East_TN_Patriot

I've tried and decided that it's best not to push it too hard. My wife lives in blissful ignorance of the potential threats out there personal protection is very low on her list of priorities. She works in downtown Knoxville and has to walk a little way to her car. Sometimes she works late. She is the type that will walk along while texting on her cell phone with no concern for her surroundings. I have tried and tried to convince her to practice situational awareness and to get her CCW. One day I decided to get her one of those Kimber OC guns so she could at least have that with her. I showed her how it works and put it in her purse. About a week later, I saw it laying on her dresser with some other stuff she cleaned out of her purse. I asked her why she wasn't carrying it and her reply was that she "just doesn't need it." That is just her mindset, and no amount of harping has changed it. There's no sense pushing her into it if she doesn't want it because she will not carry a firearm, practice the skills, or runs the risk of having the firearm used against her in a critical situation. She needs to be interested on her own and make the decision to take on the responsibility that a CCW brings with it.

Good old Wal Mart... Selling cheap stuff by taking advantage of over $1 billion in government subsidies and tax breaks...

I wouldn't call that a loophole. If an officer has probable cause that a person will not respond to a traffic summons, they can generally arrest that person. Once that happens, the vehicle can be searched incident to arrest and/or inventory in accordance to a documented and regularly applied policy. Just like any other arrest, the officer must have legitimate probable cause to make that arrest.

You are correct. It has been a couple of years since I've had to look at Terry.

And this is especially easy to do on Colt revolvers. I carried a Detective Special for a little while and know first hand it can happen when you try to rapid fire on a wheel gun.

Not exactly. The only time an officer can make a protective search of a person under Terry or under the wingspan rule within a motor vehicle is in a case where the officer has PROBABLE CAUSE that the individual has a weapon. It must be enough information that you can articulate it to a jury and have them agree that under the same circumstances they would reach the same conclusion. I emphasize probable cause because it is a higher standard of proof than reasonable suspicion, mere suspicion, gut feeling, etc. An officer can't just automatically frisk people or search cars for weapons just because they want to (at least not legally). Typically, to search a motor vehicle for a weapon, the officer must observe "furtive movements" where it appears that someone in the vehicle makes a suspicious movement that gives the officer probable cause to believe that the occupant has either concealed or tried to retrieve a weapon.

The article also cites the Violence Policy Center, which is a very biased anti-gun group, worse than the Brady Center in my opinion. They also mention a fellow from "academia" who is far from it. He has a Master's Degree in criminal justice, which is typically not research based degree, and works for the LEIC, which does not do research on violence or crime causation. Funny that they chose this fellow over any of the criminologists with PhDs at the University of Tennesee who do reasearch on this sort of thing. Considering that I am a criminologist as well, I guess I need to pick apart these numbers myself and see what the scoop is.

Yeah, it pretty much makes no difference either way. I tell people that if they ever actually fire a weapon at someone, whether they actually injure or kill the person, just bank on getting sued.

This statement is inaccurate. Police routinely ask for consent to search for no reason at all other than as a fishing expedition. This has been shown to be true over and over again when the police are looking for drugs in particular and using a traffic violation or equipment violation as a precursory stop. Any police officer who is on a mission to make drug arrests will systematically seek out violators in traffic, especially those that they think fits the stereotypical drug criminal as they have conceived it, make the stop and ask for consent. There have been multiple studies & cases to show that the poor and minority groups (who tend to be disproportionately poor) are more likely to be targeted due to the tendency to see drug crime as one of the poor. Keep in mind, there is a big difference between an officer who is legitimately working traffic for the sake of working traffic enforcement and an officer who is using traffic as an opportunity to seek out drug offenders. Also one thing that people have left out is the mistake that officers make when they place someone in the back of their patrol car "for your safety and mine." In effect, they have detained the person beyond the scope of the original investigation and have very clearly removed the person's ability to revoke consent at any time as required by the Supreme Court.

The issue is over-penetration with slugs vs. 00 buckshot. At close range, the spread on 00 buckshot is minimal and the energy is contained within the body as opposed to a slug, which will pass completely through the target. This is a potential problem if you live in a neighborhood or apartment complex where there is a risk of your slug passing through walls and striking an unintended victim. When we did ballistic vest testing at my old police department, a vest with a trauma pack will stop buckshot or a slug, but the blunt force trauma is so extensive from either that it's virtually unsurvivable. I keep my shotty loaded with 00 buckshot now, and I kept it loaded with 00 buckshot when I was a street cop and had slugs available on a side saddle in case I needed to engage a target inside of a vehicle or behind a barricade of some sort.

Thanks for the link. I've seen those and that's basically what I want to do myself. They took the same selector kits and changed them to make a dummy selector. I may just buy one of the original selector kits and see what it would take to change it into a dummy. I guess it really doesn't matter since my M1A doesn't have the correct sear or internal parts to make it into a full-auto anyhow, so the trick is getting it to mount securely to the stock.

