JayC

I carry a G19 in a Serpa Level 2 holster on a daily basis... You're going to hear a lot of anti-owb/open carry arguments here on TGO... There are very valid points to trying to carry concealed if possible... My style of dress generally does not support concealment of a compact firearm such as the Glock 19, I wear slacks and a tucked in dress shirt, this makes truly concealed carry very difficult for me. (I know all about tuckable holsters and they're uncomfortable POS in my opinion)... When I have a choice, I cover up... I wear a 'Shoot me vest' or a jacket when possible... I'm in my mid-30's I'm not going to change my style of dress just to carry a firearm to protect myself, people who suggest you buy bigger clothes, or change your style of dress are wrong IMHO. Now, here is my general rule in life, it's better to open carry than it is to leave your firearm at home. Even with the 'disadvantage' (which there is no scientific proof of) of open carry, it's better to be armed than disarmed. So I tend to open carry a lot... almost daily, in all sorts of environments... I've come in contact dozens of times (probably nearly 100 different officers) with LEO's, I've NEVER been approached, not once, never been asked if I even have a HCP, and for sure have never had my firearm taken for 'officer safety'. I've only once been approached by anybody else, and that was a security guard in a Krogers (Nolensville Road area)... They asked where I had gotten my holster from... Now, I suspect the way I look, my manner of dress, the firearm and holster I carry all help with not getting unwanted attention from law enforcement. I'm my personal belief that how you look has a huge impact on how much negative attention you draw... Wear a pair of dirty jeans and a rock t-shirt that prints very badly IMHO is a lot more likely to draw the attention of the public or LEOs, than if you're wearing a nice button down long sleeve shirt and a pair of 5.11 pants and open carrying on your belt.

We need a Constitutional Amendment, voting for any law that is later determined to be unconstitutional results in a 10 year prison sentence of any member of the government who voted for, signed, or enacted the legislation, and no possibility for election to public office for life. But that will never happen

I'm pretty sure part of that isn't the case... The vast majority of restaurant/bar owners don't keep up on what does or doesn't need to be posted... They expect the ABC or local health inspector to tell them... I believe it's still listed as a required item if you ask for the ABC check list (which hasn't yet been updated)... As the signs get old or get taken down, the inspectors won't say anything and they'll stay down, but that is going to take decades The vast majority of owners don't even worry about the anti-gun crowd... trust me the pro-hcp crowd is a lot more vocal in my experience.

Only downside to this ruling, it may force a lot of insurance companies to raise prices drastically, or cause them to go out of business altogether... Causing more Americans to loose health insurance, and the screams for a single payer system will be louder and louder which is what the democrats want.

The law referenced in those signs have been repealed.... But, they've been up for so long it maybe decades before they're all taken down... Health inspectors and ABC inspectors aren't mentioning to restaurants the signs aren't required anymore...

This case is most likely to make it to SCOTUS first... VA federal court system is know for it's speed... It might be before SCOTUS as early as next fall.

I'm curious if this happened to you as well, it would seem that would be a violation of state law... Unless you're arrested or violated 39-17-13xx... I've even heard reports of them not taking firearms for evidence in self defense shootings.... Seems odd they would give you the run around in a car wreck. 39-17-1351t:

Have your wife or significant other go and get their HCP so they don't have to worry if this ever happens Also, takes care of those instances you leave a firearm in the vehicle or what ever other reason they may end up with a load firearm in their possession. It takes virtually no training to pass the HCP class, I took my wife, she shot 6 rounds (first 6 rounds she'd ever fired from a pistol) at 15 feet into the target to make sure she knew how to load/unload the revolver, and fire the pistol, operate the target controls... she then took the class 15 minutes later, and passed with flying colors. Oh, and the added benefit if they ever need to carry a firearm they're not trying to find a class, and wait up to 90 days to get one down the road

Not to disagree, but how is it different from the last administration? It is a republican former DHS head that is selling us all those porn scanners you know

The issue isn't these types of fiber lines... there is so much dark fiber like you describe for sale cheap it's not funny... it's the last mile of infrastructure that is the hard part... all of our problems stem from exclusive deals prohibiting competition for decades in that arena, and now cable and telephone providers are abusing the government monopoly they've been given.

