Previous Post
Next Post

Mr. Patterson (courtesy fox13news.com)

“A Plant High School student faces charges for bringing a firearm on campus after police — investigating an unrelated ‘vague’ threat — found hunting weapons in his vehicle,” foxnews13.com reports. That lead doesn’t quite make the grade (so to speak), in terms of telling readers that the young man in question had nothing to do with this “vague” threat. In fact . . .

The South Tampa school was put into a modified lockdown Wednesday morning while police investigated a possible threat.

During that time, a student arrived for school, but could not get inside because of the lockdown. Officers approached the student, who was waiting in his vehicle, and discovered a shotgun, ammunition and a knife.

Stupid kid probably consented to a search. Don’t they teach them anything in high school civics class?

The school was later taken off lockdown after nothing else suspicious was found.

Stratton Patterson, though, was charged with two counts of possession of a firearm on school property. His attorney admitted the 18-year-old made a mistake.

“He is, in fact, a hunter and it was an honest mistake. He simply forgot to remove the weapon after returning from a prior hunting excursion,” a statement from Barry Taracks said. “He is a great kid with no prior criminal history and is shocked to find himself in such a predicament.”

Forgot to remove his shotgun — with ammunition! — eh? If Mr. Patterson is like any other teenager, I’m thinking he simply couldn’t be bothered to take it out, figuring he’d done it a bazillion times before without incident, and it sure as hell beat schlepping back to the house all the time. Besides, cool!

Only now Mr. Patterson’s looking at a serious talking to from his parents (who will shell out thousands in his defense) and a judge, who will impose some kind of sentence that could well eliminate his gun rights for the rest of his life (no hunting for you boyo). This despite the fact that there is no evidence that Mr. Patterson intended to do anything criminal with his firearm.

Zero tolerance sucks. Gun control sucks. It’s time to reclaim our gun culture and with it, our American values.

Previous Post
Next Post

71 COMMENTS

  1. ‘Don’t they teach them anything in high school civics class?’

    I don’t think they teach civics class anymore.

    This is the Gunshine State so hopefully he’ll get a break from the prosecutor and get off with a few hundred hours of community service and keep his rights.

    • 18 year old high school kid with no priors on a malum prohibitum offense–some kind of deferred disposition (i.e. no technical “finding of guilt”, no technical “conviction”) would almost certainly be in store for him. Except, you know, guns, so maybe not.

      • No. Guns are EVIL to Liberals. So gun owners are evil men who must be punished to maintaining that evil object. Just like Appellate Court judges, educators have a black hole in their brains beyond the reach of reason.

      • Living 1500 miles from Florida, I’m not an authority on their law. But I checked the Legal Heat ap on my phone and checked my state’s law (Iowa) and Florida sounds similar. In Iowa it’s a class D felony to carry a firearm on school grounds, however it’s not a crime to have an unloaded, cased firearm in a non-passenger part of the vehicle or out of reach, yada, yada.

        My guess is the shotgun was not cased and possibly loaded. In which case he probably needs to be taught a lesson about how seriously the authorities take violations of their weapons laws. But it would take a real bastard of a DA to refuse to plea down to a misdemeanor.

        • Deferred dispositions are available for felonies as well as misdemeanors. Even if they are not “officially” available, prosecutors can think of ways to do it. For example, when Texas law was changed so that no deferred adjudication was available for DWI cases, some prosecutors here would simply let the charge hang for six months or so while the defendant paid an “administrative fee” to the office, took the relevant evaluations and classes, and otherwise behaved as if he had been convicted and placed on probation. If he toed the line for the given length of time, the charge would simply be dismissed per “prosecutorial discretion”. OTOH, even being arrested for a felony carries consequences unless you can get the record expunged. And, of course, it all varies state to state.

        • “prosecutorial discretion” – I think that’s the key phrase. Kind of like the AG (AKA Coal Miner’s Bastard Daughter) might use ‘prosecutorial discretion’ when the FBI makes it’s official recommendation for prosecuting a certain former Secretary of State.

          And true Ralph, DA and bastard go together like ham and eggs, but there’s more to it than just one man’s will to ruin a teenager’s life. DA’s offices work on finite budgets and charging a teenager with a felony is going to require a jury trial. Frankly, I’d think there’s bigger fish to fry in Tampa. But if it’s a slow week…

  2. My brother had a shotgun on school property once and he told the principal about it. The principal told him to go park on the other side of the street so he wasn’t on school property. Problem solved. And this was around 8 years ago, but it was in a small town and we had a principal who knew how to handle kids.

    • Not bad, but “don’t do it again” would have been better. What’s the difference what side of the street its on, the problem is a stupid law.

      • I agree – stupid law. Until such time that stupid law is repealed or IF its repealed, you’re still subjected to it.

        “What’s the difference what side of the street its on”

        I’d say jail time, criminal history and if the DA is a dick, your 2A rights going bye bye

        Other than that… no real difference.

        But until the time of repeal, is it worth the roll of the dice?

