monkeylizard

  FIFY!

I'm pretty sure that NC has open carry without a permit. Some exceptions, but that's mostly true. That's how OPEN CARRY dot org comes up with their ratings and why NC get's the gold star from them. Concealing requires a permit.   By and large, unless you're doing some crazy back country trails, it's TN up to Newfound Gap, and NC on the other side of Newfound Gap. the road spur leading up to Clingman's Dome stradles the line.   Here's the official park map. Notice that except for a small corner in the western point, the AT follows the state line, so you can use the bright yellow line as your state line guide. If I recall correctly, the parking lot and ranger station/gift shop is in NC but the observation deck on the summit is in TN. http://www.nps.gov/grsm/planyourvisit/upload/grsmmap-edit-2.pdf   Either way, we have reciprocity with NC and their laws are pretty much the same as ours for what the casual visitor will see.

I picked up most of the gear I'll need, but still haven't started taking classes yet. I did loads of snorkeling in Hawaii last month and loved it. If we had stuff like that here I'd need a second job to pay for all my air tank fill-ups.

GSMNP is one of the most car-centic parks in the NPS system. You do not have to haul your kids on miles of trails through the woods to see the good stuff.   Newfound Gap, Clingman's Dome (The parking lot views are great. Haul your kids to the top only if you like to punish yourself), Cade's Cove, and my personal favorite, Roaring Fork. Plenty of little pull outs to get out of the car and enjoy the stream and woods. I enjoyed Hungry Bear BBQ which is located just outside the exit of Roaring Fork.   I love this site for finding trails that meet a person's needs/capabilities. http://www.hikinginthesmokys.com/difficulty.htm   One of the shortest and flatest trails in GSMNP is the Spruce-Fir on the way up to Clingman's Dome. You'll see a little pullout on the left with a trail head style nature sign. That's it. It goes back into a spruce forest . Beautiful.   +1 to Laurel Falls on the way to/from Cade's Cove. The trail is paved all the way up to the falls so you can push a stroller. It's uphill and I personally wouldn't want to do that, but I saw plenty of parents with their younguns doing it. If you can keep going up the unpaved trail after the falls, you'll find yourself in some fantastic old-growth forest. The sinks are also on that road and impossible to miss.   As for non-GSMNP stuff, you'll have plenty to do with the kids in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Your wallet will hate you but your kids will love you...until you say no to doing "just one more.....pleeeeeeeease". +1 to Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg. It's quite good.

  Did the other two keep advancing?  :D

Come on...you guys are getting sloppy. Mystery creature at night and it takes until post#18 for this feller to show up?

Maybe I'm being judgmental, but something tells me this dude doesn't fit the description of "normal business person." If he actually has/knows attorneys, my money is on them being liberal community organizing activists that he knows from "rallies".

"I come in peace"   It starts awesome and just gets better. This is full of WIN!     LOL!!!!   "Call the Police!" "Ma'm, we are the Police"     A predictable sticker appears at 5:52

Yep. No duty to inform, but a LEO can secure your firearm at his/her discretion. If there's a chance he'll see it, go ahead and tell him and declare your permit.

First, thanks for vacationing here. We love to get Yankee dollars.  :)   Your permit from MI is valid here, but we don't require it to be concealed. With the permit, you can be open or concealed, so don't worry too much about printing or your cover shirt riding up. We're cool with that here. No carry on schools or any place a judge is holding court. This includes any location being used by a school, but since it's summer, you should be OK.* Proper no-gun signs carry  the weight or law. Here "proper" means they have to be the "gunbuster" circle and slash OR must cite the TN law. A basic "No guns allowed" sign isn't legally binding, but the Attorney General may not agree with me on that. We have no duty to retreat in TN City/county parks vary from county to county, but I think Sevier Co. where you'll be would have to post the entrance to the parks for them to be off limits. Someone from over that way will be along shortly to clarify that. State parks are OK even if you see a sign saying otherwise. Those are old signs that the parks dep't wasn't required to change (too much $). National Parks (Great Smokey Mts) are OK as long as you don't carry where the rangers work, which is most buildings up there. They did a good job of posting them with the gunbuster sticker, so just watch for that.     *There are exceptions, but for a visitor, don't worry about them. Treat them as no-gun zones.

