East_TN_Patriot

I have used and made several shoulder rigs for others.  Like any method of carry, they have a niche to fill, but my opinion is that they do not function well as a primary carry method for most people.  The rigs I made have primarily been used by pilots flying in the Middle East because they are the most convenient and accessible option while strapped into the cockpit of an aircraft.  If they crash and are pinned in the aircraft, they want to have easy access to the pistol should enemy forces come snooping around.  I have made others for large frame handguns that are used by hunters who want their firearm accessible in the wilderness and don't want to worry about getting the gun hooked on a tree branch or the barrel dipped into the mud.  In both of these uses, the shoulder rig is ideal because it can be worn over other clothing and gear, plus it keeps large frame firearms off of your belt. For daily civilian or law enforcement carry, they are not as useful - at least that's my personal experience.  To conceal them, you always have to wear a jacket or open shirt.  They tend to flop around more unless you use tie downs.  Horizontal carry is a pain for larger handguns.  Some folks find the weight to be uncomfortable on the neck and shoulders over time.  I have contemplated making myself a rig for a very small-frame handgun that I could wear under a dress shirt (and over my undershirt) in cases where other more easily accessible carry methods are not a viable option, but again, that is a very unique niche for the rig to fill. All that said, I think that a shoulder rig is like any other holster option and you get what you pay for.  Uncle Mike's holsters are relatively inexpensive and the quality is not exceptional.  They tend to be more generic fit, so the ease of access and overall fit can be sketchy.  If you are seriously considering a shoulder rig, my advice is to break down and pay for a nice high-quality rig.  Try to find a used one on eBay if you don't want to drop the big bucks on a new one.  I am obviously partial to leather ones, especially for the harness because the leather will break in over time, flex more, and fit the contours of your body.  During my law enforcement days, I looked at some nylon ones and found the quality to be lacking and the narrow nylon straps to be very uncomfortable.  I bought a Galco rig, tried it a couple of times, and threw it in a box.   For my money, I would look for a high quality belt holster of some sort.  So take my perspective for what it is worth, your needs and experience may vary.   :)

  I've never had smoked duck, but that does sound good.

It looks like ash. Oak bark tends to be more chunky looking than that one. Here's a pic from Google of an ash tree. If it's not ash, my next guess would be pin oak:

A lazy argument??? I've provided multiple explanations and verses to frame my argument.  What do you have?  A single verse from the Old Testament mixed in with the verses that say you can't eat bacon and oysters while wearing a linen shirt while you are selling your daughter at the slave market.  You'd rather just read a single verse of the Bible and use it as a stand-alone statement rather than read it within the context of the whole book?  You can't actually address the argument without an insult?  You  Who's the lazy one here?    

You have this exactly correct.  What far too many Christians misunderstand is what Christ seems to be referring to in regards to "sin".  You are correct.  Jesus never spoke about homosexuality.  He spoke about sin, forgiveness, and love.  As I read the New Testament, Jesus was referring to sin as any self-indulgent behavior that gets between you, your relationship with God, and your ability to love one another.   What is amazing to me is the fact that the Jewish law contained in the Old Testament that Christians keep referencing as absolute truth is essentially the same legal code utilized by Sharia law that is criticized by Christians as being backward and barbaric.     - Christians believe that Jewish/Mosaic law is divinely inspired and was passed to mankind through Moses: - Muslims believe Sharia law is divinely inspired and passed to mankind through Muhammed. - Mosaic and Sharia law govern virtually all aspects of social life, family life, and individual morality.   - Both call for similar punishments of banishment, stoning, and hanging for violations of that law.   - Both texts prohibit eating "unclean" foods, like pork.  Yes, all you God-fearing people insisting that Old Testament law is absolute are sinning by eating pork.  Need proof?  Here ya go:     Think about that next time you eat a Baconator and joke about how you'll roll your bullets in bacon grease before shooting Muslims. The book of Leviticus also sanctions slavery, requires you to perform animal sacrifices, prohibits eating shellfish, outlaws wearing wool and linen garments, and mandates capital punishment by stoning for adultery of any kind (for women only, of course) and for using the Lord's name in vain.  In response to this, people will say that Jesus' birth, death, and resurrection changed things.  Yet a majority of Christians - at least in my perception - have held onto this one single verse about homosexuality and proclaim it to be absolute and unchanging truth.   Here was my response to someone on Facebook regarding a question that is very similar to this point.  I cite New Testament scripture that specifically talks of two men in one bed and how one would be taken in the rapture while the other would not.  Christ commanded Christians to put away their swords.  Christ commanded us to love one another.  Is comparing someone's private love-life to having sex with animals what Christ would have done?  

