TMF

At the end of the day the gatekeepers for one's freedom or incarceration are a jury of your peers. They chose not to convict. If I was on the jury I'd most likely come to the same conclusion as those jurors due to lack of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman broke the law when he killed Martin. I don't celebrate the verdict for the sake of Zimmerman, but for the sake of a fair trial being conducted.

We all make decisions in life. I've probably been in Zimmerman's shoes half a dozen times when I lived in a downtown apartment only a stones throw away from several bars. I called the police more than once to report fights and vandalism. I guess I coulda injected myself into the situation, but no way would I do it unarmed since I wouldn't know what kind of violence I'd be stepping into. This leads to the obvious risk assessment analysis of possibly having to use my weapon to defend myself and deal with all the crap that goes with that. I obviously made good decisions and didn't have my life turned upside down. Zimmerman did not make such good decisions and now he has to deal with the consequences. I hope people learned a lesson from all this. I'd feel bad for him, but he is a damned fool, and I don't expend sympathy for fools.

So to say that Zimmerman acted irresponsibly automatically qualifies me as teaching my son to confront and assault someone? Why take this so personal to hurl unfounded accusations on how I raise my kids?

Good advice for youngsters. For gun owners the take away should be that the dark alley is just as dangerous now as before you started carrying. There is no way in hell that George Zimmerman, a self described pussy, would have gotten out of his truck and pursued a suspicious man down a dark street if he didn't have a firearm on him. He meets the very definition of irresponsible carrier who is emboldened by his weapon.

I would very surprised. Then again, I was very surprised that there was no evidence to prove murder 2 when the trial was prosecuted.

5 fingers of death... yuck. I actually dug the tuna & noodles. Wasn't bad when you put salt in there and mixed it. The chicken breast, "chunked and formed" was the best because you could eat it on the move and didn't need a "rock or something" to heat it up and make it bearable.

That fear isn't at all irrational. It is a very rational fear that we must focus on.

Somehow the results of this case (whether he'd been found guilty/not guilty) would have zero bearing how I defend myself or whether or not I would dismount my vehicle to follow someone I deem suspicious down a dark street. We all make decisions in life and we are beholden to those decisions.

Nearly every time I can remember my dad working one he was getting overtime. I assume that is par since they still need to have cops doing actual police work while these checkpoints are set up.

Be careful, those Japanese tourists down there have been known to loot and burn stuff down.

I see them do it in Clarksville every so often. They park on the exits from downtown. I don't get down there too much these days, but I remember years back seeing them on the way home from downtown late on the weekends. Got no problem with them using that technique to poach drunks. Seems like it would yield plenty of results considering the number of people on the road who are drunk after a certain time of night.

A child being hit in the head with a heavy grain bullet moving 300 fps is much different than an adult it think. Kinda like how a grown man can take a grown man punch, but a kid might easily be killed by such a blow.

This was on Ft Campbell? Nice. Damn wish I was there.

Trust me, I'm not jumping on the Ron Paul bandwagon in support of this kid. I have limited download capability at the moment so I was not able to see the full vid. That line from the cop sounds hilarious though.... "attorney school"... priceless.

I sure do. Got detoured through there during the APSU homecoming parade. Didn't even know a place like that existed in good 'ol Clarksville and I had been here for a few years when I drove through there. Of course, I was probably safer there than any place else in Clarksville. The dealers ain't gonna let a cracker like me get popped in their distribution center.... bad for business if the Popo were to actually go down there.

That sounds like a "for the children plea." Don't get me wrong, my mother worked for MADD for nearly a decade and my father worked over 30 years in law enforcement, most of those years being involved specifically in busting drunk drivers. To give you a better idea of the household I grew up in, I was named after a friend of my parents who was killed in a drunk driving accident barely out of high school. I get it. Drunks are a danger behind the wheel, and I don't think the legal system does enough to punish these people when they use their cars as premeditated murder weapons, but we have to draw a line. I have no problem being cooperative at a checkpoint. I have nothing to hide and surely just want to be on my way, but that isn't the point. Our forefathers did not envision a country where you would be stopped just trying to get from point A to point B, questioned and verified via papers to a government agent. I disagree with the practice and I think I have good reason to. Furthermore, from the mouth of my own father "DUI CPs are BS." He's worked hundreds of them I'm sure. I'll take his word for it.

