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For the sake of brevity, I am excluding hunting and sports shooting from this discussion.
Both are very firmly entrenched in our society, and worth many hundreds of millions of rands every year.
So, why are there so many handguns in South Africa? I think that it is largely due to the nature of the society we live in.
This paper daily runs articles on crime, which tends to be very violent.
I do not need to be a master of persuasion to convince the average person that violence is a very real plague in our country. And people respond to this reality differently.
Let us have a look at the average gun owner for a moment, and use a Mr Mkhize as an example.
Mr Mkhize is an average South African male: employed, married, works hard at his stable job, and makes do as best he can.
For him to be able to own a handgun, he first needs to attend an accredited training institution, and demonstrate his competence in theoretical and practical modules.
Upon completion of these unit standards, he then has to convince the South African Police Service that he is a fit and proper person to possess a firearm by applying for a competency certificate.
This process requires character references, his proficiency results, proof of residence and a whole host of other criteria. If all goes well, he will get his competency certificate after three months.
Then, and only then, can he even consider applying for a firearm licence. So, after much consideration, Mr Mkhize decides on the firearm, pays for it and begins the application process.
This is a separate process with its own library of required of documentation. Why? Because Mr Mkhize must prove that he needs this particular firearm. Hence he waits for another three months for his licence to be granted.
The entire exercise in order to legally licence a firearm takes a minimum of six months. Usually longer. Thus the argument that firearms can be legally obtained on a whim is very far from the truth.
It is an expensive and time-consuming process at best. And not one undertaken lightly.
But why does Mr Mkhize need a firearm at all? We live in the eighth most homicidal nation in earth.
A country where crime is a rampant problem, as we can easily judge from a mere glance at the annual SAPS statistics.
These same statistics also tell us that we cannot rely on the police to protect us. Their average response times in cities vary anywhere between 10 to 30 minutes. In rural areas it is even worse.
So, Mr Mkhize finds himself at a crossroads: he can either accept whatever violent crime is directed his way, or he can become his own “first responder”.
Should he choose the latter, he must mitigate violent threats as far as possible, and protect both himself and his family as best he can.
And in the 21st century a firearm is by far the best tool for such a vitally important job. No other object allows the weak, old, and frail a more effective manner with which to defend themselves.
Disarming Mr Mkhize deprives him of the only means with which he can protect his constitutionally entrenched right to life.
All human interaction falls into two categories, reason or force. You either have to convince me to do something by reason, or force me to do something by threat of violence.
Ideally we would like to live in Utopia, where there is no violence, but there is no place in the world where this is an attainable reality. Human nature prevents such fantasies coming true. Criminals are a global phenomenon.
The very definition of a criminal is a “law breaker, offender, villain, wrongdoer”. These are people who disregard the law.
Violent crime especially flourishes where victims cannot fight back. Jamaica. El Salvador. Honduras. Venezuela. Among countless other places.
Many proponents of a gun-free society believe that guns are the root cause of crime.
Apart from there being no correlation between rates of private firearm ownership and rates of violence, such reasoning also attaches attributes to an inanimate object it cannot possibly possess.
Regulating objects in order to regulate behaviour has always ended in failure. The two most prominent examples are the War on Drugs and the outlawing of prostitution.
The United Kingdom banned handguns in the mid-1990s. Ceaseless upsurges in violence, already overstraining their police resources, has led to all sorts of knife bans. Despite all these measures, the UK is becoming more violent every passing year.
Earlier in 2018 London’s murder rate surpassed that of New York for the first time in history. Clearly banning guns and knives have not made any difference.
In fact, these laws only serve to inconvenience the law-abiding and leave them defenceless.
The average South African gun owner is law-abiding and very aware of their responsibilities.
We are the people who stand next to you at the taxi rank, sit next to you in restaurants, live in the house next door, and interact with you every day.
In most cases you are not even aware that we are armed. While we respect your rights to choose whether or not to carry a firearm, this by the same token does not give you the right to disarm us.
We choose not to be victims, for we are all Mr Mkhize.
With a megaphone in hand and a banner in the background that reads “Jesus Saves,” Adam LaCroix and his team are not easily ignored and have become a part of FGCU’s culture.
His message is constructed around Christianity and spreading the word of God, and students and faculty often hear about eternal damnation.
