The bill is being celebrated as "gun control" by Democrats and the mainstream media (pardon my repetition), and they should celebrate it. With one mass shooting, a mere 17 kids, they got the Republicans to enact their policies for them. The Dems don’t have to worry about not getting votes next time, the Republicans do; in fact, judging by the anger at Republicans, I wouldn't be surprised if not one that voted it for it was re-elected.
As always, the Republicans are beaten badly because the Dems have a strategy and work it relentlessly. While Republicans go along complacently, the Dems hire organizers who work for years in preparation for the times they can push their agenda, and in this case, they don't even need to push their agenda. They didn't have to do a thing except propose amendments that make them look good to their base.
I’m not saying Bloomberg and his minions killed the kids themselves, or arranged the shooting, but the response to the shooting was clearly planned and executed like a military operation. Far too many moving pieces dropped into place far too quickly for me to believe it’s just a reaction. Florida is late to the show; new laws have already been passed in other states. Do you honestly think the kids had a list of companies to boycott? I doubt half of them even knew who the NRA is, let alone sporting goods companies that don’t have stores in South Florida. Wasn't the girl with the Sinead O'Connor hair talking about boycotting Cabela’s? The nearest Cabela’s is close to Atlanta. How many of the aggrieved students even know who they are?
"Wait a minute, SiG. What do you mean there are ways around the good features, but not the bad?"
Glad you asked. The strongest feature is the Coach Aaron Feis Guardian Program, which allows people who work on school property to carry concealed. As bonus, the volunteers get to take 132 hours of classroom and range training to get better at their new role as marshals. How much would you expect to pay at Gunsite or Thunder Ranch for 16 days of training? Comparing some courses at Gunsite (finding one that sounds close), it would be over $6000 not including air fare, lodging and all the rest. If you accept the responsibility of carrying, the taxpayers foot the bill. The bad part of this is that a late compromise took teachers out of eligibility for the program, so in effort to say, "we're not arming teachers", they took away the teachers' right to defend themselves.
The way around it, though, is that the local school district and sheriff's department can decide not to allow the program. In a county as sapphire blue as Broward, what do you think the chances are the Sheriff Israel will allow it? A sheriff known for chumming around with Hillary and Obama - before he was known for assigning responding officers to "wait outside while students died". You know how it goes, there's two chances: slim and none, and slim already left town.
The bad features are all the gun control provisions and I don't see anyway around those.
The most useless is the 3 day waiting period, which is waived for holders of a state concealed carry permit (technically called the CWFL) for handguns and for those who completed a hunter safety course for the long guns. I haven't found a single study that says those are useful at all, and especially not for school shooters, who plan these things for years. A 3 day waiting period is "cooling off period" to prevent crimes of passion - as if they're even good for that.
Next most useless is raising the age to purchase long guns to 21, the same age as to buy a handgun. Again, all they're doing is denying civil rights to people for something that has never been shown to matter. Today's fun fact: do you know how many mass murders in the last five years have been committed by someone under 21 years of age? Two: this cretin and the one in Sandy Hook.
The last gun control provision is not only useless but pointless: banning bump stocks. All that a prohibition on bump stocks will do is reduce the sales of a couple of small companies, maybe push them out of business. After the first reports that the Las Vegas shooter had bump stocks, I haven't heard of a single crime that involved them - and you know how first reports are always wrong. You've also got to know someone's been looking for more crimes to blame on them. The final law left the definition of a bump stock vague enough to ensure lots of prosecutorial discretion:
As used in this section, the term “bump fire stock” means a conversion kit, a tool, an accessory, or a device used to alter the rate of fire of a firearm to mimic automatic weapon fire or which is used to increase the rate of fire to a faster rate than is possible for a person to fire such semiautomatic firearm unassisted by a kit, a tool, an accessory, or a device.Real quick: does this outlaw trigger jobs? What about drop-in triggers from your favorite race gun trigger company? If the prosecutor is trying to run up a laundry list of charges against someone, I bet they go there. What about shoe laces or rubber bands?
There are worse provisions, including creating Risk Protection Orders that allow confiscation of guns without due process. I will need to look at the law in more detail.
Look, none of the gun control measures in this thing affect me. I'm so far over 21 I barely remember even being 21, I have a CC permit so no waiting periods, and I couldn't care less about bump stocks. What I have against those three things is they're meaningless if not counterproductive and they take away human rights. Those gun control proposals will have no effect on the next psychotic killer - who probably already has his guns and is already known to various government agencies. Bad laws reduce respect for all laws, and liberties lost in the heat of the moment, when "we've got to do something" never come back. Florida has gone from being a friendly environment for gun owners to one less friendly. You can blame it on whoever you want, but things are changing and not in a good way. This has been going on for the last few years.