The vast majority of Internet service is provided by a state owned company, and they play a lot of games with the Internet traffic... There are a number of countries where getting VOIP telephone service is illegal, and lets not even get started on the great firewalls American companies have built for dictators and oppressive governments. Japan, is a success story that we can look at, while there are a lot of differences between Japan and the US, bandwidth costs are MUCH lower, 50Mbits/s DSL runs about $35 a month, and 100 Mbits/s Fiber runs about $50 a month (costs here in the US are more than 3 times that, if the service is even available)... The biggest reason is last mile infrastructure is open to any company who wishes to enter the market... The competition drove the price of Internet service down, and has kept it down for over a decade (has your Internet bill been going up or down for the last 10 years?)... Since companies share last mile infrastructure, they create peering points much closer to the end users, and as such backhaul Internet costs are much lower... by comparison, here in the United States less than 100 true peering points exist for the entire country. South Korea would be another example where many different companies have been given access to the last mile, and there is a lot of competition, which drives prices lower... by 2005 50% of the population had access to broadband speeds. South Korean cost for basic DSL 8Mbits/s is about $32 a month, half to a third the price of here in the US, with VDSL coming onto the market for ~$50 (50Mbits/s)... So why is Korea so successful (keep in mind they have a much lower income level than we do, ~$10,000 per household) They've separated the infrastructure from the ISP... So company A builds the infrastructure and maintains it (NSP), and then sells service to a VSP or SSP (we'd call it an ISP)... Since the NSP just builds and maintains the infrastructure, and not provide service they don't have control over the data... VSP's are largely unregulated (they do have to basically announce to the government they're in business)... it's easy to switch between providers, and therefore VSPs have to be very customer focused and competitive. Cable service is ever similar to the phone service described above... there are 77 regional cable providers, who have exclusive deals similar to what we have here in the US, but they are prohibited from providing Internet service, they can lease access out to ISPs, who in turn provide service... thus splitting infrastructure from provider again like in Japan. The long term key here is to either A> unlock last mile access, or B> prohibit cable and telephone companies from running both the infrastructure and the Internet service... As Mike has pointed out, A is highly unlikely, B is a much more attractive alternative and much more probable. If we required the two to be separate and prohibited exclusive deals between new ISPs and infrastructure providers... prices would dropped quickly, and there would be dozens of ISPs available to each customer, and we'd see a fairly free market. Also, another thing we could do... require that Telephone and Cable companies who are receiving BILLIONS in "Internet Infrastructure Taxes", be required to spend that money on capital infrastructure upgrades, instead of padding their profit margins like they do today.

I do something very similar... I have a Glock19 and a Keltec P3AT (380)... I ALWAYS carry the Keltec, it's in my pocket right now. If I can I also carry the Glock 19, but my style of work dress and certain situations prevent me from properly concealing the Glock, so I have it locked in a car safe or in my office when that happens. Truth be told, if you can conceal a Glock 26 IWB, concealing the 19 is just as easy (I also own a Glock 26 that my wife carries - along with her own P3AT).