  3. I don’t recall bringing rifles to school but can relay in Florida during the 70’s it was common to see a rifle in the rear window of pickups.

    Unfortunately policing today is about revenue. The 1000 dollars might be a low estimate, not to mention every bullshit program he’ll have to attend to get back in the correct grace of the court. Meanwhile gang bangers gonna bang and hunters punished.

  4. I remember way back in the olden days when I could get a pass from the School to take off the day from school so I would not miss the first day of rabbit and pheasant season. That day there were almost no boys at all in school, even the ones that did not hunt were smart enough to get a pass too, ha, ha. Our history teacher even brought in an old, old Stephens crack shot single shot .22 rifle to teach us the safest way to carry your gun while out in the filed.

    Can you imagine a teacher bringing in a real gun today at school even for educational purposes, the black helicopters with jack booted storm troopers would mount an all out assault on the school.

    Those days are gone forever along with the wild game as now our favorite fields are now paved over with asphalt and concrete to create endless miles of new shopping centers that pay people minimum wage at part time work while down the road there are miles and miles of empty manufacturing facilities because the American greed monger rich have shipped all the jobs overseas and America has become a vast wasteland of underemployed and unemployed people almost all who have never known what it is like to get a fair wage for a days work because Regan made it legal to bust the only organization that protected the American Workers, the big strong Unions who are now an emasculated pitiful remnant of what they once were.

    • No, no, you have it all wrong. The 50s-70s were a horrible time when young people couldn’t find work and if they could they would be paid a pittance. We are much better off now that the unions have been busted and “free trade” agreements have been signed.

      • Well you are HALF right.

        Today 49% FORTYNINE PERCENT of US union membership is government employees. And growing. How does that fit your story? The union do love them some government.

        • That’s not that surprising when you consider most of the private sector fields that had strong Union membership have been driven out of the country.

        • Ohio Governor Kasich destroyed the Ohio Teachers Union and they reduced their salaries and benefits. He also hired Business Administrators with no educational degrees to penny pinch and run Ohio Schools like a greed monger business resulting in a second rate education for Ohio’s school children.

          Reducing teaching salaries also does two things, it discourages people from entering the field of education and the people left who are willing to work for reduced wages are second rate teachers.

          Now you Moron can you see that yes indeed workers in government should have every right to join a union even if it is just to maintain the salaries that they are currently receiving.

        • I was forced to join a union to work in a Deere warehouse back in college. They tried to fire someone 3 times because they were so useless but the union kept bringing them back in. Forever put a bad taste in my mouth of unions. I’ve always related corporate Unions to communism, equal pay for all down to the lowest common denominator, no incentive to work harder… I’m sure not all unions are like this, but it was my experience. From some teachers I’ve spoke to with their unions they also do not receive pay increased based on merit, instead only years on the job and how many extra degrees you’ve obtained…

      • Man, you need to untangle the spaghetti up there. Freedom is good, period. Always. Everywhere. For all time. Indisputable. Definitionally.

        If some people use that freedom to trade with someone else, that is fine. Restricting that freedom is very much not fine.

        If others use that freedom to join a union, that is fine too.

        And so is using that freedom to choose to hire whomever you please. Whether he is in a union or not.

        And, so is using that freedom to buy a gun. To carry that gun down the street. To school. To daycare. To wherever.

        There are no such thing as good restrictions of other people’s freedom. None at all. The 50s were better, because there were fewer idiotic laws. Meaning fewer restrictions. Fewer restricters, as in apparatchiks and lawyers. But that doesn’t mean that the restrictions that did happen to be in place in the 50s, were somehow magically “good” ones.

        What we need to do, is get rid of all the restrictions that have been created since the 50s. WITHOUT also adding back the precious few ones we have managed to get rid of.

        It’s not like “free markets”, “free speech”, “free association”, “free trade” free blah blah are some sort of separate and independent buckets. Instead, it’s just freedom. you either have it; freedom to do whatever, or you don’t.

        And in the latter case, your government is illegitimate. Your country a totalitarian hellhole. And you nothing but a slave.

    • I liked what you were saying until you went Bernie Sanders on us. Unions today are nothing more than the Democrats’ street bullies and an absolute money pit. They need to be beaten ’til they go sulk in the corner where they belong. If you showed the Nevada and Virginia miners of the early 1900’s what working conditions are in 21st century America are like, they’d get mighty pissed when they saw all the the whining and complaining done by, surprise, Democrats and union reps (but I repeat myself).

      • You cut your own throat when you mentioned the Miners. It was unions that made the working conditions way safer and they got higher pay for the miners , retirement benefits and medical care.

        Before that Miners were worker slaves that were even raped by the Company stores which stole back the little money they paid the Miners for their work. If you had lived back in those days you would realize how much better a life the Miners got when they went Union. Even a Moron knows that when you give one group of people absolute power over another group of people the people in power will enslave and rape the people that are working for them. History has proven it over and over again.

