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Original question:“What are the downsides of living in Florida?”Answer:Some things are obvious:Hurricanes.Tornadoes (Not as much as Oklahoma or Kansas, but still more than most states).Lightning. The Tampa area is the lighting capital of America.Flooding in a few very low-lying areas.Heat (during the summertime).Humidity (during the summertime).And some things that are not so obvious:VERY dry winters that lead to widespread wildfires about once every 10 years or so.Wintertime traffic congestion due to snowbirds (snowbirds are people, most of them elderly, that live in Florida only during the winter).Wintertime traffic ACCIDENTS due to snowbirds (Frankly, some elderly people should not have a driver’s license if they live in high population parts of Florida, imo. Driving in high traffic areas requires an agility at the wheel that many elderly people just don’t have). I’ve come VERY close (like stomping-on-the-brakes-tires-screeching-to-within-inches-of-the-other-vehicle-close) to some accidents because of elderly people making very poor driving decisions.Most of Florida (except for parts of northernmost Florida) is flat flat flat. Like no mountains, foothills, hills, or even bumps flat. Anything over 5 feet in height is called a “hill” or “highland”. I actually call it “Flat Florida”. No joke.There a LOTS of crawling type bugs down here. LOTS. Which is OK if they stay outside. But they won’t, even if you keep your house IMMACULATELY clean.The traffic lights down here are literally 4 times as long as traffic lights elsewhere. No joke, I’ve measured it. I found that traffic lights in most places that I lived in or visited before I moved down here lasted 30 seconds from beginning of green to the next beginning of green. Down here traffic lights are 2 minutes from beginning of green to the next beginning of green. As a result, there are more people that run red lights down here, and also much longer groups of cars between traffic lights, which causes some people on side streets to turn into traffic when it’s not safe.Much of the housing in some of the counties is located in developments that have restrictions, such as the colors you can paint your house, the type of mailbox you can have, what colors and types of Christmas decorations you can put up, and so on. If you try to disobey those restrictions, then the HOA/POA (Home Owners Association/Property Owners Association) for that development will fine you, and if you don’t pay the fine, they will put a lien on your house. No joke. Some people actually like such restrictions, so for them, this point would be a plus. But not for me.Many housing lots are tiny, like less than 1/3 of an acre. This is because it is the price of the land, as opposed to the house, that is more expensive, especially anywhere within about 20 miles of the ocean. So to get an affordable home, it is necessary to build it on a tiny lot, in much of Florida. There are many high-class type houses that are surprisingly affordable down here, as long as they are on very tiny lots.Lastly, what is by far the most negative thing about Florida, there are MANY girlie joints (you see the billboards for them all over the place) and pawn shops, which draw the criminal element.But for all of those (except the flatness), there are very common and/or easy work-arounds:As for hurricanes, houses in Florida nowadays are built to VERY STRICT building codes. We have among the strictest building codes, if not THE strictest building codes, in the nation. Plus some counties add even STRICTER building codes on top of the already strict state codes! The house I live in, for example, has withstood two MAJOR hurricanes (Frances and Jeanne in 2004, which hit very close by). Houses (and any other buildings) down here that have been built in the last 15 years or so aren’t simply houses; they are FORTRESSES. No joke. And if you are concerned about the week or two after a hurricane power outage, you can buy a generator, a gas stove, etc., or solar panels, which have been getting less and less expensive as of late. Plus solar panels cut your normal electricity cost. So if you are buying an existing house, be sure the house has been built after 2002. If you have a new house built, it will be built to the new codes. Just be sure to use only Florida certified builders, and keep an eye on them (take photos of the construction from time to time, say). If you are still concerned, hire builders that will build to the strictest codes in the state - the Miami-Dade building codes. Those are, by far, the strictest building codes in the state and, in fact, the entire nation.As for tornadoes, see my prior point.As for lightning, stay indoors and don’t touch anything plugged into electrical outlets. If you are outdoors, get indoors. Many public places have lightning detectors that go off even before you know there is a thunderstorm in the area. Florida thunderstorms are very short; they only last about 15-30 minutes or so on average, and usually occur around 4 or 5 PM during the afternoon on summer days, so it’s not much of an inconvenience anyway. And if you’re afraid of thunderstorms, one summer in Florida will cure you of that!Most areas that are prone to flooding have been declared nature reserves, or parks, or some other type of area that you can’t build in anyway. Plus the drainage system is very well built, and has been in continuous construction since the 1940’s (for more info, see the South Florida Water Management