What are the other 2 besides the Electric company, and the cable company? The government allowed telephone company? What is the fourth? It's a free market when any company can enter the market for the same cost as the current government backed companies... When there is a set price that I can buy access to the 'right of way' exception Charter gets, and it's the same price Charter pays... Then you can have a free market... It's that government control of that right of away access that is the key... when the Government prohibits a second cable company from entering the market by signing exclusive deals with a single company, that company becomes a government backed monopoly... 3 different types of Government backed monopolies don't make a free market in my book. These exclusive deals are the root cause of this problem... If Comcast, Charter, and BillyBobs Cable could go head to head in the same town/city/county for the same customers, then you'd have choice... and I'd be 100% in agreement this regulation is not needed, and would only do harm. But, the VAST majority of customers have 2 choices, government backed telephone company X and government backed cable company Y, in some rarer cases government backed electric company Z... Why is it these companies can't handle have another direct competitor fighting them for the same customers? Nobody has a Constitutional right to broadband Internet... just as nobody has the Constitutional right to telephone service... But the Feds regulate that, and that regulation prohibits them refusing service to a business who is competing with them.... Phone Companies aren't allowed to block competing operator/411 services because of Federal regulation.... If you're going to provide a communications infrastructure for customers, in an exclusive deal with the government, it's reasonable to require that provide must not use that advantage to block out competitors from using that infrastructure. Else you end up with AT&T before it got broken up the first time.... do you remember some of the games AT&T played back in the day... You could only buy a telephone from AT&T... oh wait thats right.. you couldn't buy the phone, only lease it from AT&T, only an AT&T technician could work on the wiring in your phone... nobody else could provide directory assistance..... So when have the feds gotten it right? I'll cite 2 examples of the FCC getting it right... 1. 1968 - 13 FCC 2d 420 - The ruling that required AT&T to allow other devices on it's telephone network as long as they did not cause damage. Also the FCC ruling that cable providers must carry all broadcast TV stations within their market footprint... This kept a great number of LPTV stations alive including many Christian and conservative stations who would have otherwise been forced off the air. The propose regulation is a dirty band-aide at best... but it's better than nothing... until we decided to fix the root cause of the problem, and require that local governments open up right of away access.

Leroy, There is a lot more to the "Internet" than surfing the web... So no there aren't 6 providers you can use... there are likely only 2. Since you're clearly not getting it, lets break it down for... The vast MAJOR of TN does not have 3G coverage (lets focus on CDMA since it's the most common and provides the best coverage for most of the state, GSM Edge and 3G throughput will be similar).... Lets also only focus on downloading data and skip over uploading right now... So as I was saying... you're $35 dollar a month DSL is probably at least 1.5megabits per second download (it's likely a little bit faster than that but this is about the baseline for what is considered broadband)... of ~ (lets keep the math simple) 1500 kbits of download. Netflix requires 1.5mbits to stream video, and recommends 3.0mbits for DVD quality video and sound. The vast majority of TN has 1xRTT wireless coverage... you can see it on your 3G coverage maps from the provides... 1xRTT is about 60-100kbits (or 1/15th as fast as the minimum connection speed needed to run Netflix)... This connection is on a good day about twice as fast as a dial-up modem. Along Interstates and in most mid-size towns and cities in the state we have EVDO or EVDOrevA coverage.... This coverage in theory get much higher speeds, if you're the only person using 3G sitting right on top of the cell tower you can see speed of 1200-1800kbits (about the same speed as our basic AT&T DSL line), but most of us don't live right under a cell tower... in practice it gets about 300kbits to 600 kbits of through put sometimes even slower if the tower has a lot of data users... again this is 20-30% the speed of your basic DSL line. The future of the Internet in your house is live video, telephone service, video chatting, and a lot more... You can't do that today or anywhere in the near future on wireless... The build out of wireless data networks is going to take decades... The phone companies have barely started converting 1xRTT towers to EVDO, 2 Networks have started "4G" roll outs (technically neither Sprint nor TMboile's networks qualify as 4G but that's another story)... at the present rate it will be 10-15 years before all the 1xRTT towers have been converted to 4G service, which still isn't any faster than low to mid range DSL, or the bare bones cable packages we have today. Lets compare that to cable and dsl technology... The vast majority of cable customers in the US are on at least DOCSIS 2.0 today which is able to do 40+mbits downlink... or about 27 times the speed of a basic DSL line... Within the next 3 years the majority of customers will be converted over to DOCSIS 3.0 (already available in part of TN today), which has a downlink cap of around 152-304mbits or about 200 times faster than your basic DSL package today... ADSL today is capped at about 24mbits, or slower depending on your distance from the phone companies equipment... VDSL2 will start to roll out here in the US over the next 10 years with 50-200mbits depending on your distance from the phone companies equipment... And finally we have Fiber... which some phone companies are currently rolling out... with speeds of 155mbit today, but to 600mbit could happen very quickly, but it will probably be 5+ years before we start to see that happen in the residential market... long term Fiber is going to be the way this ends up going IMHO. 10 years ago, 1.5 mbits was FAST, a lot of folks were on 256k to 768k DSL connections... the top tier of most cable systems was 2-3mbits... Today for a small fraction of the country, wireless is just now catching up... 10 years from now, we'll finally be seeing 4G service being rolled out to the more rural areas... while those same areas will be seeing 100+ mbit cable and DSL connections by that point. If all you do is surf the web... and don't ever plan on doing anything more... this is all a mute point. But the Internet today is a lot more than webpages... Youtube needs 300-700kbits of bandwidth to stream VHS quality video today... Hulu, Netflix, and other sites, need even more to stream TV and movies to your house... More and more people are moving away from AT&T phone lines, towards VOIP provides such as Vonage and Skype who provide a much better solution at a much much lower price point... All fo these applications people are using today are bandwidth hungry... Whats just around the corner is even more so... GoogleTV, AppleTV, Beebox, etc... we're going to see another HBO style revolution in TV entertainment in the next couple of years... You won't buy TV service, to watch ad supported TV shows... you'll stream them over your Internet connection... Think of a Titans or SEC application for your TV... with all the customization you have of a web browser today but for your favorite sports team... All of this stuff and a lot more is coming over the next 2 or 3 years... 5 years from now it will be as common place as a DVR/Tivo is today... And it scares the crap out of cable providers... They want to lock the Internet down, to prevent TV subscribers (cash cow) from being converted to pure Internet viewers... What comes next when we have 100+ mbit connections to the average home... I'm not sure... but if all data is treated the same, it's going to be a lot easier to innovate... As an innovator, my agreement is purely between me and the consumer... That is a truly free market... How does that negatively impact me as an innovator, if I have to ask for permission from every ISP, and probably have to pay a fee to even access the consumers? Then, I have to compete against their in house version of my product who doesn't have to pay that fee for access? When consumers only have a choice between 1, 2 or 3 providers because of current government regulation, it's not a free market... We see that today in the wireless space, there are basically 4 major wireless providers... While it's not illegal, 3 of the 4 providers switched from an unlimited 3G wireless plan for ~$50-60 a month, to all having a limited 5 gig plan in a 60 day period... Seems kinda funny that 3 companies with 85% of the customer base, all switched their plans in the exact same way in such a short window huh? No amount of money can buy the old plan they offered... sounds like a free market to me The same will happen with broadband ISPs... As soon as Comcast can get away with block Vonage, and other VOIP telephone providers, AT&T will follow suit shortly... There is no downside to them following suit... only upside, but the consumer will have to choice but to cancel their vonage account and purchase telephone service via one of their two ISPs, who charge more for the same level of service. Here is an interesting question for you Leroy... ever use Skype? Ever wonder why in the US you can only use Skype via wifi on your smartphone (there is a single exception for a handful of Verizon phones)... but everywhere else in the world you can use skype on 3G on the exact same smartphone? That's because the phone carriers told skype, keep your data off our networks or we'll ban/block your software on our customers phones. But, nahh there is no way your DSL provider would do anything like that huh?

