JAB

Nice gun, nice shot and nice results.

I still like the show but with all the 'filler' they have foisted on us in the last, couple of seasons I think spin-offs would just water down the concept so much that neither show would last much longer.   Of course, you know what might make a really weird spin-off?  A show, set in the year or two before the zombie apocalypse, featuring the members of a small town sheriff's department somewhere in the American South investigating crimes and busting bad guys.  I'm not talking 'Mayberry', here but rather a serious show about LEO in a rural, bedroom community that periodically suffers the splash over of crime from nearby, larger cities.  The spinoff would feature Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes and Jon Bernthal as Shane Walsh, two key members of the aforementioned Sheriff's department, as they and their team work to enforce the law.   There would be no supernatural or otherwise 'odd' element to the series - remember that Kirkman has said that even zombie movies, lore etc. didn't exist in the pre-outbreak world of The Walking Dead.  In my thinking, it would be partly a straight up cop drama, including elements of a police procedural, with some delving into the character's personal lives, including Rick's relationships with his wife, Lori and his son, Carl  as well as Shane's growing dissatisfaction with his life as a bachelor jumping from one failed relationship to the next and partly an exploration of the small town where they live and the other residents (and interesting characters) who live there.  We might even see Shane starting to quietly have a bit of a personal breakdown/crisis of faith until his friend's shooting leads to him pulling himself together to help lend emotional support to Rick's family (foreshadowing him being the one to get Lori and Carl out after the outbreak and also foreshadowing Shane's eventual descent into darkness and insanity.)  The series would be planned for a limited run of only a season or two and the series finale would feature Rick getting shot and waking up in a hospital in a world gone to hell.  I love the idea of the series ending with such a wrenching tangent to give the viewer a small taste of what it would have been like for Rick.   I think such a show, if well written, could be interesting in its own right as a police drama (even though there are far too many of those these days) within a slice-of-life type show.  It would also be interesting to see some of the "Walking Dead" characters in a completely different light and show how they were just 'normal people' before the zombie apocalypse forced them to be something else.  Some fans of "The Walking Dead" would hate it, I expect but I think others would appreciate it.   Yeah, I know - sometimes I let my imagination get away from me.

1957, nothing - the first outcome of each of those scenarios would have still held true when I graduated High School in 1989 except it would have been our Geometry teacher - who had a hook in place of one hand - and not the vice principal who would have wanted to compare shotguns.  Come to think of it, though, I believe that Geometry teacher became the assistant principal some time after I graduated.

Might be pretty good.  I think the soon to be released collaboration between Dolly Parton and Five Finger Death Punch will be better.

  On the other hand, think about how much the Smith and Wesson guns folks now own will increase in value once the name changes!  Maybe I should get out ahead of the profiteers and buy a bunch of Smith and Wessons now.  :pleased:

  My guess would be that the group held in the railroad car will manage to somehow create an opening but only Carl will be small enough to fit through it.  He will sneak out of the compound and Carol and Tyreese will find him as he goes to collect the hidden weapons cache to try and help the others escape.   I am also hoping that Rick and the others had the presence of mind to stash a knife or two and maybe that snub-nosed revolver that Michonne took from the 'Claimed' gang guy in their boots, etc.  Yeah, the Terminus folks frisked them when they first came in but it was mostly a cursory, going through the motions frisking and Rick, having been a cop, would probably know of good ways to overcome a weapon or two being discovered in such a frisking.

  I meant to mention earlier (and did on another forum) that this is my belief where Beth is concerned.  I think the people who had been living there (and who were, apparently, 'caring' enough to want the dead bodies there to be laid out with respect - unless there is some twisted undertone to that) came back in their car just in time to see zombies flooding through the front door of the building.  Daryl sent Beth on ahead and stayed behind to draw the walkers away from her.  If you didn't know Daryl was a friggin' zombie killing machine you would probably assume that he couldn't possibly make it out of that mini-horde alive all by himself.  I think that they grabbed Beth to save her, put her in the car and hi-tailed it out of there, figuring Daryl was already lost.  I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the people who took her might not be entirely well-balanced (few people are at this point in the show) but that they are 'good' people who took a risk to rescue a complete stranger (Beth) from the walkers.

  All I know is that, right after the 'new and improved' stuff came out and right before all the ammo dried up, I bought a couple of boxes of the 'improved' Golden Bullet loads at Wally.  I decided to test the claim so I took one of the new boxes, a partial bulk box of the pre-improved Golden Bullets and a couple of .22 firearms out in the back yard and fired off a few full cylinders/magazines of each from each firearm.  Based on that limited comparison, I believe Remington's claim.  The reports from the pre-improved stuff varied, sometimes quite a bit, as Remington Golden Bullets usually did while the reports from the 'improved' stuff were much more consistent.  Also, accuracy out of my guns - especially handguns - with the old Golden Bullets was pretty bad.  Federal has usually been the best, of the bulk packs, from my guns but Winchester wasn't bad.  The pre-improved Golden Bullets were just as bad as ever but the new, improved stuff was just about as accurate as Winchester bulk ammo normally is from my guns - i.e., much more accurate even at short range than the old Golden Bullets were.