        In Canton, Ohio before Unions came it was normal for people to lose their eyes, hands or feet while on the job. The companies considered them little more than animals to be used up and thrown away once they were hurt on the job and could no longer work for slave wages. All that changed with the coming of the unions as they beat the greed monger business people at their own game.

        How in the world any sane person that is of the working class would be against Unions simply defies the imagination. The only real reason being that the cheap retarded Moron does not want to pay union dues so that he ends up having no rights, has to work for peanuts, has no medical care and has no retirement benefits. Pure Genius would you not say. A good Conservative saves a penny today and goes bankrupt tomorrow.

        • Nowhere in my comment did I say that unions as a whole should not exist. I merely said that they have gotten out of control with their demands and are more a hindrance than a help because of the way they currently operate. I’m well aware of the history of mining and, shocker, I actually side with those miners just like you because their conditions were horrid. But that’s my point, they faced real dangers. Anyone who says working conditions in America today are the same as they were back then, and uses this claim to justify the demands of today’s unions is insane. People aren’t losing arms and legs in meat packing plants en masse and not getting compensated for it anymore. Gunfights are not erupting between striking miners and company men. We have weekends, set maximum work hours, vacation days, holidays off, benefits of any kind, and shit would you look at that, now we have Obamacare. When is enough, enough? The workers seem to be fine with everything they have, but not those union bosses and politicos, oh no. Every day is another day in Sinclair’s “Jungle” for them, so they must need more tax dollars because they say so.

          My own grandfather was a union electrician. During a particular job he worked, he installed twelve lighting fixtures and then took lunch because he had a strong work ethic. His boss saw those fixtures and said “Take that shit down, per union regs we only install four per day.” That moment put a chip on his shoulder, because he saw people starting to use their union status as an excuse to be lazy, tax-dollar guzzling bullies whose working conditions were already paradise in comparison to the miners of old. He saw them toss away the work ethic he had for years. And that was in the 1960’s.

          I understand that you and I probably have differing views on unions, taxes, etc. But let’s steer those horses back to the corral. Do you honestly believe that Bernie Sanders and his supporters would stop after radically altering the tax structure? Do you really think that after Obamacare is firmly implemented, nothing else will become dominated by the state? After all that happens, do you really think gun rights are going to be our circle of protection, that they will remain untouched? Of course not, because socialists never stop, they never give up until their ideology has absolute control over every facet of your life.

        • Thanks for your response. I agree with you in regards to Sanders being no friend of gun owners but remember that Obama was prevented from doing much of anything about guns and those of us that are pro-gun believe that will happen to Sanders. So why would we vote for Sanders? Because we agree with everything else Obama has done (not gun ban attempts) but his health care was a huge step in the right direction but it did not go far enough. We Socialists have a lot more to accomplish especially in regards to catching up with the rest of the civilized world in regards to health care.

          When Conservatives are pointed to the fact that corrupt insurance companies were now no longer able to deny coverage to children or to people because they had reached a “cap” or deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions they have no counter argument against the truth.

          When Canadians were interviewed during the Republican propaganda war against Obama Care the majority of those interviewed said they would never consider going back to “the way health care used to be in Canada”.

          When interviews were conducted with European’s especially the French and Germans during the Republican propaganda campaign against Obama care they were shocked and appalled when they learned that people in the “out house culture” of America people went bankrupt when they came down with diseases like cancer. They replied “We always though that a rich country like America took care of its people”. They were shocked when they found out the truth. We did not and we still with Obama care need to do more to catch up with the rest of the civilized world in regards to health care and in regards to free education for our children.

          The rest of the industrialized world has it and even though most are smaller countries they afford it and are beating us economically because their children are fitting into the new global economy of intense competition while our people now are employed by Americas largest new employer the “Workers paradise of Wal-Mart” which enslaves workers with part time slave worker wages and of course no benefits or paid holidays. This is the Conservative Utopian World of America “For the 1 % of the Rich and to hell with the 99% of the rest of the American working people.

          And as far as your fears of Socialism being a drag on America’s economy. The world as proved you wrong. Germany, Norway and Denmark do have more restrictions on Business and they have had more new business start ups than America especially Norway. France where Socialism reigns supreme had the most last year with 1,000 new 21st Century high tech businesses while here in the worker Slave State of America people must apply at Wal-Mart for a job.

          Today On Fareed Zacharia MSNBC News he pointed out that America is now rated 11th in the economic freedom index.

          FAREED ZAKARIA Quote :————–But how limited is American government? The conservative Heritage Foundation publishes an annual “index of economic freedom” that ranks countries based on their degree of economic freedom (from government). America comes in 11th, behind Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Chile, Switzerland and Singapore. That doesn’t seem very exceptional.———–QUOTE

          https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/yes-america-is-being-changed–but-by-whom/2016/02/11/834d3dca-d105-11e5-88cd-753e80cd29ad_story.html

        • For those who don’t want to read about ‘The Mingo County Wars’ , see moive ‘Matewan’ — though it leaves out the part where the National guard and US Army aircraft (twin wing) flew rail lines with bombs and loaded machine guns to keep miners from marching from one town to the next – or the military snipers (1903-A4’s and A3’s) scattered in the hills to ‘pick off the leaders. I’m sure Wiki has an entry under “Mingo County Wars” (could be singular).