Thats not exactly true either... The judge ruled they couldn't regulate ISPs under a certain title of the communications act... they are writing the new regulation under a different title... it doesn't invalidate the judges ruling.

My 'definition' of net neutrality comes from the 2009 proposed regulation... This is not a passing fancy of mine, this is an area that I have more than 15+ years of professional experience... There are a lot of left leaning AND right leaning groups who want to go farther than this regulation... I don't support any of those ideas (trust me the left isn't the only group who wants to censor the Internet). Charter has been caught doing some of the same bad things... Did you know Charter planned to the following until it was caught in 2008 and the FCC (those nasty guys) and congress intervened? Oh BTW, if they had done this, they could have sold the data to the government without a search warrant. Did you miss the announcement from Charter they were planning on doing this? No, that's because they didn't tell any of their customers.... they were just going to do it behind their backs. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/06/nebuad-forges-g/ So yeah Charter Communications is really looking out for you... Not only would this new FCC regulation stop stuff like this... it would require them to at least tell you what they are doing to your Internet traffic. Trust me, this isn't all slippery slope maybe this will happen... ISPs are the next form of big brother if the FCC doesn't regulate the same 'common carrier' rules which are in place for the telephone industry. Now, the whole question of Title I vs Title II jurisdiction... I agree is splitting hairs, and may very well be an over reach on the FCC's part... It would be better if Congress passed a law approving the regulation, but make no mistake, this regulation is needed or the Internet as we know it is going bye-bye, and fast. And yes I really do believe that.