Like I said in a blog post about this issue, the claims that this is about freedom of speech is laughable on several levels. First, nobody is saying Phil can't express his views. All A&E did was say he can't use their network to promote them and they don't want to be associated with him or his views any longer. Second, like any freedom, exercising it comes with personal responsibility. You are free to say pretty much anything you want, and there may be consequences to what you say. If you want to say something you know is controversial, you have to own the consequences. You walk into your boss' office and cuss her/him up one side of the room and down the other, you're going to get fired. That's not a violation of your free speech rights. Third, there are multiple examples of conservatives and Christians calling for the firing of liberal pundits. I have seen first hand on this forum multiple incidents of people with opposing viewpoints being insulted and run off for expressing them. These debates are never about tolerance or free speech; they are about people demanding to have their voice heard while demanding to have other people's ideas shut down. Personally, I think what the guy said was inappropriate and smacked of ignorance. If one really thinks that acceptance of what two people do in the privacy of their own homes will lead to bestiality, I don't know what to do with them. If one thinks that Southern blacks during the pre-civil rights era weren't unhappy and never complained because you saw them singing songs in the fields, that is ignorant. I'll protect his right to say it, I respect the ability of a private employer to determine the standards for acceptable conduct from those they employ, and I also say he should have the opportunity to redeem himself if he chooses to. That is the Christian way. Edit: And it only took me about 5 minutes to determine that DD was one of the worst shows I have ever seen,

My mom had a fetish for vacuums. She owned ones from Electrolux, Kirby, Dyson, Hoover, and Rainbow. It did a good job, but the water was a pain.

I never even put any thought into this question. If I ever got mine dirty, I just rinsed off with water and wiped it off with a paper towel or cloth. Of course, I don't spend much time in the mud, muck, or dirt these days so it's not much of an issue for me.

All I needed to read was this paragraph to know that he has no clue what he's talking about: "I am not proud of that fact. Indeed, I am often torn-up by the realization that not only is this my job, but that I am really good at my job. But my profession is about directed violence on behalf of the nation. What is happening inside our country is random and disgusting, and living here in England I am at a complete loss as to how to explain this at all. In 2011 the number of gun deaths in the United States was 10.3 per 100,000 citizens. In 2010 that statistic in the UK was 0.25. And do not even try to tell me that the British are not as inclined to violence or that their culture is so different from ours that this difference makes sense. I can say nothing when my British officers ask me about these things, because it is the law." Two key points: 1) Gun violence in the US is far from random. Data consistently shows clear overall patterns about who commits gun crime and why. Very little is random violence. 2) Yes, the culture in England is very different than ours. We don't even have consistent patterns of violent crime in the US and countless studies have shown that the availability of firearms and the amount of gun regulation don't explain the differences. It's culture and economic inequality that tend to have the greatest influence on violent crime including gun crime. Obviously, the fewer guns there are, the less likely it is that a violent encounter will involve a gun, and guns make It much easier to kill another person. If that wasn't the case, this would be the Tennessee Knife and Stick Owners forum. Regardless, the question is not about the weapon, but why they choose to use it in an unlawful manner. That guy has a BS degree in business and 9 years in law enforcement. I have a PhD in criminology and a decade of police experience. You can decide which of our perspectives is more credible.

What a jerk and what a crappy instructor.  

Easy cure.  Get a Sig.

