A horrible tragedy. At least six now are dead with many more injured. The police expect additional fatalities are possible.
Recovery workers expect to find more bodies as debris is removed, Miami-Dade police Director Juan Perez said Friday. Of the six people who died, five bodies still were under the bridge wreckage Friday morning, Zabaleta said.
At least nine people were taken to hospitals, authorities said, after the bridge failure that one witness said “sounded like the world was ending.”
The structure’s 950-ton main span had just been installed Saturday using an accelerated construction process meant in part to reduce the time that street traffic was halted. The bridge had been designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane.
…
The bridge was scheduled to open to foot traffic and cyclists in 2019, and was designed boost safety on busy 8th Street, where an 18-year-old FIU student was fatally struck by a vehicle in August.
“It is exactly the opposite of what we had intended, and we want to express our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of those who have been affected,” Rosenberg, the university’s president, said in a video.
“The bridge was about collaboration, about neighborliness, about doing the right thing,” he said. “But today, we’re sad. And all we can do is promise a very thorough investigation, to getting to the bottom of this and mourn those who we have lost.”
A few thoughts:
My guess is the thing was way too heavy. 950 tons!? That’s about 5 tons per foot. If it wasn’t that, then I suspect it was something with the new, speedy construction methods. Could be both. The investigation will reveal the cause sooner or later.
Much was made of the architect who designed the structure. It was, putting it one way, not your father’s engineering. Another guess of mine is that there was too much emphasis on aesthetics – which, combined with incredible (likely unnecessary) mass, just didn’t hold up to mean old Mr. Gravity. Too heavy.
And “too heavy” may explain the desire to have such a super-sized structure in the first place. Pedestrian bridges are good, great even. And it sounds like one is really needed at that location. Yet, this may be another example of government overkill.
It’s kind of like the school shootings. An extremely small number of kids are killed in schools each year by bullets. More are killed by bees, swimming pools, and electricity arching between the Earth and the sky. But those aren’t easily projected upon law-abiding citizens and the NRA.
The “solutions” to the few gun deaths are always more of the same dictatorial, anti-freedom measures that help feed the shootings in the first place. More prison-like schools. More laws. More cops (to hide under stairwells). More spying. More snitching. More fear. More panic. More hysteria. More gun control. Less freedom. It was something about trading essential liberty for temporary security… And it’s always overreaction.
So it my be with this bridge. One person killed crossing a street is one too many. I had a beautiful young friend who was hit and killed by a bus while crossing the street in Athens, many years ago now. Again, the bridges may be a reasonable response. But the physical objects themselves should also be reasonable. Might a simple, yet sturdy, steel tube bridge have sufficed? Could not all of this been accomplished without the pomp, grandstanding, SJWism, and risky construction practices? Still getting my mind around something the size of a small ship hanging overhead.
The investigation will proceed. We’ll know one day.
There will be lawsuits. Maybe criminal prosecutions. And, at least with the civil suits, there will discovery problems. Big ones.
Companies involved in the bridge’s construction are scurrying to delete tweets and other marks of all the former pomp and celebration.
After the collapse of Florida International University’s newly-completed pedestrian bridge killed several and injured others on Thursday, two construction companies involved immediately deleted tweets celebrating the “spectacular” structure.
Reporters captured screenshots of the posts before they came down, showing a congratulatory shoutout from BDI Test to Barnhart Crane, a group with whom it said it worked on the project. Wednesday night, less than 24 hours before disaster struck, Barnhart tweeted a PR Newswire story showcasing the bridge’s supports.
What else is being deleted? And who is pressing the delete key?
This isn’t just a bad PR move. It’s also known as destruction of evidence. Any party who knows, or should know, that legal action is in process or is likely to commence, is duty bound to preserve any and all evidence. This includes digital or electronic information – to include social media posts. This is black letter law, under the civil practice act and the rules of civil procedure. It’s in the federal system and the Florida code. Some lawyer is probably having a fit right now.
