SSCC #337 – TSA

You would think that given all the previous incidents of child molestation by the TSA would mean they would filter this guy out.

Until 2002, Harkins was a Catholic priest working at churches across
South Jersey. But the Diocese of Camden removed him from ministry
because it found he sexually abused two young girls. Now, in a new
lawsuit, a third woman is claiming she also is one of Harkins’ victims.

Evidently not.

The security checkpoint between Terminals D and E is a busy place where
thousands of people – including lots of kids – pass through every day.
But you might not believe who the I-Team observed working as a TSA
supervisor at that checkpoint this week: Thomas Harkins.

That’s right folks.  He was hired by the TSA and given free reign to molest your little daughters without legal recourse.  Is anyone though not surprised by this?  This to me is expected.

State Sponsored Criminal #337:  Thomas Harkins

molest_kid_thumb

Because when the church kicks you out for molesting little girls, go talk to your Uncle Sam.  After he puts his hands in your pocket you can put your hands in that little girls pocket!

SSCC Honorable Mention – Dallas

Here’s the static link to the video in case embedding didn’t work.

Obviously this guy felt that rules were for everyone else and not him.  Thankfully no one was injured and this is yet another example to add to my anointed class post

Since he didn’t identify as an officer and he’s currently facing charges I’m putting this as an honorable mention.

State Sponsored Criminal Honorable Mention – Hector Roa

Because rules are for everyone else, no one, not even the property owner can keep you out of his bar!

via Bob S.

Quote of the Day -Tam (05/24/2012)

Using abstract targets to pretend you’re shooting anything other
than imaginary bad guys makes you look like dorky hypocrites with
corporate sponsorship jerseys.

Tam Why Fruity Targets? Because racegun!

May 24, 2012


[I find it doubly ironic that the bickering exists considering the P in USPSA and IPSC stands for practical.  More practically odds are you’re going to be shooting a two legged varmint than a flying oddly shaped octogon.  Which oddly enough is labeled the “classic target” while the practical target still used in USPSA is the “metric” target.

Does it really matter the shape of the target, not really though it does make for much more interesting problems with how you can cover the targets.  Having a separate A zone leaves a choice to the shooter for solving the problem.  He can try and hit the bigger A zone while risking clipping the no-shoot, or he can aim for the smaller A zone and just risk getting a B hit instead.

As I’m learning while creating new stages, the fun part about medium and long strings of fire is creating a stage which provides numerous trade offs and different paths to solve the problem.  Doing that is difficult, but it’s what makes a course fun to shoot.  Pulling those targets to me pulls something I can use to add extra trade offs for the shooter.

Yes the upper AB zone happens to resemble a head, with the lower zones being a body but this is practical shooting, not bullseye.  I understand Caleb’s concern and it’s reasonable.  We all want to grow the sport and different targets make some feel better.  But let’s not kid ourselves, even the hovering octogon is a bad guy, it’s shape doesn’t really matter when you’re running a stage to resemble a house.  Doubly so when the stage description leads off with:

You have just arrived on the scene of a call about a home invasion robbery.  The door is closed and you cannot see through the windows.  Starting position is hand on the door knob…

Do you need to create a scene for a stage.  No, but it can also be really fun, especially if there’s a prop involved.  Why do I care about the briefcase and getting it to the end of the course of fire?  The answer, nuclear launch codes!  Why do I have this pizza box?  The answer, you’re delivering a pizza in Detriot a post apocalyptic waste land, delivery failure means they get it for free.  If I spend time designing a stage and coming up with a solid course of fire and spend time making sure someone’s not going to drive a tank through it, I’m going to spend some extra time polishing it!

It’s fun and this is a game, but it does seem very silly and hypocritical to throw “metric” targets out consider in the end it’s still the same thing mentally but with a differently shaped target.  I need to post my 30 minutes or less stage.  About everyone who saw it at the end said, I want to shoot that! -B]

Ear Worm Wednesday–05/23/2012

Don’t know why but this one’s done it.

New Medicine – Race you to the bottom.

I think it’s because the chorus reminds me of Stich Jones in the bar in Heartbreak Ridge.

The Following Term Comes to Mind…

Warning, especially if you have kids:

Image courtesy of Robb Allen found via JayG

Via Ry, I stumbled across this set of blazing stupidity.

Let’s set the scene first:

Volusia
County School officials stand by a Deltona High School nurse’s decision
to refuse a student his inhaler during an asthma attack, citing a lack
of a parent’s signature on a medical release form.

Yeah, but I mean how bad was it really?

He said the school dean found his inhaler during a search of
his locker last Friday. The inhaler was still in its original packaging
— complete with his name and directions for its use; however, the
school took it away because his mother hadn’t signed the proper form for
him to have it.