          You might also be interested to read the part of the US National Guard and US Army’s (“unofficial”) role in the “Iron Range Miners Strikes if 1907 and 1916). Suffice it to say that the miners who protested earning ‘negative wages’ (after housing, food, clothing, and tools were deducted from their wages) were run down and murdered by National Guard and ‘State Troopers’, using supplies offered from the US Army — from rail mounted Browning .50 cals, and ‘horse cars’ with mounted cavalry’ running down and ‘shooting to wound’ all males so they’d never work again to support their family, (often shooting in the shoulder), then in the legs, killing many men, women and children, burning their houses, and shooting their pets and live stock while they were not even on land owned by the mining company. Many histories mention cavalry dismounting and using their swords to ‘dismember’ hand or feet from wounded miners.

          Again I’m sure Wiki or a quick Google Search will turn up atrocities used against miners by ‘The Company’ and their ‘Thugs’ (vernacular of the times). I would search “mining strikes” or “miner strikes’ as a start – and if no hits, try “mining strike [by state]”

      • from UNR database: mining deaths 1900 +/- 5 years = 798
        2000 +/- 5 years= 000

        (Drawn source: County birth-death records) UNR= University of Nevada, Reno

        • I made a mistake and ran those figures for Storey County only, and did not include the entire state, when I ran the database, I forgot that the default was Storey County ONLY. So you have a TINY county with well over 700 deaths from 1895-1905, and 000 deaths from 1995-2005. So all it does is show that the smallest country in Nevada went from over 700 to 0 — just imagine what the REAL number was for the entire state – esp if you include the entire Comstock and other mineral mines in the state.

      • Miners aside. Some of the FINEST teachers I have EVERY had – from K-post grad, would have been canned by Administration were it not for their Union. In high school I remember a teacher who taught AP English who expected his students to read ‘Old English’ — understand the evolution of the English Language, and write a ‘Term Paper’ of 10 pages (pretty hard when you are in High School) — AND who produced 4 plays after starting a ‘Drama Department’ (club). He was fired after the first year because 1) he rode a Triumph 500 motorcycle to work the first semester and up-graded to a BMW the second, and (horror of horrors) had a tiny pony tail. The Union tried to stop the Suspension of Employment — but because he was still on ‘probation’ – he was fired. That just allowed him to get his Ph.D. (he had an M.A. when most high school teachers had a B.A.) – and Ended up teaching at a local state university.

        A teacher the union DID save was one who had the gall to go to Montgomery and March across the Bridge with MLK, was vocally anti-Vietnam (he argued, correctly, that it was a civil war, not a ‘war against commies’ in 1963) and would point out how silly ‘sacred’ American Educational Poetry was; “I think I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree. . .” and then demonstrate the absurdity of the image of an object with it’s ‘mouth to the ground’ and it’s “arms in the air”. He gave me a ‘D’ on my paper on ‘the use of hallucinogenic images in Modern American Literature’ which I thought was very good , but gave another student an ‘A’ on her paper about ‘fruit cake’ – !!?? — He was right – I shorted my footnotes on ‘Modern Lit’ — and had most of them grouped around Aldus Huxley, Leary, Sacks, etc. Even though I squeeked by with a ‘C’ – he was one of the finest teachers I ever had – but would have been fired for his ‘anti-American’ stand on Vietnam, his VOCAL opposition to the McCarthy hearings, the House on Un-American Activities (HUAC), and his VOCAL support of, and active PARTICIPATION in the Civil Rights Movement. The Union saved one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. Because he leaned left and not right and made his students support their ideas with FACTS, not rumor (“You can’t quote a local paper on national issues”).

        Yes, the Unions DO keep workers who ought to be let go – but those are, from what I’ve seen, are the few — from toilet scrubber to janitor, to lab assistant, to foundry worker, to firefighter-paramedic, to agricultural worker, to any number of jobs, union and non-union – I’ve found union jobs paid better, had better benefits, and treated you better.

        The worst offender was a mobile home factory in Georgia where I watched a state certified electrician have to buy his equipment from ‘the factory store’ because ‘it was safer’ than his high-end equipment – and the work load started the week slowly and ended up with mandatory 14 hour days out overtime and Friday off so they could hire for the following Monday run. —

        The worst example of ‘stupid union rules’ was working in a college football stadium as a janitor and when I saw a light out, wanted to replace it, so found where the spares were and replaced eight burned out lights – and was told my my super that what I’d done as NOT my job, that it belonged to ‘the IBEW’ so don’t replace burned out lights, call to have them replaced. Later when I was a line-man in training and had to join the IBEW, I appreciated the rule when I saw that when I was working around medium tension lines, there were TWO safety officers watching me – one watched ME and the other watched the area AROUND me and another worker stood around and brought me materials I needed from the truck, and it was double checked by the ‘environmental safety worker to make sure it was the correct part for the job) – so I never grounded out or fried because I’d been given the wrong part. Before the IBEW there was the driver and the worker, the driver drove and sometimes would get material (but not always) the worker worked.