Similar to nightrunner, my first thought was, "When did Amazon start selling ammo?"   Okay, okay so there might have been some vague hope that Amazon had just started selling ammo and, since very few people knew about it, yet they just might have some stuff in stock.   Dangit!

  I like folders but there are just some uses where I trust a fixed blade more.  I guess that comes from, as a teenager, having one of my razor-sharp pocket knives close up on me while using it.  I don't think a person is meant to see their own knuckle bone.   I might not even 'carry' the longer, fixed blade on me all the time.  Sometimes but not all the time.  The ability to keep one or two in my vehicles at all times without worrying about legal trouble would be nice.

  There was a similar scene in the comics.  Instead of a group actively looking for Rick, though, it was just two or three guys that Rick and Carl encountered on the road.  In that scene, Rick did bite one assailant's throat out and he did butcher another one that tried to rape Carl.  Carl's reaction, though, was influenced by another scene that had a similar but not exact equal in the television show.   In the comic, there were two little boys and the older one was psycho (like the Lizzie character in the show.)  The group were on the road and the two little boys kind of wandered off.  When the others found them, the older boy had killed his younger brother and was still standing over him with the bloody knife and saying, "Don't worry, he'll come back."  The group confined the psycho kid in the back of a van that night and were discussing what to do about him.  Some of the adults hinted that he needed to be killed for the safety of the group but it was obvious that none of them had the stomach for it and none of them were going to do it.  Carl was a different story.  That night, he slipped out of the tent where he was sleeping, slipped into the van, shot the psycho kid then slipped back out and into the tent before the others came to see what was going on.  They never knew that Carl had been the one to kill the kid.   So, flash forward to the scene where Rick rips one guy's throat out with his teeth then butchers one that was trying to rape Carl.  Afterward, Rick is worried that Carl now sees him as a monster and is afraid of him so he tries to apologize to Carl.  Carl's response is, "Dad, I am glad you did it.  I just wish I could have helped."  Then when Rick keeps on about the bad things he has done and how he worries that Carl will think less of him, Carl finally looks at him and tells him that he, Carl, shot the psycho kid.  He tells Rick that they all knew it needed to be done but that he also knew that none of the adults were going to do it so Carl had taken care of the problem.  So, basically, Carl was telling Rick that if doing horrible things because they needed to be done made a person into a monster then Carl was at least as much of a monster as Rick.   See, I don't think Carl in the show is afraid of his father at all.  Instead, I think what Carl said to Michonne explains the real story.  Carl saw Rick pushed to do something horrible and then saw that Rick was kind of torn up over what he had done.  I think that Carl's worry is that he - Carl - would have done the same thing without having felt bad about it, afterward.  That is why he tells Michonne that he isn't the person his father thinks he is because he isn't upset over what Rick did or the things that he has done, himself.  That is why Carl thinks that he, not Rick, might be a monster.  Heck, Carl didn't seem as upset about having to shoot his own mother to prevent her from coming back as Rick was about killing some POS that was trying to rape Carl.  Carl was reaching for the knife, himself, but couldn't get it.  He probably had the same thing in mind as what Rick did but thinks it wouldn't have bothered him to do it the way it bothered Rick.  I think Carl was avoiding Rick because he was ashamed of his own lack of remorse not because Rick scared him.

    SPOILER ALERT   SPOILER ALERT   SPOILER ALERT   SPOILER ALERT   SPOILER ALERT       Doesn't Eugene seem like kind of a dud to be the one person who, "knows what happened and how to fix it?"  In the comics, he ain't either one.  Instead, he is a former science teacher who realizes that he can't fend for himself and knows just enough to BS Abraham (the military guy) into protecting him and keeping him alive.  In the comics, he is exposed when the others realize that there aren't even any batteries in that radio that he is supposedly using to talk to Washington.   His skills and knowledge do turn out to be very useful in other ways, though.  He may not be the one guy in the group who knows how to stop the walker outbreak but he is the one guy in the group who is able to figure out how to use the equipment in an abandoned factory to do fairly large scale ammo production.