I think the law is very vague. Read my post about the bump stock definition.
ReplyDeletehttp://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2018/03/floridas-soon-to-be-new-gun-control-law.html
I would say that Gov. Scott screwed his plans to fill Bill Nelson's seat, except that Nelson is about as far left as a Californian politician.
ReplyDeleteStill. I think the anti-gun people have finally, finally lit a fire under the arses of the pro-gun people. Too little, too late, but finally.
Nelson is an evil we know.
DeleteScott just showed us we can't know him.
If you haven't "known" Ricky since he sicc'ed Angela Corey on George Zimmerman even after the police and the local DA said there was no "there" there, you ain't too bright. He's just another filthy piece of Koch-sucking Rove Republican swill. A wannabe Shrub, tryin' hard to be Jeb!! II.
DeleteDo you know where "Law Enforcement" live in your neighborhood? Do you know their schedules? Do you know their spouses' schedules? I do. These "laws" are only worth as much as the Blue Wall says they're worth. If there is no Blue Wall, then one can deal with the Elite appropriately at one's leisure.
That there is the exact kind of threat in writing that this law says they can come take your guns away for everyone's safety.
DeleteDidn't you KNOW that?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has some thoughts for you. And a significant number of people from his homeland corroborate the analysis.
DeleteI'm done with it. They can pass as many laws as they want at this point. I believe it's called Noncompliance.....
ReplyDeleteOk, so you're not complying with 1 law out of a zillion. But you will still comply with the laws defining consequences for not complying with this 1 law. Outcome is you volunteer for prison, which you believe will prick the conscience of nationalistic socialists. Hint: liberals don't have consciences, that's why they're liberals.
DeleteYou can blame it on whoever you want
ReplyDeleteBlame should be assigned according to the best available approximation of cause and effect. I blame the millions of Florida residents who at every moment keep deciding to obey these evil laws, and the evil government employees who administer them. Just because organized crime in Florida has 21 million members, that headcount size doesn't reduce the culpability of each of the millions of criminal principals, accomplices, and accessories in the slightest. The opposite position, that agreement of a large number of humans produces moral justification, produces horrors.
This IS NOT the "heat of the moment". It is a plan to force gun owners to surrender there rights or go to war. Nothing that we say or do will stop this march to an open communist state. We will ether fight or go quietly to the death camps. They will take the guns(and bibles) if we don't fight. Voting and calling our representative have prove to be an utter waste of time. All of you dance around the one and only solution that CAN work. The soap box has failed. The Ballot box has failed. That only leaves one. If we won't use it then we may just as well take the guns and stack them in front of democrat(communist party) headquarters. They'll get them anyway, sooner than later. Once they abolished the 1st 2nd and 4th amendments with these RPO's the legitimate elected government ended forever. Now it is just a matter of time until we say the wrong thing, or carry the wrong book. Or like the man in Seattle who "looked at people in a way that made them uncomfortable", to lose our weapons, and be dragged to the Gulag. That is really what all this is about. The nightmare has become reality. --Ray
ReplyDeleteMost gun owners keep looking at politicians for approval; if politicians won't recognize the gun owners as having a reason to fight, the gun owners will whimper but won't fight. Most gun owners won't stop paying the taxes that hire government employees to oppress them. Most gun owners would rather get on a white bus to prison than raise their hand against the leaders of the herd.
DeleteGun registration in Connecticut in 2014 was too shocking, and triggered a willingness to fight. Politicians have to be more gradual, more progressive, than that. All the stuff politicians wanted was openly in the gun bills this time, but they didn't pass much of it, this time.
Why thank you for that stunning support of the federal military dictatorship. I know what side you are on and why you don't leave a name. In fact there are millions of otherwise law abiding who WILL fight for there absolute holy and god ordained rights. I am a native of the rural mid west, and I'm here to tell you that they are fed up with this communist BS.---Ray
DeleteNearly everything governments do is communism. The rural Midwesterners aren't even slightly fed up with it, just with being on the losing end of "Who, Whom". They love communist wealth transfer, and will do anything to keep their medicare and social security flowing. They're not even at the point where a small number of successful, formerly law-abiding people with something to lose, hide contraband in the attic.
DeleteRural Midwesterners decided there is an absolute dictator in the sky, but concluded they should submit to it and worship it, not liberate themselves from it. They think happy thoughts about the protection of their imaginary friend, while regarding their brand logo of a man being tortured to death. They believe one of the highest human values is faith, belief contrary to evidence. All of this is fertile soil for a charismatic nut to hire a good screenwriter to plant the seeds of his prophesied rise. Heinlein's character for this was named Nehemiah Scudder.