Proof of willful destruction, deletion, of such information has ramifications, some of them drastic. Such actions can shift presumptions and even force admissions of fact. That can force settlements, as will likely be the case here.
Anyway, it’s just a terrible event. No “blame the National Bridge Association” or “only the police or military need high-capacity bridges” comments today. Worn, eh?
As a final aside, I’ve always hated walking or driving under large overhead structures. Maybe my fear hasn’t been so misplaced.
Just what we don’t need: more gun-toting, taser-wielding cops in government-run schools that bear an uncomfortable resemblance to prisons.
Microcosms of the police state, America’s public schools already contain almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.”
Now the Trump Administration wants to double down on these totalitarian echo chambers.
The Justice Department, headed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has announced that it will provide funding for schools that want to hire more resource officers. The White House has also hinted that it may repeal “Rethink School Discipline” policies, heralding a return to zero tolerance policies that treat children like suspects and criminals, especially within the public schools.
As for President Trump, he wants to “harden” the schools.
…
Maybe we could harden the young people instead of feeding them a load of worn out socialism:
Hours after thousands of Richmond County students participated in a school walkout to push Congress to end gun violence, area youth staged a lie-in outside the Augusta office of U.S. Rep. Rick Allen.
Organized by March For Our Lives CSRA, about 15 students laid down on the grassy right-of-way for 17 minutes while hundreds of cars passed by on Interstate 20 and Interstate Parkway. Most of the participants were high school students from Evans, Lakeside and Davidson Fine Arts, although there were some younger pupils.
They’re hearts are surely in the right place. But their actions are misguided, ideologically and symbolically. No one but the dead “laid down” at Lexington and Concord.
Whether in Atlanta, Sacramento, or DC, the politicians must welcome people on their backs, practically prostrate before whatever heavy-handed madness the elite have in mind. This is the opposite of freedom. It’s clamoring for more of what causes the real problems in the first place.
“Standing tall” for Marxism. Michael Holahan/The Augusta Chronicle.
I don’t give a damn what the powerful National Box Association (NBA) has to say. And the Second Amendment does not concern me. The fact is it is past time for a national discussion on boxes. We need common sense box restrictions. #boxcontrol.
How many people have to die because of boxes? How many? I’m serious as a crisis actor. Tell me how many? Would two mass box attacks in a day be too much? How about three in ten days?
The Washington Post has identified one of the people injured in Southeast Austin during Monday’s second package explosion.
Esperanza Herrera is the 75-year-old woman injured in the explosion at the 6700 block of Galindo Street, according to relatives at the scene, the Post reported. They also said her mother, Maria Moreno, suffered minor injuries, the newspaper said.
The incident happened hours after police responded to a previous package explosion at the 4800 block of Oldfort Hill Drive, killing a teenager and injuring a woman, police have said. LaVonne Mason, co-founder of the Austin Area Urban League, told the Post her grandson was the 17-year-old victim killed Monday morning. The newspaper did not name the grandson.
3:20 p.m. update: A 75-year-old woman was injured after picking up an exploding package outside her Southeast Austin home on Monday in the second blast reported in the city and the third similar incident in two weeks, Austin police said.
Interim Police Chief Brian Manley confirmed that evidence suggested that this bombing was related to two previous blasts from “box-type deliveries” that killed a teenager earlier in the day and a 39-year-old man 10 days ago.
Manley warned the public about receiving unexpected or suspicious-looking deliveries in an “average-size delivery box,” but declined to offer more specifics about the packages to protect the integrity of the investigation.
He said the devices can be detonated by moving or by opening the boxes.
Old ladies scarred and terrorized. Generic men and teenage children killed. Enough is enough! I hereby call on President Donald J. Trump to administratively ban boxes via executive order!
High-capacity box-type device.
Assault-style delivery box.
Mercury-triggered, motion-activated killing box.
These are but synonyms for the plain, pure evil that is the box. The box that you, caring nothing for the children, YOU CLING TO! Box clinger!
