JayC

Government can't make any ex post facto laws, they can't give you data under public domain and then turn around sometime later and say the data is now prohibited.  Also, trying to force them to take the data down will result in a lawsuit that the state will loose over 1st amendment grounds.   If somebody illegally obtains and then provides the CA with all HCP permit holder records, they can publish it no matter what state law says.  (ie Pentagon Papers) The state could come after the person who obtained the information, but couldn't charge/file suit against the paper, or force them to take the information down.   And don't get mad at the paper over this, focus on the real root cause of the problem...  Why does the state need a list of law abiding citizens exercising their 2nd Amendment rights in the first place?  If the state didn't have the information to begin with the CA wouldn't have it either.  

This is what concerns me more...  Where were all the supposed oath keepers?  I've not heard about a single incident where a police officer or national guardsmen (there appears to be videos of ACU clad NG troops involved) refusing this unlawful order.   And that should concern you a lot more than the fact they did it...  that nobody said NO.     You constantly hear people argue that the police and the military won't turn on the population, they will stand by their oath and follow the constitution,  I think this goes to show those people are wrong, when push comes to shove, the vast majority of police officer (it would seem ALL of the hundreds involved in this action) will follow orders and violate the constitution.    That is a much more chilling issue IMHO.

People keep saying this, doesn't make it correct.  Powder and ball was just as covered by the 2nd amendment as the flintlock rifle.  The British weren't coming to Lexington on April 15th, 1775 to go door to door and collect flintlock rifles, but powder, ball, and cannons.   The 2nd amendment protects ammo the same as it protects the firearms that shoot the ammo.    

If this is true, why only an aggravated assault charge?  Where are the under color of law charges?  Use of a firearm while committing a felony, etc. ?   No offense but the DA needs to throw the book at this guy, he never needs to see the outside of a prison again.

Agreed but you keep think of this as a single incident, instead of a string of incidents....   The threat of death or serious bodily injury while in the store, may well have been over, and the manager no longer had a justified self defense situation.  But, chasing/following the suspect is still covered by the 'stand your ground law'...  Unless you contend that the manager while following the suspect was either someplace he couldn't legally be (clearly not) or was doing something illegal (which doesn't appear to be the case).   So you have 2 out of 3 legs of the 'stand your ground' law in place...  all that remains is a reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury.  The instant that happens, the manager would be back in a justified self defense situation.  Some would argue that a fleeing armed felon who has threatened to kill you with a gun already could very easily pose a threat of death or serious bodily injury if he was within range to shoot you (which is clearly the case here), even if he's running away when you hit him.   Clearly the DA didn't think it was a good case, and did the right thing.   Anyhow my point in my quoted post was that by following after a armed robber while you might be 'escalating' the situation, does not interfere with your ability to claim self defense under 39-11-601 ie our 'stand your ground' law.    

Care to cite the state law that says this?  Because I'm not aware of said state law.   The stand your ground laws in TN allows you to use deadly force anywhere you're legally allowed to be, and not doing anything criminal as long as you're have a reasonable fear of death or serious injury.  Both of those conditions appear to have been met by the manager.  The only question at hand is the reasonable fear of death or serious injury, which most reasonable men would agree an armed bad guy trying to escape could pose a risk of death or serious injury.   Chasing after an armed bad guy in the process of committing a felony, while not the smartest thing to do, is not illegal (and is even explicitly legal under state law).    

What is the concern here?  A really bad guy got shot and killed for threatening the lives of a bunch of people.  And you want the good law abiding citizen charged?   You have to remember the stand your ground laws we have here...  You can chase after a suspect legally, you can even attempt to stop/detain/arrest them as long as you don't use deadly force...  And if in the process of following/detaining/arresting the bad guy, you have a reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury you're free to use deadly force.   I can think of 100 different ways somebody could have such a reasonable free while following an armed robber, even if the shot that kills him lands in his back.  And that sir is what we call reasonable doubt...  Here we have a DA that not only knows the law, respects the fact he will have re-election problems if he goes about charging law abiding citizens who aren't bad guys for killing armed robbers and thugs in self defense.   There is a lot wrong with the criminal justice system, but this isn't an example of it.    

Obama won his second term because republicans weren't 'excited' with the republican nominee.  If Romney had gotten the same number of votes that McCain did in 2008 he would have won.   We keep picking democrat light republicans to run, and we're surprised that the democrats keep getting elected.     And make no mistake if Romney had been in office in Dec of 2012, we would have a brand new assault weapons ban in place right now.   