website https://www.sfwmd.gov/). If you still have any concerns, look up the flood zone map for the county that you plan to move into, then don’t buy or rent a house in a flood zone.As for the heat and humidity, just about every single property, be it houses, stores, malls, workplaces, etc., has central air conditioning. Plus EVERY car sold down here has good AC. In fact, there are state laws that REQUIRE certain places, such as nursing homes, etc, to have AC, and systems to back up that AC in case of power outage. So an average summer day consists of: Waking up in your air conditioned house, driving to work in your air conditioned car (be sure to park in the shade), working in your air conditioned workplace, running your shopping or other errands in air conditioned stores/banks/doctor offices/whatever, then driving your air conditioned car back to your air conditioned house. And the rest of the year, the temperatures are much nicer than in the rest of the country.As for the once per decade wildfires, they don’t occur everywhere, and when they DO occur, one of Florida’s many, very well equipped fire departments is usually on the scene in minutes. In the rare cases when they get out of control, most of those are in remote areas like the Everglades where nobody lives, and if one does get close to an inhabited area, people will be warned if there’s even a slight chance of the fire coming their way, and evacuated if needed. Plus extra fire departments are called in from other states in those cases. Plus a lot of warning/work is done to prevent fires from getting close to houses to begin with (towns/counties/state trimming roadside/canalside shrubbery, etc.) If, after all that, your house is one of the rare few to get burned down, your homeowners insurance will put you up at a hotel somewhere nearby (Florida has TONS of hotels), and your insurance will build you a brand new house, built to the latest codes, to boot! But check insurance company reviews before you buy any kind of insurance.As for the wintertime traffic congestion, try to avoid living in or near a city. Traffic is INSANE in south Florida (that is, the counties of Martin, Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade. Those all contain big cities. But Monroe and most other counties are OK). Plus, once you become a native Floridian, you will learn all the back roads to take to get around most of the congestion.As for the wintertime traffic accidents, see my prior point.If you like mountains, you are plain out of luck. You’ll have to go up to Georgia to see the Appalachians. But the very northernmost part of Florida, by Tallahassee, for example, has some hills.You can easily get around the bug thing by having a pest control guy spray around your house every month or two. If you don’t like bugs in your house, you will REQUIRE pest control spraying. It’s not expensive and it works. It’s kind of like of an extra utility bill that you have to pay, but it’s not that much; for us it has varied from $30 to $35 per month.As for the traffic light thing, learn the roads. We DO allow right-turn-on-red down here (like most of the nation), so when you come to a red light, and you need to take a right, you’ll be OK if there is a right turn only lane. Or if you see a traffic light about to turn red far down the road (99% of the roads down here are as straight as an arrow for long distances), you may be able to turn off the road that has the traffic light and use another road that doesn’t have a traffic light. I use these and other legal tricks all the time to avoid red lights. Also be extra careful at intersections (remember the red-light runners), and watch those side streets! Fortunately, however, the wider streets down here make it much easier to see traffic at intersections and coming in from side streets; so overall, even with the afore-mentioned issues, it seems safer to me.As for the housing developments thing, if you don’t like restrictions, make sure that any house that you buy or rent is NOT in such a development. Talk to your realtor, or ask someone in a nearby house, about it. In some counties, it’s easier to find houses that are not in developments; in other counties, it’s virtually impossible (such as Palm Beach county, say), unless you either: A. are willing to live in a high crime area, or B. have several million dollars in your bank account. About the only reasonable “work-around” for housing in a county like Palm Beach County would be for you to buy housing in a development that has fewer restrictions than other developments (get a list of the local HOA/POA rules and regulations BEFORE you buy a house), and then be SURE to attend all HOA/POA meetings, or better yet, become an actual MEMBER of the POA/HOA, to ensure that they keep the number and type of regulations down to a bare minimum.As for the girlie joints and pawn shops, sad to say, there’s not much you can do immediately except to avoid them and avoid the neighborhoods that have them (and no, I do NOT recommend the use of arson :D). Long term, I would like to see the state legislature ban such businesses, or if that is not possible, to regulate them so heavily that it becomes almost impossible for such businesses to exist in the state.I moved down to Florida from Albany, NY over 20 years ago, and OVERALL I AM VERY GLAD THAT I MOVED TO FLORIDA, for the following additional benefits:It’s much sunnier. We RARELY have days that are overcast or rainy all day long. Most of our rain comes from brief but very heavy rainfalls in