TGO David

I think Lee is trying his best to pick up a turd by the clean end. It can't be done, of course, but he's trying. Unfortunately I think that while the police might be able to enforce his directive, some agencies won't want to - and I can't blame them. In order for an edict like this to pass the constitutionality sniff test, it has to be applied to all people equally. Saying that each agency can decide how they want to penalize people doesn't mesh with that at all. Neither does telling some businesses that they have to be closed while others can stay open, I guess, But here we are. If your local agency decides that they want to enforce it, you're at their mercy until you get your day in court. When you do, you might get a judge who has his head screwed-on straight and thinks it's unconstitutional as well, or you might get one who doesn't. Then you're going to end up having to appeal it until you either get to a judge who agrees with you, or get told that the court isn't going to hear your case again. The whole thing sucks. It's not good, it's not right, it's not clean, and it doesn't feel like America. Each of us has to decide where the line is drawn for us, and hope that maybe it's in the same place a lot of other people have it drawn too. If everyone rebels, we stand a chance of coming out reasonably well on the other side. If only one or two do it, they'll experience the punitive capacity of the government and be portrayed as lone dissidents by the government to an unsympathetic public. The better option is probably to just sue the hell out of the local and state governments that do this sort of thing, and hope you get enough sympathetic jurors on the stand to agree with you. Otherwise that's futile as well. Damn, I'm depressing myself.

This is a good read from some smart lawyer type people on the subject of whether the government can shut down businesses, as they have been doing lately. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/can-government-really-shut-down-my-business-and-make-me-stay-home-questions-answered This is a very hot topic right now, and rightfully so. People who support what their local governments are doing and say it's necessary to stop people from needless social mingling are accused of being "statists" or "boot lickers" or "cucks of the crown". People who oppose it because the idea of government tyranny makes their blood boil are called "extremists" or "threepers" (Three Percenters) and other not-nice things. I'm very opposed to large government. I'm a dinosaur in the sense that I'm a firm believer in the Constitution and individual freedoms and liberties. I don't think it's a good thing that this is happening, for a variety of reasons. However, it is helpful to understand how we got here, what the legal precidents are, and maybe... just maybe... to acknowledge our role in all of this as citizens of a laws-based society, regardless of whether we agree with the laws. And we need to remember that there is a method to change laws and it includes the whole range of actions from he voting booth to the minuteman's rifle. For some reason there are a lot of people who insist on glamorizing the latter and don't seem to grasp the gravity of what it really means. I tell my teams at work all the time: When we are reckless and careless, we invite leadership into our world to "fix things". Can we honestly state that as a society we haven't invited the government to step in and "fix things" due to our inability to simply stay at home and deprive the COVID-19 virus the means of transmisssion? I'm not talking about necessary trips to the grocery store. I'm talking about trips to the Mall beceause we're bored, or to parties on the beach because it's Spring Break, or to the local bar or club because we think we're too healthy to get sick. Anyway... these smart lawyers explain why the government can do what it's doing. If we don't like it, we should fire the politicians who support it and elect some that won't.

@Royal Range USA don't you all do this?

Not much else of any public significance right now. My company made some internal adjustments this week to keep people employed and on the front lines fighting this virus and helping save people's lives. Our CEO is giving up 100% of his salary for the next few months and the leadership team that reports to him are giving up hefty portions of their salaries. The rest of us that aren't on the front lines are going to give up between 10-20% of ours for the next few months time to contribute to the war chest to buy PPE and pay wages. My wife and oldest daughter are both nurses, and my daughter is pregnant with her first child. My first grandchild. I can't imagine asking them to go do their jobs and risk their health (and the health of my daughter's baby) for me to sit back and not make some sacrifices as well. Especially if mine means they get paid, get N95 masks, face shields, nitrile gloves, etc. and the patients they're caring for get the care they need. We may yet experience what the Greatest Generation did when they gave up personal property so that the war effort could have the raw materials (rubber, copper, brass, etc.) it needed for victory. For now, me losing some pay but staying employed so that a war of a different type can be fought seems pale in comparison. I have no complaints. I feel terribly for those who aren't as lucky right now and are either sick, know someone close who is, have lost someone, or have lost their job. There but by the grace of God, go I. This may mean little to some of you, but I'm praying for all of you daily now.

Alright, I was partly jesting when I made my previous reply. Here is the factual statement taken from Executive Order #23 and Executive Order #22. Note that there are two links there and that EO #23 only replaces the first numbered list item in EO #22 and changes it from people being urged to stay at home to being required to stay at home. That said, fishing seems to be allowed for the time being as an essential recreational activity. Actual text from EO #22 in photo. This section, per EO #23, remains unmodified.

