A euphemism for children.

Greg used it in conversation. I snortled.

Brain Blogger

I’m curious to hear what people think. Would you not see a doctor if you knew he had a gun in his office? Do you feel that physicians are similar to the Red Cross and that they should be neutral and conflict avoiding?

Someone needs guidance and you guys and gals are the perfect ones to help.

No, really. Friggin' CHAINS

Stephanie Ragusa was arrested a third time on April 28, 2008 and charged with having sex with an underage boy.

First things first. I'd prefer, if guilty, she had a rope around her neck, but the fact of the matter is I don't know all the facts and can't pass judgement. What I can bitch about is the way she's locked up like some sort of violent felon.

Seriously. She's a 26 year old woman of slight build. I can understand some sort of restraint that prevents her from standing up and booking it to the nearest door, but she's chained up like some sort of 300 pound former linebacker accused of ripping a school bus full of nuns in half with his hands, eating said nuns, and then wearing their habits like a diaper.

I'm surprised they didn't put on some sort of hockey mask a la Hannibal Lecter so she can't eat someone's kidneys with a side of fava beans.

Because it is clear that easy access to drugs with the knowledge of how to use them is forcing physicians to commit suicide

And when the pain is too much, doctors have easy access to prescription drugs and a precise knowledge of both how the body works and the amount of a drug needed for an overdose to stop breathing and halt the heart.

"All physicians have access to neat, clean ways to commit suicide," said Dr. Robert Lehmberg, a Little Rock, Ark., surgeon who has battled depression and long considered suicide "an exit strategy if absolutely necessary."

First off, I say a 3 day waiting period to obtain prescription drugs is in order, as a cool off time to ensure the person isn't going to commit suicide with them. Also, we need stricter background checks on doctors to make sure they don't do these kinds of things. Third, we need to restrict the manufacturing of these so-called "assault pills" who's only purpose is to kill people quietly and painlessly. Death should hurt and be really, really messy apparently.

Because that's what the anti's tell us all the time - that even though most of the deaths from firearms are suicides, if it weren't for the gun, people wouldn't kill themselves. I guess the same logic can apply to medicine, then.

Of course, there's that small, small chance that people who have decided to take their lives wish to do so in the least painful way and the tool used, be it a firearm or pill-bottle, has no bearing on the decision itself, only the method, but that'd go against gun grabber logic wouldn't it?

My mother told me that she helped conserve water since it was a drought and that because everyone stopped using water, the water company realized it was losing profits so it jacked up the prices after the fact.

Seems she's not the only one to notice.

This should have happened the other way around. Jack up the price to reflect the lower supply and watch usage drop. This makes them look like economic idiots.

Don't resist. Don't agitate. Don't fight back. Otherwise you might end up killing the bastard

At 1:10 p.m., a male suspect came through the courthouse's west entrance. As he approached a walkthrough electronic screening device, two bailiffs told him to go through it.

He produced a handgun and fired at them, Pinellas County sheriff's spokesman Jim Bordner said. The two bailiffs shot and killed him.

One of the bailiffs was shot, suffering a nonlife-threatening injury, Bordner said. Further details on the bailiff's condition were not disclosed.

How many more stories like this do we need to read before everyone realizes it's simply better to not resist, to just give the criminal misunderstood individual what he asks for, even if that happens to be your life?

The sheep were really startled, too

"I knew when I looked in his eyes. It was something," she said. "I can tell a lot by a person's gestures, his eyes. I made eye contact, and his eyes told me to run, run for my life, and that's what I did."

Now, I'm not going to make too much fun of this woman because yeah, run. That's actually a good idea when the option is available. I mean, I like you and all that, but in a situation like this, you're on your own bud. Had she screamed that she saw his gun (which she did), he may have shot her instead.

But this lady, on the other hand

Shara Ellis, a property manager in the courthouse taking care of some civil matters, said everybody ran for cover following the shooting.

"I didn't see much. I heard," Ellis said. "I was standing in front of the elevator to go to the law library. … In that moment, I heard an explosion. … I was just riveted to the spot. I didn't move right away. When I did, I went to the detector. A man was on the floor in a ball. He had a backpack on."

Sounds like a standard case of being in condition white and switching too fast to red. Now, I can't speak too well on firearm reports in buildings, but one would suspect you could at least get a North / South bearing on where the shot came from... and go the OTHER way.

