TGO David

Here is my personal belief about the root cause of this: Bullying has been a thing for as long as there has been diversity in the human gene pool. Person One has always felt that it was fine to subjugate Person Two because Person One viewed themselves as being the stronger, more popular, smarter, wealthier, powerful, valuable or otherwise more advantaged than Person Two, or just because Person Two was different in some way and Person One was able to think of them as being "less than". Only two forces have ever kept that in check: Morals and ethics based in a belief of Right and Wrong, typically rooted in and codified in a religious belief system. The threat of repercussion, typically dealt out by an authority figure. I believe that we have come to a point in society where item #1 (Morals and Ethics based in a belief of Right and Wrong, especially rooted in a religious belief system) are on the decline and where people who hold to those values either already are in the minority or are trending towards being the minority very soon. I also believe that item #2 (the fear of repercussion from the Law or an authority figure) is just as rapidly eroding. There is very little respect for the Law these days, or for Law Officers or for Teachers or Parents or any other authority figure. Lacking the moral compass of item #1 and the fear of repercussion of item #2, a person can be expected to have no boundaries for what behavior they feel is acceptable. And consequently we have bullies who will bully without remorse and we have victims of bullying who will unpredictably resort to any possible form of retaliation to cease the bullying and exact revenge upon the bully. None of this justifies anything. It's just a description of the hand basket we're all in as we slip and slide down the slope toward Hell and anarchy. Parents, Adults... teach your kids that life isn't fair. Teach them that it sucks, that there are winners and losers and you can't always be the former. More importantly, teach them how to be a loser with dignity and a winner with compassion. Teach them that people can be cruel but that you don't have to let their cruelty define you, and that nothing excuses you to be a murdering asshole. Raise children with tough skin but sensitive hearts and equip them with a moral compass. Show them how to deal with anger productively.

I saw a post on Facebook earlier from a family member of his playing up that defense VERY hard.

Yes. It's something we will try to do later this year.

We had someone donate the entire cost of setup today. !!!!

We had someone donate the entire cost of setup today. !!!!

I’ve been tracking this since right after it happened this morning. It’s all over the news back home in Kentucky and starting to hit the national news. http://www.wpsdlocal6.com/2018/01/23/shooting-marshall-county-high-school/ My brother alerted me to it this AM. He’s got family who were at the school when it happened so it’s been a tense day. So far they’re saying two teenagers have died, as many as 14 others are wounded, and the 15 year old shooter is in custody. It’s a senseless, terrible loss of life. No motives have been mentioned yet. Pray for all those involved, please. My hometown is no stranger to school shootings, unfortunately. The last big one like this was in December of 1997 at Heath High School in West Paducah.

I am splitting this thread off from the other one. So, I put in a small order for a few samples from the company I have in mind. They won't arrive until mid February. These aren't done off-shore, it was just a condition of the small quantity and taking advantage of an offer they made to digitize the TGO logo for me for free if I didn't mind the delay. That said, I am also going to speak with them about a storefront for TGO. They will do all order fulfillment, which is nice. I'll let you guys know what we need to do to get this rolling after I speak with them.

If you're sending to your ky*****ry.com email address, try it with another email address instead. That service might be blocking us for some reason.

Yeah yeah yeah. If I think there is really enough interest in it, I will try to get something going again. The place I've found that would be easiest for all of us to use produces things on par with what we had before, which is to say of considerably better quality than Cafe Press or Spreadshirt or any of those other places. These folks do actual embroidery, just like we're all accustomed to from before. Setup to have them produce stuff for us is going to set me back about $150. I've got to be sure we can sell enough hats and shirts to recoup at least 50% of that up front and the other 50% over the next few months otherwise that's just money out of TGO's operating budget out the window.

SEXY gun!