Lets look at the law:   39-17-1359 a1:     a2:     As you can see, it only applies to permit holders.  

That would be the case if it was a free market, unfortunately just before WWI the government declared that is was a strategic resource and created the national helium reserve which held a huge amount of the gas because it was so rare.  Then in 1996 the government wanted to switch to a free market, and passed a law that said the helium needed to be sold off by 2015, which artificially dropped the price on it, so it's not really a free market to begin with.   And while nobody would argue I'm not all for a completely free market, we have to understand that unlike most 'products' we can't make more helium because it's an atom.  Right now there is a single source for the helium in the world, and that source seems to be running out.  With what we use helium for, it's probably a good idea for national defense that we have a strategic supply of it on hand.   As for having as much as before...  yeah kinda, first helium is light enough that it does escape the atmosphere out into space...  So while it still exists as matter it's not still here on Earth...  Second, helium is hard to 'refine' in low concentrations, and right now we know of only 2 methods to create helium in a high enough concentration to capture...  First is fusion by pressing 2 hydrogen atoms together to create a Helium atom, which we can do in the lab, but have no method to do this on large scale (or we would have very cheap power), the second is fission and while we do have plants setup they don't produce very much helium, your average nuclear power plant if we captured all the helium would only produce enough for 2 MRI machines.   We can redesign some stuff to use liquid hydrogen, but currently there is no replacement for liquid helium.  

Well to be fair, this is a real strategic issue that we should be concerned with...  Unlike made up issues, there is a real concern that we could have a major helium shortage, as early as 2025.   90% of the worlds helium comes from Natural Gas wells within 250-300 miles of Amarillo, TX, there currently is no readily available source for helium anywhere else in the world today.     So, what we only use helium for filling kids balloons :)  Helium is the only atom we can cool to nearly absolute zero and not freeze, this provides us the only way today to make superconductors.  These superconductors are used in things like MRI machines, and to make many of the electronics we have today.   So a shortage of helium would be bad, very bad, not only for technology but possibly for our economy.   Now, things could change down the road, we might find a way to perform fusion, and then have a crap ton of extra helium laying around.  But until we find a second source of pure helium somewhere in the world, it might not be such a bad idea to treat it as a strategic resource.     

You say that, but show an example of them charging a permit holder for an incident like this.  DA's here in TN want to keep their jobs, you go after a guy like this, you'll have somebody challenging you in the next election for going after good folks trying to protect themselves, and trying to protect gang banger criminals.   That is even if the DA could have found a grand jury to give a true bill in this case.    

Unloaded firearms aren't covered by 39-17-1359, as that law only covers permit holders.  Clearly transporting an unloaded firearm home after purchasing it, or transporting it somewhere to sell it is covered by 39-17-1308.   So you'd be in the clear even on private property, unless you were asked to leave, then you'd have to leave, at least to the sidewalk or public right of way.  

Stand outside on the road in front of where people pull in...  That's part of the public right away they can't hit you for trespass there :)    

Cambodia 1975 is a perfect example of this tactic being used for bad.  You see great examples of it during WWII, and The Great War...  Indian wars here in the 1880's.... Here is a little hint, it is a classic war strategy taught to every cadet and officer in the military even today.   What does it take to train and coordinate a terrorist organization?  A safe place to train, stable transportation, stable food supply, the ability to move men and equipment around from place to place, the ability to communicate with units operating in the field.     Can you completely stop an enemy bent on low velocity terror attacks using this method?  No.  But, if they have to use horses and donkeys to move 600 miles to training, and pack in all of their supplies and equipment...  it might slow them down a bit.    

Sure you can, if you force the population as a whole to have to spend 100% of their time focusing on trying to live, they're not very likely to have extra time to go out and get into trouble.   You only have groups of guys meeting in hillside caves, and causing trouble when those men have spare time not growing food, or taking care of their families.   You're right a lot of countries in the middle east don't have a stable power grid, or don't have access to clean drinking water on a regular basis.  But, they do have a power grid that works at least some of the time, they have bridges that cross rivers, and passable roads, most have a rail system, pipelines, fuel storage tanks, airports, internet, cell phones, and radio and tv stations.   Now, if you go in and deny all of those things, the country even a crap hole like afghanistan can't function, they can't move food around to feed people, you can't move supplies around, and you don't have the time to hike up to a cave and figure out new ways to cause more trouble.     Now, you go in and destroy anything that looks like infrastructure...  not just 1 of the above, all of the above all at once.  And for a period of time you continue to deny them this infrastructure.  Let them rebuild a little, somebody says something about attacking us again, and go blow it all up again.  The population won't put up with trouble makers anymore.    I think it would have worked at least as effectively as what we've been doing today, and at a lot lower cost is both lives, and money.       

