’t apply to felons.
In your defense, with exception of Thomas, the Supreme Court has misplaced its one testicle. SO if you can get the circuit court to uphold part of your law, you might get a partial victory.
So your law is law. Good luck with that. California, Connecticut, and New York tried registering “assault weapons” (making them among those rare places where the term means anything). Care to guess how that went?
CA: 2.33% compliance. Over 97% of gunowners told them to fribble off.
CT: 13.44% compliance, with the rest more or less saying, “Try it.”
NY: 4.45% compliance. The rest were too busy giggling to issue a statement.
That was just registration. Not confiscation. Do you really want to try your luck? Or, rather, the luck of the cops you’re sending out to do the dirty deeds? (Unless you were volunteering to take point. No?)
I’ve noticed that some victim disarming idiots point to Australia’s success in firearms confiscation. But have you wondered why they keep having new amnesty periods? I’ll give you a hint: After 22 years of confiscations and amnesties, the Australian government now estimates they have achieved approximately 20% compliance.
Closer to home, California began a confiscation program. As an example of how well that’s working:
Santa Cruz County law enforcement agencies teamed up with agents from the California Department of Justice Bureau of Firearms for a two-day operation on Tuesday and Wednesday to recover guns owned by individuals who are prohibited from possessing them, according to the Santa Cruz County Law Enforcement Chief’s Association.
Multiple agencies from the state and local levels. Two days. 47 addresses. They have the addresses and names because they have registration. If these laws work, they knew exactly where to go to arrest who with what.
They were able to bust one guy. With one gun.
California has a backlog of some ten thousand new prohibited persons (and growing). At the rate of one half a gun per day, that will take how long…
That’s a math test. Answer it. No; it isn’t common core, so the right answer matters.
20,000 days. Just shy of 55 years. Not counting people constantly joining the list.
Lecture over. It’s time for your final exam.
Telling your anti-rights agenda teachers to shove their candyland version of politics gets you an automatic passing grade.
Figuring out you were wrong about the whole thing is an A+.
* Side note: You kids played hooky from school. A legislator paid for your transportation to and from Tallahassee, and bought your meals. Such a sacrifice on your part.
All those grownups who showed up to oppose your CNN’s 18 U.S. Code § 241 production? They took unpaid time off work to defend their rights (and yours, though you haven’t figured that out yet). They paid their own ways, and bought their own food. They sacrificed for something they truly care about.
You’d best factor that principled and dedicated opposition into your plans.
Random Acts of Gibberish 
