TGO David

Sounds like you guys had a great time. Thanks for making it happen! And just think... all of those lawfully carried firearms in one place and not one of them went off on a rampage by itself!

Great photo, guys! Glad everyone had a good time and thanks to all of you for putting this together.

Real quick post... here are the photos from tonight: Present: Bigdaddy (and companion), Cory25 (and companion), Creeky, Daniel, Hexhead (and wife), Hornet Handler, IWI.BabyEagle.40, Jhatmaker (and son), Lagerhead, Moose, Mrs. Shima, Mrs. TGO David, Ngoeser59, Oakey (and wife), Shima, TGO David, TheMark712 (and son), Trekbike, Volzfan (Nikki with a couple of the best behaved members of our group tonight!) Thanks to all of you who came out tonight to celebrate with us. It was great to meet a lot of new folks and as always a pleasure to see old friends. Nikki did an excellent job with her interview on NRA Radio's "Cam & Company" and they even showed the two photos (above) on their webcast! I definitely want to give a special note of thanks to the management and staff at Pie In The Sky in Franklin, TN. These folks were extremely gracious and bent over backwards to take care of us. Our waitress, Toni, was a trooper and did an amazing job. If you're ever in the area and are looking for some great food, please stop in and support them! I'll post a list of all the folks who attended in the morning. I'm literally hammering this post out from the laptop before we call it a night, but I wanted to make sure this was posted before it got much later. Thanks again, everyone! I hope to see as many of you as possible this weekend at the Meet & Shoot.

Come on out and join us. I will have us seated under the name "TGO" and we will likely be in their back-room seating area. Just look for TGO hats, shirts and the table where (suspiciously) no one is drinking beer or booze.

Johnson City is more east'er than you are. If they hear that you're trying to muscle in on their east'er'ness... it could get ugly.

Well go eat again and this time vote on it.

If I lived in Knoxville, I'd probably wear one of those shirts too.

Perhaps someone from this gathering can take a camera and snap a group photo at some point this evening, then post it here later for us all to see and enjoy. Be sure to raise your iced-tea high in toast.

Perhaps someone from this gathering can take a camera and snap a group photo at some point this evening, then post it here later for us all to see and enjoy. Be sure to raise your iced-tea high in toast.

Perhaps someone from this gathering can take a camera and snap a group photo at some point this evening, then post it here later for us all to see and enjoy. Be sure to raise your iced-tea high in toast.

Have added a poll in case it will help with the headcount. Also, if someone from the Chattanooga group can take a camera and snap a group photo (raise your iced tea high as a toast!) then maybe post it later, that would rock.

Added a poll in case it would help with the headcount.

I'm going to add a poll to the thread just in case it would help you guys get a headcount.

Thanks for sharing. I just ordered a few thousand small and large pistol primers.

If your head isn't hex shaped for real...

Purely from the outside looking in, it seems to me that commissioned officers view private security as those who want to be commissioned but aren't, hence the term "wannabe cops" and such. I know you know that, I'm just answering the rhetorical question posed. I'm sure there are private security personnel who have no desire to be cops, just as there are private security personnel who used to be cops and got tired of the crap hours, retired, etc. My grandfather was career LEO, retired from the public sector and went to work in the private sector as chief of security for a nuclear refinement plant. Better pay, better hours, better benefits and less bull****.

Clearly someone with a TFA avatar and TFA plug in their signature wouldn't have an agenda here, but the bottom line regarding what you've stated is that you guys have tried numerous times to recruit for your organization here and I've grown tired of it. TFA has it's own web site, they should stick to recruiting there. TGO is an accurate source of information, regardless of what you or your group like to claim. And again, as I've stated, copying and pasting is preferred because other sites can and do go away as organizations, companies, entities, etc. fade out of existence. I'm not saying TFA is in danger of that, I'm just saying that I can't guarantee it won't ever happen and a bunch of broken links aren't going to do anyone here any good if it ever does.

Yep, that's part of the plan.

I hope that we can have a good percentage of success in that as well, but ultimately we must be respectful of their right to post if they so desire. My own thinking on this has obviously evolved a bit over the past month. Does that mean to accept defeat? No. But it does mean that we can be gentle in the way that we apply peer pressure. If I owned a restaurant, I'd be more willing to listen to a reasonable request than a foaming at the mouth demand or a card left on my counter, threatening that some nameless, faceless coward was going to take his business elsewhere (and good riddance to him or her). Face-time with the managers and wait staff is important, as is the impression that you make on them. Let it be a good impression. Leave a healthy tip. Don't resort to maniacal spit-infused rantings. We all see what sort of impression it left on Nikki and the rest of us when Randy Rayburn lost his cool with her. Why would we want to leave that sort of impression on anyone else?

As Fallguy showed, Bar-B-Cutie changed their mind. For the record, Nikki had conversations with the establishment staff and the manager received emails, calls and letters asking them to reconsider or risk losing paying customers. She didn't crop-dust them with a silly business card threatening to take her money elsewhere, she interacted with them, one on one, and mobilized others to do the same. THAT tactic is effective and TGO members excel at it. It's honest, grass roots activism. I was told pointedly by Senator Jackson immediately following the passing of HB0962 that he appreciated the calls, emails and other support and prodding given by TGO MEMBERS. He mentioned you folks by specifically by name. That's not a pat on my back, folks. It's a direct compliment to each and every one of you who take the time to call, email and write letters when things need to be changed.

Finally got to read it. I wonder if John Harris was as amused by the wording as I was.

I'd read it, but their web server is slooooooow.

But tell me this... If you notice that a restaurant is posted and you decide to leave the card, do you disarm before going inside? I doubt many people would be willing to do that, assuming that they are willing to go inside in the first place. Failure to disarm before you go inside puts you in the position of violating the law. My stance is pretty simple: I think the cards, as TFA and other organizations present them, are stupid. They amount to nothing more than feel-good drive-by activism for people who want to take a stand but want to do it with relative anonymity, choosing instead to redirect the ire of the restaurant owner at an entire organization. The best option here is to have a friendly, non-confrontational, face to face discussion with the owner or management of your favorite restaurant when/if they decide to post. Explain to them that you're a long time patron and that you really love their establishment, but you're going to have to take your money elsewhere if they persist in demanding that you come into their restaurant void of your legal means of self protection. If you're a regular customer and this restaurant values your business, your words will carry weight and might affect some change. This happened just recently with Nikki Goeser and the Bar-B-Cutie restaurant on Donnelson Pike here in Nashville. Cards left on a table or handed to the manager while you're in a huff about their rightful decision to prohibit carry aren't going to do squat for the cause. I don't really think TFA is trying to accomplish anything positive with these cards other than raise awareness that they exist, and honestly think the cards have more potential to do harm to the cause (or at least to the reputation of that organization) than they have the potential for good. If these cards were a good idea, organizations with more firepower beneath their belts (such as the NRA) would have been doing it a long time ago. The NRA spares no expense in marketing their organization and in evangelizing pro-2nd Amendment ideas and ideals. There's probably a very good reason why this isn't one of their tactics. Again, I'm still kicking around some ideas in my head for a way that a hand-out of some sort could be used positively for our side of the issue, but I'm not ready to make any sort of announcement just yet.

No need for thanks here. Daniel did most of the reportin' on his iPhone and Twitter. He also had to resist being recruited by other organizations.

Hope to see you this evening!