The clamshell block I have works as well.  I don't recall the brand, but it came in a kit that included a gas tube alignment tool.  So I guess it's hit or miss on those.  If one were to invest in a block just for this build, I would invest in the one that attaches at the bottom using the takedown pins.

Insurrection. Give. Me. A. Break. I've said it before and I'll say it again. People are too conformist and scared to abandon the two party system and fight this at the ballot box! What makes anyone think these same people will revolt?

Just picked mine up. They look much nicer in person. CMT left the BCG out of mine by accident, but they took care of it with no questions. Thanks to all who made this happen. Very cool indeed!

I would say there are two reasons: 1) I am under the impression that it's primarily because the 1911 does not include a drop safety or firing pin block, and the thumb safety prevents the hammer from falling if the pistol is dropped. Striker fired pistols like the Glock are not prone to this possible problem. This is the reason that people who carry and compete using older style single-action revolvers are not supposed to carry with the hammer sitting on a live round. 2) Assuming you train on the 1911 properly, the time it takes to deactivate the thumb safety is so negligible that it doesn't make sense not to have this extra safety on while carrying with the hammer cocked on a single action handgun that doesn't typically have a very beefy trigger guard or safety integrated into the trigger like on the Glock. There are enough people who have shot themselves with other types of firearms after the trigger got hooked on a holster, clothing, etc., so why risk it? On your other point, I see no advantage to having a carry gun without having a round in the chamber.

So this was a few years before he called for a ban on "assault weapons", ran up the national debt to build thousands of nuclear weapons, and started the drug war thus fueling the expansion of the power of government to violate the 4th Amendment, the militarization of civilian law enforcement, and the use of the military to fight aggressive wars in the name of drug enforcement (the Patriot Act was originally written for the drug war, but they couldn't get it passed so it sat in someone's desk drawer until 9/11).     Fun fact for you:  Ronald Reagan also signed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 that socialized emergency medical treatment by requiring hospitals to provide stabilizing care to patients regardless of their citizenship status or ability to pay.  

  Yeah... no kidding.   :huh:      Dude, you seriously need to step back for a couple of minutes and take a look in the mirror.   Do you realize how incoherent your argument is here?  You say I have intentionally misinterpreted your post and criticize me for it while you intentionally misrepresent my post as evidence that I was intentionally misrepresenting your post?  Wow....  Pot, meet Kettle. Still waiting on that evidence of my "regular" practice of this.  I'm holding my breath... :lol:

I do it with regularity?  Please do tell how you can support such a claim.  That is something I have never been accused of before.   I even made the statement up front in that post that if I had misinterpreted your comment, to ignore what followed.  That being the case, it's simply not logical that I would be trying to "purposely misrepresent" your statement.  You were free to say that I had misinterpreted your comment, to which I would have acknowledged and apologized.  Instead, you decided to insult me.  That speaks volumes in my book.  You also responded the same way to others who disagreed with you, call them an example of the "authoritarian mindset", and completely fail to recognize that you are demonstrating the same sort of attitude towards others. I am done with this silliness. 