afternoon thunderstorms; outside of that, it’s usually sunny.There are fewer social restrictions on what people can talk about (like church, prayer, and such; people are very open about that and many other things down here).They are also more open about fireworks and a few other things.I like the way people think down here, they are more down-to-earth.Folks are “warmer” down here; that is, they are more polite and welcoming. You will, of course, come across the occasional grouch, but that happens everywhere.Property tax rates are lower than many states.There is a 3% cap on how much the tax rate on your home can increase, annually, no matter how much the value of your house increases (if it’s your primary residence). So if your house increased 20% in value last year, they can’t increase your home property tax more than 3%. It’s actually in the state constitution.If your Florida home is your permanent residence, you are (in the majority of cases) eligible to have up to $50,000 worth of the value of your property exempted from the calculation of your total taxes. SWEET!!!There is NO state income tax. Yippee!!!!There is a moderate sales tax, but there are annual sales tax suspensions, such as a week in June for hurricane preparation items such as generators, plywood, etc; a week in August for school related items, and so on. During those weeks, the sales tax for the specified items is ZERO. Nice, eh?It’s MUCH easier to find your way around in Florida than many other states because 99% of the roads run either DUE North and South or DUE East and West, go straight as an arrow for long distances, have no hills, plus most of the roads are much wider (which also makes seeing at intersections and onto side streets much better and therefore safer). If you can navigate in any other state, Florida should be a snap for you.Oh, but bear in mind, once you get down to Dade, Broward, or Palm Beach counties, some of these things are really different, like #’s 2, 3, and 4 in this list. Those three counties are a different world entirely. But most of Florida is just fine.

Trump’s deliberately sending a message of division with the announcement of his rally at Tulsa—on of all days, Juneteenth, the holiday which commemorates the end of slavery in America—ninety-nine years after the Tulsa riots.The Tulsa disaster wasn’t just a “race riot”—it was a massacre—the worst incidence of racial violence in US history, the destruction of “Black Wall Street.”↑ Image: Destruction at Tulsa. Credit: United States Library of Congress - Smoke billowing over Tulsa, Oklahoma during 1921 race riots, File: TulsaRaceRiot-1921.png - Wikimedia Commons; © Public Domain.The attack, carried out on the ground and from private aircraft, destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district—at that time the wealthiest black community in the United States, known as "Black Wall Street". [1]More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and as many as 6,000 black residents were interned at large facilities, many for several days.↑ Image: Events of the Tulsa Disaster, Mary E. Jones Parrish; File: Panorama of the ruined area tulsa race riots.jpg. © Public Domain.The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead, but the American Red Cross declined to provide an estimate. A 2001examination of events was able to confirm 36 dead, 26 black and 10 white, based on contemporary autopsy reports, death certificates and other records.The commission gave overall estimates from 75–100 to 150–300 dead. [2]—Report on Tulsa Race Riot of 1921.Doubling down after the clearing of protesters for the photo op stunt at St. John’s Church in Washington, Trump is choosing to ignore precautions against coronavirus with his campaign, plus making a quite deliberate statement about the “Black Lives Matter” movement and ongoing civil unrest in the US.↑ Image: Photo record of a 2017 campaign rally at Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), part of the Congressional Record; © Public Domain.If you’re wondering what the closing months of 45’s presidency will be like after the last 3½ years? [3]Statement on the Trump campaign’s event signup website for the Tulsa rally:By clicking register below, you are acknowledging that an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. By attending the Rally, you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; BOK Center; ASM Global; or any of their affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors, or volunteers liable for any illness or injury.—Make America Great Again! Rally - Tulsa, OKThe response from critics is calculatingly provoked. Trump fully intends to be inflammatory. The message is clear. [4]UPDATE: On the afternoon of Saturday 13th June, Trump tweeted, “… out of respect for this Holiday, and in observance of this important occasion and all that it represents. I have therefore decided to move our rally to Saturday, June 20th.”Footnotes[1] Tulsa race massacre - Wikipedia[2] Tulsa Reparations Coalition - Wikipedia[3] Coronavirus Live Updates: Trump Rally Attendees Cannot Sue if They Get Covid-19, Campaign Says[4] Trump sees backlash after announcing campaign rally in Tulsa on Juneteenth - The Boston Globe

