MacGyver

We're two closer now.

Family members coming to see me from Atlanta always take the time to stop at hero gear and the outpost. I'm from Atlanta and can't really recommend any stores there. We have a lot better here in middle Tennessee. If you are going to be in Marietta, I would check out Brigade Quartermaster off of Barrett Parkway. They're always worth a stop. Brigade Quartermasters - Gear: Above and Beyond Standard Issue

Two here.

Man...just when you thought you've seen it all, 6.8 goes and buys a combloc heater. You can't count on anybody anymore.

That's cool. Nice work.

I'd be in for one

Nice work.

So I'm going to close this thread before somebody gets booted because of it. I count myself fortunate to be someone who spent the morning of September 11 in 1 World Trade Center and watched both planes go in. I witnessed the first plane from directly below the impact. I also spent the next nine months within the red zone working the rescue effort, the recovery effort and finally some special projects related to the cleanup. Why do I count myself fortunate? First of all, I lived. My office was on the 78th floor, on the exterior wall, on the side of impact. American Airlines Flight 11 hit on roughly the 81st floor. Had I been in my office as opposed getting a cup of coffee due to a delay at the security desk, I would have been one of the people that we simply never found. The second reason I count myself fortunate to have been there, was that I got to be a part of the effort in the days following one of our nation's greatest tragedies. While it was a terrible time for our country, and to some extent our world, it was a great time to be in New York. The nation and the world were united and standing solidly with us. It was great to be a part of that. Unfortunately, we've squandered much of that goodwill. And that infuriates me. Make no mistake, we are absolutely at war. But, we are to some extent in a proxy war. This war isn't between us and Muslims. It's not between Christianity and Islam, or Jews and Arabs. This is a war between a group of extremists who happen to be Muslim and the rest of us - whether you realize you are a part of that group of the rest of us or not. We've become distracted. We went to Iraq, and while I believe that the world certainly needed to hold Saddam Hussein to account, that effort took our eye off the ball a bit. It changed the conversation from combatting extremists to words like "empire", "nation-building", and "occupier". As misguided as any of those representations are, those became the focus. All the while, there's still this group out there that hates us. And, nothing we say or do is going to keep them from hating us. They would like to kill you because of who you are, and who you represent. These people need to be removed from the gene pool. Authoritatively. Here's the tricky balance, though. We are America. We are the greatest country in the world. We are better than them. Not because our religion is better than theirs, not because we have better stuff than them, not because we are smarter than them. America is the greatest country in the world, because we can take in the tired, poor and oppressed from any other place in the world, and make them Americans. I'm fortunate that I get to see pretty much every third world backwater that exists. They all have two things in common. Food from street vendors will kill you, and it's not hard to find someone who wants to come here - who is completely willing to give everything they have for the remotest chance to become one of us. An American. We've got this Constitution that makes us great. We are founded on a belief that all men are created equal. It was, and is an experiment. Your family that you were born into, your class, your religioin - none of that guarantees you anything. Anyone can come here, step up to the plate, work their ass off and make a better place for themselves and their family. You can build a border fence 100 meters tall with snipers on the top, and people will still come. They are willing to risk everything they have, including their lives for a chance to be an American. One of us. If we lose that, we've lost the war. Unfortunately, despite our missteps, despite being engaged for a period longer than our involvement in WWI and WWII combined, we have only seen the opening salvos of this war. Because of our modern "sensitivities", we aren't going to have the conversations we need to have or do the things we would have to do to bring this war to a swift end. We're going to be engaged here for a long time. I agree with the fact that the TSA is nothing more than an expansion of a government jobs program and is really not much more than security theater. A lot of us seem to have bought into the illusion that all of this theater makes us safer. It doesn't. If you are willing to commit your life to an objective, you have a pretty big playbook to work from. There isn't much you can't achieve if you are willing to commit to not walking away from it. There is no machine that's going to stop a threat like that. People should expect to be reasonably safe when they fly, and should also fly with an acknowledgement of the risks. We are at war. There are some people who would like to blow up the plane you're sitting on. You chose to get on, deal with it. Frankly, the airlines could put a stop to the TSA's overreach, but they are so dependent on government's largesse with your money that they keep their mouths shut. They could handle security much more effectively, but they won't. For now. So we find ourselves in a bit of a morass. The TSA is a consequence, if you will, of not recognizing the true enemy and doing what we need to do to remove humankind of their presence. We are better than them. We don't need to profile Muslims, because frankly, most of them just want to live here and make a better life for their families. They are Americans, too. Just like you and me. We need to kill the ones that need killing - whatever your deluded religious claims happen to be, make it abundently clear that if you attack us, we will kill you, and then get on with our lives. Our enemies know that we aren't willing to do this right now, so they are emboldened. You do have a choice with the TSA. Don't fly. Then, write two letters. Write one to your representative. And then, write one to the airlines. Let them know that you would have loved to have flown, but chose not to because of the waste of time and dignity that dealing with the TSA represents. The TSA isn't going anywhere until the airlines realize how much their bottom line is affected. Oh, yeah. Play nice. I hesitate, but I'll leave the other thread on airline security open for now. But, respect one another. You're grown ups. You can express your point without calling names or initiating personal attacks.

That's wild. I've spooked deer before and had them cross a river in front of me, but I've never heard of anything like that before.

I'll be happy to. But be forewarned, you won't look at your other shotguns the same after you shoot 9 rounds of autoloading goodness.