To some, LaCroix’s message may sound harsh and inexcusable, but to LaCroix, his preaching is the most important work in his life.
“Without the understanding of the danger people are in [eternal damnation], according to what the Bible says, they’re not going to be able to understand their great need for forgiveness,” LaCroix said.
According to LaCroix, his messages tell of love, patience, righteousness and charity. The goal —outside of teaching Biblical moral values — is to change the minds of nonpracticing Christians to save their souls from damnation.
LaCroix is a founding member of TeamJesusPreachers, an organization originally founded by a man known as Brother Israel.
Together, LaCroix and Brother Israel run a YouTube channel amassing about 13,000 subscribers that support their work from around the nation.
Team Jesus Preacher’s headquarters is in Fort Myers, and LaCroix says it is comprised of seven to eight members, including LaCroix. LaCroix says he travels from coast to coast to preach, having gone as far as Las Vegas and New York City.
When he’s not preaching, LaCroix tends to his remodeling business and enjoys spending time with his wife.
But LaCroix wasn’t always a preacher holding signs that warned onlookers of burning in an eternal hell.
There were several turning points along his journey that made him change his outlook on life.
According to LaCroix, before becoming a born-again Christian, he indulged in a life of sin. LaCroix said he excelled in academics, sports and bodybuilding in high school, which made him extremely popular, he said.
According to LaCroix, he sold drugs and he ended up dropping out of Michigan State University and later got arrested with four felonies.
The arrest became his first turning point, he said, and he began to pray.
With time, LaCroix said he managed to get his life back together. He ended up marrying his wife and followed the path of sobriety for three years, in which he married his wife and started his business.
His life took a darker turn when he ended up in the hospital with nothing left but faith.
One day, LaCroix went to a pool hall and choked on a swig of beer and was rushed to to the hospital, where he fell into heart failure.
He said he was in the hospital fighting death for six months, resorting to prayer to save his life. He vowed to turn his life around and preach the word of salvation if God saved him, he said.
According to LaCroix, doctors were certain he would not make it, but he did and he took true to his promise. Afterwards, he worked as a prison chaplain helping felons find faith.
Turning point number two: According to LaCroix, after the incident, he began to pray and apply himself to Evangelism, which helped heal his marriage, he said.
In this time, he also says he recuperated his business, acquired success and has been clean for the past eight years.
In present time, he is preaching his message of the Bible through his controversial methods.
This method isn’t without its dangers. LaCroix said he and his team have been threatened and physically hurt. There was also an instance where someone attempted to kill him, he said.
With a distant smile, LaCroix recollected the event in what seems like a distant memory. When questioned about his own safety, he said he was not afraid because of his belief in Jesus.
“Believing in Jesus is the only way, turning to a power greater than us in the only way to rid ourselves of a life of sin,” he said.
The guy is a nut job and he concerns the majority of the students that have to deal with his antics on a regular basis.
GREAT MAN OF GOD ! KEEP PREACHING ADAM !!
The Beauty Fashion and Vloggers Alliance (BFVL) has selected entertainment agency EdenCancan to promote the body's first conference.
Taking place at Google’s offices in central London on 18 February, the BeautyCon Europe conference will host influential beauty and fashion vloggers, known for their social media following.
Speakers include Kandee Johnson, who has two YouTube channels and two daily blogs offering beauty and fashion tips; make-up artists Pixie Woo, who have over 138 million hits on their YouTube channel; and Andrea Brooks, who has over a million subscribers to her online beauty tutorials.
EdenCancan is providing PR, social media and events services to promote the conference, with activity starting immediately. The BeautyCon event times with London Fashion Week, which starts on 15 February, and will be followed later this year by the first convention for YouTube’s most influential beauty and fashion vlog...
Last November the entertainment agency was appointed by lingerie specialist Panache to help promote its collaboration with designer Wayne Hemingway.
EdenCancan’s clients include Comedy Central, BBC Children in Need, Look magazine and Spanx.
The Partnership for Safe Driving, a Washington-based nonprofit, has caught up to the politics of that self-absorbed TV ad Corzine did after his car crash. “Tell him … he is grossly distorting the truth … ” when no anti-speeding message is included, the group urged people to inform the governor. The poorly worded ad is ...
This entry was posted in Corzine, State Police. Bookmark the permalink.