A few years ago I tabulated some items and places that should be banned for safety. In a momentary lapse of judgment I left off assault boxes. I say ban them. Ban them all – all types of these “packages.” Think, Dear Lord think, of the children.
It wasn’t a total lapse on my part. I specifically named “houses” as being direct accessory venues to all manner of atrocity. Had my recommendations been followed, I believe all of these poor, innocent people in Austin would have been spared. I guess the National House Association is like the NBA – too powerful and too well-connected. I say it’s time to silence these money-grubbing thugs. They no more have freedom of speech than you or I have the right to bear arms.
Okay … the boxes. It’s time, past time, to face facts:
Only the police and the military need such powerful and deadly cardboard constructed receptacles.
You cannot hunt with a box. (You! You with the stick, string, and rock! STFU, Yous!).
More school children in America are killed by boxes every single day than all the guns, cars, sugars, doctors, abortions, swimming pools, lightning bolts, falling trees, exploding hot water heaters, baseball bats, hammers, baseballs, nails, brimstone, and wars from the last three centuries combined.
Bubble wrap, found in many boxes, sounds when popped a lot like: little gun shots, very, very small bombs, or cap pistol fire. This is generally available to untrained civilians in this a supposedly civilized nation. Great Britain made bubble wrap illegal in 1984.
Someone called and told me CNN may classify these attacks as “school shootings”™. Young Hogg may, or may not be, speaking (agent cannot or will not confirm).
Boxes are scary.
They don’t say “the smoking BOX” for nothing.
You’re move likely to be killed with your own box than to use the box to thwart criminals or common woodland predators.
Blue-haired, be-gauged, tatted-up Tide Pod-eaters agree no one needs boxes.
The Second Amendment only allows Eric Holder to sell (or to give) boxes to foreign criminals and terrorists.
Some “big boxes” are banning rifles. I say ban the big boxes.
If you’re against #boxcontrol, you’re a racist.
UPS, FedEx, and other FOR PROFIT box pushers support capitalism. Marx said that’s bad.
Most assault rifles and almost all bullets are shipped and/or sold in boxes. Tell me that’s a coincidence!
Bibles, Constitutions, IQ tests, soap, and geometry books have also been seen inside boxes!
The ridiculous Trump-Twitter administration recently proposed shipping food to poor, hungry people. Shipping the food in boxes. Proof Twitter hates poor people.
Children, left unattended by horrible parents, used to (maybe some still do!) make rudimentary make-believe forts out of larger boxes. This hideous practice, once promoted by the John Birch Society, encourages free play, imagination, violent reenactments (Cowboys and Indians, my a$$), and boxism.
Thursday, after they’ve warmed up with the walk out for communism gun control, the kids are playing hooky for box control.
And … a whole bunch of other worn clichés!
Stop the madness! #boxcontrol!
Imperial Stormtroopers try to make sense of carnage caused by high-capacity, military-esque, assault-style, wouldn’t-the-Unibomber-be-proud, NBA-has-blood-soaked-cardboard box attack. The Statesman.
The State of Florida, acting partly on pressures from teenagers, quickly passed a ban on gun ownership by those under age 21. Yes, in Florida, teenagers aren’t old enough to own guns but they are old enough to direct public policy. Curious.
This will surely halt all violent crime in the Sunshine State. There are no criminals (or terrorists) over 21 and everyone knows criminals (and terrorists) respect and obey the law… It is certainly NOT a first step (third, 28th…) towards total gun control.
This isn’t something exactly new. The danger has been publicized for a few years. But it is real. The most prevalent problem is that your phone has been synced and your information is vulnerable (like banking, passwords, etc.). Then, there’s the issue of someone hacking the car and using the controls to kill you. Car companies and our ever-so-benevolent government have known about this and done next to nothing.
The manufacturers are working on even more mobile killing computers and the gubmit is after guns. This all makes good sense as guns kill 1/3 as many Americans as cars.
Either way – you are largely on your own. Be advised.