I think this is probably like a lot of things in life: It's only against the law if you get caught. Just own it as a decision you made consciously if you do get caught.

Governor Lee announced this today.

I'm sitting here trying to understand how you cut salary temporarily without ending up on the losing side of a Labor Relations Board suit. Companies use salaried positions expecting to be able to flex into overtime hours without having to pay overtime wages. The trade-off is that they also agree to pay the same salaried rate if they retain the worker but give them less hours. The only way around that is to sever the employment agreement and establish a new one or just sever the employer-employee relationship.

I feel fine (about this).

Logically one can assume that there are people and organizations that I'm going to just call "COVID response personnel" across the strata of Federal, State, and Local governments and various sectors of research science and medical fields that are privvy to more information than the public gets to see. There are things that sound borderline conspiratorial and make a reader start rolling their eyes and scrolling ahead... so that's fine if someone feels that way about what I am going to say next. I do have proof early-on in this thread where I alluded to some things that I couldn't talk about at the time that then about a 7-10 days later were made public. So, maybe a little credibiltiy there? Trump has started to show more transparency lately, and I think it's because we are getting close to the time when a lot of models predict that the situation is about to get really, really REAL. I think this careful management of information and the rate at which it is flowing out to us has been wisely designed to keep the thin veneer of civility stuck onto our society. First, some of the data is so dynamic and changes so rapidly that it looks like chaos when you plot it on a chart. Statisticians need time to process it, modulate and normalize it. If you try to "accept it" in real time, your response to it would be very manic. High today, low tomorrow. Hell, we've seen that with Trump during the daily White House briefings over the past week. I figure he's been getting the daily flood of data and it's had an effect. BUT... back to our Governor: He's an entrepneur and a good businessman. He's a solid Christian. I know because I go to church with him and have had him literally turn around in a service on a Sunday, look me dead in the eye and say, "I don't know why but I really feel like I'm supposed to pray for you. Can I?" He's the real deal when it comes to his faith and I see a lot of folks on social media mock him for it, or they question his sincerity and assume he's a Christian for the sake of show. Not the case. He's also what you'd probably just call an American. From what I've seen, he believes in the Constitution, he believes in the burden of leadership, and he's got experts in various areas advising him. While I'd still love to see some movement toward Constitutional Carry in Tennessee, he's not a single-topic governor and we don't have single-topic problems these days. My gut feeling -- and it's just that... not insider info -- is that he's been determined to walk the delicate balance between dropping the hammer and limiting a lot of civil liberties to control a crisis, and pulling the right levers at the right time, to keep the economy moving in Tennessee while managing down the potential for people to further propagate the virus. I think the "slow walk" toward big brash moves is just him being careful and reluctant to stomp on our freedoms. Take that for what it's worth. Last nugget for those of you who read this far: This isn't from my professional life either so I don't mind sharing. Based on what a surgeon at a very well-regarded local hospital told me yesterday, to my face, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Music City Center turned into a makeshift Coronavirus hospital very soon. Probably one of those things the government is doing behind the scenes that we're not all aware of.

My man it's always 5 o'clock somewhere!

I do that at my desk around 5pm Monday through Friday.

Worst Apocalpyse... Ever. https://www.shootersnation.com/podcast/0067-the-end-of-the-world-doesnt-have-the-zombies-you-prepped-years-for/ Enjoy!

I've got two of them. One mostly stock, the other fairly tricked out. IMO, it's the perfect carry model.

Yep @BimmerFreak still visits from time to time. He sold the Battlemug company a few years ago, though.

I still have my original.

I had a statistics professor once tell my class, "Of course models aren't exact. They aren't crystal balls. That's why they are called models and not guarantees." Man I can't tell you how many times those words have rang in my ears the last month as I've watched the facts and data do their own things.

My wife and I were just commenting last night that Gov. Lee's slow walk towards shutting things down may have helped businesses prolong the inevitable, but it's not encouraging people to stay the hell home as they should.

Awesome!!!

You've got it! I'll do it right now.

I am going to add another forum in that group for non-firearms related. Cigars, toilet paper, good whiskey, etc.

This is now live.

He's the perpetual salesman. It's fairly annoying but once you learn to process what he says through that filter, it gets easier to filter the outright BS from the hype.

Fair point. Coach was an easy albeit perhaps flawed analogy. CEO would probably have been a better term and equally applicable to the comparison I was drawing. As an aside, I think you simply must have a huge (yuuuuge) ego you be in politics at that level in the modern era anyway. His predecessors just hid it better. Perhaps sociopathically better. Gone are the days of “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country” statesmanship.

https://apnews.com/36bb744ed120b703b4bf13695572cb84 This is how we get curfews.