It’s great how Corzine’s story keeps changing in regards to the speed. If they just admitted it from the start, it would all be forgotten by now. Corzine shows time after time, he doesn’t know how to tell the truth, it is constant lies.
Welcome to “Today’s America”, where people have become accustomed to lying their way out of problems they behave themselves into, a tactic which seems to work famously as long as you have enough political power and/or entitlement to sweep the truth under the rug.
When will you people ever learn ,Politicians ,police,and anybody with enough money to get that GOLD shield in your windshield they are a select group that are above the law ,laws are not made for them .
Tell a lie enough times and people will accept it as truth.
Corzine’s a liar because he has never really HAD to tell the truth.
As arrogant as he is, why would he even care if anyone believes?
How about a father and mother with 3 small children in the back seat getting slammed by this 91 mph caravan blowing up the GSP or a group of seniors or a group of people with developmental diabilities? The thought of what the outcome from his stupidity could have caused is unreal. He just doesnt get it. I think someone...
Governor Corzine has come up with two ridiculous proposals to raise the gas tax again on New Jersey residents as well as the tolls. This man’s ridiculous proposals MUST be stopped. I urge you to flood e-mails and letters to the governor and your representatives ASAP. Demand that our governor cut all the pork in Trenton...
Thanks and send those e-mails and letters today!
Hipsters can be a weird breed. They’re the pinnacle of non-conformism, and prove it by all conforming to an easily recognizable style.
This was a point that was made by Gideon Lichfield in an MIT Technology Review article released last month. According to Lichfield, the article got the attention of a reader who noticed the picture at the top of the article and subsequently recognized himself.
“Now, as far as I know, calling someone a hipster isn’t slander, no matter how much they may hate it. Still, we would never use a picture without the proper license or model release. It was a stock photo from Getty Images. So we checked the license,” tweeted Lichfield.
Getty does have some rules about using their photos. As Lichfield points out, Getty notes that if you’re using one of their models as a subject for articles about STD’s then you must highlight the fact that the person in the picture is merely a model and not an example of a carrier of an STD.
As calling someone a “hipster” is not necessarily an insult, MIT Tech Review didn’t think they were violating any of the policies despite the angry reader’s protests.
To be on the safe side, Lichfield contacted Getty to make sure implying someone was a hipster wasn’t breaching their rules. Hilariously, Getty checked the model’s release and found that the angry reader wasn’t even the guy in the picture.
Getty checked the model release, and gave us the news: The guy who complained wasn’t even the guy in the picture. He'd misidentified himself.
Let’s break this down. A hipster came across an article talking about how all the non-conformist hipsters conform to a singular style. The hipster saw a photo of another hipster within the article, and due to being so similar to the model thanks to the conforming hipsters do, ended up believing he was the guy in the ph...
Young cricketers had the chance to learn from the master when Sri Lanka legend and Sussex player Mahela Jayawardena came to teach them basic skills of the game.
He spent two hours talking to and watching around 40 children at Ifield Community College in two sessions organised by Crawley Cricket Academy.
Jayawardena said: “I am playing cricket in Sussex and I love playing with the kids because I want to help inspire them to be good cricketers.
“Azam Riyard is trying to get Asian kids to play cricket and maybe become a homegrown player for Sussex one day.
Crawley Cricket Academy manager Azam Riyard is old friends with the legendary batsman.
He said: “I wanted the children to have this opportunity to experience time with a great.
“People like Mahela and give a lasting impression. To have experience of having time with a great is fantastic for the children. It was a wonderful opportunity for the children.
“Sussex County Cricket Club have been very helpful in letting their pro’s do community work.
“Crawley Cricket Academy provides facility for people from U11-U17 who don’t have a lot of money to provide them an opportunity to play the game and have quality coaching with a lot of top class equipment.
Click on the video to watch Jayawardena and Azam teaching the kids from Crawley Cricket Academy.
New Delhi: A panel of state finance ministers Tuesday decided to scrutinise the GST collection on services by the states to find out if they are taxing them correctly, Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Modi said.
The panel has been formed by the GST Council to look into revenue shortfall being faced by the states post implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
The seven-member Group of Ministers headed by Modi also decided to look into the issues concerning input tax credit (ITC) with a view to finding out if they were contributing to revenue shortfall.