A teenage Utah student, allegedly a supporter of ISIS, allegedly brought a homemade bomb to his high school on Monday. The police arrested him. The officers carry guns. Guns have been known to shoot. School. Shooting. Since we’re playing loose and fast with facts, why not? Makes as much sense as 15 of those other 17 “shootings” this year.
ST. GEORGE, Utah (KUTV) – UPDATE: Police said a homemade explosive device was the item discovered in a backpack at Pine View High School Monday that forced the evacuation of the school. Police said if the device had detonated, it would have caused significant injury or death. Police have a suspect in custody.
A warrant served at the home of a male juvenile found materials consistent with the materials used to build the device.
Police also said the suspect had been researching information and expressing interest in ISIS and promoting the organization.
I’m sure there’s some way to blame this on the NRA. Maybe the drama club can organize a march. Trump could administratively ban shoulder slings. Certainly no problems with the schools, the culture, or terrorism.
Vox Day offers a few suggestions for E.O. action on gun control:
In any event, this is what I would advise instead of doing nothing and trusting the states to be sensible.
Arrest Dan Israel, take Nikolas Cruz into custody, stop the demolition of the school, and order an investigation into the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, the Secret Service, and every other federal, state, local agency that had any contact with that school in the last six months. Then publish the results of the investigation and have the DOJ prosecute the various guilty parties.
Criminalize the public advocacy of gun control, using the anti-BDS template. Any television or radio station advocating gun control would lose its broadcasting license. Any corporation advocating gun control would lose its federal contracts.
Announce mandatory carry reciprocity between states on pain of losing federal highway funds.
Stop all federal funding to all universities, colleges, and schools that ban guns on campus.
Announce an executive order suspending all state and local gun control laws.
I think we’ll see my suggested E.C. designations before any of this. But, hey, nice thoughts. I also recommend adding a DACA-esque “program,” sure to be mandated and defended by the Courts, to halt enforcement of all federal gun laws – Deferred Amnesty for the Second Amendment, or DASA!
And … at least I didn’t react to the Trumpishness quite like the Z Man.
With the highest gun ownership per capita in the world – by far – the US is only number 111 (of around 200 nations) in per capita murders. The left’s assertion that over-armed America is the murder capital of the world is a ridiculous lie. And, dear God, let’s NOT get into the statistics of who commits the largest measurable percentage of murders in America (hint: it’s not the Amish).
Gun murders and deaths, including those related to rifles (including “assault-style” rifles) are but a near microscopic fraction of total “unnatural” or “preventable” deaths in the US. From 2014:
248 people killed with rifles (all types including … assault rifles);
435 people killed with baseball bats and hammers;
660 people killed with punches and kicks;
8,124 people killed with guns of all kinds (offset by 1,000,000+ lives saved by all guns);
14,249 murders of/by all weapons sources (and unarmed murders);
32,744 killed by automobiles;
Approximately 200,000 killed by doctors and medical professionals;
Approximately 365,000 killed by obesity and fat-related causes;
652,639 killed by “legal” abortions.
One, if one is blind, deluded, and perhaps mentally deficient, or possibly evil, can easily see the way to best save lives in America is to ban the scary AR-15. (Better raise taxes while we’re at it).
And no one ever uses an assault rifle to prevent crime or save lives … except that they do.
Yesterday I ran a rather incomplete, but illustrative, list of current and historic gun control proponents. Show me a tyrant, a dictator, a mass murderer, a genocidal maniac, or an active war-monger, and I’ll show you a loud and proud supporter of disarming the locals.
All of this figures largely into today’s Prepper News Weekly, which you should watch on a regular basis:
Perrin Lovett/FPTV/YouTube.
Yet and still, otherwise decent people, whether they be “average”or “ordinary” or powerful celebrities, continue to mindlessly (no thought, just emotions) clamor to be disarmed. To disarm you. It’s as infuriating as it is embarrassing.
