Musings, opinions, observations, questions, and random thoughts on island life, Fernandina Beach and more

Musings, opinions, observations, questions, and random thoughts on island life, Fernandina Beach and more

FL Sheriffs Voice “Graveyard Dead” Consequences For Killers As Clueless Democrats Call For Sympathy & Understanding

Democrats want to take guns away from law abiding citizens and erect signs that say “gun free zones” to protect school children. Florida’s sheriffs have more practical tactics in mind.

Following the massacre of Texas school children last week, a trio of Florida sheriffs articulated their no-nonsense, rationale approach to crazed armed folks who want to attack residents in their jurisdictions.

Sheriff Judd

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd may have been the most candid saying: “This is the last thing you’ll see before we put a bullet through your head if you’re trying to hurt our children. We’re going to shoot you graveyard dead if you come onto a campus with a gun threatening our children or shooting at us,” Judd told the press as he held up a photo of armed officers in a video released by his office last week.

Recently, while his sheriff’s office was looking for Tianis Jones after she went “McNuts” in a Lakeland McDonald’s Thursday, May 19, the uninhibited sheriff said: “When we find her she won’t have any golden arches, but we’ll give her some silver handcuffs.” It’s hard not to like this guy.

Lee County, Florida Sheriff Carmine Marceno issued a similar warning to those who would attack a school in his county following last week’s Texas tragedy. “We are going to kill you,” he proclaimed.

Marceno said that if an individual goes “to one of our schools and present[s] deadly force,” his deputies are going to “meet you with deadly force and we are going to kill you.”

In case they didn’t understand it the first time, Sherriff Marceno emphasized his point repeating: “You bring deadly force in this county; we are going to kill you.”

Marceno said that his deputies view the lives of those that they have sworn to protect as more valuable than their own.

“In our schools, over 100,000 children go to school, over 118 schools in Lee County,” he said. “Our great governor DeSantis has made it very clear, by giving me and all sheriffs and law enforcement across our great state, all the tools that we need to absolutely make certain that our mission is complete, and that is safety and law and order.”

“My policy is very simple,” he said, “When we get that dreaded call, God forbid, we get that dreaded call, we don’t wait one second. We don’t wait one second. For any person or persons that go into a school where our children are and they present deadly force, they will be met with deadly force immediately. We are going to kill them. We’re not going to hesitate. We’re not going to wait.”

Pinellas County, Florida Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, head of the Parkland commission chimed in saying that the investigation of the Parkland attack had changed his views on armed teachers — he went from opposing the idea to supporting it. He noted, “People need to keep an open mind to it, as the reality is that if someone else in that school had a gun it could have saved kids’ lives.”

What these sheriffs are saying is a no brainer….but according to Democrats the solution to stopping mass shootings is to assume that the perpetrator will follow gun control legislation and will be deterred from conducting their evil mission when they see a sign outside a school reading: “This is a gun free zone.” The killers are the ones who seek out the “Gun Free Zones” because they know no one there is armed and and unable to defend themselves. And now Joe Biden wants to disarm everybody but government employees and their bodyguards.

The Democrat’s expert source.

In an article that could have come directly out of the satirical Onion or Babylon Bee the left has produced an expert – Dr. Joel Dvoskin – a clinical psychologist at the Washington D.C.-based American Psychological Association, who asserts that blaming mental health problems for mass shootings such as the Uvalde tragedy is “intentionally disingenuous” and “insulting” to those suffering from those sorts of conditions.” This guy is as nutty as his statement and needs to be locked up among his homicidal patients.

The left says we can’t insult homicidal maniacs, it might hurt their feelings. Are there people out there who actually listen to lunatics like this obviously deranged D.C. doctor? Oh, yeh, Joe Biden!

Much of the media focus from the Texas shooting has been helping naïve and devious Democrats advance their leftist gun control agenda and criticizing local law enforcement officials for their response to the incident which they have admitted was problematic. Listen to these lunatics at your peril.

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More Leftist BS: Leftist Democrats say guns are the cause of the school and other shootings, but that’s BS. When I was a teenager my pals and I could order rifles from a magazine and there weren’t churches, movie theaters, schools, grocery stores, etc. getting shot up. In our public schools we also said the Pledge of Allegiance, recited the Lord’s Prayer, and read Bible verses in home room before going to class. Our parents and teachers demanded respect and there were no violent video games or vulgar rap. The Dean of Men and coaches instilled discipline with large wooden paddles. Democrats and the left eliminated all that and have driven society into the ditch, blaming everybody but themselves.

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One of Mr. Martinage’s ranges

Speaking of Safety: When it involves personal safety and preparedness few people hereabouts are as knowledgeable and prepared as Amelia Island resident Bernard Martinage.

Martinage, a charming local French expatriate, knows more than most about educating folks on how to prepare for and react to dangerous situations. He’s so good at it it’s his fulltime job. He’s authored books and teaches courses on personal security, firearm training and preparedness.

A long-time resident of Amelia Island, Martinage, an unabashedly patriotic naturalized U.S. citizen. His books on private security and preparedness are being used by more than 300 schools across eight states and in three countries to train security professionals www.SecuriSTART.com . He has been a registered body guard in the U.S. since 1994 and served several years in third world counties under extremely dangerous circumstances.