The Constitution places limits on the GOVERNMENT not private individuals.  A bail bondsmen is a private individual and is therefore NOT restricted by the constitution.   SCOTUS made some famous ruling back in the 1800's that still stand today that give 'bounty hunters' wide latitude in recovering people who have skipped on their bail.   If you don't co-sign a bail application, aren't out on bail, and don't hang around with people who are on bail, the chances are you'll never have an encounter with a bounty hunter.    

Targeting individual enemies is a complete waste of time, and a poor game plan for executing a war.  You win a war by denying the enemy the ability to wage war, you do that but making anything other than staying alive a low priority.   If you deny the enemy: electricity, communications, running water, bridges, and passable roads then you remove their ability to wage war or terror.   Even in a primitive country like Afghanistan, if you deny these assets, the population is forced to focus on food production, and rebuilding infrastructure assets that it can not 'afford' to waste time and energy on waging war or terror.   The fact is, if we had gone into Afghanistan and leveled all the bridges, destroyed all the power and water plants...  Messed up the roads, and knocked out anything that transmitted a radio signal...  then turn around and came home, and promise them that any hint that somebody living in Afghanistan tried to attack us we'd repeat the process over again.   Our boys would have been home 10 years ago, we may have had 200 deaths, and it would have cost us 50 or 60 billion dollars.  Instead we're still there today spending money to rebuild the stuff we blow up, have lost nearly 3200 friendly troops, and it's cost us the better part of a trillion dollars.  

No we really need another Calvin Coolidge :)  Clearly the best President we've had in the last 100 years    

The police officer should be arrested for civil rights violations under the color of law, kidnapping under the color of law, and felony stupid under the color of law :)  This guy needs to be at the very least sitting in prison of the rest of his life.   Arresting a kid over a t shirt?   I mean it's kinda understandable that some stupid teacher and principal will over react and do something stupid...  nothing that a lawsuit and firing of both can't fix...  but an officer should have enough common sense to say 'that's not something we need to be involved in, if you want to suspend the kid call his parents to come pick him up, I'm out of here.'  

Just remember his crime, 50+ years ago was over $40.83.  He's never been in trouble since then...  Does this 70-something real poses such a serious threat to soceity that he can't own a firearm?

  And throw in Beth Harwell as well :) 

While they aren't prohibited from ruling on matters not before them, they generally don't.  So unless the plaintiff says this part of the law is unconstitutional then courts won't rule...  And you're right the ruling does say that restrictions on bearing may very well be constitutional, but there is no way you can claim an entire state is one of those zones.   I'm not suggesting it will be a free for all type ruling...  but I forsee a lot of restrictions being placed on the government.   It's a long process where you chip away one layer at a time at unconstitutional laws.    

Oh Shoot,   That's not correct, re-read Heller about the right to bear arms, they clearly state that issue was not before them and therefore they couldn't rule on it.  They lawyer who brought the case (and the McDonald case) said he excluded the right to bear from the case to break the ruling up into small chunks.     And there is a case working it's way through the federal system by the same lawyer who argued Heller and McDonald to do just that, Palmer vs Washington, DC hopefully it gets to SCOTUS before we're all dead from old age.   It's far from settled case law, there is virtually no case law on the right to bear arms from SCOTUS and we do have a lot of lower courts that disagree on the matter.  

I've personally seen the weapons in the Smyrna armory, and knew one of the NCO's (he just passed from cancer a couple of weeks ago) in charged of maintaining those weapons.  This was a few years ago, so they may very well have gotten rid of them, but that would surprise me.     As I said a few years ago I was recruited heavily by the state guard which included a sit down meeting with General Takasaki and a number of his aides, everyone I met were very professional and trying to make the best of it.  They still had weapons at the time of that meeting, and per the budget I was given by one of the NCO's, they had a small budget for ammo and firearm maintaince each year.  Has that changed since then?  Maybe.   But, as I've said before TNSG has serious structural issues most of which are brought on by the state legislature and TN department of the military, not wanting to have a trained defense force which would handle situations when the National Guard is deployed outside the state.   At the end of the day it wasn't a good fit for me, it might be for some others.  But, don't think you're going to get any weapons or combat training.  And the training they do offer can be had from other organizations.   As for getting called out for a disaster, go look at the 'deployment' record for the state guard, and compare that too the Red Cross or ARES in this state, the state guard is rarely deployed and often unable to get approval to do anything except stand around.