East_TN_Patriot

Take a photo from your home and have a member of the US military point a rifle at you. At least, I presume that's who he is since the vehicle is a Humvee and it says "military police" on it. People spend time ad nauseam talking about FEMA trucks waiting to take over the country, but nary a word about this use of the military to deal with a domestic law enforcement issue. This is the danger of the "war on terror" since it essentially gives the federal government to render a criminal incident a "terror attack" and ignore the Bill of Rights and the Posse Comitatus Act. There is a reason the military are not allowed to carry out civilian law enforcement duties and this is why. Military rules of engagement are quite different than civilian law enforcement and the Bill of Rights is not something considered in training soldiers to fight a war.

  The issue in the commentary was a general disregard for civil liberties, not just the suspect.  That said, the Supreme Court has ordered that a suspect be given Miranda prior to being interrogated.  The feds are suggesting that they are able to skip this requirement for "public safety" interests.  Interrogating the suspect with the intent of skipping Miranda knowing that you'll not be able to use it in court is a pretty sketchy approach to law enforcement; it violates the spirit of the law.  They are saying they will violate this guy's rights knowing his statements can't be used in court, but that's ok because the information is more important than the law.  This is setting a dangerous precedent that says individual rights don't matter if the government can justify the violation for some alleged greater good.  Considering how the "war on terror" is a broad and non-specific war with no clear objects where the definition of a "terrorist" is an abstract and flexible term, this should concern any American who cares about civil liberties.  Tack on the number of people in America saying we should just ship him to Gitmo and be held indefinitely without trial, and the true point of the commentary becomes clear.     Heck, take the post right above this one and it's case in point.

One thing I will throw out there is that the idea of the Bill of Rights was based on the idea that human beings all possessed inalienable natural rights, not rights granted to citizens by a government. In other words, it doesn't matter whether the bad guy is a natural born citizen, a naturalized citizen, or foreign citizen. The Bill of Rights is a statement of philosophical beliefs embodied into law. Following the Boston Massacre, John Adams insisted the British soldiers accused of firing on Boston residents should be given due process including a fair trial.

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/reawakening-liberty/2013/apr/20/bill-rights-was-written-dzhokar-tsarnaev/    

My Springfield mil-spec has a metal one as well.  I had no idea, but when I did some research on it, it seems more and more are using this approach.  I would venture a guess that it's cost savings for the manufacturer as much as it is weight reduction.  If I am correct, that is annoying because I think most people expect to get a steel mainspring housing on their pistol at that price point.

    And that is the folly of the vast majority of legislation related to "assault weapons".  It's like trying to do away with prostitution by saying the women can't wear certain "hooker clothes" or something.  Now, they have taken a very identifiable weapon due to it's unique profile and forced people to change the look of it so that someone comments that it looks kind of like a paintball gun.  Gawd!  These laws are so ignorant!

  This exact thought crossed my mind when I was writing my earlier reply.