“Current news reports describe an environment that presents more and more obstacles and dangers that have people concerned about a variety of personal security issues,” explains Martinage. “These require an increased need for self-protection and organization; the increased need for self-reliance; the need to maintain a means of communication and awareness; and creating a network like-minded or geographically related people.

Martinage offers a variety of opportunities locals can take advantage of to secure their personal safety including:

  • Operating a Florida licensed private security and PI agency that exempts him from curfew and martial law, enabling him to serve communities during difficult times. AmeliaSecurity.com
  • He owns a defensive tactics shooting range an hour away from Yulee that’s equipped with two tactical bays, a 1,200 square-foot, five-room ballistic shoot-house and a 1.5-mile amphibious jungle course that includes a mile of riverfront (both banks). DrOpZOne360.com
  • He is a certified Law Enforcement Firearm Instructor enabling him to teach the law as it relates to the use of deadly force. He is also an National Rifle Association (NRA)  Training Counselor who has trained more than 600 firearm instructors in all disciplines from pistol to personal protection Instructors; AmeliaGunners.com
  • He owns patents on a variety of products relating to firearm training. TargetNation.com
  • He is a federally licensed firearm dealer, enabling folks hereabouts to legally purchase guns through him.
  • He offers a gun-test on Amelia island where folks can shoot more than 20 different pistols to find what fits best for self-defense. I have personally taken advantage of this, and it is impressive. Go to https://www.safeandsecureamelia.com/buy-a-gun-1.html
  • He also created a NERAG (Neighborhood Emergency Response and Assistance Group) as featured in his News Wrecker ad.

    Bernard Martinage

Martinage is currently offering two local workshops. “These will enable people to build a foundation of knowledge and skills they need to protect themselves and others, as well as prepare their home for better protection and preparedness to manage short-term and long-term disasters,” he explains. Workshops run five to six hours.

He can be contacted at (866) 766-3889, ext. 701; his website at www.SafeAndSecureGroup.com; or contact him by email at oic@SafeAndSecureGroup.com.

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Wait! What? Joe Biden’s aging and inept Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last month that certain black lives “don’t matter” when she argued that so-called unwanted children of black women “will grow up in poverty and do worse themselves” if they are allowed to be born. Apparently this addled old bird believes life is only worth living if you are affluent and not black. Why do blacks continue to vote for Democrats? Earlier this week this senile old-timer also admitted that she was all wrong about inflation, and that it actually exists. The Marx Brothers are in charge of the government folks.

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Gone With The Wind: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts the 2022 hurricane season will bring an above-average number of storms, but many Floridians apparently don’t care.

According to a new poll from AAA, 29% of Floridians don’t make advanced preparations for hurricane season or other severe weather events and more than two-fifths haven’t planned for what to do if an evacuation order comes.

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Just Asking: Why is it when archeologists find human remains they discover only male and female remains and not the other more than 700 genders?

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Get Me Out Of Here: The poor New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden, looked like she’d rather be anywhere but where she was the other day when she appeared sitting next to a mumbling, incoherent Joe Biden in the Oval Office.

Ms. Arden was wearing what appeared to be an overcoat and her eyes were darting back and forth giving the impression that she was anxious and ready to bolt out of that room as soon as somebody opened a door or a window.

Biden, who constantly lowered his head to mumble from a note card in his lap, did a spot-on impression of the addled Aunt Bethany in the 1989 National Lampoon Christmas Vacation movie, who when asked to give the blessing at dinner, instead recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

Imagine the stories the prime minister must be telling her staff back in Wellington.

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Things I Wish I’d Said: “I believe the 400,000 bodies buried at Arlington National Cemetery is the reason you should stand for the national anthem.” – Senator John Kennedy (R-LA).

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Don’t Bank On Climate Warming! HSBC, a British bank, punished their global head of responsible investing because he spoke honestly at a bank conference, and said climate change risk is negligible, and lenders need to stop focusing on climate risk and get back to basic underwriting. Leaked reports said he had a slide which said “Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving and apocalyptic warnings are always wrong.” He was absolutely right, so the woke jerks at HSBC suspended him. Brilliant analyst, pundit, investor, and observer Joel Ross says the outspoken banker asked the simple question: “If climate change is such a risk why did asset values increase so much as the doomsday warnings increased?” The astute banker warned that banking resources are being diverted from good lending to climate regulation. The obsession with climate change is based on imperfect models and political nonsense taken to extreme levels. What a crock! If you bank with HSBC beware.

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WOW! Department: British bicyclist Guy Martin is recorded as having set the British record for outright speed on a bicycle of 112 miles per hours.

  • Comment (12)
  • Another great blog Dave – thanks and keep up your good work – our Island needs it!

  • Although quite impressive and dangerous at the same time, these bicycle speed records are somewhat misleading. For decades now, the cyclist rides behind a large vehicle, such as a truck or train, to take advantage of the drafting effect of the wind eddies created by the vehicle.
    It’s like riding with a 90 mph tail wind.

