East_TN_Patriot

If you are a retired LEO, then why do you need a carry permit? Per federal law, retired LEOs are eligible to carry their firearms anywhere in the nation as long as they qualify annually. Are you talking about your license to carry as an armed security officer?  

More like the last 10 or 15.

  Or maybe you need to stop trying to get information about current events by listening to silly Facebook rumors.

Just an update for everyone who is curious.  I've been trying to get this addressed by Spike's, but true to their past performance, the customer service rep is being less than easy to work with.  It's looking like I'll just take it to a local shop like Predator and get it worked on.   I'm pretty easy to please as long as you stand behind your product and not give me a hassle when I need work done.  I'll not buy another thing from Spike's Tactical.  That's for sure!     I'll post an update once I talk to Predator. 

I second this one.  I got mine at Ace Hardware for less than $2.  Lowe's has them as well.  They keep them in those drawers of specialty hardware.  Step-by-step here:   http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_3_4/362116_.html

  Um... yes, they do.  Quite frequently.  In fact, it's a crime in Germany to deny the Holocaust.   To your other point, and the point that others have made, I presume that you are correct.  You or I are not directly responsible for what was done in decades past.  However, we are responsible for the outcomes of those policies, so every effort made by Americans in society (white Americans in the context of this discussion) to act as if they have no responsibility to right past wrongs makes them culpable.  The fact of the matter, and it's a fact that most whites fail to recognize and refuse accept when it's brought to their attention, is that whites are more economically wealthy as a whole than blacks and it's because white society was able to accumulate wealth over centuries through racist policies that exploited blacks for white economic gain.  Until we are willing to acknowledge that, we are culpable in what happens in the future. White society became wealthy through slave labor, following the Civil War, blacks were still disenfranchised and forced to work as sharecroppers and in mining to help economically benefit white land owners and industrialists.  Simultaneously, the South adopted "black codes" that criminalized acts such as vagrancy or leaving a sharecropping plot without the permission of the landowner.  The "crimes" were punished with very hefty fines and when poor blacks were unable to pay them, they were "leased" to an employer who would put them to work doing hard manual labor mining coal and iron ore for the industrial north, or laying railroad track to transport these raw materials to the North and bring manufactured goods to the South.  These "leased" prisoners were very commonly worked to death and their bodies discarded by the side of the road.  When convict lease went away, we had policies of Jim Crow and redlining.  Blacks were not allowed to vote, attend white schools, participate in "American" institutions like the Boy Scouts, could not hold high-level professions, etc.  They could not buy homes or start businesses in white areas.  They were unable to help make public policy, so the laws that were made were typically done to their detriment.  Blacks who did try to gain civil rights were beaten, arrested, and murdered.  When the peaceful protests didn't have a dramatic effect, others used more aggressive tactics (fighting tyranny has that effect on people) and the white controlled government met force with greater force.  Black communities were occupied by the police and residents were harassed and arrested for minor infractions of the law.  Then we saw the "law and order" era that includes the "war on drugs", "zero-tolerance policing", "place-based policing", and "broken windows policing".  Each of these policies tend to target low-income communities, which are disproportionately populated by blacks and Hispanic/Latinos.  Schools in these communities are very poor.  There are very few businesses or job opportunities due to earlier "redlining" policies and the loss of blue collar factory jobs through deindustrialization.  Those who remain in the urban ghettos are very poor, uneducated, have no skills, and usually have a criminal record.     Are reparations the answer?  No.  Why?  Because anyone with a lick of sense knows that you can't just write someone a big check and change their lives, especially if they are uneducated, unskilled, and lack the social capital needed to understand how to use that money wisely to help invest in their futures.  What we can do is understand why there is so much violence, crime, and poverty in the black community, and try to fix it by using social institutions to provide greater educational and economic opportunities for these people.  We can stop targeting minor "quality of life crimes" committed by minorities in poor neighborhoods.  We can invest money in helping these at-risk kids before they turn to a life of crime and gang activity instead of investing in prisons.  I agree with others that government policies, including the "war on poverty" are part of the problem.  Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood are part of the problem, but she was part of a bigger movement called eugenics.  Eugenics was a movement to use science and social policy to genetically create a perfect society; a perfect WHITE society.  It was backed by the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan and helped promote the call for "100 percent American" politicians.   I could literally go on for pages because I actually teach semester long classes and have written articles on these issues.  I don't expect any white folks to have guilt, but I do think that whites should be honest about the past and have some level of sympathy for the plight of poor blacks who have been placed at a consistent disadvantage due to 200-plus years of racist policy.  