Many times local law enforcement is not made aware of intelligence acquired by the feds or the state.  Many other times, the intelligence is so weak that it simply doesn't justify putting people on a watch list.  Also, just a quick look at the Internet reveals how many people think all Muslims are terrorists, so I'd think it's a safe bet that law enforcement agencies are so buried in crappy intelligence that it's tough to weed through it all.  To illustrate this, back in the late 1990s there was a Mexican serial killer named Angel Resendiz (The Railroad Killer) who had some relatives (including his mother) in the town I was working in as a police officer.  When the public became aware of this fact and were asked by the State Police to keep an eye out for him, we were inundated with calls about possible sightings of him for over a week.  If you were a Hispanic/Latino male in that city, you were almost certain to have the police show up to ID you.      The bombs were made of gunpowder and a pressure cooker.  Is that really all that suspicious?   You are assuming that they were constantly walking around with bomb sniffing dogs, and even if they were, there's no way the police could have a dog at every single place at every single moment.   I assume you are talking about the bombers.  Consider the thousands of people in the area when these bombs went off.  It was total chaos.  Thousands of people were running everywhere, nobody was aware of what was going on, nor did they have a suspect description at that point.  Tack on the fact that dozens of people were seriously injured.  What's the priority for law enforcement at the scene?  To render aid and control the crowd so other first responders can get in to help the victims, not search for suspects.  From what I understand, the bombs had crude timers on them, so between the time the bombs were placed at the scene and detonated, the bad guys were likely far enough away from the scene for them to not even be noticed by anyone.   OK, and?  If that was the only eyewitness who could provide any sort of detailed description, there's no way for the police to get a description of the suspects.  The victim who gave the description was in shock and in very critical condition.  Again, priority is getting this victim medical aid.  The police are not, and should not, interfere with this to get a statement.  Even if they tried, a guy in shock likely isn't in a condition to give a description anyhow.     OK, and?  A physical description does not a positive ID make.  They were looking for two guys in a metropolitan city who did not particularly stand out.  Take a description of "two young men, white or of eastern European ethnicity, one wearing a black ball cap and one wearing a white ball cap" and go positively ID two specific individuals with no other information or evidence.  By the time the police got any description, these perpetrators could potentially have already been out of the United States had they tried to do so.  It's hard enough to find my wife in the grocery store and I know exactly who I'm looking for and what building she's in.  Now consider two unidentified men in a city of millions of people.   OK, and?  This is not something unique.  Police can't crap a positive identification of two unknown people.  Cops have been doing this for decades in wanted posters.   None of us know exactly what the situation was related to the pursuit, but we do know that the MIT police officer was killed in his patrol car.  I speculate that the officer had either tried to approach these suspects or the suspects thought they were about to be stopped.  After killing one LEO, they carjack someone, get in a high speed police pursuit, throw explosives at the police, at the conclusion, a large gun battle erupts, another cop is shot and seriously injured, one of the bad guys is shot and killed possibly by one of his own explosive devices, and in the chaos, the other suspect manages to slip away.  Were there "a thousand LEOs" at the scene of that pursuit?  I seriously doubt it.     And if it had not been for the large concentration of police covering the area, I think it's a safe bet the bad guy would not have just crawled up into a boat and hunkered down.  He had slipped away twice so certainly he'd have done it a third time if he could have.  Yes, perhaps Barney Fife could have caught the guy hiding in the boat, but it was the massive law enforcement response that led to a positive identification of the suspects and made the captures possible.     Yes, I think you are being too hard on the police in this case.  I am actually impressed with how quickly they solved this one.   Lucky would have been if the suspects had both dropped their wallets at the scene with receipts for the bomb-making materials and a to-do list with "bomb the Boston Marathon" in the money compartment.  What you are criticizing is actually police work.  Taking a chaotic crime scene full of unknowns and putting together the pieces to identify a suspect while gathering enough evidence to get a conviction in court.  Think about how many unsolved murders there are and many times they have a known suspect, but not enough evidence to prove it.  Now imagine doing this with two unknown suspects with no obvious motive or clear connection to the victims.

A potential problem I see here is that the kid's father also lives there, so it's his place of residence as much as it is your aunt's.  If the father wants to invite the son over, it's a tough situation for the police to force the son to leave.  If she was smart, she'd evict the dad, tell them both to stay off the property, and that would make the situation much easier to deal with.  Unfortunately, this may be one of those situations where she either has to suck it up and do what it takes to fix the situation or suck it up and keep being the victim of the grandson's theft.  It seems this is probably one of those situations where there is no middle ground.  

When you see it in person, it's obvious it's a plastic part and it drove me crazy.  You can sort of tell when you look at the before and after pictures.  The plastic one was a darker gray and didn't have the metallic sheen of the stainless steel part.   So far, I have read that Kimber, Springfield, Colt, and even some of the other high-end 1911 pistols are now coming with a plastic housing.  The ones I've read about breaking were usually dropped, but a couple were chipped around where the grip safety meets the mainspring housing.  I am quite pleased with the change for $40 and about 45 minutes of work (most of that trying to get the darn mainspring installed in the new housing.  Now I have no worries about breaking it!  :up:

I've always used Lone Wolf and have zero complaints.   I pop it in for range shooting and put the factory barrel back in after I'm done.

As many 1911 owners know, many 1911 manufacturers today, including Kimber, use a plastic mainspring housing. Also like many 1911 owners, I question the durability of such a vital part and think the plastic looks like crap. After picking up this Kimber Pro Raptor II recently, I decided to upgrade the plastic part with a quality matching stainless part. Here are the results. This is the before photo: The Raptor pistol has a pretty unique texture on the slide and frame. I found this part made by Ed Browne and thought the "chainlink" texture was a good compliment for the pistol: Installation was pretty straight forward and took me less than an hour with no fitting required. Here are the results. Personally, I think the part looks excellent and almost perfectly matches the texture on the remainder of the pistol. The texture of the housing definitely gives you good grip without being to aggressive.

As others have stated, a concrete slab will allow any moisture in the ground to penetrate (think about any damp and musty basement you've been in).  When I bought my safe, it was delivered with wood skids attached to the bottom to make it easier for a pallet jack to get under it.  I had them leave it on since it was stored in the garage.  When I moved to my new home, it now resides in my office on a carpeted floor.  

