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[Ed note: for up-to-date info, see also: NOAA National Hurricane Center, Mike's Weather Page, windy.com, NWS - Hourly Weather Forecast Graph - Tampa, and NWS - Hourly Weather Forecast Graph - Miami.]
At 8:28AM September 5, Zero Hedge reported
Irma is now the [strongest] hurricane [ever] in the Atlantic basin, outside of the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, in [US National Hurricane Center] records.
[...] meteorologist Eric Holthaus writes that Hurricane Irma is now expected to *exceed* the theoretical maximum intensity for a storm in its environment, or as he puts it "Redefining the rules".
[...] Irma's current path--headed straight for Florida--has prompted the state to prepare for the "catastrophic" system.
Unlike Harvey, which caused widespread damage, power outages and flooding and taking almost a fifth of U.S. oil refining capacity offline, Irma is a bigger threat to agriculture, with orange juice futures surging.
[...] Florida is the world's largest producer of orange juice after Brazil. About two-thirds of the state's citrus crop is located in the lower two-thirds of the peninsula.
[...] Airlines have canceled flights across the Caribbean and are adding planes to evacuate tourists, while cruise-line stocks have tumbled.
[...] Only three Category 5 hurricanes have hit the contiguous 48 U.S. states, [said Bob Henson, a meteorologist with Weather Underground:] The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 that devastated the Florida Keys, Hurricane Camille in 1969, and Hurricane Andrew that cut across Florida in 1992. Andrew was originally classified as a Category 4 storm only to be upgraded years later after further analysis.
"It is obviously a rare breed", Henson said. "We are in rare territory."
At 12:37PM September 5, Heavy.com reported
The Florida governor has declared a state of emergency as Hurricane Irma reaches a Category 5 storm. The Florida Keys are currently in the hurricane's path, although the storm remains unpredictable.
[...] Irma has [...] maximum sustained winds [of] 185 mph. It was moving west at 14 mph and is about 270 miles east of Antigua. The Florida Keys are in the projected path of the hurricane, according to September 4 late evening forecasts.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:25AM (4 children)
Why does "care" need to be taken here? Can you think of an actual problem where this would make a difference?
On the "mere right"? It's right after the First Amendment. Someone thought it was very important to put it in second place. And why do we need a more rigorous registry of weapons and commercial transactions? What problem does that fix?
All those things can be (and have been) used to illegally infringe on peoples' right to bear firearms. One of the key problems in this debate is the historical dishonesty of the gun control side over the past 40+ years. Many vague, incremental, and poorly justified restrictions have been exploited to violate the Second Amendment rights of firearm owners over that time.
Such as calling firearm ownership and usage a "mere right"? You have said something to indicate you are against the Second Amendment. Also, your initial weaselly sentence about implementing gun control by "defining more carefully what is meant by 'bear' and 'arms'". Semantics games where one redefines terms to change their meaning is another way to subvert or undo the Second Amendment. This is another indication you are against.
The thing is all the things you've mentioned have been attempted in the past as means to violate and infringe on Second Amendment rights. Let us also note that several of these controls are already in place. We are already selective [wikipedia.org] about who can own firearms. It is already illegal to handle firearms in an unsafe manner, much less murder people with them (with everyone allowed to respond with lethal force, if one tries the latter). Many of your supposed concerns are already regulated and have been for over half a century (sometimes far longer than that).
My take is that we are already adequately regulated. Most firearm-related deaths are already due to suicide, accident, or the drug war, all which are preventable (without need for gun control laws) and/or none of our business.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Saturday September 09 2017, @12:05PM (3 children)
To continue, here's what else I see [soylentnews.org]:
Let us note that some of the earliest gun control law [thoughtco.com] was precisely to prevent [wikipedia.org] blacks from owning firearms.
So portraying the Second Amendment as ethnically selective (even though it isn't) while ignoring that gun control traditionally has been, is another indication that you are actually against the Second Amendment.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday September 09 2017, @07:04PM (2 children)
The obvious rejection is that all this discussion of ammosexual love for implements of lethal force really has no place in a discussion of a hurricane. Does everything have to be about guns?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 09 2017, @10:58PM (1 child)
Alas, we've tried and this appears to be a forbidden love. Perhaps a car analogy?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday September 11 2017, @08:09AM
Ah, khallow, the love that cannot be spoken! OK, we will go with that, although it is kind of creepy.