I think it likely has something to do with the fact that a great pump shotgun in the line of a Remington 870 or Mossberg 500 is half the cost or less of a great auto shotgun. I use an auto, and wouldn't trade it for anything. That said, I could have bought 4 870's for the same price of one Benelli M4. There is also probably the misconception of racking the slide on a pump gun scaring a criminal away. This is a bad mindset, and I'll go with Travis Haley on this. He says, "I don't use a pump to scare somebody, I use a pump to shoot somebody." BTW, the above video set from Magpul is a great set for any shotgun owner. Like their other two videos on running the carbine and pistol, this is almost a must have. It shows you how critical it is that you go out and get some training on your weapon system.

British Lifeboat Matches are great, but they take some getting used to if you've not used them before. They burn super hot, and even underwater, but they burn for about 10-12 seconds and then generally go out. You definitely need to make sure you have your fire prepared with appropriate tinder and kindling. You've got to have the sprecific striker as well. REI carries these as well, for a little bit less, actually. I think it's two boxes of 50 for $4.95 or so.

Unfortunately since they dropped the charges, there was nothing for the court to actually set a precedent on. I'm sure that if someone gets busted for it in the future that this ruling will come up. I was thinking about this the other night as it relates to the MP5-K variants. Of course those are NFA items, so owners can run whatever they want on them. However, from there I made the leap to the GSG-5-PK, and a google image search shows plenty of people seemingly running those with forward pistol grips. This would seem to be in opposition to the letter. We could see some test cases out there.

You made a great choice. Have fun with it.

It's funny that you use the word "counterfeiting". I was thinking about this over the weekend. The real danger with counterfeiting is not devaluing the currency through the fraudulent additions - it would take massive sums to do that kind of damage (and $600 Billion would be a massive sum if a malicious actor got it into the system). The real danger with counterfeiting, and the reason the Secret Service is so serious about combatting it, is the risk of people losing their faith in the government's ability to protect the monetary supply. If you don't trust the currency is genuine, then you're also not going to trust anything the government is going to do to try and rectify the situation, and thus you lose your faith in the government itself. Black markets emerge, massive volatility swings undermine markets, massive inflation occurs, and pretty soon you are on the quick road to civil war. I think a lot of what we saw last week was the world essentially accusing us of counterfeiting. Sure, that money is still backed by the full power of the Federal Government, but suddenly has less value in the world markets. And, all those governments that are complaining really need Americans to keep buying their junk. But, at some point, it's going to catch up with us.

That's super cool!

As Oscar Wilde said, "She's the kind of thing you like if you like that kind of thing." Personally, I can't wait for her to exit the national stage. I think that she is a fine person, and probably would have been a great govenor of Alaska had she stuck around. However, I think she is terribly damaging to the overall national dialogue, and is the polar opposite of what we need in a Commander-in-Chief. The biggest problem that confronts our national politic right now, is a liberal agenda being allowed to proceed intellectually unchecked. The current administration is getting away with proposing and implementing policies that were not just doomed from the start, but have been proven wrong multiple times in the past. I mean, seriously...should there really be any debate over Keynesian monetary policy. There is loads of data proving that Government spending can't grow an economy historically, and simply going out with a lot more money isn't going to make it work this time. Keynes vs. Hayek was decided decades ago. You can debate whether or not Hayek was right, but the last 6 decades of data proves that Keynes was certainly wrong. The GOP's biggest problem is that they can't seem to produce anyone to offer an honest intellectual counter to Obama's policies. And, this will eventually hurt if not destroy the GOP. Sure, they have a majority in the House at this point, and a much smaller disadvantage in the Senate. But, if they are going to hold onto that, they have to win the trust of the American public. Opposition to the administration is a start, but it isn't a solutioin. At some point, they have to offer viable alternatives. My problem with Govenor Palin is that I don't believe she is capable of this level of dialogue on her own, and I haven't seen her surrounding herself with people who can proffer these kind of solutions. She seems to be riding her celebrity status to further her ambition right now, but she will doom the GOP's chances at the Oval Office if they are stupid enough to run with her. --Note, that the above comment considers the GOP inside a political vacuum if you will, and does not take into account the innate ability of the DNC to screw up any good thing they have going.

Or, since I see you are in Nashville, you can bring it by once you get it clean, and this Eagle Scout will teach you how to fold it properly. A flag for presentation is done a little bit differently from a standard fold, but both represent something good to know nonetheless.

There was a case in 1993 where the ATF busted someone for putting a forward grip on a pistol, but they dropped the case after a court said that it was not an AOW. Since the ATF dropped the case, no precedent was set. In 2006, the ATF sent a letter to FFL holders stating that they were still interpreting the law their way. As such, unless you want to be a test case, I would fill out the form 1. Adding a Vertical Fore Grip to a Handgun I'm going to move this to the NFA subforum so that Jasongar8 will be sure to see it. He would know better than anyone.

The cleaner way is to go into the user account control panel and add an account for yourself first and then remove the other user. XP should let you change the name, though assuming you have full administrative privileges.

When a pet tangles with a wild animal, you want to call animal control so that they can test the offending animals for rabies. They also appreciate knowing about it so that they can track incidents where animals like coyotes are getting bolder. First it's cats and small dogs, if they've moved onto larger dogs, a child could just as easily be a target.

That's great to hear on the PIF! There are some good people on here.

That's a great looking blade.

The Ma Duece gets my vote, too. I think they issue you one as you cross the city limits sign. That place is a pit. Last one out, turn off the lights.

Joe's rifle guy did a great job on my 700 barrel. Cut it down, threaded it, and made me a thread protector. Looks like it came from the factory that way.