TGO David

Thanks, Ken. I'll make those changes.

Pardon me if I feel a little slighted by that comment. Since when is discretion considered cowardice?

Your conclusion that this is indeed a positive outcome is pure assumption. As Creeky pointed out, you may now also have a store full of anti's who will mobilize against open carry or at least carry resentment about it with them into the voting booths down the road. There are plenty of more favorable ways to educate the masses. Scaring the **** out of them isn't one of them.

Yep, I'm a natural skeptic. Probably one of the biggest reasons I'd never intervene in what appeared to be an armed conflict between a thug and a businessman. It'd be my luck that the businessman was a drug dealer and the armed thug was an undercover narcotics officer. Perception being reality could really bite you in the butt in a case like that.

Sure, but that assumes that the observer has a positive impression of the person who is carrying the gun. Mars and I talked about this once in the past and perception is indeed reality. If you look like someone who should be carrying a gun, then you are less likely to cause panic. I love to use Eddie (Molonlabetn) as an example of this. The guy is fit, dresses clean and carries an air of quiet professionalism. He open carries a lot but he looks like he's probably got a badge inside his wallet. If he drove a Crown Vic, he could probably get away with a bank heist and even get a cop to help him carry the loot to his car. That assumes that the person concealing somehow lets it slip that he or she does, or lets the weapon be visible for some reason. And again, the impression the latter would make on the sheep depends largely on whether they look like a responsible member of society or if they look like some dreg who shouldn't even be trusted with a bottle opener.

There's a lot of truth in it. I dropped about 50lbs myself then started to slip a little after my wife got pregnant. Lately I've started back on the morning routine of doing crunches and hitting the weights, and the dog and I are about to start hitting the streets every evening for a good long walk. It's hard work losing weight, and not nearly proportional to how easy it was to get fat to begin with, but it's worth it. I keep telling myself that nothing I eat will taste as good as being thinner feels.

Yeah, because a guy walking around in a store at 2am with a gun on his hip sends a positive message to those people. The best activists are those who you never assume to be activists. "You mean you carry a gun? I had no idea. You seem so ... normal. You mean regular citizens can get a carry permit? How hard is it to do?" -vs- "Yeah, Bob carries a damn gun everywhere he goes. Right on his hip like he's Wyatt Earp or something. It doesn't bother me personally but it scares the hell out of my wife and kids. I wish Tennessee would do something about regulating that stuff." Which dialogue do you think has the more positive potential outcome?

The good news is that none of these ads are actually being deleted. If you go to the Classifieds sytem (link) you see that the ads are still very much there. The problem exists in the hoodoo-voodoo that the software does to copy those ads and make "threads" for them in the forums. Those threads are getting marked as deleted for some reason. That's where the problem exists. It is misleading to see a thread marked as deleted when in fact the classified ad is still open as usual.

That's cool and I respect your decision to do so. But I'll be here in a few years to post an "I told you so" follow-up when this happens.

Real men carry all-metal pistols and use angry pictures of themselves as their avatars, no doubt.

Sooner or later our state issued HCPs will be amended to be concealed carry permits and everyone's going to sit around slack-jawed with blank, dumb expressions asking why the heck they changed the rules. And when it happens, I'm going to tell stories about people open carrying at Wal-Mart, scaring the sheep. Yeah, I'm knocking you pretty hard for this. Deal with it. The reason our state doesn't require concealment is because if concealment is required by law, then you could lose your permit or be thrown into jail for even accidentally "flashing" your weapon as you reached for a box of Fruit Loops on the top shelf. In many states where concealment is required, this can and does happen. The law wasn't written with open carry as a provision so you could cowboy-up with your heater on your hip. It was written to keep you out of jail for being careless. People argue all the time that more open carry would make it so common place that the public wouldn't care anymore. Bull****. More open carry will result in more sheep being pissed off about it, writing their representatives and castrating your right to carry at the polls during the next election cycle. Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face. CONCEAL IT. The world does not need to know that you are carrying unless you are trying to send the message that you carry your balls in your holster. There is zero tactical advantage to revealing your hand.

I think I'm going to take a lesson from our dear friend Barack and do a little "community organizing" and see what I can accomplish. Today, speed bumps. Tomorrow, the White House.

Gotcha. Not sure our road would support that due to width requirements.

What exactly is a "speed circle" ? I'm envisioning something like a speed bump but made up of circular bumps or something like that?

Man I am so glad I got on here and read this. I was JUST about to go outside and do it but you talked some sense into me.

I believe that someone on M4C posted a letter from the ATF stating that it was legal for use.

I have asked about them putting in a stop sign at the corner of my lot just to slow traffic down and was told by a city engineer that connector roads cannot have stop signs on them like that. I am going to call city hall again and see if a petition from the residents on this end of the neighborhood would help get some speed humps, stop signs, police cars, radar wagons, whatever.

I'm about ready to start putting cement blocks in the middle of our street after dark just to slow some people down. We live on residential street that our city planners have designated as a "connector" road that ties together two major roads at either end. I would say that our street is about a mile long and winds lazily through several small residential neighborhoods. There are zero commercial properties along it, the area is zoned residential. We have a 30mph speed limit which frankly I think is about 10mph too high but I would be happy with if the motorists obeyed it. I realize that the human eye is not a good judge of speed. But I also know the difference between a car or truck doing 5mph over and one doing 10-15mph over. It's pretty friggin obvious when you hear the engine and see the suspension loading as they carve the corners. When I moved into the neighborhood, my house was literally one of the last on the road. Now development has extended another quarter mile or so down the road from us and the traffic has increased to where it is constant and consistently fast. I purposefully don't walk our dog through the neighborhood for fear of getting hit by one of these assclowns. Sooner or later, someone's kid will get hit and killed. It is almost a certainty at this point. I really don't think I'm exaggerating the problem and think that BNagashima and his wife can vouch for what I'm saying. They don't live too far from us and have commented on the same things at dinner with us in the past. So... have any of you here ever combated a problem like this? If you have, what did you do? How did you make City Hall listen to your concerns? Does someone generally have to get hurt before something is done about it? While it's mildly therapeutic to bitch about it here, I'd rather put my energy into doing something about it.

I am not sure what's happening but am checking into it. None of the moderators are doing it.

Sorry, it just caught me the wrong way when I read it last night. I'm very cautious when teaching my kids to shoot. We just weren't shooting yet when the "glamor shots" were taken.

She actually shoots wearing these... Pink of course. But we make her ride in the car without a seat belt to make up for it.

We were just getting her used to the controls and the optics at that point. She hadn't begun to shoot and my wife wouldn't have been standing that near her.

Some of me and my daughter shooting my SBR today...

Really looking forward to seeing it.

My wife and I are taking my daughter to the range today, in fact.