So are you suggesting that the "white race" is the only racial/ethnic group in America that has an interest in defending American society and rule of law?   Frankly, whites in this country do have plenty to feel guilty about.  We enslaved blacks, then subjected them to convict-lease and Jim Crowe, and used racially biased policies like redlining to prevent people from investing money into black communities or allowing them to live in white communities.  We took land from Native Americans through deception and force.  We interned Japanese Americans during WWII, including those who served honorably in the military during WWI.  We told blacks and Native Americans who wanted to serve the country during WWII that they weren't good enough to be in white fighting units.  We allowed blacks in the South to be infected with syphilis and didn't give them medical treatment.  We used Chinese labor to build our railroads, and then told them that they could not be citizens.  Whites from Europe colonized Africa, dismantled the local governments, stripped the continent of resources, and then abandoned the people leaving their societies without a power structure that has caused multiple civil wars, genocides, and rampant poverty.  Most of the time, these actions were done in the name of God, democracy, and "100 percent Americanism".  That certainly isn't a record to be proud of.  

  No.

I'm thinking about registering the lower as an SBR, build an 18" mid-length upper in 5.56, and then do a short upper in .300BLK once the stamp shows up.

We have a 1200 square foot townhouse that has a packaged gas/electric furnace and air conditioner.  The property is a rental and the property manager called tonight to say the heat isn't working.  He had his guy go out and he said that water had gotten into the furnace part, rusted out the burners, and shorted out the control board.  His guy quoted $2800 to replace it.  I'm having a couple of HVAC companies go out and look at it tomorrow, but I'm curious; do we need to replace the whole unit or just the furnace part?  What should I expect to pay because $2800 for an entire unit seems cheap to me.

I need to get one for each of my boys.  One is 2 years old and the other is 4 months.  I have one for myself that I got in a trade from a fellow TGO member.  I have an AR for each of them already, so now I need to focus on a couple of the old M1s before they are gone.  I fully believe the OP that there are 2-3 years' worth of rifles on hand, but that time will pass very quickly.

:squint:

He's not retiring.  Not from acting anyways.   http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2013/09/jack-nicholson-retirement-report

Done.  And I'll learn something at the same time.  I'll owe you lunch or some free leather work.  :up:

  Will do.  I appreciate you, and everyone else, taking the time to answer my questions.

  So send this back to Spike's or just take it to Predator and eat the cost?  And yes, I can actually see little bits of brass all over that side where it's shaving it off.

That's my suspicion, but it would have to be more than a burr. We are talking that the gouges are deep and severe enough that I'm a little worried that it will puncture the case. Here is the best pic I could get of the feed ramp. Pardon the dirt; I didn't clean it from my range trip today.

  Typically PMags, but it also happens with mil-spec aluminum.

I reckon I'll have to unless one of you more knowledgeable folks can give me some sort of "smoking gun" that I can use to get Spike's to eat the shipping.  I already paid for one return trip to Apopka. 

Here are some pics I took way back when so you can see what it does:

I have not since I just finished that other build a couple of days ago.  That Spike's was my only complete AR. 

1) Because I read that it would help lessen recoil and help with faster follow-up shots (I originally planned this for 3-gun)   2) About the 4 o'clock and roughly 3 or 4 feet away.  No stovepipes.   3) Yes, it has always locked back.  

A couple of years ago, I built an AR carbine using a Spike's lower, LPK, Enhanced Battle Trigger, buffer assembly, and a complete Spike's LE upper with Spike's BCG.  The rifle has been having pretty consistent failures to feed since I got it.  The round gets hung up about half way into the chamber and the edges of the ramp will dig into the cartridge case so hard that it will dig in and leave deep gouges and shave off brass.  This appears to happen when feeding from the right side of the magazine and it does it no matter what ammo or mags I put into it.  Out of 100 rounds, I will get a couple of these failures.  I sent the upper back to Spike's and they returned it several weeks later with no explanation of what, if any, work was done.  I took it out and shot it, and had the same problems.  I emailed them again, and never got a reply.  As is typically the case with these sorts of things, life got in the way and that problem got pushed to the back burner.   Fast forward a few months to today.  I cleaned and lubed everything, double-checked the bolt carrier and bolt (including the gas rings to make sure they are staggered), and went off to the range.  I fired 40 rounds and had two of these failures.  I've sent another email to Spike's customer service, but I'm not holding out much hope with them.  It's annoying because I put what I thought were high-quality parts into that build and the budget build I did using a blem LRB lower, blem PSA upper, basic PSA lower parts kit, and a basic R Guns BCG runs like a top.   My immediate thought is that the feed ramp is not machined properly, but it looks OK to my untrained eye.  I wonder if the bolt carrier is not moving to the rear properly and not stripping the round like it should.  I have the heavy buffer installed.  Could that cause such a problem? Any thoughts on how I can fix this problem?  

Not that I am aware of.  I have a friend who teaches pilots for the Flight Deck Officer program and he has not indicated that any special ammo is used or even needed. The idea that the entire side of an aircraft will rip off from a bullet hole is Hollywood nonsense as far as I am aware.  Take it for what it's worth, but the Mythbusters even tried to make that happen and all they got was a small bullet hole in the side of an airplane.

Might make for a good discussion starter for one of my criminal justice classes.