JAB

IF LEGAL would I shoot someone over a television set? No. IF LEGAL would I shoot someone over breaking in and stealing my television set? Damn skippy. To some, that might seem like the same thing but to those who understand where I am coming from, it is not. In the case of the latter, the act of breaking into my home (even if I am not there at the time and simply come home to catch someone walking out the door with my stuff) should absolutely justify the use of deadly force, IMO, whether my life is being threatened or not. The same goes for stealing my vehicle from my driveway and so on. A free citizen should not be legally constrained from responding to such a trespass with any available means - up to and including deadly force - as long as use of such force does not endanger any innocent bystanders. Further, contrary to what some folks believe, there are material possessions that absolutely can not be replaced. My great-grandmother's antique bed is the only one in existence because it was hers (even another exactly like it - if one could be found and purchased - would not have that connection.) The same goes for the firearms I have inherited from family members - there may be thousands more 'just like them' out there but only one of those was or will ever have been my dad's, my grandfather's and so on. Stealing those items would be stealing memories and, therefore, would be like stealing a part of my life. That is much more serious - and a completely different situation - than simply lifting a microwave I might have bought at Walmart the week before, etc. Further, I personally don't care if the thief loses all chance at redemption, rehabilitation and so on. As others have said, that isn't my responsibility and it matters not, to me. Of course, the law being what it is I wouldn't use deadly force simply to protect property but my restraint would be for purely legal reasons and would have nothing to do with any ethical qualms on my part, whatsoever. Think of it this way - if a foreign government sent troops into the U.S. and onto a U.S. military base to steal Jeeps, etc. would the U.S. military personnel just let them go, figuring that those vehicles and maybe a few guns weren't worth taking lives? Or would they threaten deadly force or even use deadly force to stop them? In fact, that would probably be seen as an act of war. To me, a person breaking into my home is no different - it is just a smaller scale of the same idea, is every bit as much an act of 'war' on my person and property and justifies the same level of response (from an ethical standpoint although not, at least at this time, from a legal standpoint.)

These weren't from seeds - I was actually able to buy plants already started. There is an Amish produce market in Delano, TN where I bought ghost peppers last year. This year they were selling the plants. I am so happy about having been able to grow some ghost peppers that I am not even angry at them about mislabling the #&^% mild habanero plants. Well, not too angry, anyhow. They still sold fresh ghost peppers this year, too. I was concerned that my yield wouldn't meet my demands so I bought several from them to dry, as well (I made a ghost pepper chile powder last year that several of my friends liked so I need to make a bigger batch this year.) I come from the other direction (Loudon) so I wouldn't be that great at giving directions from Chattanooga. I imagine you'd want to hit the Cleveland bypass over to 411. I can give landmarks, though. There is a winery called Savannah Oaks winery back off 411 and you turn on the same road that goes to the winery to go to the Amish market. Coming from your direction, it would be just a few miles past Benton Shooter's Supply if you know where that is. From that direction, the road you would want (as well as the winery) would be on the left - the same side of the road as Benton Shooter's Supply. From that direction, you'd probably come to the road where you want to turn before you'd see the winery but I believe they have a sign at the road (and I think there is also a sign there for the produce market.) I believe the winery has a website and that you can get directions from their site to get you at least that far - the Amish market isn't too far past the winery. To get to the Amish market, drive on past the driveway for the winery and follow the signs. When you turn toward the actual market, there is a narrow underpass that you will drive through. For that matter, if you are 'in' to that sort of thing, Savannah Oaks is a pretty decent winery and they offer free tastings of their products. I'm not sure what the Amish market hours are right now or when they close for the season. I know they have expanded hours in the summer (open more days) but they might have wound their hours down by now. They have an animal sale the last weekend of the month (mostly chickens, goats, etc. from what I saw the one time I happened to be there on the right day.) They won't still be selling ghost pepper plants this late in the season but they might still have some fresh ghost peppers (and habaneros - both the mild and hot varieties), etc. They often have fresh baked goods for sale at the market, too, but the best stuff sells out quickly. They have these pizza roll things that are pretty darned tasty. They are traditional Amish people so they use horses and buggies for transportation and they also use horse drawn carts for gathering their harvest in the fields. They don't have electricity or a telephone in the market (so you wouldn't be able to call and check to see what they still have or what the hours are.) They don't come across as 'severe' or 'stern' and are actually usually quite friendly bu they do ask that people coming there to shop respect their beliefs and dress appropriately (mostly asking that women refrain from wearing halter tops and other 'revealing' type clothing.)