Yes and no—and that’s killed with a gun, because guns don’t kill people by themselves; it takes a person to pick it up or draw it and point it at someone & pull the trigger. A significant number of murders committed with firearms in the USA are criminal vs. criminal incidents.Firstly, what you want to look at is the firearm murder rate—FMR—per 100,000 persons, not the gun death rate, which includes suicides (the majority of firearm-related deaths), homicides (murders & justifiable), and accidents. Quotes of the US ‘gun death rate’ are deliberately prevaricative. Additionally, firearms are used 1 to 2.5 million times annually to defend against crime, and most of the time, a shot isn’t fired. See The Armed Citizen on the National Rifle Association’s website for accurate accounts of armed self-defence.The FMR for all of the USA is 3.5. Vermont, which has never required a permit or licence to carry a concealed firearm, has a FMR around 0.5 among the lowest FMR’s in the USA; compare that to Washington DC, which banned possession of handguns until the US Supreme Court ended that ban—12. (Puerto Rico was even worse—18—and until recently, it was quite restrictive.) Utah’s FMR is quite low, less than 1, and the FMR’s of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota are, at the most, ½ of California’s FMR of 4, which is also the rate for the far less restrictive states of Arizona & Nevada, so California’s more restrictive laws haven’t brought its rate down to that of its northwestern neighbours, let alone Vermont’s. New York, New Jersey, and Maryland have FMR’s of at least 4.In fairness, Louisiana is the worst state, with an FMR of 10, followed by Mississippi, and South Carolina. Sociological studies to see exactly who is committing murders with guns—likely felons, who are prohibited by law from possessing guns or ammunition, and subject to five years’ imprisonment if caught possessing either—are necessary to unveil the reasons behind their unusually high FMR’s.Indeed, people licenced to carry concealed firearms—CFL’s—have a remarkably low rate of committing offences that would result in revocation of their CFL’s—which I believe is less than a tenth of 1% of licensees. So, it’s not concealed firearm licensees you need to worry about, it’s criminals, who don’t obey firearm laws anyway.In addition to Vermont, 17 states—Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana (legislation just signed into law by the governor—effective in June) New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah (legislation signed into law by the governor—effective in May), West Virginia, and Wyoming have enacted what’s known as constitutional carry laws that allow law-abiding persons to carry concealed firearms without a licence or permit. The sky has not fallen.Caveat: Know the law! Oklahoma, North Dakota and Wyoming require you to have their state-issued ID cards or driver’s licences to carry a concealed firearm without a permit—others must have a CFL that’s recognised by OK (which allows residents of other constitutional carry states to carry without a CFL), ND or WY—and not all states recognize all CFL’s issued by all other states. Know the law before deciding to carry a concealed firearm on an out-of-state CFL.Having said all of this, I should think it quite unwise to engage in a life of crime in states with liberal gun laws, especially burgling homes or home invasions. People can and will use their guns for self-defence. I just read a story of a 12-year-old boy who used a gun to defend his grandmother against a home invasion robbery wherein one of the robbers shot his grandmother in her leg; the boy returned fire and drove the attackers out of the home, and one of the attackers succumbed to a gunshot wound. (The grandmother’s wound wasn’t life-threatening, fortunately.) Kudos to the boy for his courage.Also, gun-ban advocates only quote the wealthy industrialized countries with low FMR’s with the USA’s FMR to support their arguments that ultra-restrictive or prohibitive gun laws are the solution to the USA’s FMR—but they omit countries with ultra-restrictive, de facto or outright prohibitive firearm laws—countries like South Africa, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, and Brazil, all of which have FMR’s that make the US FMR look pretty tame. The problem here is Americans (and by that I mean the inhabitants of North & South America), and America, with the general exception of Canada, has a violence problem that restrictive or prohibitive gun laws can’t and won’t solve, as evinced by the aforementioned countries.Except for Vermont, all of the constitutional carry states and most others issue CFL’s as a right, and they’re recognised by a significant number of other states, but again, know the law first by checking whether another state will recognize your CFL. As for states that are known for their reluctance to issue CFL’s, they’re a minority: Hawai’i, California (where some counties & cities are no-issue unless you’re nomenklatura), Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts; they’re discretionary-issue states wherein the issuing authority generally decides whether CFL applicants have ‘good cause’.Lastly, the Czech Republic is the only EU country that allows its plebeians to carry concealed firearms, which the type E firearm licence permits—and the Czech Republic’s FMR is also a fraction of the USA’s. (Brussels has been pressuring the Czech government to change that, but the Czechs have pushed back—there’s even been threats of Czexit. In a nutshell, whilst in the USA, if you conduct yourself in a civilized manner in those states with liberal firearm laws, you’ll likely have no problem at all. You’re far more likely to be killed in a car crash, thanks to the USA’s abysmal automobile traffic management & driver licensing education & standards.