I appreciate that graphic, but it confirms my previous thoughts. The problem isn't the state, it's power, more specifically the misuse and abuse of power. The economic organization of a society is as much a source of power as the state. Anarcho-capitalism appears to presume that a free-market will somehow prevent anyone from gathering and abusing power. That is simply not the case. The closest our society has been to a society organized in a manner similar to anarcho-capitalism would be during the late 19th and early 20th centuries during the age of industrialization and the era of Rockerfeller, Carnegie, Morgan, et al. These powerful business leaders were subjected to virtually zero regulation, the power of the federal government was still very weak (so weak in fact that J.P. Morgan loaned money to the US Treasury to keep the government solvent), and free markets were the order of the day. When these business leaders exploited their workers, these individuals rose up and demanded better treatment. When they did so, these business leaders used their power and wealth to form private armies (much like what anarcho-capitalism supports in lieu of a government supported police force). Where was justice and benevolence when these so-called "robber barons" were using privately funded armies to shoot unarmed free men? In a state completely organized around completely unregulated economic relationships, power will ultimately be concentrated in the hands of those who have the most wealth. When these people misuse or abuse their wealth/power, there will be no law to refer to as a statement about the rights afforded to individuals or the obligations of those who have power. With no state, there will be no entity to which to turn for arbitration or protection. We will simply return to a feudal state with the new nobility being the Warren Buffets and George Soroses of the world. We will all be serfs working in the factories and farms owned by others clamoring for freedom and justice until we are beaten, shot, or imprisoned to keep us quiet. If anarcho-capitalism presumes that the role of the contemporary state would be adopted by private business interests, then all would be accomplished would be to create a de-facto state held in private hands not guided or restricted by an established legal system, and even more prone to corruption that the government we have now. At least in our current government, individuals who have limited wealth and power do have the ability to vote for politicians and hold them accountable by voting them out of office. If the problem is a government that is corrupted by private business interests, I see no logical way how abolishing the state would end that corruption. On a side note, Karl Marx actually advocated a system similar to what anarcho-capitalism appears to support. Communism was not intended to be a totalitarian state. Rather, it was intended to be a stateless society organized around mutually beneficial economic activities. The key difference is that Marx envisioned property held in common rather than concentrated in the hands of a few successful free-market capitalists. I've read a lot of Marx and was rather shocked at what he said and how it totally did not fit what I thought I knew about Marx. He actually supported free-market capitalism. Yes, I said that, and it's true. He believed that free-market capitalism was a beneficial and necessary step in the progression to a communist society. He believed that the production and technological advancement spurred by capitalism would provide the resources necessary to support a transition to communism and allow all people to live a life of freedom and relative comfort. I am not saying Marx was correct, just that he talked about many of the same ideas as what I have seen in my brief look at anarcho-capitalism. The reason there are so many similarities is because communist philosophy has its roots in anarchism.

All of the amendments are important and are interconnected.  The logic was that all of the rights in the Bill of Rights were especially important to preserving a free society.  The key due process rights are discussed in amendments four, five, six, and eight.   I think that some exigent circumstance are legitimate, ones like the ability of a LEO to enter a residence without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe that someone's life is in immediate danger.  I'd sure hate to think that me or one of my family were being beaten, raped, or about to be murdered and the police could not enter the residence with out a warrant.  I also think that hot pursuit would be legitimate.  I certainly think that the police should be able to come on in to apprehend someone who was running from them and came into my house to hide.  It happened many times while I was a LEO, so it's not as uncommon as you might think.   I also understand what you are saying, but the Constitutional protections we refer to in our daily lives did not apply at the state level originally.  That is why the 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments were passed.  There have been several Supreme Court decisions dealing with this as well, perhaps the most notable being the Gideon v. Wainwright case.  Even if your interpretation of the 10th Amendment is correct, it was never treated that way by courts or governments.  This is why states have their own constitutions in the first place.    

I can appreciate that.  My favorite watch is a good old mechanical watch that I have to wind manually.  It has a see-through face so the mechanical components are visible.  The only high-tech feature is the pendulum in the watch that self-winds with body movement.

  Yup. The Citizen Eco-Drive watches are also solar.  The face of the watch is a solar cell and it recharges the battery.  If that's not enough technology for you, there are watches that also automatically synch with the atomic clock so you never have to set them.