Ok, so we have positive authority that this medication was prescribed to the individual named by a medical doctor.

He was taken to the nurses office in need of medical attention, more specifically medication prescribed to deal with his condition.  The nurses response to the situation:

“As soon as we opened up the door, we saw my son collapsing
against the wall on the floor of the nurse’s office while she was
standing in the window of the locked door looking down at my son, who
was in full-blown asthma attack,” Rudi said.

So the attack was bad enough to cause loss of consciousness, yet the nurses response was to lock the door keeping the child in need of medical aid out.  Further the school while depriving the student of his life saving medication did the following, or I should say didn’t:


Selesky could not explain why 911 was never called.

“I understand if you can’t give it to him call 911,” Sue Rudi said. “Why did you not call 911?”

Here’s my problem with this whole statement, they can’t give him medication.  They can not hand him medication and say, “Take this.”  That does not mean they have legal right or cause to prevent someone from taking prescribed medication.  Parent signature or not.  The school does not have need, nor cause to be briefed on all medical issues surrounding a student if the student is capable of management on his own.  The school is not a medical doctor with training and ability to determine if the child does or does not require medication.  That is up to 3 different people, the child, the parent, and the doctor.  The school is not in that loop and has no business in that loop.

So what term comes to mind, Willful Negligence.

This whole incident fits to a T the definition of Willful Negligence.  They did not call 911 despite the individual exhibiting signs of respiratory distress up to and including a loss of consciousness.  The school actively sought out and withheld medication that could have prevented the condition from worsening.  The medication was obviously prescribed to the individual and their was nothing indicating that the medication was intended for any other individual.  Their actions, or inaction depending on your view, directly contributed to the loss of consciousness by the student and the aggravation of his condition.  Their inaction could have also easily resulted in death had the mother not arrived when she did.

This is your public school system.  This is how they treat your most precious gifts.  They do not care about your child, they care about you being a good cog in their bureaucracy.  How dare you give your child life saving medication without you going and telling them it’s OK.  Your child isn’t yours to them, your child is theirs, to let die like a laboratory experiment so they can feel good about making sure people go to the administrators for the medication required by a 17 year old.

I hope that woman lawyers up, because that school is responsible as well as the nurse and there is no doubt in my mind regarding negligence.  My wife would only have to utter one word if that had been my kid and it would have been world war 3 in there.  Rule 1 on my list of dealing with a man, “Never fuck with a mans family.” That includes stupidity, such as being willfully negligent, which might kill his kid.

Open Carry and Ass Clowns…

There is some yahoo running his mouth currently that those who open carry for any other reason than practicality are ass-clowns
Then another yahoo came in to say something that people exercising
their rights caused California legislators to double down on stupid.

Here’s the thing, when people open carry firearms, 99.99999% of the time not a damn thing happens
Most of the time no one cares.  When someone does care they are so
irrational about it it would be funny if it wasn’t for the danger they
create by calling 911 one in a panic.  Here’s some extra qestions that
are valid:

  • Is the gun in his hand?
  • No, then what the hell is the problem currently?
  • Is he physically assaulting someone or provoking attack?
  • Other than the fact he has a gun, what is he doing that is illegal or worth of suspicion?

Guns being openly carried by law abiding citizens is not a problem. 
Yes some times cops are harassed by people saying, he has a gun.  Good
one’s just inform them it’s legal and carry on about their business.  OK one’s ask you to cover up to save them time.  Bad one’s falsely try and arrest the carrier.

Open carry though helps desensitize those who would go into PSH over
the sight of someone carrying a gun.  Doubly so if you actually get
either of those first two officers.  (The second officer isn’t really a
bad guy, he’s just tired of answering the same question over and over. 
He proves his intent when after covering he says thanks and doesn’t even
bother to ask for your permit.)  The problem we get into is that we
have those third officers, who by their illegal actions reinforce the
PSH as being positive.

The open carrier has every right to exercise his rights within the
law.  If a decent population doesn’t exercise the right, just the same
as your legislators used the hammer of legislative force because you
did, they have no reason to preserve the right.  If no one exercises it,
why do we need to have it legal right, it’s just those nasty bad men
who do it then!  This also ignores the fact that California is honestly
not the best example to be using.  But that’s beside the point given
that the law they changed resulted in a legal case to push for shall
issue. 

Back to the overall theme and out of specifics; it is not the fault
of the open carrier that the officer charged with enforcing the law
decided to break the law and violate his rights for merely exercising
them.  It is not the fault of the open carrier that the officer decided
to reinforce the PSH as being positive.  It is the fault of their
leadership and departments for allow their officers to get away with
that behavior.  Why do they get away with that behavior, because we have
men like Pincus who say open carriers are ass-hats.

