JAB

My main concern would be the ammo.  Looks like the bullets are coated in jewels - maybe diamonds or diamond chips.  With diamonds being so hard I doubt that the bullets would be able to engage the rifling very well so it would be inaccurate as all get out.  It also looks like the little revolver is plated in gold.  I have to wonder if the inside of the barrel is gold plated.  Gold being very soft and diamonds being hard, I can't see that as a good match.  Even if the inside of the barrel is not gold plated I have to imagine that the diamonds would wear out the rifling very quickly.  Then you'd have a smooth-bored j-frame and the ATF wouldn't like that, at all.  Given all that, one might almost go so far as to say that the pictured revolver is not very practical.   :pleased:   Of course, that revolver would likely be right at home in any pawn shop in my area.  After all, based on the prices they ask for the guns they have for sale, they seem to think that all of their firearms are plated in gold and crusted in diamonds. 

  Let us know about that process if you don't mind.  I am curious if anything has changed in the last, couple of years.  IIRC, I had to go to the DMV, pay the initial fee and get the paperwork started.  At that time, they gave me a code or some such to authorize me to have my prints run by the service that runs (or, at that time ran, at least) prints for the TBI.  I then had to go somewhere else to have my prints done.  In my case, I went to a UPS store and they scanned my fingerprints direct with a special scanner (rather than doing ink prints) and sent those electronically to the folks who were doing the check.

  Right but in the scenario you presented in the original post they aren't (weren't) already a convicted felon when they stole the guns.  They weren't a convicted felon until they were caught, charged and tried which wouldn't occur until after the theft/possession of the firearms.  Simply committing the B&E (or any felony) does not make the person a convicted felon.  Being convicted of the crime is what makes the person a felon.  Therefore, they were not a felon in possession of a firearm unless they steal a firearm in a later incident after having been convicted of a felony.

  Sensors or not, knowingly and voluntarily standing still while a projectile that weighs more or less a ton heads right for you and depending on said projectile to stop of its own volition is dumb - especially when there is even the slightest chance that those sensors could fail (which obviously they could because they didi.)  At some point surely a person who is not having a 'duh' moment would think to themselves, "You know, I don't think the darned thing is gonna stop," and get the heck out of the way.

  The heck it isn't!     Yep, what Caster said.

Congratulations and welcome to the 'club'!

  I am not a lawyer but I think the key is in the phrase (which you actually used) "when convicted."  Technically, I would say that the burglar does NOT become a felon upon committing the act of breaking and entering.  Instead, he (or she) becomes a felon upon having his (or her) day in court and being convicted of the crime.  That is why people who lose their rights due to having committed a felony are called convicted felons.  Think of it this way - the DA may decide to deal the charges down to allow the suspect to avoid felony charges (maybe in return for information about another case, etc.)  In such a case, the person still committed a B&E but simply committing that B&E did not automatically make that person a (convicted) felon.  Even being charged with a felony does not automatically make the suspect a felon - only a conviction on said charges makes the suspect a felon.   So, precluding any prior felony convictions, as the suspect had not yet been charged with a felony at the time of the theft, much less convicted of a felony, then at the time of the theft the suspect was NOT a convicted felon.  Again, the conviction is the key here and I don't think you could charge someone with being a felon in possession of firearms for an act committed before such time as the person was, in fact, a convicted felon.  In other words, I don't think the felony conviction could (or should) be retroactive.    Think of it this way - if the B&E were committed on the day before election day and (however unlikely) the suspect (having not yet even been identified by the cops, much less arrested, charged and convicted) went to vote the next day then he or she would be allowed to vote and his or her vote would be just as legal and valid as anyone else's.  It is not until he or she is convicted that the right to vote is lost.  Again, the conviction is not retroactive.    I do wonder, rather that 'possession of a firearm by a convicted felon', if the suspect could be charged with 'possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony' as the firearm(s) would be in the suspects possession while the suspect was still in the act of committing the burglary, etc.  Some might see that as simply semantics but I think it is an important destinction.

  I don't think Dolomite was saying people shouldn't defend themselves.  Instead, it looked to me like he was saying that most people lack the KSAs to pull off a disarm technique.  I have to agree with him and include myself in that majority.  Bad things would happen if I tried to go all Jackie Chan when I am more like Jackie Gleason.  Rather than trying to get all fancy I would probably have a better chance at just attempting to draw my own weapon and shooting the ba**ard before he can shoot me.   Over the years I have grown very tired of the Andy Griffith Show but there was one episode that I think pretty well demonstrates the problem with trying to 'train' based on demonstrations such as in a short video clip..  Barney was trying to demonstrate to Andy the new martial arts techniques he had learned but Andy kept 'messing it up' by not coming at Barney in exactly the right way, with his arm in exactly the right position and so on.