Personally, I'd like to see Tennessee adopt Texas style legislation making it perfectly legal to use deadly force to protect property.

I carry Winchester PDX1 and have seen it at most of the local Walmart locations. Lately, I have been seeing some calibers of Federal Hydroshoks at some Wally locations and I think I have seen 9mm in them there. Finally, as others have suggested, I wouldn't feel unarmed with the Remington UMC 115 grain JHPs.

I go back and forth on the idea of 'belong in a museum.' On the one hand, that is definitely the best way for the greatest number of people to have the experience of seeing them and is a good way to preserve them for the future. On the other hand, as long as they are in working order, firearms were meant to shoot, not sit behind glass to be stared at.

Well, at least it looks like I am not the only lousy SOB on here (I prefer heartless a-hole, though, 'cause my mom hasn't done anything wrong.) I agree 100% with what you said. I will further say (as I did in the News-Sentinel comments section today) that if a similar tragedy had taken place in Nashville, Tennessee or Birmingham, Alabama, etc. we probably would no longer be hearing about it in the national media by now.

Not just antiques. My understanding is that even repros fall under the exception - so that a reproduction of a Colt Navy revolver, etc. is not technically a firearm by the federal definition as long as the gun cannot be easily converted to fire cartridge ammunition. To further complicate matters, am I wrong in my understanding that, since they are not technically firearms, such a reproduction can be shipped right to a buyer's door with no background check and without even the need for a curio and relic license?

I currently carry Winchester PDX1 124 grain +P in my P95. One reason I am carrying it is that this is the same type of ammo that the FBI has chosen for their handguns and it appears to have done very well in their tests. Another reason - and probably a bigger factor, truth be told, is that it is premium SD ammo that I can buy at most Walmart locations, meaning it is readily available at a good price without having to hunt it down, order online, etc. The UMC 115 grain is what I used to carry in my P95 (and in my Kel Tec P11 before I traded it.) It is still my choice for a defensive load in my Hi Point 995 as it feeds and functions reliably and, especially out of the longer carbine barrel, I suspect it will open up and penetrate admirably. I would use it as a 'back up' carry load for the P95 in the event that I didn't have a 'premium' SD load on hand. I haven't seen it at Walmart as much lately - especially in the 100 round packs - and the last time I saw it the price had gone up.

Habaneros + bacon sounds like all kinds of win. What did you stuff them with - cheddar cheese, cream cheese or ??? I have confirmed (by taking a big, ol' bite of one) that the habanero plants I bought this year were mislabeled. Instead of nice, hot habs I got some kind of mild habanero. They honestly taste like mild cherry peppers, to me. Horrifying! I really have no idea what the heck i am going to do with a bunch of mild peppers but I am considering going the cream cheese stuffed route. Maybe I will mix a little ghost pepper with the cream cheese to help the habaneros regain some modicum of respectability.

I'm lucky in that I live in the country and my neighbors are my mom (on one side) and my sister and her husband and kids (on the other side.) If I got the chance, I'd drop a coyote in a heartbeat. My mom would probably be happy that it didn't get one of her dogs. My sister probably would be happy that it didn't get one of hers. My BIL might be a little mad/jealous that he didn't get to shoot it, instead. My dog (which I think is a Mountain Cur mix) is only about five months old - so still a puppy - and somehow managed to completely ruin her right/rear knee while playing in a fenced in yard by herself a couple of weeks ago. She had to have orthopedic surgery and now has two pins in her leg and staples holding the incision closed (I got her free and, because of the costs of the surgery, she is now the most expensive dog I have ever owned.) In other words, she isn't up to fighting any coyotes. She mostly lives inside but I wouldn't take any chances if I saw a song dog hanging around. In fact, I am seriously considering getting a decoy and taking up coyote hunting in the woods on our property. The strange thing is that, although we hear them in the woods and sometimes see them standing or running along the road near where we live, I never see them close enough to our houses to get a shot at one.

There are a whole lot of people (aka: potential zombies) in Atlanta and there would be even more if - like in The Walking Dead - Atlanta was used as a supposedly 'protected' area and everyone was told to flee there. For me, given the choice, the last place I would go during any kind of disaster would be the place where everyone else is going. I'm not going to voluntarily go somewhere that is going to be overcrowded, probably under-supplied and where martial law is likely to be in place/enforced. In other words, I wouldn't be in Atlanta to begin with. Smaller towns with lower populations (and, therefore, fewer zombies) - especially after most of that population likely fled to Atlanta or wherever else they were told they would be 'safe' - sound like more viable options, to me.