Are there actual ass-hats who open carry that I wish they shouldn’t? 
Yes there are, but they’re not actually as common as someone makes them
out to be.  As Robb said,


Do
the loud people get attention? Yes, they will and you won’t be able to
stop them by making their goals harder to achieve. Instead of expending
the energy ripping the few, problem OC’ers because they’re a danger to
your rights, use that effort to call your representatives and explain to
them why they should support the 2A. Do like I do and host calm, non
threatening Open Carry events.

The trick is to speak softly and still be louder than the fools.

Instead of bitching about people who open carry and calling attention
to open carry as if all who do it politically are “ass-clowns” that are
nothing but detriments to the fight for the Second Amendment, step up
and talk about the good they’ve done.  It’s not my fault that some idiot
doesn’t understand that discretion is the better part of valor, and
that in chess the game is to not loose
Calling me an ass-clown because I’m trying to help desensitize those
people while also being considerably more comfortable while carrying
doesn’t exactly win you any points either.  It paints you as nothing
more than your generic FUD of the same type as those who gifted us the
GCA 1968, the Hughes Amendment, and the ’94 assault weapons ban.  Guess
what, shut the hell up, go sit in the corner, no one gives a crap what
you have to say.

Doubly so since you’re so smart as to put cameramen down range next
to a target with someone shooting live ammunition, it begs the question,
who listens to the idiot when he speaks?  He obviously doesn’t have any
credibility, integrity is questionable since he’s providing ammunition
to the enemy, and his attitude is in the gutter with regards to those on
his own team.  Maybe he should go sign up for Smoke and Chunder,
obviously with how he feels open carriers are detrimental to the gun
rights movement Pincus and the Admin should get along great.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pissed when an open carrier does something
stupid
.  Especially when they’re stupid and they loose.  However I
direct my anger directly at that specific target.  I spend my time
making a lesson out of them to educate others.  I call them out as a
specific example because they are.  They are not common, they are are
rather the exception.  Open carriers as a whole are not the problem, no matter their reason for carrying openly.

*I realize Pincus probably didn’t mean to lump all open carriers under that umbrella but that’s exactly what he did.  That’s why you need to be very careful with your words when you’re directing an insult at someone.  You need to make sure it’s directed in the correct direction.

A Note for CSGV, Here’s What PSH Gets the Public (SSCC #336)

Someone on their way to work induced someone in the greater Boston area to go into a fit of PSH recently.

What people inside didn’t know–Brockton police had just received a
911 call–reporting a man with a gun walking toward the store.

911 caller: “And he’s got a gun in his back pocket, so I don’t know what’s up with that.”

911 Operator: What’s he look like?

Caller: He’s black, he has a red shirt on, and like tan pants.

So we have someone turning their pants brown on account of someone walking towards a store with a “gun” in their pocket.  So what happens to the store employees that don’t actually match the description?

Watch: the man police confront in the red shirt and black pants is Bill Ceneus, a 10 year employee of Save-a-lot.

You can see one officer wraps his arms around Ceneus, lifts him up, and within seconds, he’s on the floor.

Ceneus
is handcuffed and searched by three officers. No weapon is found…

Well I guess it’s a good thing the officers didn’t just shoot him.  But it begs the question, where’s the guy with the tan pants, since you know the officer is obviously color blind.

So
where’s the guy the 911 caller saw with a gun? While Ceneus sits in
handcuffs, another store camera shows police confronting a different
store employee–wearing a red shirt and tan pants. He’s in the produce
section –and as he shows them, he has a pricing gun. The police report
says that’s what “was mistaken for a firearm.”

Lets see here, the caller induced himself into a rage of PSH over what he thought was a gun.  The end result, one man physically assaulted and another detained and harassed.  The result of the physical assault is now a lawsuit whereby the taxpayers are going to pay out*.

The public at large, especially those who go into PSH over the sight of a firearm are not able to accurately separate real firearms from fake.  Take this (the call was for a man with an AK-47 mind you), this and this for other examples.  There are numerous other examples but those drive the point home.

There is a cure to the cause of PSH though.

State Sponsored Criminal #336: John Doe

*I am including this in the criminal count.  It was an unnecessary assault based on the ramblings of a panicking individual which the officer couldn’t be bothered to see he didn’t match the description or the fact red was a store uniform.  Doubly so since the report differs from witness statements and video as to their justification for force.

Sorry, busy tonight

Discovered today that for some reason my photo gallery is down.  I’m working on getting it back up and running.

That’s one of the sites I still need to move hosting I’m just not sure where to start yet.  I will say drupal makes that really easy.

So instead here’s a random picture.

DSC_1449

Who needs snow to use a snowmobile?