        Yes, I’ve seen teachers K-post grad who should be fired. And I’ve seen 90% of GREAT teachers protected by the Union – I was one when a student brought a multi-million dollar suit against the college because when he threaten to kill me with mutions taken from a military munitions storage facility, I reported him to the facility, and when asked what department I worked in – at the time it was working with disabled college students — I told them, and he argued that I had ‘broken confidentiality’ the moment I identified him as a student and then said I worked with Disabled Students Programs and Services – the Union supplied me with enough lawyers to bury the college who had lawyers who told the University to side with the student to prevent the suit against the college. — WTF? — a student threatens to kill me, has access to munitions, I report him to the mutation storage facility, and **I** get sued while the college sides with the students??? I blasted a short-cut road into some land I bought using munitions and fuses from that very same facility — I was able to get another degree that took me away from crazies like that, and put me more ‘in the field’ than ‘in a classroom’ — but fail a poor student on government subsidized income — and they can lose those benefits, kind of like being fired from a job — and they come looking for you. And that percent was maybe 5 students out of over a thousand in over 20 years, but enough that I never went into the field without a CCW. So it’s not about government programs, it’s about the specific students (maybe 5), so let’s not go off on government help for college students as if the 5 represented the whole.

        Unions saved some of the best teachers I’ve ever had, they also saved me from being fed to a student who would have owned everything I owned for the rest of my life — by the administration of a university that SHOULD have stood with me saying: when you threaten a teacher you don’t get the right to sue the teacher and the University – but which said – “Yes! Sue HIM– WE ARE ON YOUR SIDE!!!” (so don’t sue us!).

        • Thanks for taking the time to write that lengthy response, I enjoyed reading all of it. I too have known many instances where Unions have saved the jobs of very good workers who had been fired over turning in the Company to the Feds for safety violations that could have killed people and in one case did get someone killed because of Company incompetence and stinginess when it came to running a safe plant.

          My credo has always been that a Union-less Plant is almost always an unsafe one because saving money comes first and if the worker injured or killed the company blames the worker even when they have to manufacture false evidence against the worker. I have seen it all happen too many times. Just one more reason people who oppose Unions cannot see the Forest for the Trees as the Union does way more good for the worker and the Country than harms it. I think the worker abuse at Wal-Mart is a shining example of what happens to workers when they are not permitted to have a Union even when they legally vote one in. It shows how corrupt the Government has become when it comes to workers righst in this country as they seem to be siding with corrupt greedy Businessmen more and more in disputes between workers and businesses.

    • “the American greed monger rich have shipped all the jobs overseas”

      Well, that’s one story. There’s also that the American greed monger union bosses demanded entrepreneur salaries for high school dropouts, then American greed monger politicians demanded all corporate profit be paid in taxes, forcing employers to move overseas in order to stay in business. But you keep on thinking about magic and evil, forget economics and enjoy. People who claim that $15/hr is a minimum for a living wage need to travel the world a bit. In most of the Philippines $15 is a marvelous wage for a week, and they seem to live, although they do not have color TV, two cars and AC, plus the newest smartphone. And they will work in that American factory and be extremely happy to, relieving the angst of managers attempting to deal with entitled, demanding employees without enough education to understand you cannot be paid more than you earn.

      • Quote—————————–Well, that’s one story. There’s also that the American greed monger union bosses demanded entrepreneur salaries for high school dropouts Quote————————-

        You know Zero about American Union History or any History for that matter. Corporate C.E.O.’S wanted 40 million dollar a year salaries which left nothing out of company profits for the workers. And factories used to have worker training programs to train people in occupations as advanced as machinists, lab technicians, maintenance personnel and even advanced engineering just to name a few. All this took money away from the corporate greed monger obscene salary’s.

        Quote—————————-American greed monger politicians demanded all corporate profit be paid in taxes, forcing employers to move overseas in order to stay in business————————-

        Corporations pay only a very small portion of their profits in taxes as compared to the much larger amount that is raped off of the backs of working people. If Corporations paid the same percentage of money as the workers do we would not even have a national debt. Social programs would be affordable as well. Norway and Denmark charge more corporate taxes and the have had more growth in new Businesses than the U.S. negating the right wing bullshit that companies should be allowed to conduct business with no tax responsibility at all. Norway and Denmark even though much smaller have had social programs for decades again negating the right wing bullshit that we would go broke if we treated our American people like human beings and not animals to be starved to death and then thrown out with the trash when they retire.

        • Wal-Mart loves people like you who will work for nothing, with no benefits, no retirement, no holidays. Why pay Unions a few bucks a month that you can save and put in your pocket and then at the end of the year see that you have made just enough money to qualify for working at poverty levels but you saved on Union Dues. Pure Genius for a Conservative.