Honestly, I am kinda 'meh' about autos being legal (I think they should be legal but probably won't start carrying one.) To me, the more exciting part of the bill is the removal of length restrictions. In the past, couple of years there have been several knives that I would have liked to have considered for EDC except that they had blades longer than 4 inches. I am not even thinking of such blades for knife fighting as I have no training in such (although I would attempt to defend myself with one if given no choice.) I am thinking more of just a good knife to have on me for general purpose use. I am also not necessarily talking about something with a twelve inch blade. It is just that sometimes it seems like a blade that is around five or six inches in length would be more useful than one limited to four inches or less. I think the Green River Dadley style knife I picked up at a historical day last year would be a good EDC knife (especially as that is what many settlers used it for) but the blade is around five inches long. Here is the Dadley pictured with a Mora Companion:

  What he said.  Gorgeous knives.

  I am pretty sure that this was a change to the rules that only came about a couple of years ago.  I seem to remember hearing something about it at the time but had more or less forgotten until recently.  The reason I remembered it was that one day when my 19 year old nephew and  I were in the LGS I asked the owner to confirm for me that my nephew could legally purchase a shotgun in the store.  He responded that I was right as long as it wasn't a shotgun with a pistol grip and that he would have to be 21 to buy a pistol gripped shotgun.   I guess it does make a certain sort of 'sense' in the upside down, Bizarro world government and ATF version of reality.  It doesn't make much sense in real life, though.  I mean, to my knowledge there is no law against an 18-20 year old buying a full-buttstock shotgun at a licensed dealer, buying a pistol grip and changing it, themselves.  Sort of like, unless I am mistaken, there is no law against an 18 year old owning a handgun or even buying one in a private purchase but that same 18 year old can't buy a handgun from a licensed dealer.  Oh, well, I guess that makes about as much sense as the fact that the same 18 year old could be sent to war to fight, kill and/or die, would be tried as an adult for committing a crime and is allowed to vote to decide who will represent them in the government but can't legally buy a Budweiser.   Anyhow, didn't mean to hi-jack but did think it was relative to the OP's question to point out that, where the government and the bass-ackwards gun laws are concerned, sometimes a shotgun isn't a shotgun, under the law, even though - legally - it still is.  Like I said, Bizarro world.

To make matters a little more confusing, keep in mind that - although a person who is between the ages of 18 and 20 can legally purchase a shotgun from a licensed firearms dealer - the dealer cannot legally sell that 18-20 year old person a shotgun which has a pistol grip on it instead of a full buttstock.  One must be 21 to purchase such a shotgun from a licensed dealer, just as with a handgun.  My understanding is that this is true even though the shotgun has a full length barrel, etc.  So that sounds like a pistol grip turns a shotgun into a handgun where some legalities are concerned (i.e. a person who is over 18 but under 21 cannot legally purchase one from a licensed dealer, just as with handguns) but not others (IOW, I don't think a shotgun with an 18.5 inch barrel and pistol grip would be considered a handgun for the purposes of carrying.)

  Yeah, I think it is from Star Trek, too.   I did notice that there was no circle/slash with a revolver so I guess wheel guns are good to go.  Another good reason to carry my J-frame the majority of the time!

Shortly after my nephew got his car, he received a ticket in the mail for running a red light.  In Florida.  This was despite the fact that he had not been to Florida and, in fact, at that time he hadn't driven much more than ten or fifteen miles from his home.  My mom called the number (the car was in her name) and was told, basically, that there wasn't any choice but to pay the ticket.  Well, she kept at them until whoever was responsible looked into the matter - and found that he (and his 90s model Mustang with a Tennessee tag) received a ticket that should have gone to a pickup truck with Florida tags.  Apparently, the truck's tag was just one number or letter off from his.  Yes, those cameras are a scam and belong on a scrap heap not on the roads and streets of our country.   I haven't gotten any camera tickets, yet (knock on wood.)  I did, however, have a KPD officer tell me that I had to remove the (clear) plastic license plate cover from my car because Knoxville has a city ordinance against them as they might interfere with the traffic cameras.  My thinking was, "What?  I don't live in Knoxville or even Knox County, barely cut through the corner of the the city of Knoxville sometimes, if I go home from work a certain way (which I rarely do) and they expect me to take my clear license plate cover off because of some dumbass city ordinance that isn't even applicable where I live or where I normally drive?"  In addition to adding to the stupidity of traffic cameras, that also serves to exemplify what makes me sick about the city of Knoxville - they expect all of East Tennessee to live by the stupid, niggling little rules they come up with for their city.