And that is exactly the point that Leonard doesn't grasp. The interpretations of the law that are important are those of the prosecutor and jury, not his own. When he says that an officer must have reasonable suspicion to detain him, he is right, but it's the reasonableness of the LEO's suspicion as judged by a group of Kwik's "reasonable" peers on the jury. I find it extremely unlikely that 12 average people wouldn't hear this story and find that the officer's actions were more than justified and reasonable. Heck, if thousands of gun owners think he is crazy and dangerous, you know that a jury of people who are scared of guns will be more than happy to throw the book at him. Kwik needs to get a clue in a hurry or he really risks getting himself and/or someone else killed. Yes, we have certain rights, but with those rights comes the requirement to exercise them responsibly. I think virtually everyone who is aware of his antics believes that he is not acting responsibly.

The disorderly conduct statute in Kentucky is pretty broad unless they changed it since I was there. Also, unless the law has changed since I was a cop there, the law specifies that an individual does not have a lawful justification to use force against someone clearly identifiable as a LEO to resist what the defendant believes to be an unlawful arrest. What would be more interesting is if some average Joe with a CCW sees this idiot bee-bopping down the street and engages him as a threat.

I hope the OP has a better experience than I did. I had an issue with a P229 that I owned, called them about it shooting about 6" low at 25 yards, even when using a rest. The lady I talked to said that they don't warranty "shooter error" and asked if I was using a proper "combat hold." I told her that I did and that I am a former police firearms instructor so I am familiar with how to fire a handgun. She immediately snapped back with, "Well, I don't have any way to know if that's true." Um... ok? Anyhow, I reminded her that I had also been firing it using a rest and while windage was on the money it was still shooting 6 inches low. Her response was, "I can issue a call tag, but when it gets back to the shop and the armorer shoots a hole out of the center of the target, we'll have to bill you for the shipping, shop time, and ammunition." Um... ok... nevermind. I ended up trading it off at a gun shop for something else. My impression of their CS was not good to say the least. When I was in policing, our department issued Sig P229 pistols with the stainless slides. The department purchased them all brand new. Within a few weeks of issuing them, several pistols began to have a large amount of corrosion on the slides, which shouldn't have happened after such a short time even in the worst of conditions. Sig gave our department more trouble than you can imagine to get these slides replaced. It literally took almost a year to get them to get the problem corrected and they weren't happy about doing it. In fact, they actually kept a couple of the pistols for so long and ignored calls to fix and return them that the Chief threatened to try and file theft charges against them (likely not something that could be accomplished, but he was pretty upset about the situation). They seem to have an attitude that their guns are so great that it isn't possible for them to have a problem from the factory.

Yes, what you say is correct, but Gallup and other similar reputable polling groups try very hard to draw a proper random sample to prevent that sort of problem. If one of these polling groups was caught intentionally trying to skew a poll, their money tree would dry up in a hurry, so it's in their economic interest to do things the right way. According to the Gallup website regarding this survey:

I can't grasp how the hunter who shot the victim is not being charged with manslaughter. We all have an obligation to make sure that when we engage a target that we are not harming an innocent person. I know that the hunter "accidentally" shot the victim, but he intentionally aimed and fired without being 100% certain and correct about his target. Inexcusable.

So basically, you have made up your mind and no amount of information will change it. You just rationalize it away as being from "questionable sources" and "propaganda machines" not even remotely considering the fact that the political right also have their "questionable sources" and "propaganda machines" that report about the OWS movement. Each side has a political agenda to push, and they do it by trying to delegitimize the other side by cherry picking facts and portraying them as the whole. The "news" media is nothing more than a business that looks for sensational stories to fill airtime/print space in order to attract viewers/readers so they can make money selling advertizing. Fox News, Drudge, Blaze, I Hate teh Media, NewsBusters, etc. are biased to the right. Kos, MediaMatters, MSNBC, etc. are biased to the left. Those of us who are the intended consumers are left trying to figure out the truth of what's really going on within this mess of inaccurate reporting and commentary. There are media reports of some Tea Party violence on a small scale. There are media reports of OWS violence on a small scale. I agree that segments of the OWS movement tends to be more unruly than the Tea Party, and that's a tactic I don't agree with. Not all OWS events are like that and not all people participating engage in the unruly behavior. Take the Knoxville OWS protest. There was no unruly mob-like behavior at all. It looked just like the Knoxville Tea Party rally; normal folks protesting a corrupt political system that is in collusion with wealthy corporations and business interests. If I haven't made it

Fine, I will accept that you didn't mean it to sound the way I took it, but I still think that it's pretty easy to interpret your words... ... to mean that you would like to see anarchy so "people like you" could kill "these people" you don't agree with. If you didn't mean it that way, I can only take your word for it, but I still think it is bad form to even remotely tie together the idea of killing anyone at all with the criticism of people we don't agree with, especially in a public forum related to gun ownership. It sends a bad message, and if a pro-gun conservative Libertarian can interpret it that way, I am very certain anti-gun liberals would as well.