It was behind Whitt's BBQ next to the Toyota dealership. AFAIK, it's closed. I've heard that the property and range equipment were sold together, and I've heard they were sold separately, but don't know who to believe on that one.   If they sold together, it will likely re-open under new ownership in the same spot, but since that hasn't happened yet, I'm inclined to think the range equipment was sold to a second person who has probably already pulled it out and taken it to wherever he/she is setting up a range. That's just speculation on my part.   Personally, I'm disappointed that it's not the new home of GnL South.  :surrender:

I don't recall much from the videos we had to watch for the HCP, but if "don't intervene" is in there, it's wrong, legally speaking. If it's (still) there I would  think the THP's intent with it is to cut down on the number of new permit holders who have too much Hollywood nonsense in their brains from getting hurt or hurting innocents. TN law does allow deadly force to prevent death or serious bodily harm* to yourself or another person. By definition, that would be while a crime is in progress. The "does not make you law enforcement" is 100% correct. Intervening or not is a personal choice. It may or may not be the astute thing to do depending on the circumstances.     *That's defined in TCA with very specific language.

Thanks for your service. Here's a photo of Old Glory that I took last month at the USS Arizona Memorial. [URL=http://s431.photobucket.com/user/kangaroo178/media/IMG_0248_zps61162609.jpg.html][/URL]

Burns and Fairview are going to be your best "in between" spots. Fairview puts you in Williamson Co. and a little closer to Brentwood but 10-15 minutes further from Dickson.

Add in that LEOs are people too with their own varying opinions, and you'll find that some don't like non-LEOs having permits.I doubt that's as common as the pro-permit LEO opinion, but you never know the personal opinion of the person that pulled you over.

That's assuming the lot is not posted in accordance with 39-17-1359. If it is, then our new law applies. But according to the AG, it's chock full of caveats that could still make having it in the car past a proper sign a violation. The firing thing is 100% correct. The new law changes nothing there.

A linear model of politics is insufficient for most discussions. It's not 1 dimensional left to right. You have to look at scales of various dimensions to put all our different political perspectives in a meaningful structure. For most discussions, a 2 dimensional perspective works pretty well. I tend to think of "individual freedom" as one axis and "size/reach of government" as the other. Other scales might incorporate economic systems or other social aspects.   I agree with Chuck that extreme facism has more in common with extreme socialism/communism (both low freedom - high government) than it does with the opposite quadrant (high freedom - low government) which approaches anarchy in its extreme reaches. The difference between extreme facism and communism is in the "why" but the "what" is pretty much the same for anyone living under either boot heel.

Thanks OS. I think I was looking at the text of one of the older versions of wht eventually got passed. I have edited my earlier post.

If you're a non-student adult, maybe...maybe not (as OS is about to point out, the new law doesn't change anything with schools).   TCA 39-17-1309 governs weapons on school grounds (including non-school property while being used for official school business). The key parts that make the "maybe" are sections (b ) and (c ). Part (b ) says it's a Class E felony if there is "intent to go armed". Part (c ) says it's a midemeanor if there is no "intent to go armed". (c ) has an exception where it's OK if the firearm is not handled nor caused to be handled and it never leaves the vehicle, but (b ) does not have that exception. It has been construed that any loaded firearm is indeed intent to go armed. Notice that 39-17-1309 never mentions 39-17-1351 (HCP process), so the exception for leaving it alone applies to all persons with firearms, not just HCP holders. By the letter of the law, the way I understand it, you'd have to stop away from school grounds, unload and separate to remove the intent to go armed (as if you don't have an HCP) then go on school property. You could relaod after leaving school property.   I don't recall anywhere that an HCP (39-17-1351) has any bearing on 39-17-1309, but I thought there might be some other 39-17-13xx law that may be important regarding school carry. I couldn't find it in a quick search through Lexis Nexis, so if anyone is a mind reader and knows what I might be thinking of, please post it. I may be thinking about parks carry being touched on by multiple statutes.   I don't have the news articles/interviews bookmarked, but I recall some lawmakers stating that the intent of the exception in (c ) is to allow HCP holders to leave it in their cars, but by not providing the exception in (b ) that they put in (c ), that's not the case, the way the law is written. The process described above is asinine and a safety hazard, and I doubt anyone does that. Remember that 39-17-1322 protects your from prosecution under all 39-17-13xx laws should you use your firearm in justified self defense of yourself or another.     Finally, if you're an employee of the school, then I'm quite certain it will be a no, per your employee handbook. Given the above, it may or may not be a criminal offense, but it's certainly one that would get you fired, just like anyone else working for a company with a "no weapons" policy.       The TFA has a nice write-up on just how weak the new "safe commute" law is and include the AG's opininon on several aspects of it. http://www.tfaonline.org/index.php/news