Luckily, the bailiff that was shot is fine. The shooter is in good condition too (room temperature is perfect for crazy killers) so it at least turned out ok in the end. It especially turned out much better for the hundreds of unarmed people in the building who could have done nothing had the perp managed to take out the bailiffs and then wandered through the halls.

But, the Gun Free-ness keeps them safe!

Hell, I'll show everyone -

This is a tragic story

PORTLAND, Maine - A nine-year veteran of the Portland Police Department died of injuries after his handgun discharged in what police described yesterday as a tragic accident.

Sergeant Robert Johnsey was apparently preparing his duty weapon for his next shift when it accidentally discharged late Monday at his home in Westbrook, wounding him in the leg, investigators concluded. Johnsey died a short time later at Maine Medical Center in Portland.

Portland's police chief, Timothy Burton, made the announcement, calling Johnsey's death a sad and tragic moment for his department.

Westbrook's police chief, William Baker, whose department led the investigation, said evidence at the scene clearly indicated that Johnsey's Smith & Wesson semiautomatic handgun went off accidentally.

"Our preliminary assessment led me to conclude that Sergeant Johnsey was doing something that all of us in law enforcement do 240 times a year - that is, getting our duty belts ready for the next day of work," Baker said.

Now, I can't comment on the accidental vs. negligent part. I know my father has 500 doohickeys hanging off his utility belt and it amazes me he could get to anything with any sort of accuracy as it is, so it is quite possible something got caught somewhere it shouldn't have, depressing the trigger and firing the pistol. I also cannot fault a rule violation as holstering your weapon points the muzzle towards your leg (and occasionally your wedding tackle), something you simply don't want to destroy.

For me, I remove my holster and pistol as a single unit. This keeps the chances of anything getting in the trigger guard to a minimum as it is covered by the holster itself. I also do not decock or unload my pistol each and every time I take it off (yes, it is kept well away from being accessible by children. I do love my girls). Oddly, there are many reasons I don't do this. Bullet setback from repeated chambering and the fact the pistol is useless in that state are two reasons, but the biggest one in my mind is the increased chance of this scenario happening.

This also highlights something that I tend to see differently than other gunnies and that I personally do not like safeties on pistols. One, they get in the way of shooting when needed, two - I think accidents like this happen because people tend to rely on them in place of the 4 rules. If you think the safety will prevent the gun from going off you might handle it differently. This, of course, is just my opinion.

Every time you adjust your firearm, there's a risk. It's terrible for this officer that this happened, especially when you consider the type of danger he had to put himself into each and every day part of which involved holstering and unholstering his weapon all the time. My prayers go out to his family.

(Cross posted at The Line is Here)

Because of shit like this

The statute was introduced by Florida Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a Republican from Miami.

His bill requires motorcyclists to "maintain both wheels on the ground at all times."

...

"When I saw that, I said, 'I've got to do something -- at least bring attention to it.' "

No, you nanny-statist POS, you don't have to do anything about it. Yeah, it's dangerous, but guess what? Natural selection has a great solution already in place and it doesn't cost the taxpayers a dime.

How can we get it into people's thick skulls that it's not the government's job to keep you safe as an individual. It's not their role to provide you with health care / a house / three square meals a day / etc. It is especially not their role to ensure you live your life in the safest, most banal manner possible.

Why do we grant these idiots (the legislators, not the cycle riders. They're idiots, but ones that really only hurt themselves) any sort of legitimacy? I do not need some pencil pusher in Tallahassee insisting that I live by his or her standard of safety. Each time we allow these maroons to make laws like this, we cede more and more of our freedom and never at any time do we gain anything in return.

Aren't there more pressing issues than trying to regulate stupidity? I mean, wheelies and Truck Nutz are something that require our representatives' attentions why?

Bill Quick depresses me with this article. It depresses me because I feel about the same.

I used to say I'd rather see Hillary in office over Obama, McCain over Hillary, and Brain Eating Aliens abduct us all rather than any of them. Now, I'm not so sure.

I trust McCain's judgement on 70% of things. However, I think Bill is right in that a McCain win will put us back further than what a Democrat could do in 4 years (I think it'd be a single term, really). But then again, I think McCain would appoint better Supreme Court justices than Hillary or Barrack McLovin' Obama.

Now, I think I'd prefer to see Hillary in the White House over either one. She's hated enough to where I don't think she'd get much done. Barrack Shazam Obama is my worst fear but the most likely result and his nebulous Hope and Change will result in... well, that's hard to say.

And to think I thought Bush was a shitty choice. At least I (wrongly) had some faith in him to begin with.