  This is not an easy answer because "socialism" means different things to different people.  I also think that what most people call "socialism" would probably be more accurately labeled as "statism" or the belief that the government (especially the federal government) should have a strong influence over social affairs.  The establishment left believes in stronger regulation of business and certain individual activities they believe are detrimental to the "common good", the establishment right believes in stronger regulation of individual morality and limiting other civil liberties that are detrimental to the "common good".  Both sides participate in crony capitalism whether it's the Obama administration supporting his pet "green" energy business and big labor, or the establishment Republicans who support their pet industries like military and big finance.  Both establishment parties are beholden to these groups due to the money that they contribute to the political process.  In fact, many would suggest that democratic processes have become an illusion because access to the ballot, candidates who are endorsed, and the information distributed to voters about certain issues is extremely tainted by the money and influence of powerful groups in society.   With all of that said, I see something happening that I do think bodes well for those of us who believe in smaller government (or at least a return to a true federalist system where the majority of political power is held at the state and local levels where individuals are more closely connected to the political process and the decisions made).  The Tea Party movement, the OWS movement, other similar grassroots movements, and the rise in libertarian thought (both on the left and the right) are signals that the federal hold on political power is on the verge of being seriously challenged.  More and more, people from all political persuasions are beginning to see that the effectiveness of those in federal government is extremely poor.  Even many Obama supporters see that his promises are nothing more than rhetoric and platitudes and what actions he does try to take are hampered by the political process influenced by powerful interest groups and individuals.  Because of this reality, I see many left leaning people call for a return of local control to most political issues.  I would like to think that this current gun control debacle would be further evidence that the federal government is ineffective at addressing the demands of people who want change.  The places that had a high concentration of people supporting more gun control were able to implement policies in their individual states and cities.  Frankly, if that's what they choose to do and how they choose to interpret the 2nd Amendment, that's their choice.  States that did not want gun control didn't get it and those who wanted it for the entire nation saw the efforts fail miserably.  Another recent example is the bombing attack in Boston.  For over a decade, people have entrusted their safety to the federal government to protect us, yet someone was able to walk into the Boston Marathon venue with not one, but three large bombs in duffle bags, and had no clue it was going to happen and apparently no clue who the suspect(s) is/are.  What I am saying is that I think people are beginning to see the failure of a strong federal government. Where I do see a threat is in the realm of public assistance programs.  The number of people getting government assistance is eclipsing the number that are paying taxes. At the end of the day, as long as people keep getting their "free" stuff, they will vote with their wallets.  Pay attention to the claims of politicians.  "The (enter opposing candidate here) is threatening to cut your (Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid/unemployment/disability/VA benefits/retirement/etc.)!"  Republican voters are just as guilty of  falling for this as Democrats.  I suspect this will continue as long as the two major parties have control and can deficit spend us into more debt while supporting public "entitlement" programs.  Add in that many more radical people on the statist left (the true socialists) are calling for government seizure of wealth and corporate assets, the establishment of a "living wage", and similar efforts to redistribute wealth.  I don't see these more radical policies take hold in the near future.  What I do see is economic collapse followed by the inability of the federal government to continue "entitlement" payments at the same levels we currently see.  For people to survive, two things will happen: 1) those who are able to slough out a living will have to suck it up and press on in some way whether they like it or not, and/or 2) those who are in desperate need of help will have to seek it from local institutions that provide assistance using resources collected from the community.   In this case, people will basically be forced to turn away from the feds to provide for their existence.  I think this will be the key issue that will determine whether we go down the road to a statist society or a return to a more libertarian federalist society.  I have met one scholar, Jeff Ferrel, who is a pretty radical leftist, but he is so fed up with government that he is calling for a populist grassroots anarchist revolt that he believes will basically reveal what a true free society (and perhaps Marxist utopia) is supposed to be.  He and I had a pretty spirited debate and I still believe he's very mistaken, but it's just more proof to show that many on the political left are just as peeved about government power and infringement on fundamental civil liberties (case in point being the essay against gun control I posted the other day by a pretty far-left socialist).

And in 2016, it will be "vote (enter establishment Republican here) and regroup in 2020." In 2020, it will be the same. The same in 2024, 2028, 2032...

  As I have said elsewhere on this essay, this is not a "left versus right" issue, but is a statism versus liberty issue.  Contrary to what many people think they know about many on the "left", there is a segment that specifically leans towards the libertarian end of the government power continuum.  They don't like the corporate influence over government and people, but they don't like excessive government oppression either.  I'm not a big fan at all of socialism or Marxism, but not all of those who subscribe to that school of thought agree with the Stalinist or Maoist interpretation of that political philosophy either.  