Wireless providers are generally NOT broadband ISPs (only 1 listed could maybe qualify if you're within their WiFiMAX zone). So, maybe Sprint, but probably not... AT&T, Verizon, TMobile (even their "4G" network) do not meet the requirements for broadband speeds. More importantly ALL of the listed prohibit the streaming of video over their wireless networks (from not approved partners), and their computer plans are capped at 5Gig transfer limit (about 3 to 4 hours of surfing at full 3G speeds). Sprint/Clearwire have a WifiMAX solution, but only covers high density population centers... In TN it's only available in Nashville and has a fairly small footprint compared to cellphone 3G coverage. So, in East TN you're back down to 1 or 2 ISPs, a DSL provider (probably AT&T) and/or a cable provider. While cellphone Internet is growing in importance, it in general doesn't replace home based broadband, there isn't enough wireless freq's available to allow enough data to move through the air, we're YEARS (maybe a decade or two) away from streaming HD on demand video through the cellphone data networks. If you look at the problems the Iphone has caused to the AT&T 3G network in major cities, and they're not even allowing video streaming yet... The cheapest AT&T DSL (~$20 a month - BTW because of an FCC requirement) is still faster than these $60-$80 a month 3G plans. So, other than your DSL provider, what other broadband ISPs do you have to choose from?

They clearly aren't responding to market forces... In a free market you can't eliminate your competition by blocking the road... That is exactly what many of these large government backed monopolies are doing or threatening to do. 6.8, The companies who we're talking about the FCC regulating aren't the one's doing any of the "innovating" you're talking about... The FCC is only proposing to regulate broadband ISPs, who are providing the last mile of service to the end users... If anything this regulation keep the innovation going, by preventing these companies from abusing their monopolies on smaller web start-ups who are the innovators. If the FCC/Congress does not act the Internet you're use to is DEAD... It will result in much higher costs, and much fewer choices... And while it won't be the FCC censoring content it will be these huge monopolies who will be. If left unchecked, you'll be forced to buy telephone, movies, email, and everything else you can think of from this handful of companies, because they've blocked or priced their competition out of business. Say goodbye to accessing sites like TGO without having to pay an extra fee for the privilege.

Deregulation in this case only benefits the providers who are already in place.... unless you're going to remove their right away access... and in doing so, break all telephone, cable, and internet service throughout the country.... So, how do you propose we get enough broadband providers in TN through deregulation to provide consumers enough choice to avoid companies such as comcast shutting of competing services over the Internet? Lets hear you plan to solve this problem...

Leroy, You're missing the entire point of my argument... I'm 100% for a free market solution to this problem... But that is going to require the Government to break up these monopolies... The last mile of Internet service is 98% controlled by government created monopolies and duopolies... Which in the long run need to be broken apart... The long term solution is similar to toll roads... The infrastructure should be privately owned and maintained, but are required to allow any car (data) to travel over the road no matter the maker of that car (data). Then consumers should be able to by their car (data) for anywhere they choose... This is the EXACT way dial-up Internet service worked... it allowed anybody to start up an ISP in their basement and provide Internet access without any of the crazy government regulation... a true free market. I'm all for a free market solution to the problem... but what are the chances we're going to slaughter all these cash cows anytime soon? Here is the problem with your solution... we don't have a free market today... answer me this, how many broadband ISPs do you have access to chose from? 1or 2? If you live downtown in 1 of 4 major cities in the state maybe 3 or 4? So how exactly do you vote with your feet? You can't just start up a broadband ISP either... because even if you had the money to, in most places in the state the cable and telephone companies have exclusive deals preventing others from entering the market place... many of those deals being 10, 20, and 99 years in length. You're right, regulation is a bad thing.. sometimes it's the lesser of two evils, as in this case. As far as bad corporations go... it's not anti-capitalist... trust me I'm 150% in favor of the government getting out of the free market... it's because some companies are 'bad' but if you want telephone service, or TV service, or Internet service you're left with choosing between bad and being left behind... Government backed Monopolies are a bad thing... they spawn bad corporations...