A Rossi lever action .357 and a (probably used) Blackhawk .357.

Okay, now that is pretty cool. I love the 'redneck' aspect of painting some of the tires white with labels telling what kind of potatoes are growing in them. Speaking of 'redneck' and this sort of thing, isn't it funny how some things that would have been called 'redneck' just a few years back and looked down upon by the more 'enlightened' members of society are now called 'upcycling' and those same 'enlightened' members of society want to act like they invented the whole thing? Further proof that the stereotypical 'Bubba' may not be entirely versed in the social graces but he still might be pretty darned smart. What some do to be politically correct, now, others have done for years out of necessity or simply ingenuity.

Yep. A lot of 'non-chile heads' ask why I enjoy such hot foods. I tell them that, beyond truly enjoying the flavor/heat (and I do), there is also an endorphine rush that is said to be nearly identical to a runner's high. I get that same cheap, legal high without all the damned, annoying running. Plus endorphines are said to be good for one's overall physical and mental well being even beyond the amount of time that the actual 'high' lasts. Not to mention that chili peppers are believed to be an excellent blood purifier, much like garlic. Mix chili pepper and garlic in the same dish (as I often do) and your blood ought to be pretty darned purified. Now, I am certainly not as hard core as some of the ancient Aztecs and so on supposedly were. Legend has it that the native peoples of what is now Mexico, etc. used to rub habanero juice on their temples to alleviate headaches (and there is support in modern medicine as some pain relieving creams contain capsaicin) and even put drops of habanero juice in their eyes to help with cataracts. There are also legends that claim their warriors would eat straight habaneros as they prepared to go into battle so that the combination of pain and endorphines would more or less send them into a 'berserker' type state. I'm not sure how much truth there is to any of that but they make for interesting tales.

Well, since you brought it up, I hate Angel Soft or any of that other, overly fluffy tp (seriously - tp that is too soft/fluffy annoys me.) Give me good, old Scottissue (the original, not their 'quilted' version) or whatever is cheapest at Walmart. I know what you are getting at and will only say that, in my case at least, the whole 'burn the next day' thing is a myth.

To me, saying that a gun is too nice to shoot is like saying a steak is too delicious to eat or a girl is too sexy to fool around with. That sure is a nice, pretty gun, though - I certainly wouldn't want to drop or scratch it.

Mom and dad used to plant 'store bought' potatoes with pretty good results. Just look for potatoes that have eyes on them. They would actually cut the potatoes up before planting them - as long as each piece of potato has an 'eye' on it then there is a good chance it will sprout. It seems like they always wanted to be careful to make sure the eye was pointing up when planted (like making sure the sprout side is up when planting a bulb) but I can't recall for sure. We had a metal, prefab type storage building that didn't have a floor in it (was sitting directly on the ground.) We would put the potatoes we harvested in there, mostly in a single layer, and cover them in lye. The lye helps them keep longer. By the time it was almost planting time, again, the potatoes we hadn't used were often soft and 'wrinkly' but still fine to eat. Sometimes they would have started little eyes, themselves, and we'd cut them up, soak them and plant them right along with the potatoes that had been bought for the purpose. All of this was about twenty five to thirty years ago, though, when we had a pretty big garden spot. The potatoes available at the grocery might be different, now, and the last time I planted potatoes I used so-called 'seed' potatoes from Co-Op. As I remember, you didn't have to plant the potatoes all that deep. In fact, in recent years I have heard of people growing potatoes without really 'planting' them at all. Instead, they mound up piles of leaves - just leaves raked up from their yards - and put a potato or two in each mound. Apparently, the potatoes will sprout, grow and produce that way. One big bonus is that - at least to my understanding - they don't have to 'dig' the potatoes. Instead, just separate the leaves (now leaf compost) and gather the potatoes. I've heard that the potatoes come out a lot cleaner, too, as there isn't dirt and so on clinging to them. I think this is more or less what I am talking about: http://www.ehow.com/...w-potatoes.html At the end of that article it says that grocery store potatoes are treated with sprout growth inhibitor. Like I said, I guess store bought potatoes were different a quarter of a century ago because I remember they used to sprout like mad in the bags even when you didn't want them to. Come to think of it, I don't recall seeing that happen as much in the last, few years.

