MacGyver

That's really nice!

A Ruskie double rifle?  That seems like some kind of heresy they don't even have a name for.

Those are generally made good on, or at least offered. Interestingly though, a pretty good number of people end up not accepting a reward for simply doing the right thing.

My vote on the 10/22 goes to wood.  Classic gun deserves a classic stock.  Nothing wrong with polymer, but if I have to choose one, I'm choosing wood.

Love my 300.

Nothing appears to be wrong with your account.  I don't see Benefactor status, so that'll take David's involvement.  It's been reported, so he'll see it when he logs in.   Thanks for your patience.

Coca-Cola has been very clear over the years for their desire for more diversity within their own company. They filed amicus briefs supporting affirmative action last year in both Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger. They've shown their commitment by their hiring practices; you'd be hard pressed to find a more diverse management team in a publicly traded company. I think the commercial simply reflects their values.

Wait...are you sure He can translate?

I hope so!

The WalMart at Nolensville Rd and Old Hickory Boulevard had an all-you-can-eat buffet of Federal 9mm the other evening when I was in there.  They probably had 300 boxes on the shelves.  And almost that many boxes of .45acp.

If there's one thing that I hope for and truly try to foster in this community, it's asking better questions of ourselves as individuals and as a community through good conversation. We all gain so much when we check our preconceived notions at the door and just engage with people who aren't necessarily like us.  Maybe if we build that ability in small communities, then we can work to affect the larger dialogues in our nation.   I'll illustrate with a personal example.  For years I was dismissive of the homeless population.  They're all drunks, drug addicts, there because they lack personal ambition, whatever...  It was a personal problem that they had somehow must have brought upon themselves, and I distanced myself from them by both my attitude and my actions.  But then I got involved with them because I along with a few others recognized that this attitude was in conflict with other things in my life that I like to present myself as being.  I got involved with Room in the Inn, a local homeless "ministry" here in Nashville.  Basically, once a week my family as well as a few other will share a common table with these guys.  Once a month, I'll spend the night in our church building alongside some of these guys so that they've got a warm, safe place to sleep.   I don't share that to say look at me, I share it to say that getting to know someone changes things.  You see that yes, there are some of them who've made really bad choices in their lives and are trying to figure out a way forward.  You meet many who are simply under-employed and don't have any family or community to fall back on.  About half of our population in Nashville are veterans, many of whom are disabled.  Bluntly, as a country we've failed these veterans in a way that ought to be criminal.  But, by getting to know them, I'll say that I've benefited way more than they ever will by spending the night in our building.  My children who are 2, 4 and 7 are happy to come share a meal with these men.  They are not okay with the fact that there are people who are sleeping on the street because they've got nowhere to go.  When they pray, I hear them pray for these men.  We'll never solve the problems that cause homelessness, but maybe their generation will see them as something other than a blight that needs to be eradicated.   So, I'll simply encourage folks to check their attitudes at the front page.  We encourage debate here.  With 20,000 members, there will never be total agreement about anything.  But, while we try to foster good debate about ideas, we demand that people act with respect towards one another.  Failing to do so is frankly the one offense within this community that you will not make a second time.   Has something gotten you fired up?  Great.  Bring the discussion.  But, as I've said many times, if you can't bring something constructive to the conversation, you probably ought to ask yourself whether or not you should be participating. 

This is a guy who had a lot of money donated to his defense during his show trial. I'd be willing to wager that if word went out that here's a guy who was involved in a terrible event and is looking to quietly move on and feed his family, there would be no lack of people willing to put him to work. That's not what's happening here. Instead, we've got a fool who's looking to cash in on what he perceives as his fame. I think that his fifteen minutes is about up.

I've always thought it a weird juxtaposition of civil religion that many of our hymnals contain America the Beautiful. I love the song, and it's made me tear up many times, but it's always made me uncomfortable when it's done in church.

Just ask yourself if out country is stronger economically when we find a way for people who want to be here to pitch in and contribute or when we spend our time trying to get them out. I figure you can only really choose one of those.

As a side note, the white, heterosexual, 'Merica loving pundits who are feigning outrage over Coke taking liberties with this commercial ought to Google Katharine Lee Bates, the author of the lyrics to America the Beautiful. Though she identified as a Republican most of her life, she wouldn't be welcome in today's GOP. She "lived" with one of her fellow Wellesley professors, Katharine Coman for more than 25 years. How's that for a historical fun fact?

In my opinion, this ad represents exactly why America is beautiful.    This noble experiment that is our country does one thing that no other nation in world has ever managed to do.  We can take the world's tired, poor and huddled masses and turn them into Americans.  Wander the streets of New York and watch the immigrant Sihk cab driver working 20 hours a day.  Go to the fields on the west coast at harvest time and watch the immigrants who have come here illegally - with no small amount of personal risk to better their families.  Stay in any hotel in America and try and count more than one hand worth of non-immigrants working past the front desk.  Go put your boots on the soil of any third world country and talk to the common man on the street, who regardless of their leaders' rhetoric would give everything they own right now to come to America.   This is what makes America great, and it's something we're in danger of losing.  Our political parties love nothing more than to divide us into factions, and nothing makes that easier than spreading distrust of people who aren't like us.  Our "pundits" are getting rich off of selling a message of fear and hate.  It's cancerous, and it will affect us as a country.  Don't believe it?  Watch an hour of Fox News and keep a running tally of the stories that are based in something other than fear.   If we're going to find our way forward as a country and make the next two and a half centuries better than the last, we're going to have to find a way to embrace each other - even when they don't look like us. 

Killing someone, however justified should not be cause to make someone a celebrity.  To have someone seeking and embracing celebrity status after shooting someone should be abhorrent to anyone.   The fact that they would televise these thugs beating one another probably says something about the state of our society at large.

Thanks for that.  And to be clear, we were very pleased with it.  We've just been around enough group buys gone bad that we were nervous about it.  Soured deals can hurt communities, so we wanted to make sure that if we were going to do one, we were going to do it right.

It's to be expected.  That's why we were so particular about the whole affair.   All in all, I'll say that it actually went a lot better than I expected.  I give almost all of that credit to the guys at CMT.

Weird.  I'll look into it.

All in all, we did 169 lowers, 119 uppers and 66 BCGs.    Considering the number of people who bought their limit of 2 uppers, 2 lowers and 2 BCGs, about 1/4 - 1/3 of the people who "committed" actually followed through.  This ration is a great example of how group buys can quickly go south.  We were so fortunate to work with Jeff and his team at CMT.  They're really top notch.

Stainless can be cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner.  Aluminum generally shouldn't be.

If it's only pistol calibers you're looking at shooting, I can speak highly of the AAC TiRant45.  You'll need a thread adapter to go down to 9mm, but it will work fine.   Rifle suppressors are made to handle a lot higher pressures, and as such a pistol rated model isn't going to work safely on a rifle.