I have to wonder how old the fellah was.  I think that things have changed in this area in the last, few decades regarding private property and so on.  I am thinking of a specific incident that made this clear, to me.   My ex-wife's late grandfather was an intelligent man who pretty much kept his full mental capacity right up until his death (in his 90s.)  Thing is, though, he never quite realized that things in the modern world are not like they were when he was younger.  One day, he had us drive him out into the country to see a building that was once an old (one room, I think) school house where his grandfather had taught school eighty odd years or so ago (yes, amazingly, the building is still standing although it doesn't look as if it has been maintained.)  He was taking a painting class and wanted to get some good pictures of the old building in order to do paintings of it.   Thing is, that building is now on private property in a fenced in cow pasture type area.  Well, he thought nothing of opening the gate, going in and closing the gate behind him and walking to the building in order to get close enough to take pictures.  None of us knew he was going to do so until he did and we tried to stop him, telling him that it was private property.  His response was that he wasn't hurting anything and whoever owned the property (he didn't know who owned it) wouldn't care.  I responded by telling him - after he had stubbornly walked close to the building, took his pictures and returned - that in their place, if I discovered that someone had just opened a gate and let themselves in I would invite them to leave at shotgun point.  He attempted to brush my comment off until my wife (his granddaughter) and later another of his granddaughters confirmed that such would be a very likely - possibly the most likely - response from many property owners these days.  He seemed genuinely shocked to hear that.   When he wanted to go back for more pictures, we drove to the closest house to see if we could find out who to ask permission.  There was an older couple (in fact, they looked close in age to my ex's grandfather) sitting on the porch and they were the owners of the property in question.  Once we explained why he wanted to get close to the building, they seemed more than happy to give permission.  That time - which turned out to be the last time he got to visit the old building - we walked with him and got to see the building up close.  It really was a pretty cool experience.   My point in all of this is that - depending on the age of the person in question - if he really did live there at some time in the past this fellah really might have just been reliving old memories.  If he was an older person, it really might never have occurred to him that you would mind him walking his old stompin' grounds or that there should be any need to ask permission.  Just a thought.

  I certainly don't believe that such things are outside the realm of possibility.  I recall the incident where a Texas man named Vic Stacy made shots at over 100 yards with a handgun to stop an active shooter who had a deputy pinned down.  However, I think that accounts of such incidents stand out because they are so rare as to be an anomaly.  In my case, such possibilities don't figure into my planning near as much as more likely, closer range self defense situations.

  We all have to do/plan for what seems right to us.  I am not saying that you are wrong (I can't as you are talking about what is right to you) and maybe I am a cold hearted SOB but to adapt an analogy that is often used, I don't carry a spare tire in case someone else has a flat.  I'm not AAA.  Just because I may keep a fire extinguisher in the house doesn't mean I am responsible if someone else's house catches on fire.  I'm not the fire department.  That doesn't mean I wouldn't help if I could but feeling some obligation to do so - to the point of planning for it - isn't a part of my decision making process.  The way I see it - with a few, possible exceptions - the other adults in the room during that 'active shooter' situation each and every one have the choice to arm themselves beforehand, just as I do.  Failure on their part to choose that option - for whatever reason - does not make me responsible for their decision nor do I feel any obligation to risk my life to make up for the choice they made.  I am not the police.  My feeling is, to paraphrase William Munny from "The Unforgiven", they should have armed themselves.  My conscience would be just fine with getting me and my family/friends out alive.   I might feel differently if I happened to be one of the only adults in a room full of kindergartners on a field trip but imagining such a scenario - and choosing a carry weapon based on that imagining - is likely going so far into mall ninja fantasy land as to approach the ridiculous.  Such a scenario - while technically possible, I suppose - is so unlikely that, again, it doesn't register on my decision making radar.

  And that, to me, is the point that the author should have focused more on in the article.  Going into the "might need to make a one-handed shot at fifty yards while riding on the hood of a speeding car and being pursued by aliens with jet packs" territory only served to weaken the rest of his (otherwise valid, IMO) argument.  It still wouldn't have convinced me to stop carrying my J-frame the majority of the time but it would have been a more solid position, I believe.

Congratulations!  I kind of doubt that most places would change their employee handbook in such a manner as the law doesn't require them to make that exception.  I am pretty sure that my employer has not.  Good for you that your employer did take that step.

  Weren't there times - in the first World War, for example - when Russians only issued a firearm to every second soldier?  Supposedly, they issued ammo to all of them but maybe didn't have enough guns to go around so the idea was that every second man would go into battle unarmed.   When one of the guys with the guns got shot down then one of the guys with just ammo was expected to pick up his gun and keep fighting.  At least, that is the story I have read in more than one place. 

  Since we started living in a politically correct 'no one is responsible for their own bad actions' society that tends to give more rights to the offender than the victim.  It is the same society that wants to push an agenda in which some maniac wouldn't be responsible for raping 33 nuns and murdering kindergartners because his mommy and daddy didn't fix him enough grilled cheese sandwiches when he was a child.