MacGyver

I love my 340PD. It’s a handful with full bore loads. Have fun.

Not to mention that you won't shoot enough of them to matter. Pattern them on a target and you'll see what I mean.

It's still lead shot which is softer than the steel in your barrel. You're not going to hurt it.

Doug, I’m so sorry to hear about this. I know what a good dog Kasey is and how much you care for her. I know you’ll do right by her, but I’m sorry you’re having to go through it.

Hmmm. I had no idea. That’s pretty cool.

Will do. It’s hard, but they’re serious about keeping them still as they recover.

Turns out the note on the table in the pictures was a dope card: http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/07/us/las-vegas-shooting-investigation/index.html

Good fishing up there. I feel like there’s a ton of stuff up there that I’ve never explored. I need to spend more time up there. Good people in Big Sandy and Paris. My third grader went up there on a field trip for three days and loved it.

What’s that old joke? There are 10 types of people in the world: 1. Those that understand binary 2. Politicians?

If you’re a flashlight fan, you’ve probably been to goinggear.com and seen the work, passion and reviews of Marshall Hoots. He passed away a few days ago, and Olight is donating 100% of sales today to a fund for his children. Mid you need a good light, todays a great day to pick one up.

The political compass needle shifts so much over time... Figure Obama was well to the right of Nixon. But, George W. Bush would be considered a “liberal RINO” by most of the right today. At the very least, there’s no way he could win the GOP nomination today. Who’s who? One thing I will note is that the needle seems to be swinging a lot faster these days. I’m not sure what the cause is. Probably multiple factors. Human existence has evolved more in the last 50 years than it has in the last 50,000. Maybe we’re just not ready to adapt to so much change. Could be social media. I think there’s a lot to us consuming relationships online as opposed to having to invest in them in person. That’s not to mention how effective social media is at telling us how to think instead of requiring us to put the time in to consider our rhetoric. There are no easy answers, that’s for sure.

Security at scale is really hard. It’s even harder when you’re trying to also get thousands of people to spend their leisure money with you at the same time.

That’s not really my point. To a tyrannical government, a single bullet represents just as big a threat as thousands. A single .380ACP round fired from an FN M1910 is credited with starting WWI. The political class will always be as fearful of the single bullet as they are of many.

If it ever comes to standing up to a truly tyrannical government, a single shot handi-rifle would be every bit as dangerous as your AR.

There’s always another slice of cake to be had...

It sure won’t be a good thing when a government built in opposition now feels the need to do something... I heard two GOP congressmen even blame bumpfire stocks on Obama today. That’s rich. This will be really interesting when it comes to that whole “well regulated militia” thing. For generations, semiautomatic has meant one press of the trigger yields one bullet firing. Now, we have semiautomatic devices “acting like automatic weapons.” It’s not a far stretch to argue that people can just fire a semiautomatic weapon too quickly. You’ll likely see any bam go through the courts - but that’ll bring little comfort with the bureaucratic morass that is the ATF. But, pay attention. You’re about to have folks lining up to seem relevant. Healthcare is hard. Tax reform Is harder. I expect the GOP will take the easy win here. The answer isn’t “more real conservatives” either. Even y’all’s Freedom Caucus guys are lining up to take a swing. I’ve been doing some pondering and have some ideas, but I’m afraid we’re too far gone as a nation to accept them.

Those things are going to be hard to kill when they turn them on us...

Not real useful/comfortable is kind of Vegas in a nutshell...

The Gell-Mann Amnesia affect is probably worth considering when looking at reporting here. As stated by Michael Crichton: Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

Y’all know my position on this. When they finally come for the guns, it will be because the GOP blessed it. No politician is in favor of an empowered people.

Hmmm. It’s almost like the GOP doesn’t care much about guns either. We’ve seen it here in Tennessee despite a supermajority. I don’t know why we’d expect much different in Washington.

Let me assure you that Khobar and RIyadh or Bangalore feel far different. Enjoy your time there. The architecture is amazing. And, there are very few collections of national treasures that can match the Smithsonian. Br aware of your surroundings, but enjoy yourself. Life is way too short to do otherwise.

You know, I'm going to close this thread. I often say we can talk about big issues - but I'm not sure that's true. At least on some issues. There are a lot of voices in this thread that while I disagree with them on this particular issue, I also really respect them. We've shared meals together. We've helped people in this community together. Or maybe we've simply shot together or conversed about a range of topics over the years. We might see this issue or any of a variety of issues differently, but we can still share a meal together and respect one another. But, we've had an influx of voices of late that don't bring anything of value to this community. It's a minority, but they're drowning out a lot of other voices by shouting down people with differing opinions. Maybe it's the constant berating that guests seem to get on "news" shows these days. Maybe it's the anonymity of social media. Maybe it's none of the above causing this. But it's detrimental to this community. I've sat on my hands for the last several months tolerating a few voices - not wanting to make it look like I was overstepping my authority by booting someone with whom I disagreed on a topic - political or otherwise. That was a mistake. Maybe we'll open this back up at some point. I doubt the issue is going to go away anytime soon. Regardless, I'm not sure it's worth it to discuss it here.

A lot of people blame protest movements for their lack of "cause" or unified voice. It's nothing new - reread King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail and you'll find ministers black and white at the time accusing him of the same. With that in mind, it's worth reading the Philadelphia Eagles' Malcom Jenkins in the Washington Post yesterday: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-protesting-nfl-players-like-me-want-to-do-next/2017/09/30/507fc4b0-a513-11e7-b14f-f41773cd5a14_story.html?utm_term=.5a9301eab813

I’m going to hit the pause button on this thread for a little while. Speculation isn’t helpful. Conjecture does nothing for the reputation of this community at large. We talk about how the media constantly gets things wrong but then go off the rails ourselves. I recognize this is a place for discussion, but we need to elevate the dialog a bit. I know this solution is not perfect, but that’s why I’m pausing this a bit Today we mourn the dead and wounded. We pray for the victims and their families. I’ll open it back up at some point as more reliable information becomes available.