  • I find myself nodding YES almost every time I read Dave’s blog. Mr. Martinage says some good things in here, too. The left is nutty about gun banning, taking their cure from Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Hitler, etc. All saw them as a threat to their regimes, get it. It’s common sense, it’s for the children, they exclaimed, before confiscating them. American politicians of the left would take them from law abiding Citizens and guess who would still have them? I could write a whole column on that and I think I will soon.

    I attended Dave’s speech at the Sunrise Rotary Club this morning- witty, satirical, reminiscing and wise at the same time. He started by saying “they asked me not to discuss politics, so in closing …” and it only went downhill from there. He soon added that he does parody and that there are lots of people deserving of it on Amelia Island.

    He is a treasure. Dave’s column will appear weekly (certainly not weakly) in Citizens Journal Florida, starting in July. Unlike the News-Leader, we wont fire him. In any case he, said a job means you get paid and he wasn’t paid by them, so it really wasn’t a job and you can’t get fired from a job you don’t have, he reasoned :-). But, we will match their offer.

  • Spot on as always Dave!! They would have to pry our guns out of our cold, dead hands before I would ever turn one in.

  • Remember when Janet Yellen and her toadies promised us that “inflation will be transitory” ? And then Sen. Liz Warren announces she wants da gubamint to spend MORE because that will cure inflation … folks, these people in power are NUTZ. Start by voting Republican in the mid-terms, then vote Republican in the National election. 🇺🇸👍

  • The dems blame the ladder if you fall off the roof and die. The dems blame the highway if in a bad accident and driving carelessly. The dems blame Donald Trump for the pope getting dementia. The dems blame Capt Kangaroo for classroom dysfunction.

    Never ever blame themselves = Pure Arrogance and Ignorance

  • Of course we cannot ban guns. Banning anything doesn’t work, as we’ve learned from prohibition and abortion. Firearms are a constitutional right that the American people must hold.

    But we can raise the minimum age to purchase a firearm, increase wait times, put more resources into background checks, close loopholes, and not allow any school shooting tip to go uninvestigated.

    We also need to build a society that is healthier for young men. Six out of nine of the deadliest mass shootings since 2018 were committed by men 21 or younger. These are young men who are on the fringes of society, many of whom have fallen into right-wing radicalization.

    We need better mental health care, and we need to combat the growing threat of right-wing radicalization on the internet.

    Republicans have obviously combatted every attempt to implement common sense gun control. They are this country’s biggest obstacle to proper mental health, just this week voting on party lines against funding mental health care. And, of course, they are the constantly denying that there is any issue with online right-wing radicalization.

    American legislators need to snap back to reality and actually put a shred of effort into fixing this country’s problems. Republicans are doing everything they can to deny what’s really going on and block any proper change. That needs to change.

    • How about the 50 shootings and nine deaths in Democrat-run Chicago over Memorial Day weekend? Happens every week there and in Democrat-controlled NYC, Baltimore, San Francisco, LA etc. All places with the tighest gun controlls.

      • I’m still waiting for somebody to ‘follow the science’ and show evidence that any gun control laws will mitigate shootings. As you point out, in Chicago there is the equivalent of a mass shooting resulting in 15 deaths EVERY WEEK OF THE YEAR, in a city with some of the strictest gun control laws in the country. Is anybody so naive as to believe that the gangbangers in these cities are suddenly going to have a come to Jesus moment and submit to a background check and turn in their illegal weapons? As to bans on so-called ‘assault rifles’ – where is the legal definition of an assault weapon? Is there a country in the world that arms it’s military with AR-15s? Nope! An AR-15 is just a semi-automatic rifle, no different than any number of other such guns used for hunting, target practice, etc. Only the styling makes it look like an M-16

        • Granted I am probably less of a gun aficionado than many of the readers of this blog, however, I have been a gun owner for over 40 years and my collection includes a variety of handguns, rifles and shotguns, to include a Bushmaster AR-15 style rifle. I agree that selectively banning a particular style of weapon is not likely to be the answer, however, don’t kind yourself into believing that AR-15s are “just a semi-automatic rifle, no different than any number of other such guns used for hunting, target practice, etc.”

          There have been 10 mass shootings in the US since the time of my original post (~2 days). I am pretty sure that our country has established a baseline for what happens when nothing is done, now let’s test the hypothesis that common sense gun legislation will help reduce the trail of death, fear and broken families. Does anyone have a better idea?

  • Modern-day gun ownership is rooted in the Second Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1791, which reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But does this constitutional right justify easy access to weapons that are now far more powerful than anything early American leaders envisaged? Especially when such guns are being used by 18-year-olds against elementary school students, as was the case in Uvalde, Texas. And then again, there is the Kyle Rittenhouse case. Although I do not dispute the jury’s verdict based on the factors that they were properly instructed could be considered in making their decision, that case certainly underscores the consequences of allowing those who lack the maturity or common sense to responsibly bear arms to easily acquire such a weapon. The Second Amendment doesn’t necessarily mean anyone can simply wield the deadly weapon of their choice and the government has no power to regulate the types of guns sold. It’s time to try to something different.

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