        • The big difference in the tax treatment of corporations is that corporations are taxed on profits and individuals are taxed on income (revenue). So if a corporation earns $100 million in revenue, but its operating costs are $100 million it’s profits are zero. It doesn’t pay taxes, because it had no profits.

          Individuals pay income tax on every dollar they earn.

          Corporations do pay (a lot) of taxes. But those are mostly associated with the costs of employing people. We have a tax code that is deliberately designed to screw the middle class. And the Democrats and Republicans both like it that way.

          Democrats, unions, and other liberals love talking about corporations not paying taxes. They love to throw around loaded terms like “fair share”. But the reality is they aren’t going to do anything to fix the tax code. They benefit from it. They hold personal assets in trusts, have corporate entities and nonprofits set up they can use for tax benefits and in general are shrewd with their accounting. They are getting you all riled up while laughing at you because you don’t understand the rules to the game they are playing. They’ve had 8 years to change things – do ya think maybe they haven’t because they like things the way they are?

          If the democrats and unions were “heroes of the working man” they’d apply their money and influence to fix the system. You’re a dupe if you think they are somehow on your side. They are on their own side – they just want to sell you false hope in exchange for your vote.

        • Quote————————–The big difference in the tax treatment of corporations is that corporations are taxed on profits and individuals are taxed on income (revenue). So if a corporation earns $100 million in revenue, but its operating costs are $100 million it’s profits are zero. It doesn’t pay taxes, because it had no profits.

          Individuals pay income tax on every dollar they earn.——————Quote

          Very true and that is the problem as all of them say “We made no profit” while their C.E.O.’s take home millions in salaries and perks which amount to millions more. And the C.E.O’s pay no income tax either as they employ high power lawyers who use every tax shelter imaginable while ordinary citizens get screwed for every penny they make.

          Trump himself just admitted today that he pays very little if any taxes and he makes billions. He actually admitted it to millions of ordinary Americans who have to pay taxes every year on income’s usually under $50,000 a year.

          The real facts are that without strong Unions the working man never has had a chance. And since Reagan broke them its been a rapid decline in workers wages ever since. One of the major reasons the Roman Empire fell, the French had a revolution and the Russians overthrew the Czar and had a revolution was one of worker rape and exploitation. America is already at that desperate point as the average worker today is working 2 and even 3 part time jobs and his income is so low he still qualifies for welfare to keep for freezing or starving to death.

          The stagnation of the American workers wage has killed the American Dream while the filthy rich scream “Let them eat cake if they cannot afford bread”. Sound familiar? It should and the American workers plight today is as desperate as the French workers plight was in the 1700’s. It just may be that that is why to this very day in France they do not rape the French worker like filthy rich in America rapes its workers.

          Its obscene, unjust and immoral. Ever wonder why even some Republicans are turning anti-gun. Its because they fear what eventually will come if the people are allowed to posses weapons. They use the excuse that they need to make the streets safe, but for who. Its actually for them as they could not care less about the common man or women.

          I think that is why even a nut case like Trump has become so popular. Even Conservatives have woken up to the vast corruption of the Republican party. And it is disintegrating on National TV as the entire population of Americans are watching it put the final nail in their own Political Coffins. Governor Kasich admitted in the last debate that they are going to lose this election. He isn’t telling anyone what they don’t already know.

  5. Last time I visited my old ruralhigh school (about 6 years ago) in the Zero-Tolerance utopia Washington state there were hunting rifles visible in vehicles in both the student and teachers parking lots. It was deer and elk season. I think the key here is that the sheriff knows that if he responds to it like the idiots in the greater Seattle-Tacoma area want him to he will be unemployed next election. I think the man reason it even made the news is ti was in/close to a metropolitan area. This still happens everyday in sane rural America.

  6. That’s how it was in rural Indiana and Ohio in the 80s and 90s. Lots of kids had gun racks with rifles in their truck windows. Never a single crime, except for the occasional Goodyear landscaping of the school grounds as we called it. Meanwhile, school the same size in downtown Ft. Wayne or Cleveland had beatings, drugs, teen pregnancies, assaults on girls.

    It’s never been about the guns. It’s always been about the people. Liberals and Marxists can’t fix, or even address, the people issue, so they spend their days bashing white people for their “privilege” (virtue) and trying to confiscate guns.

    Now they’re trying to unconstitutionally “radically transform” America into a third world country full of people who have machetes and want your flat screen or your life.

    My grandparents came here to escape Latin America. They’d be rolling in their graves to know that MS-13 and other oppressive gangs are going to school with their great grand kids in suburban USA.

    • That’s how it was in rural Indiana and Ohio in the 80s and 90s. Lots of kids had gun racks with rifles in their truck windows. Never a single crime, except for the occasional Goodyear landscaping of the school grounds as we called it. Meanwhile, school the same size in downtown Ft. Wayne or Cleveland had beatings, drugs, teen pregnancies, assaults on girls.
      Same in Adams County Indiana which was Southeast of Fort Wayne in the 60s and the 70s. Inner city East Allen County schools in Fort Wayne could be a different matter. Rural Allen County schools were about like Adams.