The impressionable youth, students who will walk out of classes to support gun control, are almost understandable. Some (very few) of them are subject to being killed, in schools or without, by bad people armed with guns. Sure, they’re more likely to be killed by bees, lightning, and swimming pools, but those facts are … facts and not really governed by easily manipulated feelings. (Ever hear someone decry “assault-style” ionized plasmatic electricity from the sky?) No.
The kids are far more likely to be killed by incompetent doctors, sugary drinks and starchy carbs, and autos. And many millions of their cohorts never even made it to the schools thanks to Planned Parenthood (aka, Rehashed Nazi Eugenics, Inc.). On that last note, an interesting, telling political cartoon:
Andy Marlette, Pensacola News Journal (via the Tampa Bay Times).
That’s good and bad rhetoric all in one, Mr. Marlette. There’s a vague truth behind it: “conservative” Republicans types, like Rick “Make it 21!” Scott, will claim to be anti-abortion. They’re not. For all the claims, there’s been remarkably little (read: NO) action since 1973 to curtail abortions. The slight numerical decline is more attributable to contraception, lifestyle changes, and the antics of the … um … Junior Anti-Sex League.
The young cartoon lady is well-instructed that the well-dressed, well-fed elephant does not care about her in or out of the womb. His only concerns are: appeasing his corporate overlords, and; getting reelected. (Yes, these are most similar to the real desires of his goofy-looking jackass “opponent”). The rhetorical truth evaporates. Then, mathematically considering the 80:1 and 2,600:1 ratios from 2014, above, the real truth interrupts with force.
For the politicians, especially the currently-in-charge GOPers, there can be no understanding, no sympathy. “Mindless shits” comes descriptively to mind.
“The schools are terrible because the teachers are incompetent, but arm the teachers.”
“No, don’t arm the teachers. Raise the gun-buying age and put a SWAT team in every school. Metal detectors! More drugs!”
“Okay. Let’s ban bump stocks (unnecessary to bump fire anyway)”.
“Take the guns first, due process second.”
Gibber. Gibber. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Stupidity to make Democrats look sane by comparison. (One notices that, largely, the Dems are silently hanging back now, allowing the fat, stupid elephants, the kids, and the corporations to fight this one – a wise strategy).
The due process thing is really alarming. Not many of ye old Rights of Englishmen still exist in dying America. DP is kind of important. And it’s kind of under siege. And not just from The Trump. He says a lot of things, many of them unwise sounding:
President Trump on Wednesday voiced support for confiscating guns from certain individuals deemed to be dangerous, even if it violates due process rights.
“I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida … to go to court would have taken a long time,” Trump said at a meeting with lawmakers on school safety and gun violence.
“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said.
Trump was responding to comments from Vice President Pence that families and local law enforcement should have more tools to report potentially dangerous individuals with weapons.
Giving the orange man the benefit of the doubt, which I tire of doing, I’m sure he means what he says in limited, emergency circumstances. There are actually times when a situation sort of dictates dispensing with the technicalities of formal due process.
For instance, if a police officer sees someone committing (or about to start committing) what the officer reasonably believes to be a crime or dangerous activity, then the officer is lawfully authorized to use force, up to and including lethal force, to stop said crime or activity. No need to trouble a judge up-front. It happens all the time. And it many times doesn’t even involve the police; see the linked example of the armed citizen of Illinois, above.
And there is, in such emergency situations, a built-in due process anyway: people know or should know not to commit or attempt to commit crimes! At least not where others might see them. And with the expectation that they might be resisted if they proceed. It’s as much common sense as it used to be common law.
You know, the common law with the due process specter floating around?
“No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …” (5th Amend., U.S. Const., as amended, 1791)(See also: Amend. 14).
If there is to be formal legal action, then it needs to take place before any subsequent state taking action. Before, first, Donald, not second. And a gun would seem to fit the description of “property.” Of course, explaining this to a man who will use executive, administrative action, in defiance of Articles I and II, to ban superfluous rifle accessories, seems tenuous. Then again, the man says a lot of things; sometimes he rationally clarifies afterwards. Time will tell, time permitting.