You're far enough away from Kraft Street. You should be fine.

Haha, this got a good laugh from me. On another note, yeah, the kid went looking for confrontation and got his wish. Trying to see both sides of this, I would argue that the kid was attempting to challenge the existence of these DUI checkpoints by playing "tempt the cop", but the cop took the bait and should have known better. I'm still not convinced that checkpoints for drunks make any significant impact versus wolf pack patrols actively looking for drunks in force. In my opinion they exist to nab people on other stuff and use the pretense of a DUI checkpoint for gaining PC to make arrest. Now, I have no problem with bad people getting arrested, such as folks with warrants out in them and such, but subjecting every citizen to such a checkpoint is lazy police work and, to me, treads way too close to the 4th Amendment. That isn't my opinion as a legal expert, but as a normal citizen, which should be all anyone needs to be to interpret the intent of the Bill of Rights. So as much as the kid was being a little snot nose, I do understand the intent behind it.

Yeah, I dunno about that. Maybe some AKs might be every bit as accurate as an M16 but I couldn't hit a 300m target with an AK to save my life. The sights certainly don't help, whereas US military peep hole sights on M1s, M14s, and M16s make long range shooting much easier in terms of sight/target acquisition. Maybe if I grew up with an AK rather than an AR it might be different, but I don't think so.

And this. This is what I meant to say.

Agreed and good points. I also vacationed down there to Puerta Vallarta years back, but was already familiar with Mexican attitudes on drinking in public. Much like I was getting at with my earlier post, there is a big difference between drinking and being drunk. Our culture has effectively demonized the use of alcohol much like other substances such as tobacco and marijuana. I enjoy beer, and I enjoy it often. I have a beer almost everyday with lunch, just as I did when I was in the Army. In fact, I wish our carry laws were such that consumption of alcohol in public was fine in conjunction with legal carry, so long as you're not intoxicated. Granted, folks are going to cry "blood in the streets" at that one, but consider for a second that the type of person who gets wasted with a sidearm is probably not the type of person who obey the rules anyway. So nothing more than a "feel good" law that does nothing to stop stupid people from doing stupid things, yet prevents law abiding folks like myself from having a beer with dinner when I take my wife out. I choose to carry rather than drink, but damn, I like having a beer with my steak and think its crap that bed wetters think I'm not a big boy enough to do that. Furthermore, if you can't control your drinking that's your business. I find it presumptuous that some ignorant folks here would call somebody an "idiot" because they can have a beer or two and still possess their pistol without incident. If you can't control yourself that is your business, but don't project your inability to handle alcohol responsibly on those who can. On a side note, apparently in Indiana there is no prohibition against drinking while carrying, just drinking and being intoxicated. Somehow they have avoided blood in the streets. Perhaps Tennesseans just aren't as responsible as those Indiana folks, or maybe the presumption that someone is uncontrollably drunk after a couple beers is all just hogwash.

That's a big negative. Some folks here who served in Iraq about a decade ago when the Iraqi soccer team was winning at the Olympics or World Cup may remember (if you lived in the city) how every time the Iraqis won a game the ENTIRE city erupted into automatic gunfire. That's a lot of bullets in the air. The rooftop positions in our little outpost were covered by 1 inch plywood, because that would actually stop falling bullets. They made significant dents in the wood and were loud as sh** when they hit. Now, some physics experts may argue for/against the lethality of a 120ish gr bullet falling at terminal velocity (which would be pretty fast for something that doesn't catch much air) but I can tell you first hand that there was a little girl in the next neighborhood over that was killed by a round landing on her head. Coulda been an angled shot for all I know, but from how I've seen those rounds hit the ply wood I would say that it has the power to penetrate a little nugget.

I agree and have never once said anything to the contrary.

Is this a Florida thing? I seem to remember the Casey Anthony closing arguments going on for a couple of days, and that was the next county over.

There is a difference between drinking and getting wasted. I have at least a beer or glass of wine each night at dinner, then one or two more with the wife after the kids go to bed. I don't normally carry around the house anyway, but if I did I would not feel as if I'm doing something "ethically" wrong. Yeah, there are some folks that can't hold their booze or can't have a couple drinks without getting drunk, but those folks should know their limit. I know mine and I don't freak out if I have had a drink or two.