If your idea of "really being free" is anarchy, then yes, I am scared of that, and for good reason.  Anarchy does not create a happy and peaceful society.  I've thought a while on this before typing my reply and I can think of no situation where anarchy resulted in a peaceful and productive society.  In the absence of law and order, there is chaos and misery.  Just think about the aftermath of Katrina or any scene of a natural disaster.  There is crime, disorder, and vigilante justice.  There's a reason the Wild West is called the "wild" west.   It's also interesting you mentioned slavery because I had planned to talk about that anyhow.  Slavery is the perfect example of what I am talking about in regards to my point on the distribution of wealth and power.  Following the Civil War, former slaves were freed, but the pre-existing power and wealth structure was still in place.  The result was another form of slavery that was created and implemented at the state and local levels of government in the South.  Former slaves who lacked the resources to purchase their own land, start their own businesses, or leave for more favorable conditions were required to be sharecroppers and were subject to legal restrictions under the "black codes" that were simply "slave codes" that had been tweaked a bit.  Under these revised legal codes, blacks were commonly arrested for simple "crimes" like loitering, "wandering about in idleness," leaving a sharecropping plot without permission of the landlord, and many other illegitimately defined crimes.  As punishment, they were fined amounts that were as much as one or two years' wages.  When they couldn't pay, they were imprisoned and "leased" to private employers who needed cheap labor to work in the fields, mine coal and other resources, work on railroads, and other forms of hard labor.  Many of the people subjected to this convict-lease system were beaten, abused, starved, and not given medical care.  The result was that many died from the terrible conditions and the attitude held by many businessmen who used convict-lease labor was described as "one dies, get another."  This is the same sort of outcome we could expect in a society as you call for without a redistribution of wealth, resources, and power.  Wal Mart wouldn't suddenly stop doing what it does now, including its practice of leveraging their massive economic power to artificially lower prices in order to drive smaller businesses out of business or intimidating workers.  George Soros and Warren Buffet would not suddenly become generous and let people live their lives as they want.  It's just not possible.   Clearly, we are not going to agree on this point, but I do think we agree on many points.  This discussion has also inspired me to do more reading on your perspective because my knowledge on it is not as good as it could be.  I may be completely misunderstanding the perspective, so I want to know more.

No, sir, there is no such absolute right to privacy.  The issue of privacy is dealt with in the Fourth Amendment, not the Fifth, and the text of the Fourth Amendment is clear that there is no absolute right to privacy.  In fact, there is no specific mention of "right to privacy" contained anywhere in the Constitution or in any subsequent case law.  What the Fourth Amendment protects the people from is "unreasonable searches and seizures" of our "persons, houses, papers, and effects."  The simple fact that they used the word "unreasonable" clearly indicates that the Framers did believe that there were times when government could search or seize people, homes, and property as long as the reason for the intrusion was "reasonable" in nature. The question of what constitutes a reasonable search or seizure has been the subject of over 200 years of debate, conjecture, and court rulings.  The standard for privacy is interpreted through the assumed right to privacy in your home and personal affairs where a reasonable person would possess a "reasonable expectation of privacy" unless an agent of the government has a warrant based on probable cause, reasonable suspicion in the case of stop and frisk, or some other warrant exception such as abandoned personal property, plain view, etc.   The Fifth Amendment protects other rights including prohibition of double jeopardy, the right to remain silent, and the requirement that due process of law be applied before the government can take your life, liberty, or property.  There is no mention of "privacy" or protection from government intrusion into our "private" or personal affairs.     I presume that we agree on a few points here, one of which is that the Fourth Amendment has become so watered down that it is becoming almost meaningless.  The final clause in the Fifth Amendment that is cited in support of the imminent domain concept has become so corrupted that it is also meaningless.   Just a couple of other points about the Constitution that many people - not necessarily anyone who has posted here - fail to recognize.  One is that the Constitution originally only applied to the powers of the federal government, not the states.  This means that the states could ban guns, withhold due process, search/seize at will, limit speech, etc., depending on the content of the individual state constitutions.  The intent of that approach was to limit federal power at keep it at the state level, but it also meant that the rights that we assume are available to all of us were restricted to individuals based on their race/ethnicity, sex/gender, and socio-economic status.  Second, the "natural rights" philosophy assumes that all people have these rights, not just American citizens.  This is an important point for those who think it's OK to withhold rights from "terrorists", "illegal immigrants", and other groups that we like to exclude from the protections of the American legal system.    

...and thanks for reaffirming what I said above.  One of the best measures of a person's depth of knowledge and maturity on a topic is found in how they respond to people who challenge what they claim to believe in.