That is part of the reason I really like Thai food (I always order 'Thai hot' which is above the usual 1 to 5 heat scale that most restaurants use) and Indian food (likewise, I order 'Indian hot'.) Those cuisines can make foods scorchingly, screamingly spicy while still leaving all the other flavors intact and very present. In other words, they are some of the hottest foods around but you aren't just tasting heat - you are tasting the food enhanced by the heat. Some Korean dishes do very well in that area, too (kimchi chigae...mmmmmm.)

The article I found for making candied chili peppers calls for basically cooking them in a simple syrup then pouring the syrup off and drying the candied peppers out a bit in the oven. They said that the syrup can be saved and is really good over sorbet. In fact, they talked about using the candied peppers in ice cream. I think they were using milder peppers than habanero or bhut jolokia, though. http://icecreamirela...chilli-peppers/ And actually the idea of candied chilies has got me wondering how peanut and ghost pepper brittle would turn out. Maybe break it into little pieces and half-dip the pieces in chocolate ('cause hot chilies and chocolate go really well together.)

Makes sense. After all, your scars can heal. Scars on a piece of wood won't. (Just tryin' to help you out with a little justification there.)

Seems there was another group of folks in this country that did a lot of talking about an armed revolution a couple of centuries back. So, would you say that they were just nutjobs, too? I'm not all that familiar with the things this guy said, posted and so on and so I am not directly equating him with the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson nor am I necessarily supporting or agreeing with his statements. However, I don't think that anyone here would argue that - in the case of those ol' militia boys back in the 1700s - an armed revolution was 'wrong' or 'insane' - so why is it that someone who suggests the same thing now is simply a nutjob? Because the government says so? Because it is easier than believing that maybe our current government really is broken beyond repair?

So, we should all just put on our tin foil hats and... Wait. You mean it is true? The government really did illegally arrest and detain an American citizen for things that he said/posted? And they really did so without any charges? Just like they have done to the 'terrorists' in Gitmo? Wow. So maybe folks who don't entirely, 100% believe that the government wouldn't do something like this are wrong?

According to the online version of the Encyclopedia Brittanica Academic Edition, the earliest recorded use of a sandpaper-like construct was in 13th Century China. Apparently, the Chinese used bits of gum to affix pieces of seashell to a parchment backing. The article also says that the Swiss began coating a paper backing with crushed glass about two centuries later (so around the 15th century.) Other information that I can find indicates that, while wet/dry sandpaper wasn't invented until the 1920s, commercial 'glass paper' was being produced in the 1800s. So, yeah, a version of sandpaper would have been available. Don't forget, too, that one thing many areas of the Old West would have had in abundance would have been sandy soil. Sprinkle copious amounts of sand on some wood then use a flexible piece of hide or heavy cloth to rub the sand over said wood and you basically have a crude version of sandpaper. There were also probably many different finishes, etc. available to them. I have a Native American style reed flute that was made by a modern Cherokee craftsman named Daniel Bigay. He uses a finish on his instruments that is like something that used to be used on fine violins to both protect the wood and enhance its beauty. If I recall correctly, he actually makes the finishing compound himself because it is not a commercially available product - at least not anymore. I imagine fine craftsmen of a century or two ago probably had their own 'formulas' that were handed down from master to apprentice and that were probably never seen on a shelf in a store. I once watched a documentary about a guy who makes violins that are intended to be as close to the fine violins of old, like a Stradivarius and so on, as possible (and he is supposedly successful in doing so.) In order to make the wood absolutely smooth and beautiful, he first carves and sands the pieces of the violin. He then soaks them in water to make the grain stand out. He sands the grain smooth and then soaks them and sands them, again. He keeps doing this until the pieces can be soaked in water and remain smooth - until the grain will no longer 'pop' out. Then he finishes them. Even via television I could tell that the final product is literally smooth as glass. In fact, it almost seemed as if the wood were somehow translucent, as if you could look down into the pattern of the wood.

I can see that to a point. Like you said, though, it is pretty heavy and I think my arms would give out from swinging it around a whole lot.

I wondered about that. Just out of curiosity, I once tried to see if a .38 S&W round would chamber in a .38 Special revolver. It would not because the round was too fat. Dolomite, that sounds like a fun project you have going there. I've seen some pretty decent looking revolvers chambered for .38 S&W here and there at very inexpensive prices. I've considered getting a revolver chambered for .32 Long just for fun and I figure it would be kind of along the same lines - fun and fairly inexpensive to shoot if you load your own (I've shot an old H&R snubbie chambered in .32 Long and found it fun and surprisingly accurate.) Right now, though, I'm staying busy just trying to get the hang of reloading for .38Special/.357 and .44.