I thought this was the sticker:

D3vo and I tried to stop by on a lunch break, but they were closed for their lunch break.

  The only times I have seen it are for telecommuters. The documents I saw in that case were related to home inspections for verifying that the employee kept an adequate work space for their home office (defined as X sq. feet) and that it met OSHA standards (desk isn't blanced on a couple of 2x4's over a vat of acid, I guess).

No, the new TN state law (I think it is labeled 39-17-1313) has no impact on this at all. The new law means it's not a criminal offense for an HCP holder to leave a legal firearm in their personal vehicle parked on property that is posted in accordance with 39-17-1359. It's basically a limited over-ride of the posting rules that extends to parking lots and personal vehicles. This only affects the criminality of having it in your car in a properly posted parking lot. It does not have any affect on employment or employee handbooks. Unless your employer's lot was posted, this law does nothing for you. Even it is posted, this law only keeps you from getting a misdemeanor charge. You'd still get fired.   That clause about state/local law is in the handbook in case the company chooses to operate a location in a state that expressly forbids employers from restricting legal firearms and/or from making it a terminable offense. The clause keeps the rest of that part of the handbook from becoming nulll and void.   "All company premises" does include the parking lot.

Haven't read the book, but plan to now that I know it's a whole lot more than the movie.   Fast Z's are scarier, but I agree that it wasn't as edgy as I had hoped. I was never in fear for the main characters, especially since there's  only one. It was action packed, and I can overlook the tactical errors as they weren't terrible, and Gerry's not a Billy-Bad-Ass operator, just an experienced field investigator. But he did leave his rifle behind when fleeing the apartment....oops.   I liked the movie for what it was, an action summer movie.   **SPOILER ALERT***   What I couldn't follow was how Israel built the wall in such a hurry. They talk about how Israel was the first to take action after intercepting communications in India, so I get thet they'd be more prepared than anyone else, but they built an 80+ foot concrete wall around the country, complete with wire-mesh enclosed people tunnels and immigration/refugee stations in a few weeks?   They never explained why some corner of Nova Scotia (or New Brunswick?) was a safe place to put refugees. I would have thought an island would have been better. Maybe it was an island off the coast of NB or NS. I would think a warmer island off the coast of the US would have been a better choice. Or even better, let's all go to Fiji.   If they're doing a sequel, it could be cool to see the "on the ground" battles, but the war is over. The humans are now immunized to where the Zs won't attack them. The Zs are being herded into centralized areas and burned/bombed. It's just a matter of mopping up.   Since when did the US fly an Antonov AN-12? It's a super special one because they launched it from an aircraft carrier, then it flew all the way to Korea without refueling, then it gets refuled on the ground in about 30 seconds with enough fuel to fly all the way to Israel. Screw the Boeing Dreamliner....this thing is the solution for airline fuel efficiency and range. Who knew the Russians solved the problem in 1957? They could afford Brad Pitt, but couldn't lease a Herc?

Is this guy really a U.S. Senator? It's no wonder that the rest of the nation and much of the world thinks the south is filled with ignorant hillbillies. Actually, you can become French or Japanese since those nations have a naturalization process just as any organized nation does. I think I know what he means, but it doesn't make what he wrote any less incorrect.