It’s odd, given The Trump’s hasty pronouncements and the quasi-legal developments of the past 20 years, that he does not (yet) take a similar approach to the deep state, the treasonous lukers, the pizza-lovers, the banksters, and the Dreamers. Would not a delayed due process, say via Enemy Combatant proceedings, benefit the stabilization of whatever remains of this political mess? Dunno but, the fact that I, a anarcho-libertarian type, would even ask such a question speaks to where we really are in the here and now…
This article runs a little long but it is worth considering the whole of the fallen government and how it reacts to the law. Joe Bob Briggs considers the TeeVee-ification of the Third Branch:
The genius element of the English justice system is the invention in the Middle Ages of the state prosecutor, or, in its original incarnation, the king’s prosecutor. His purpose was to keep vengeance out of the courtroom. Before that you had the aggrieved-kinsman system. The suffering family brought charges against the alleged offender, so that if a Hatfield killed a McCoy, it was up to the McCoys to file charges, and if the Hatfield was found guilty, the McCoys were allowed to take vengeance in the form of executing the offender themselves. Eye for an eye, family member for family member, murder for murder, rape for rape. This is the system that, in various forms, still exists today in many Muslim cultures, and it’s the system that we supposedly got rid of 800 years ago after agreeing that eye-for-an-eye is not what we wanted. Henceforth the only person allowed to bring criminal charges was an unbiased public official representing the state and the people, and that person had to be emotionally uninvolved with either side of the case.
Then, as the court system developed in England and America, we became strict about excluding from trials anyone who had any kind of bias, even if he otherwise qualified as a witness. In fact, bias caused by friendship or blood relation is one of the principal ways that witnesses are impeached.
…
*Please read the whole original at Taki’s, via the above hyperlink.*
Our courts, judges, and prosecutors are every bit as out of control as their legislative and executive counterparts. It’s a very good article as are most that pass through that source. Still, I will note that there was a time and place for private prosecutions, ones involving really process and decorum. The Romans, for example, ran a system of private felony proceedings similar to those used in their major civil cases. The aggrieved party, usually of Patrician class, brought charges and prosecuted them before the whole Senate or before a large jury of the accused’s actual friends, his peers.
We don’t do that anymore … to our detriment. We still, to a degree, use the Roman system of magistrates to quickly resolve minor cases. But the felonies are now handled by self-serving government agents, before government judges, with government witnesses, all before a jury carefully selected so as to favor the government. In short: you are screwed.
Maybe the Romans, like the ancient English, were a little more civilized. More honest. More intelligent. “We” certainly tend to be none of those things.
Also, to partly answer Joe Bob, the changes (to due process, equal protection, etc.) may have started prior to the 1980’s. It might have come through the example of 1945-46 and the Nuremberg Trials, which essentially threw out hundreds, thousands even, of years of legal refinement. Threw them out for temporary expedience and feel-good-isms. And with ramifications for the future.
And so we are left with a system based on: ignoring facts, ignoring history, emotionally driven nonsense, collectivist actions, always geared towards taking the maximum amount of freedoms away from the maximum numbers of innocent or disconnected persons.
248 bad actors (calm down CNN, Google – not those actors) kill people with rifles, some of them surely “assault-ish,” while 100 Million good actors remain armed, responsible, peaceful, and vigilant. The solution is to disarm the many over the actions of the few?
That’s the “thought.” The thought of today’ do-good grabbers and of Hitler, Himmler, Mao, Stalin, Amin, Hussein, and Pot. A somewhat disconcerting truth and conundrum.
I don’t recall ever hearing so much about gun control as now. “Common sense” gun control. “Reasonable” gun control. “Hunters don’t need…” It’s coming from the usual sources: The Coalition to Stop Freedom, the Democrat Party, Tide Pod-eating millennial students, the American Pravda. And, now, we’re getting it from: Republicans, The Trump, DELTA, Dick’s Sports, and Walmart.