Needs more cowbell.       To me, pink guns look more like "Malibu Barbie' accessories than serious self defense tools.  Of course, as the owner of my favorite LGS has said to me on a couple of different occasions, "Nobody wants to be shot with a pink gun."   I can see the point behind that statement, too.  I mean, can you imagine the kind of hit a gangbanger's 'street cred' would take if his fellow gangbangers found out that he had been put out of commission with a pink .32 with faux pink pearl grips?  Even better if he took a round to the nads.

That was great - and I liked the way the reporters handled it.  Rather than being all like, "It worked out okay for him this time but the safest thing is to let the person take your car..." or some, other such shullbit, they were smiling appreciatively and even commenting that he doesn't plan on becoming a victim any time soon.

  Interesting.  I didn't know that.  Still, in mom's case, I think she liked it better because I did the drawing.   Mom collects music boxes (although she isn't really getting new ones anymore because she is pretty much out of places to put them) and I have bought her a couple of nice ones over the years which she liked.  When I was in college, I actually made her one.  My step-grandad had a pretty decent woodshop setup and he helped me.  We used 'raw' wood, used his planer to smooth and thin it, used his router to cut grooves to put it all together and so on.  I bought the part that plays music and installed it.  That was the one and only time I have ever seen my mom cry over a gift - it meant more to her because I had thought enough of her to put the effort into making it than the (honestly nicer) ones I had bought her over the years.   Opinel sells some of their knives in a 'raw' version.  These have wooden handles that aren't really shaped or finished.  People buy them in order to carve the handles.  There are lots of pics of cool, carved Opinels on the Internet.  One of my favorites has the butt end of the handle carved into a boar's head.  I am going to try and teach myself some wood carving/engraving techniques.  I will practice on wooden dowels, first, and if I get good enough I want to play around with a few of those.  If things come to fruition, I will probably eventually carve one for mom so that the butt end of the handle is a three dimensional rose and then carve a stem down the length of the handle.  That is if I ever get good enough - which is, admittedly, a big 'if'.

Thanks for the positive comments, folks!

I always try to get unique presents for my mom and I like to think that at least one of the gifts I got her this past Mother's Day was right in line with that. Mom used to have a rather long-bladed knife (basically looked like a 'fruit sampling' folder) that she carried in her purse. The blade on it was long enough that she worried it might not be strictly legal to carry so she put it up 'somewhere'. I told her recently about TN having repealed any and all blade length limits but she couldn't remember where exactly the 'somewhere' she had put her knife was. I figured she needed a good knife to carry in her purse for chores such as peeling an apple if she were out somewhere and wanted to do so and similar tasks. I also figured it didn't need to be 'fancy' just a good, solid knife. I decided to look at Opinel knives as they seem to have such a good reputation. I decided that one of their knives might be just the thing and the wooden handle gave me an idea so I ordered her a No. 8 carbon bladed model from Amazon. That might not be a great gift for every mom out there but my mom isn't necessarily typical. When it arrived, it looked pretty much like I imagine every other Opinel No. 8 carbon on the planet looks when it leaves the factory: As for the idea inspired by the wooden handle, I almost think that was the best part. My mom likes to collect things with roses on them. In the past, for her birthday, Mother's Day and so on I have bought her various pieces of costume jewelry featuring roses. I thought it might be a neat personal touch if her knife had a rose on it, too, so I broke out some fine Sharpies and drew a stylized rose on it. I then decided to try and 'set' the colors using a heat gun. I liked how that worked but it kind of 'baked' the wood in that area a little darker than the rest. At first I was disappointed but soon realized that it made kind of a 'background' which actually set the rose off a little more. Of course, it also dried the wood a little so I rubbed it with a few coats of boiled linseed oil. I think it came out looking pretty good. I originally intended the rose to look a little more realistic but the challenges of drawing freehand on a smallish, rounded surface made the final results look more like tattoo art. That's okay, though as, while mom doesn't have any tattoos and I can't imagine her having any, she does sometimes like t-shirts and the like with that type of art on them. Anyhow, this is how it turned out:

  Is there an echo in here? :pleased:         I dabble in reloading - so far only .38 Special although I have the materials and equipment to eventually do some .357 Magnum and .44 Special/Magnum.  I will likely stick with those and not branch out much further, at least for now.  Using my previously fired brass, I can load up a box of 50 range rounds in .38 Special for about half the price of buying a box of new, factory range ammo, maybe a little less - which is still a few dollars more per box than ten-cent-per-round .22LR.  I could probably save more if I really got into it and started casting my own bullets, etc. but there is a point past which my time and effort are worth more to me than saving a few more cents per round.  Even at $5 per 50 - which, I must admit, sticks in my craw after being used to super cheap .22 ammo prices - it's a lot of plinking fun for comparatively little money.  Heck, the sandwiches on the 'cheap' menu at Subway are $5 for a footlong and those things are mostly average-at-best bread and whatever (cheap for the chain to buy) toppings you put on them.

  That didn't make a lot of sense to me, either.   I mean, rimfire ammo uses less powder, less lead and other materials than centerfire.  There is no jacketing process with .22LR.  Rimfire ammo does not require the extra step of physically putting a primer - wihich is a separate part - into the casing.  How couold it possibly be more expensive?  Surely the machinery to 'spin' the primer inside the casing doesn't cost that much.   My hunch - and this makes more sense, to me - would be that the ammo companies' return on investment may not be as high when setting up new lines to expand rimfire production - especially .22LR.  The reason I think that might be the case is that the machinery, etc. probably costs about the same so the initial investment is likely close to that of setting up a new centerfire line.  However, as the price on .22LR ammo is comparably low relative to centerfire ammo the companies probably don't see as much of a profit margin.  That is just my WAG.

  A few years back the FBI released a report regarding criminals who had shot police officers.  The report found that many of those criminals practice shooting far more than the police officers involved.  Much of that practice was at an out of the way place in the woods, at the local dump or landfill and that sort of thing.   I also heard, again, a few years ago that gang affiliated individuals whose gang affiliation was not known or obvious were joining the military in order to receive training in fighting techniques, strategy and so on.  When they got out of the military, they would return home and train the rest of the gang.  Just because someone is former military - gang affiliated or not - doesn't necessarily mean they are a good person.  Likewise, just because someone has a black belt in one martial art or another doesn't mean they are an honest, law-abiding citizen.

There used to be a show on one of the outdoor channels (might still be for all I know) called "American Airgunner" or something like that.  They showed people with very high-powered, large caliber. single shot airguns cleanly taking wild hogs, white-tailed deer and something that looked like a big-horn sheep (but in Africa, iirc.)  To the best of my recollection, they fired a (lead? steel?) ball.  Those things are no joke.  They are, however, expensive and, IMO, too much of a PITA to fool with.  Many of them must have their reserve filled from a scuba tank or similar.  They also appeared like they would be more trouble than a firearm to take care of (I don't consider airguns to be firearms because, well, there is no fire involved in shooting them.)  I think I'd go with a modern muzzle-loader before I'd fool with one of those.   I have a basic, run of the mill .177 air rifle (an old Daisy Cobra that I have had for years), a Crosman Pumpmaster 'target' pistol and a Crosman revolver made to look like a long-barreled .357 that runs on CO2 cartridges.  They are all pretty accurate and I can hit targets with the handguns about as well as with comparable .22 handguns - as long as the boredom induced yawning that starts after about five or ten minutes doesn't throw me off.  Okay, so the yawning might be a bit of a hyperbole but the fact that I find airguns boring is not.  I could never see replacing a .22 with an airgun no matter how fancy or high-powered - but that is just me.  Honestly, the 'bang', the smoke and the smell of gunpowder are a big part of the plinking experience, for me.   I did just give myself an idea, though.  The only muzzle-loader I have ever fired was my old musket style.  Modern, inline muzzle-loaders seem like they would be much less of a PITA.  Maybe some company should capitalize on the current lack of .22LR ammo and mass produce a small-caliber, rifled muzzle loader to be sold at a good price at the big box stores..  Imagine if it could fire both a heavier version of the .22 caliber BB and a heavier version of the .22 caliber hunting pellets.  Build them strong enough and, with the proper load data, the shooter could load light and use a lighter weight projectile to mimic a .22 Short, load at a medium level to mimic a .22LR or load heavy (maybe even with a heavier projectile of, say, 50 grains or so) and get velocities and energy levels comparable to those of .22WMR (.22 Magnum.)  All in one gun.  Powder charges would be so small - even for .22WMR power levels - that a jug of black powder or Pyrodex would last a really long time.  Surely some company would rather quickly make bullet molds.  According to the hunting regs on the TWRA website, muzzle-loading rifles of .36 and smaller are legal for hunting small game.