I disagree, the Internet is just about as free as you can possible get it... free as in speech not as in cost. The FCC isn't doing anything to impact innovation... If anything this regulation will continue to promote the innovation we've seen on the Internet for the last 15 years... Lets use last weeks example of Comcast to highlight what will continue to happen if this regulation is blocked... Netflix offers a streaming video service to it's customers over the Internet for the low price of $9 a month, you can watch as many movies as you want. It's starting to get very popular as a cheap way to watch movies - companies have started to sell cheap $99 set top boxes that stream Netflix directly to your TV in the last few months - this is a perfect example of good innovation on the Internet. But Comcast pay per view priced at $4.99 per movie is starting to loose market share (ie less profit), because people tend to pay $8.99 for Netflix instead of $4.99 per movie to Comcast.. now in a free market, Comcast would be forced to offer a competitive plan to keep from loosing market share to Netflix... So what does Comcast do? Instead of announcing their own streaming service and trying to compete with Netflix, they have their ISP business unit make a threat, pay us money or we'll block/degrade Netflix access to our customers... That sounds like the free market doesn't it? Now mind you Comcast customers are already paying for Internet access, at X speed a month... And Comcast is making profits hand over fist on their Internet business unit already... Charging 10x or 20x the going rate for bandwidth. And I'm not complaining about them making a profit only pointing out that Netflix is not costing the ISP part of the business money... This is exactly what the FCC regulation is aimed at stopping. Don't believe me that Comcast would do such a thing: FCC looking into Comcast / Netflix blocking threat, Level 3 responds as analysts chime in -- Engadget

I agree completely... much to watered down... supposedly the 2010 will include wireless broadband providers (ie cellphone companies) which somehow got themselves a pass in the 2009 regulation... even though they are some of the worse offenders of a free and open Internet.

Leroy, If you don't bother to read the proposed regulation, how do you know the regulation is bad? The tyranny of large corporations controlling information is just as bad if not worse than the tyranny of the government doing the same... at least in theory the courts will intervene with the government. The threat of blocking this regulation is much greater to the free flow of information, than allowing it to go forward. Nobody is going to allow the cable and telephone companies to be dismantled... and until then they need to be caged...

Ler5oy, Have you READ the 2009 proposed regulation from the FCC? I have... and no where does it regulate content, speech, or require equal time for opposing views... Here is a copy of the 2009 proposed regulation, which should be 99% the same as the soon to be announced regulation... http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2009/10/fcc-09-93a1.pdf To save you the long boring read here are the highlights of the regulation: 1. Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service may not prevent any of its users from sending or receiving the lawful content of the user’s choice over the Internet. 2. Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service may not prevent any of its users from running the lawful applications or using the lawful services of the user’s choice. 3. Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service may not prevent any of its users from connecting to and using on its network the user’s choice of lawful devices that do not harm the network. 4. Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service may not deprive any of its users of the user’s entitlement to competition among network providers, application providers, service providers, and content providers. 5. Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner. 6. Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must disclose such information concerning network management and other practices as is reasonably required for users and content, application, and service providers to enjoy the protections specified in this part. Wow, really looking like a communist proposal doesn't it? To put this in terms you can understand... A electric utility has announced that starting in 2011 they will only allow black and decker power tools to be used on their power grid from now on... And the government regulator saying, nope you can't do that, customers can use any device as long as it doesn't harm the power grid. And before you say, no power company would ever do something like that... in this case telephone/cable companies have been caught violating everyone of the above rules the FCC is proposing, and in many cases lying to their customers about it at the same time. I'm always against government regulation of free markets... and the best idea here is to break up these monopolies, and duopolies... Until that happens, basic rules preventing these monopolies from abusing that government granted position, is required. When and if the FCC attempts to regulate content or impose the fairness doctrine on the Internet I'll be standing next to you screaming bloody murder... but in this case people have it all wrong... read the regulation, and see for yourself.

Corect before the 17th Amendment, most Senators were chosen by the state legislature... and could be recalled if they voted against the state's interests... The 17th Amendment was the last nail in the coffin of states rights...