OK, here is a brief sample of examples from a quick Google search: [/img] San Francisco Tea Party for 9/11 Truth WARNING AMERICA CHRISLAM IS COMING - Tea Party Nation http://ladylibertyslamp.wordpress.com/2010/05/20/rand-paul-throws-a-play-soldier-dress-up-party-for-obese-white-men/ Blah, blah, blah... it goes on and on. Any form of non-violent political dissent is legitimate in my mind, and the First Amendment of the US Constitution backs me up. Indeed, the left has said virtually the same thing about the Tea Party movement, except their description basically reads: "They are nothing more than a mob being incited by Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers, and their kind. Did you not see Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin stoking the crowd in DC?" The only difference is you agree with the views of the Tea Party over the views of OWS. Nothing more. Yes, some are, most are not. Just like in the Tea Party, some are for violent revolution and/or secession while most are not. Well, he did not personally, but some of his ideas did. His ideas spawned the calls for improved labor laws and better working conditions, public education, and very insightful methods for examining society. People reduce his ideas as only being reflected in the Communist Manifesto, which was a reflection of his political activism. He wrote literally thousands of pages evaluating and discussing European history and society. He pioneered the concept of dialectics that stresses examining society from a very complex and multi-level perspective. I have made it clear that I strongly disagree with Marx's political ideas, many of which I think are criminal and vile, but this doesn't mean his other contributions lack any usefulness. Interesting... many of the OWS supporters I have talked to in my area actually want to team up with the Tea Party and join forces to deal with the issues both movements agree on. Take this statement pulled from a website: After reading that, tell me, are these OWS "talking points" as one other post here suggests? No, they are from the home page of the Knoxville Tea Party website. Read that again, and go back and re-read my original post. Do my words sound like Marxist BS? Or is it maybe that both sides of this issue are onto something here? If you don't believe me, here is the link: The Unofficial Website of the Knoxville Tea Party | Tea and Crumpets Anyone? "Right" and "wrong" are relative. In the good ol' days, it was considered "right" to own slaves, "right" to beat your wife and children, or "right" to force Native Americans from their land at gunpoint. It was "wrong" to let women vote or own property, "wrong" to let black people drink from the same drinking fountain as whites, and "wrong" to socialize with people not like you. Am I saying that all issues of morality are social constructions and totally abstract? No, not at all. I believe there are very fundamental values of right and wrong, one of which includes respecting the right of people to freely express their political and social ideas, ESPECIALLY the ones I don't agree with. As far as being normal or just about what Marx wrote, ask yourself if you have ever actually read anything he wrote at all. Most people haven't even read the Communist Manifesto, much less any of his thousands of pages of writing. Until you have read a broad sample of his work, you can't make that judgement of his ideas as a whole. I can tell the difference between the two groups; many of the differences are obvious and I made that clear in my first post. They disagree with Tea Party on HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Many of their complaints are very similar. We just tend to disagree on the solutions in pretty dramatic ways. You, and many others, seem to be wrapping their value as human beings and American citizens with their political ideas, which is a very un-American idea. We are a society based on tolerance, free thought, and liberty to live our lives as we choose as long as we are not doing direct harm to someone else. Last time I checked, dressing like a hippy, putting your hair in dreds, soaking yourself in patchouli oil, and protesting in a park for a month isn't inherently illegal or a violation of my rights. We have a Constitution and a political process to deal with the issues, and that is where the arguments will end up.

Yes, which is a point I specifically made. Again, Marx was critiquing a very specific set of social and economic conditions during his time that simply don't exist in our current time. This doesn't change the reality, however, that those with money have power and they use that to influence policy and law in many cases. Take Solyndra for instance.

OK then, that makes my criticism more serious. You are now saying that in the event of anarchy, you would like the opportunity to kill people you disagree with politically. That's fantastic. You clearly don't agree with the idea that all people have natural rights, including the right to their own ideas and right to protest. I, on the other hand, would use my weapons to protect my family, protect the innocent, and try to restore order, not execute people I don't agree with.

Unfortunately, those aren't "talking points," but my own original words compiled from several years of reading, studying, and teaching about social theory and crime. I am a strong Libertarian who used to be a die-hard Republican. I worked in law enforcement, would have joined the military had it not been for a childhood head injury that kept me from pursuing the job path I wanted to follow, a Christian, and own a sole-proprietorship. I have read so many different perspectives on social issues, politics, crime, and social structure, it would likely make your head spin. If you choose to ignore my own critiques of our economic and political situation, fine, but please don't think I am regurgitating "talking points" of any kind.

No, I won't "lighten up" on that. We don't joke about wanting to kill people. It's not funny, it's not productive, and it's not the right way to act, especially when gun owners are constantly under the microscope by the gun-grabbers who want to portray us as violent and overly-eager to use our 2nd Amendment rights to kill people for no reason.

I haven't seen anyone need a sling, but you probably want to bring one along just in case. I've only gone a couple of times, but I don't get the impression that using a sling is a common thing.

That's a great way to back up your political views. No responsible law-abiding gun owner should even joke about killing people we don't agree with politically. It's irresponsible and exactly the sort of rhetoric that draws negative attention to gun owners.