  I think you are taking that quote completely out of context and then misinterpreting what he's trying to say.  He was posing it as a rhetorical question to establish his point that gun ownership IS a fundamental right.  Now put that question in it's complete context:         His point is essentially the same as yours, but he goes on to argue the same as I, which is that is the fundamental question that simply cannot be ignored.  Again, it is THE fundamental question here.  Either you believe people have a right to own firearms or you don't.   The very reason I posted this was to show that it is actually possible for people from a political persuasion that people assume would support gun control to have a pro-gun position.  When a Marxist says that the Second Amendment is a legitimate and essential civil right, then why ignore it or alienate the speaker?  

  That logic just doesn't wash.  Are all Republicans identical?  Are all As I said above, when someone on the other side of the political fence lays out an argument saying liberals are wrong on this issue is important.  Again, who is going to be more compelling to gun grabbers?  I promise you it's not anyone in the Republican Party or the NRA.  Would you rather debate a Democrat gun-grabber with "Wayne LaPierre said" or reference the words of a person known to people on the political left?  If you can't argue the issue on terms that your opposition can relate to, then you might as well not argue the issue at all.  And that is not an option.

If the government decided to go into the business of confiscating all weapons, it's not going to matter if you bought it new or used.  They will be coming into your home to check for weapons whether you like it or not.  4473 or no 4473, unless you hide every single trace that you are a gun owner so well that they don't find any of it, your home will be searched for weapons.  

My gripe is that I posted this at about the same time as another thread and it has gotten over 10 times the views. And dozens more responses (because it is the typical "they are coming for all of our guns!" kind of thread). I think it's a really important thing when people we consider the enemy on this issue actually agree and craft very well-stated opinions on he issue. The same holds true for several other threads I've started on the issue. A bunker mentality is detrimental to a cause and this one in particular. When you find people on their side of the political fence who say they are wrong, you have found a strong advocate. Which do you think provides a more compelling argument to the left, Alex Jones or the author of that commentary?

I can assure you that is a very bad approach. I'm pretty sure the guy who wrote this is a Marxist. That said, I know several people who would consider themselves "progressives" or "liberals" and are solidly pro Second Amendment. The issue is that not all progressive liberals (or Marxists) are statists. As an aside, Reagan and GW Bush were both Republicans and did a fine job at deficit spending.

Viking Tactical here.

The establishment Republican Party will not let this happen without a fight and they control the resources of the party to pick candidates, support their campaigns, and discredit those they don't want in office. Like I said earlier, I strongly suspect the vote was not in support of gun control, but the establishment Republicans' way of taking those who won't toe the line out to the woodshed. Screw taking back the party! Move to a party that fits your beliefs and run the Republicans out of town. The Republican Party *wants* you to believe "taking back the party" is the only viable option. Then they give you just enough lip service to keep you from totally abandoning them and continue their statist policies. In response to the post above this one, this isn't rebuilding from scratch. The Libertarian Party has been out there for almost half a century. I can't count the number of fed up Republicans who say they like the libertarians, but won't support them because "a vote for a Libertarian candidate is a vote for the Democrats." If all of these people would actually vote against the Republicans, one of two things would happen: 1) you would see the Republican Party actually start to change in response to the losses at the polls, or 2) some Libertarians would actually get elected and change things though their policies and this would start the momentum. I simply don't understand the logic of those complaining about statist Republican establishment policies, but then running to the polls to vote for candidates selected and backed by the Republican Party. Also, many Libertarians are former Democrats. I also hear the same rhetoric from them. They can't vote for a Libertarian because that's really a vote for the Republican candidate. There are lots of "independents" out there and most of the voting population is in the "mushy middle." Why are they in the middle? Usually because they have libertarian-like values, but are so brainwashed into the two-party system that they don't vote for a third party like the Libertarians, whom they would likely find to be the very middle ground they are seeking. People dream about a Mr. Smith to rise up and go to Washington, but then refuse to vote for him because they have been hoodwinked by establishment parties. Never forget your history. The Republican Party was started by a bunch of pissed of Whigs and in less than a decade they put Lincoln in the White House.

Kind of like the Second Amendment maybe? The purpose of the Electoral College was to assure that the largely populated urban states were not able to completely decide the presidential elections through their massive populations.  It also served as a check against a corrupted election process.  The candidate must get the majority of electors, not popular vote.  It was a way of protecting the interests of the less populated rural states.  Technically the electors are not required to vote for the candidate they represent, but it's not happened in American history as far as I am aware.  The electors for a given candidate are chosen by each political party and they send their elector to vote following the election.  You don't become a party's electoral representative if you are not a wildly loyal party member.  The Electoral College concept fits into the federalist system conceived by the founders.  

This should make people here feel better: Republicans, Democrats and the NRA secretly working on full gun control legislation?    http://real-agenda.com/2013/03/12/republicans-democrats-and-the-nra-secretely-working-on-full-gun-control-legislation/