  Truth.  We had to track ours down through the woods and to the cow pasture next to us - and drive them home with swats from a switch - more than once.  The male would go home pretty easily but that danged mean ol' female made you work for it.  In fact, if I remember right, between the time she went in the freezer and the time we took him to the slaughterhouse (we wanted to eat most of the meat from her before we took him) he never once got out.

  Back when I was in high school we raised a couple of pigs for meat - one male and one female.  The female was a stone b*tch from the innermost ring of hell.  She would charge you, sometimes, come up behind and bite you, sometimes and generally had a bad attitude.  She went to the slaughterhouse first and we all kinda celebrated.  The male, on the other hand, was a big pet.  Not that we made him that way, that was just his nature.  The hog pen was in the woods a decent distance from the house so we carried water in gallon jugs to fill the trough.  The male pig would pick up the empty jugs and toss them in the air, trying to get us to play 'fetch' with him.  He would nuzzle us, wanting to be petted and was just generally a very good-natured critter.  When we loaded him up and took him to the slaughterhouse, my mom cried and my dad - who had been involved in such things on and off all his life - said to me in a sad tone, "Well, this is the last animal I'll ever raise for food."

It has been a few years since I or anyone I know has taken the HCP test.  I don't imagine it has changed a whole lot, though.   When we were first married, my (now ex) wife (who is still one of my best friends) was pretty leery of guns due to the fact that her father was a complete jackass and his behavior where guns were concerned was no different.  After we were married - and I like to think it was partially due to me and her grandfather providing positive examples of gun ownership, etc. - she became a little more comfortable with them.  Until she found the Kel Tec P32 she had trouble racking the slide on a pistol due to hand/wrist issues.  When her father died she got a Rossi .357 revolver that had belonged to him.  At first, she had trouble pulling the trigger on it but I was able to show her how to hold it and where to place her finger, etc. so that she could operate it pretty easily.  She used that snubnosed .357 - loaded with .38 Special ammo - to pass the shooting portion of her HCP test the first time she took it.  She passed the written portion the first time despite not really being a 'gun person', as well.   My mom is not the best written test taker in the world but she studied the study guide and also passed the written portion the first time she tried.  As an aside, she passed the shooting portion with her Hi Point 9mm - apparently shooting the best of her group and doing so well that everyone else was asking the instructor what kind of gun she had (as if the gun could magically pass the test for her.)  Mom had also mostly only shot informally in the back yard, etc. up to that point so to help her feel more comfortable the Saturday a week before she was to take her test I took her to the range where she would be qualifying and pretty much walked her through the shooting portion of the test as my instructor had conducted it (she ended up having a different instructor but apparently he did it pretty much the same way.)   I really don't think you have anything to be nervous about.  I also wouldn't be surprised if you aren't the only woman in your class.  Finally, don't worry so much about 'shooting in public'.  You aren't competing with anyone else and when you start actually shooting you will probably be in such a 'zone' that you can almost forget that there are other people there.  The test is between you and the target and it is strictly pass/fail.  As long as you put enough holes in the right area of the paper your 'groups' or lack thereof really don't make a hill of beans.

Personally, as his gun never left the holster, I would not have called the cops in the same situation.  First, my past experience has been, "What good would it do?"  When I lived at my grandmother's house on East Fifth, on one occasion someone broke into her car.  On another occasion, someone vandalized her car (broke a tail light, etc.)  Further, one Thanksgiving (I wasn't there that day) while her brother and his wife were eating Thanksgiving dinner with my grandmother someone stole their car from her back yard, took it on a joy ride and left it pretty much destroyed a mile or two away.  A year or two before I moved in there to attend college (at UTK) a young, black man knocked her down and stole her purse right in her own back yard after she returned from church one Sunday.  On every one of those occasions the police were called and a report filed.  On no occasion were there any results or any suspects caught after filing the report.  For such things I would still file a report but for a little run in in a gas station parking lot where no one was hurt, the threat backed down peaceably and my gun never left the holster?  Not worth the time or the hassle.  Basically, I prefer to keep police contact to the minimum possible and - to me - this incident simply would not be worth the time and aggravation it would require to call it in and file a report that would likely yield zero results, anyway.

Supposedly the animals who tortured and murdered Shannon Christian and Christopher Newsome originally 'only' intended to jack their vehicle.  I think the bottom line is, if you can't stop them from taking your vehicle, do not allow them to take you anywhere.  I have actually read (and seen in person) where more than one security adviser type advises that, if it comes down to it, you are better off making them shoot you where you are (where there is at least a chance you might get help and where they will be more likely to flee the scene without taking the time to make sure you are dead) than allowing them to take you to a location of their choosing where they can take their time killing you and hiding the body.  Of course, I imagine making that choice and sticking with it would be easier said than done but it seems likely that if they are really going to shoot you then they are going to do so sooner or later either way.