Hey folks. As I have mentioned before, I am looking to do regularly scheduled podcasts to help bring us even closer together as a group. If you've ever just sat around a coffee table, campfire, the gun shop counter or even the shooting range, and talked about shooting, guns and everything that goes along with it... you've got the general idea of what our podcasts will be about. I am a pretty big fan of podcasts as a form of media. I listen to quite a few of them each week during my commute to and from work or while exercising trying to get a little healthier. Some of my favorites make me feel like I'm right there in the mix, listening to what the hosts and guests are talking about, and learning from them in the process. I am not big on any sort of media where I feel like I am being preached at or condescended to, which means there are some relatively popular podcasts that I don't care anything about too. Other than to use this thread to tell you that podcasts are coming soon, I also want to hear from you. I want your suggestions. What do you want to hear about? We can certainly talk about the latest firearms industry news and buzz, but what other things do you want to hear discussed and who do you want to hear from? I have started a thread over on TGO's sister site, Shooters Nation, to gather input. I can't promise miracles and some of what you suggest may take some time to put together, or be outright impossible to deliver, but I will try my best to make sure that any podcast we release is worth listening to. If you have a moment, stop in and give me some feedback: https://www.shootersnation.com/forum/threads/podcasts-coming-winter-2018-suggestions-welcomed.7/ Thanks in advance!

I found you as "steeharp" minus the L. I added the L back in.

I was going to mention the bill for heating the house this month. I am scared to death of what it's going to look like. Last year my wife was working during the days and my daughter was in daycare. This year they're all staying home with the new boy, and that means our power bills are going to be much higher. I switched the majority of our lighting at home to LED bulbs to save on power because no one seems to turn the dang things off. *sigh*

Yes, please feel free!

Hey gang... I've often compared my role in a forum to that of a Grounds Keeper. What I am good at is keeping things looking nice and making sure the lights work and the doors open. The real life-blood of any community is the people who come and participate. An important element of that is having good Moderators and we have some openings! When I think about what a Moderator should be, it's someone who is engaging and likes to stir up conversation. It's also someone who can help steer conversations back on topic, or guide conversations to another "room" when it is appropriate to do so. Some folks might think of Moderators as being grumpy bus drivers who ride herd over a bunch of unruly kids, screaming "Fun isn't allowed on the bus!" but that isn't the role I like to see moderators take. If we get there, we've done a lot of other things wrong along the way. While a bouncer at the door may be necessary on the rarest of occasions, what we really need are concierges who help keep things moving. Maybe you're the kind of person that folks naturally gravitate toward in crowds of people. Maybe you're the one who always seems to be surrounded by good conversation, and can talk about pretty much anything. If your friends and family accuse you of being able to talk the paint off the walls, you're probably the person I am talking about. So if that's you, or if you just have a serious desire to help out and always seem to know how to get an answer for folks even if you don't know what it is personally, I could really use your help. In addition to the fame and entourage of good-looking people always following you around, moderators receive full "Benefactor" perks for free for as long as they're on staff. Just kidding about the entourage. Send me a private message if you'd like to be a Moderator here on TGO! (<-- that whole thing is a link. Click it!)

Or the warranty.

I'm noticing a trend with your posts to date.

Which features are you missing the most? Xenforo (the SN software) is definitely a little more basic out of the box but there are a lot of add-ons for it. Lifetime memberships eventually. Maybe sometime in June/July. I want to make sure it keeps the momentum up so that everyone (myself included) has some confidence in it first.

Email from Shooters Nation is now going out via the SparkPost service. It should be more reliable now.

I appreciate all of of you jumping in there! Please do feel free to let friends outside of TGO and Tennessee know about the site too. I'll be logging off here in a few minutes to get some rest but will check in the morning and update any accounts that need to be updated.

That's the one to use. I tried to combine a few things over there to streamline it some. Thanks for signing up.

It's all good. Someone told the Wright Brothers they'd never get off the ground too. I hope the new site flies just a little longer than their first airplane did, though. lol

I switched to invisible reCaptcha to avoid this. Are you still having problems? If so, what device are you using to sign up?

Noted - working on making it a little easier.

Yep. I am also keeping an eye on who signs up and comparing to this thread. If I spot you before you get around to messaging me, I am upgrading your account for you.