Some of the hysteria I could almost understand. I am solidly against gun violence, any violence, really. But I’m also against lies, tyranny, and communism.
So, here’s a reminder of who currently favors gun control along with some historical supporters (it’s all about the company one keeps/list in not all-inclusive):
Michael Bloomberg;
Diane Feinnstein;
Barry Obama;
Adolf Hitler;
Pol Pot;
Donald Trump;
Chuck Schumer;
Mao Zedong;
Adolf Eichmann;
Hillary Clinton;
Bill Clinton;
Chipper Jones;
Joseph Stalin;
Karl Marx;
Some actors paid millions to “kill” with guns on screen;
Saddam Hussein;
Vladimir Lenin;
Idi Amin;
Robert Mugabe;
Sarah Brady;
Benito Mussolini;
Nancy Pelosi;
Francisco Franco;
Matt Damon;
Abraham Lincoln;
Rick Scott;
Kim Jong-Il;
Kim Jong-Un;
Muammar Gaddafi;
Fidel Castro;
Slobodan Milosevic;
Chiang Kai-shek;
Kim Il-sung;
Ho Chi Minh;
Nikita Khrushchev; and
Hideki Tojo.
Sure, some of them murdered a few hundred million people but their hearts were (are) in the right place. It’s common sense, really.
The truth is part and parcel with common sense. Tomorrow I’m running a video and a list of gun/murder stats at FP which is intended to interject a little truth into the current mass hysteria. I’ll copy a link here, then.
It will also feature largely into Prepper News Weekly tomorrow.
The Complaint is HERE. I didn’t follow the case and won’t. Originally I figured it would go nowhere; now it’s a moot point. The suit was filed immediately in a case that still consists of nothing but unanswered questions. No investigative report. Multiple narrative changes. Adamant ISIS declarations. And admonishment from the FBI that it may be a year before anything is known factually (if ever).
President Donald Trump called on politicians on both sides of the aisle to back stronger background checks for prospective gun owners on Tuesday.
‘Whether we are Republican or Democrat, we must now focus on strengthening Background Checks!’ the president tweeted.
Hours earlier, Trump took action to outlaw bump stocks like the one used in the Las Vegas massacre last fall.
‘I signed a memorandum directing the Attorney General to propose regulations to ban all devices that turn legal weapons into machine guns,’ Trump said in the wake of a Florida massacre in which the killer did not use such a device.
His push for stricter gun controls comes after thousands of students and parents have called on his administration to implement changes to prevent future mass shootings.
Sell. Out.
This isn’t merely an affront to the Second Amendment, it’s an APA-driven assault on the Article One legislative authority of Congress. I suppose none of this matters at this rather late hour.
Nothing to address the rapidly declining culture. Nothing about the schools themselves. Nothing about the constant link between the shootings and psychotropic medication. Nothing about the massive failure of existing laws and law enforcement. Nothing about the illegality of most of those existing laws. Nothing. A feel good measure that doesn’t even feel good. And won’t help anyone.
Since he took office last year I’ve been trying to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. That ends now.
You may find this one hard to believe as all Florida schools are “gun free” zones, effectively (we’re told) protected by statutory force fields against crime and terror. Maybe that’s not the case.
Last year twin bills to even the odds were dropped in Tallahassee. Such would have opened up legal weapons carry in schools and at other “gun free” venues. The effort failed: SB 908 was indefinitely postponed and died in Senate Judy; HB 803 died in a subcommittee.
A whole lot of dying, needless perhaps.
Drudge.
UPDATES:
17 dead;
Suspected shooter: expelled former student Nicolas de Jesus Cruz, 19;
Suspect previously known to authorities (for similar threatening behavior);
Suspect in alive and in custody;
Pelosi, left, even Legs Network, predictably peddle gun control (like “gun free” zones?).
MORE UPDATES:
Suspect followed social media sites for “resistance” groups out of Syria, Iraq. Hmmm???
PERRIN LOVETT 
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