  7. Sorry. I graduated H.S. in 1976. At that time, the legal drinking age was 18. However, booze wasn’t allowed anywhere on campus, neither were guns, although not a “gun free zone”, guns, alcohol, drugs, even aspirin, weren’t allowed.

    I couldn’t simply say to the Principal that I had to buy a keg the night before, to bring to a party that started right after school, as a reason as to why it was in my car, parked in the school parking lot, even though it was legal for me to have it.

    Eagle Scouts have been busted for having their knife in the trunk of their car. Apparently, someone tipped off the school administration.

    “Oh, gee, I forgot.” is not what I think of, when I think of a responsible gun owner.

      • And a liberal student. Never mentioned “why?”, was anything accomplished as a result of all this control, other than the destruction of any concept of freedom to a bunch of students?

    • “I couldn’t simply say to the Principal that I had to buy a keg the night before, to bring to a party that started right after school, as a reason as to why it was in my car, parked in the school parking lot, even though it was legal for me to have it.

      “Oh, gee, I forgot.” is not what I think of, when I think of a responsible gun owner.”

      The issues are community standards, scope of authority and proportionality.

      – Community standards: This is an example of making it hard, dangerous, and discouraging to do something normal in the community. The many prior comments about the normalcy of guns in the past are about that. When, how, and why did this get denormalized, and is that what we want? Or is it actually denormalized, since while the school-folk seem out of step with people who attend their school do.

      – Scope of Authority: What, exactly, is the scope of a school’s authority? One might argue that a school should *accommodate* it’s policies and implementations to least burden the community it is part of. This looks like the opposite of that.

      – Proportionality: Ruining someone’s life over a memory lapse seems a bit excessive. Compared to, for example, threats, brandishing, stalking, disrupting classrooms, drug dealing, assault, blah, blah, blah. The disproportionality of the consequences looks like social engineering, again. At what point does destroying a kid’s life for a memory lapse become cruel and unusual?

      This isn’t about responsible gun use.

      Taken together, this looks way more like an(other) instance of cultural engineering through force of law, than anything else. Amplify the consequences & stack up the administrative infractions around something to get it run out of the culture when you can’t get it flat out prohibited. Because the people involved don’t want that, but they’re wrong, so whatever it takes. This is of a piece with charging hikers under the endangered species act for picking up a feather. The point isn’t protecting the birds. The point is, people wandering around enjoying a public space, unchaperoned – can’t have that.

      It’s worse than that. It’s willful. Using the keg example, while possession with intent to distribute is any of several kinds of felonies depending on jurisdiction, people using judgment and discretion don’t have to invoke Defcon 1 of the process that is the punishment on a lapse of memory. Even if it’s someone who forgot they had a keg in their car, there’s room for judgment and discretion – or ought to be.

      Indeed, the gendarmes were searching everything in sight, and not in sight, because of some vague threat not specified in the article, which apparently empowered them to grub through every damn thing they could get their hands on.

      Indeed, this kind of over-reaction, and the draconian laws that allow it are, or should be, both up for discussion when stuff like this happens. It’s a good times to look at the incentives, implicit as well as explicit. It’s a good time to look at the implementation. Where’s the judgment and discretion? It’s as if escalation is its own end.

      When stuff like this happens, it’s a good time to look at the costs we’re creating with nominally well-intentioned rules. Does this make sense? Is this what we want?

      “Sorry. …”

      Well, you were misunderstanding the objections. No need to be sorry, though. These things happen.

      You are free to argue for a change of community standards, infinite scope of public school authority, and disproportionality, singly or together. Also, that whatever it takes is justified in tamping down community standards that are just wrong. Also, that judgment and discretion are not required of the people empowered to implement the “rules” whatever those might be.

  8. This should be a cautionary tale for those Fudds who care only about sporting clays and hunting.

    The former is seldom to be found in schools anymore, and the latter is seeing ever greater persecution. Witness this story.

    Yes, guys, they will eventually paint your bolt-action rifles and break-open shotguns with the same lurid brush as MSRs and semiauto pistols.

  9. In my neck of the woods, students were allowed to bring shotguns on the bus, and into the school (provided they were stored in the principals office) so they could go hunting with there friends after school. All you had to do was ask. Not uncommon for guys to bring a shotgun and a weekends worth of clothes to school on friday, for that all weekend rabbit s̶l̶a̶u̶g̶h̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶ hunt. And yes, there was usually a pilfered bootle of whiskey hid away in those packs, which wasn’t allowed on the bus or in school.

  10. Truck? In 1982 suburban MI, I took a Springfield 1903 & 1873 (on separate occasions) to school on the bus and then showed them in history class. Totally open carry. Can’t say it went unnoticed, but I wasn’t hassled about it.