  That makes sense about dropping from the rigging.  I also agree that 'Wharncliffe' as used to describe a blade type is a bit of a loose term.  Honestly, I almost think one could divide such blades into the very basic categories of 'traditional Wharncliffe' and 'fighting Wharncliffe' or some such.  Whatever the term, it is definitely becoming (or has already become) pretty popular.  Spyderco even makes a few folding Wharncliffes.    Again, that is a great looking knife that looks like it would feel good in the hand.  Knowing nothing of knife fighting, it also looks to my untrained eye like it would be sleek enough to be a very fast knife for fighting in trained hands while still being large enough to do some real damage to a threat.

  I didn't say I would feel great about it.  I am just saying that I would prefer $5 per box for ammo I knew I could walk in and buy any time I wanted it to the current situation where stores are generally sold out and scalpers are pricing the same ammo at $8 or more per box.  I don't buy enough at a time to make it worth ordering ammo online or to make it worth the aggravation to constantly shop around only to find that this or that online dealer had that same ammo for a little bit less - until they sold out twenty minutes ago..   Further, the comparison in your quote is not an apples to apples comparison.  I am not talking Remington Thunderbolts at $5 per box of 50 vs. Remington Thunderbolts at $40 for a bulk pack.  I wouldn't pay $5 per 50 for Remington Thunderbolts.  Personally, I think that CCI (for which I have paid $5 per box of 50) is better ammo than Remington Thunderbolts and worth a few cents more per round.  Some folks apparently refuse to shoot Thunderbolts at any price.  I do not but I wouldn't pay that much for them.    The people who are pricing Remington Thunderbolt bulk packs at $40 are the same people who are pricing 50 round boxes of various 'nothing special' .22LR ammo at $7 or $8 dollars per box.  I have even seen a couple of them with a $12 price tag on the same ammo that is currently selling for $4 or $5 per box in stores (when they have it.)  That, to me, is scalping.   I guess I just have a different perspective and that is fine - I know everyone won't necessarily agree with my opinion.  As I said, before, my perspective is influenced by seeing how much other ammo as well as non-gun related products have increased in price or availability in just the last, few years rather than putting my, "I remember when $5 would feed two people at Taco Bell." or my, "I remember when Krystal burgers were 25 cents a piece," blinders on and looking only at the price increases on .22 ammo.  I think of it this way - the price difference between 9mm range ammo or .38 Special range ammo now compared to four or five years ago would buy me a box of that $5 .22 ammo with change left over.  The price difference between .44 Mag ammo or .357 Mag ammo three years ago compared to now would almost buy me two boxes of that same .22 ammo.  When I bought a CZ 82 in 9mm Makarov during the last ammo 'shortage' I could get Monarch fmj ammo for right at $10 per box.  I haven't seen Monarch in 9mm Mak on an Academy shelf in a year or two and the next cheapest 9mm Mak ammo I can find is twenty-some-odd dollars per box.  Again, I could buy 100 rounds of that $5 per 50 .22 ammo just with the price difference.  Heck, gas has gone up nearly thirty cents a gallon in less than a month and I have to buy that crap even if just so I can get back and forth to work.  So, in light of all that, paying a buck or two more per box of what is still the cheapest factory ammo around doesn't rankle me nearly as much.

  I was recently doing some reading on some other forums (some that I don't even belong to) about the style.  I think the current Wharncliffe style is a bit changed from the traditional Wharncliffe.  From what I could find, the traditional Wharncliff style was intended to be not very 'stabby', at all - with a profile more like a sheepsfoot blade.  Apparently - again, from what I could gather - it was a style that was used by a lot of seamen because it could do the slicing work they needed to do and even have a bit of a 'point' so that the point could be used to push through thick rope rather than a completely blunted end without having so sharp a point as to accidentally stab through things they didn't mean to stab through.  Also, supposedly - again, according to the info I found -, many times the average sailor was not allowed to carry a pointy blade so as to avoid the possibility of their working blade being turned into a stabbing weapon in case of mutiny.  Obviously, the more modern 'self defense' Wharncliffe designs have a very sharp point but that seems to be a more modern variation, much like the modern 'American tanto' style is quite a bit different than the traditional, Japanese tanto.