  11. My criminal justice teacher got a talking to from the school board for having blue rubber guns for the policing program. People were mad when there were spent shell casings for crime scene investigation. My civics teacher didn’t understand any federal or state gun laws. Heck, the criminal justice teacher and forensics teacher like guns but they weren’t completely up to date on some laws. Oh, the princible wouldn’t let a uniformed police officer carry a gun when coming into our cj class because they “looked young”. But, back in the day my high school was right across the street from a shooting range. Students stored their shotguns in the teachers room, who coached the trap/skeet team. What happened to America?

  12. From ’72-’76 I was on the small bore rifle team. Twice a week we would go to the armory in the ROTC building, check out our assigned .22 rifles and a brick of ammo.
    Walk across campus, (no cases), load them in the trunk of the car and drive to the range.
    After practice or a match, walk back to the armory, clean them up and check them back in.

  13. Yep. Grow up in South Florida in the late 60s early 70s and it was not uncommon for kids who lived out on ranches to drive one of their trucks with a .22 or shotgun locked into a behind the seat rack. Nobody thought anything of it. But then also never heard kids talking about solving every problem by shooting someone. We tended to use fists.

  14. I was in high school in the late 50’s, early 60’s … Our school had a rifle range in the basement under the gym. Times have sure changed

    • My high school in The Bronx — The Bronx! — had a rifle range in the basement until the school decided to expand the pool area for the swim team.

      At that point, smallbore rifle became a club instead of a school team.

  15. Yep… When I was in high school (in Arkansas), it was very common to see trucks in the parking lot with hunting rifles and shotguns in the rear window racks. Guys went hunting before and after school routinely. There was never an incident on campus. In fact, we had a “hunter’s safety” class offered at the school.

  16. When I was in HS in PA I kept my hunting rifle(s) in my car and brought the ammo indoors and kept it in in my locker.

    Also carried a hunting knife and folder as did many other kids. No problems ever as the rare fight
    was conducted with fists and the losers shaking hands usually becoming fast friends.

  17. Like most of the Stories here, mid 90’s had a gun or bow in a friends truck for hunting after school. Some of the older guys brought guns into the school and built rifle stocks in shop class. Columbine changed a lot of things.

  18. My brother was on the high school shooting team. Heck, I would have been on it too, but had no idea it even existed. But it was an official school thing back in the day.

    So, yeah, that’s another thing that’s probably gone forever or until the next World War when people finally get serious about the fact that the world is a hard, deadly place full of people who want to take or wreck your stuff.

  19. sadly remember the Day! During small game season would bag up my shotgun hop on a school bus, transfer buses with shot gun in hand arrive at school place shotgun in locker with shells, lock locker. nobody blinked, end of school reverse bus ride get dropped of a couple miles from the house hunt on way home! nobody died or got shot except an occasional bird! knives were popular, remember seeing Bowie,s, K-bars and other large knives During Deer Season Buck Lock back was popular along with Case and Schrade, if bored would play stretch with buddies by sticking knife in to ground etc! don’t forget the sling shots, rubber guns and BB guns had a steely go through a car door once! no body said jack about it! now you got all the pussies afraid of their own shadow crying for protection they don’t need except from their own paranoid minds filled with their BS self worth!

  20. Heck, I remember going to the local YMCA back 40 years ago and having to wait until the rimfire target team was done with their match before we could lift weights…I used to have a 1974 Chevy shortbed 4×4 when I was in highschool, used to have a Mossberg 500 in the rack in the window… after school we used to hunt quail, pheasant, etc.times have changed for the worse. The gun is vilified not the perpetrator… our legally owned guns are not the problem…we all know that as I’m preaching to the saved!

  21. Is it me, or have any of you other regular readers noticed the encroachment of Trolls on this site more and more? For example the whole series of rants about corporate greed and unions above? I don’t GAF about unions., especially government unions. They were bankrupting WI until Act 10. Retiring at 52-55 with 80% of the average of your 3 highest wage years? Sure, that’s a good deal. Brought to you by the same morons that think zero tolerance policies make sense, too.

  22. Remember? Hell, I lived at the tail end of the days when kids used to show up in hunting season with shotguns or deer rifles in the trucks or trunks so they could head out on Opening Day immediately after school.

    And it didn’t just end now. Those days have been a thing of the past for a long time now – several decades at least.

  23. Tough way to learn an important lesson…when you practice situational awareness, never forget YOU are part of the situation as much as any other factor around you. Hope it doesn’t result in permanent bad consequences for this young man.

  24. Usually when a boss tells a worker that he is working too hard, it is because of the buget, a schedule of man hours to do a particular job. Many of these geniuses will put in a figure based on the last similar job. Maybe last time the units had to be assembled first, or were up in the air or had to have special handling. He will tell you to slow down because it is his butt on the line – it is NOT the union.
    Other times the company has budgeted man hours based on having some problems, they don’t want to lose those manhours because next time they may need them. It really depends on the company and how they fund these jobs.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here