champu

Jeez, What do you have against toddlers? Do you not understand how screwed up the kid is going to be for the rest of his life knowing he killed his own mother? Come on... No Paul, I'm apparently a moron and didn't understand that.

Jeez, What do you have against toddlers? "accidental murder" is an oxymoron.

Yup, nothing in that article I didn't already know about the iP1. Its story is a really good example of the idiocy. In many places in the US, gun owners don't have sufficient representation to stop bad legislation like the New Jersey law mentioned in the article. When put in a position like that people turn to the courts to try and have laws thrown out or, unfortunately, they try to pressure business owners into not triggering the laws. Some people like to focus on the behavior of the people who are backed into a corner and forget who put them there. As mentioned in the article there was a report (found here) by the NJAG that concluded the iP1 wasn't a smart enough gun and thus didn't trigger the law. Hooray! This should allow the gun to at least come to market and let market forces decide... right? Well, two things: 1) As with all firearms laws, if there's something stupid not being done, wait until next year. If the iP1 or iP9 do go on sale watch how long it takes CA, NY, HI, CT, MA, etc. to introduce legislation that does trigger off their sale. 2) If the iP1 doesn't trigger the NJ law because someone may "forcibly [take] possession of the wristwatch" then I'd hate to see a technology that does trigger the law. In California we have this lovely gem called the "safe handgun roster" which charges manufacturers a fee to have their guns added to a list and charges them a renewal fee to keep their firearms on the list. Only law enforcement are allowed to buy new "unsafe handguns" Each item on the list is specific to make, model, color, and revision. So if H&K or Sig or whoever come out with a 2015 model of a gun that was on the list and all they do is make the grip a little thinner or it's a slightly different shade of black then guess what, the gun is now unsafe, and must go through the process to get back on the list. But ah! as of a ruling in May 2013 (basically the opposite of the NJ ruling), "microstamping" firearms are technically available [where?] thus for a gun to get on the list now, it has to have microstamping. What you'll see happen is the list will erode as nothing new gets added to it and manufacturers stop making the models that are on there now until eventually it becomes tantamount to a ban and gets challenged and thrown out in its entirety in court. That may take a while. In the meantime, you know who I bet loves the roster? Well, remember how I said only LEOs could buy new guns not on the roster? Well they can also legally sell them to non-LEOs. Having a monopoly on new handgun sales in the state sounds pretty sweet.

If you're referring to this post of her's then you're missing the point of the article and actually demonstrating the problem it's describing. First you have to accept the fact that you and Wendy just maybe don't have all that different of a stance on firearms or what might be a reasonable way to address some of the issues related to, but perhaps not caused directly by, firearms ownership. If you're always putting up an "I smell a rat" attitude where you fly off the rails if someone even sounds like they aren't as hardline as you are then that causes people to stop hearing anything you say on the matter.

The irrationality of the gun law landscape in the US doesn't actually fall directly across party lines, but it is fairly close. It is a regrettable stand-off between one group and their lobbyists who spend most of their energy on all the wrong things (for example, California tries to ban something new about rifles and magazines every stinking year, it's insanity by everyone's favorite definition.) and another group and their lobbyists who spend all their effort trying to stop everything the first group is doing because the vast majority of it is ridiculous.

You were doing okay until you wrote this sentence. First off, if the car is reported to contain a murder suspect, all those race statistics collapse. You now should exercise the appropriate level of caution for dealing with a murder suspect regardless of race. Secondly, none of this is about "exercising caution." Your statement/logic is wrong in a way that has nothing to do with his argument. It's not compelling to say "Oh yeah? Well, fish are on bicycles and the sky is green according to your logic!" You just end up sounding like an oaf.

I think the word you're looking for is misanthrope, which would mean you have a general dislike for and are mistrusting of people. It's not synonymous with being a jerk, mind you, you can go through life being very courteous to others, voting with empathy, etc. and still be very mistrusting of the people you encounter, particularly in passing, day to day. Some people are overly sensitive to others being racist and will assume that any description given about the type of behavior/personality of people you don't like is your code for "niggers," "towelheads," etc. and they get excited that they "caught you" like they're playing a card game or something. I don't much see the point in acting like that. On the other hand, some people are overly sensitive to being called a racist. I have a friend who told me that because I'm a white male I'm fundamentally incapable of making race-free, sex-free decisions or of holding like opinions. *shrugs* I know what she meant and it wasn't that I'm "unfit to walk among society" as Tink suggests the term "racist" should mean.

Posting people's personal details (aka Personally Identifiable Information) when you have both motive to want harm done to said people and an expectation that your audience is sympathetic to your motive is at best chickenshit and at worst criminal. People have watched too many mob movies and television shows, "It would be a shame if some type of misfortune were to fall upon these individuals." I will temper that by saying that without any specific threats, I don't think you can call posting the info anything more than a call to harass the people. I don't buy the "a reasonable person would have known someone would have used that info to murder them" argument.

Developed countries lie by omission. Countries like DPRK and Iran and entities like the Taliban, ISIL, and JI lie by complete fabrication / bad shop jobs. Interestingly, the latter tend to be much more effective among their target audiences.

I have USAA for homeowners (renters before I bought a place) and car insurance. I've asked them specifically about theft from a locked vehicle and theft from a locked team room at the dropzone and they said they would cover it. Be sure to check on individual item limits and/or make sure you inventory everything separately (everything has its own serial number, so that shouldn't be a problem) to make sure you're covered adequately. About a year and a half ago my wife and I were doing a balloon jump. She had a cutaway and it landed in a eucalyptus tree inside the walls of a concrete yard. We scrambled to get in touch with the yard, the security outfit looking after the yard, and a tree-trimming service. That was slow-going so I called USAA about it and they said "It can't be considered lost or stolen... yet. Get in touch with the concrete yard owner and if they refuse to let you make a reasonable effort to recover it then call us back." The security detail and the tree-trimming guy came through for us, though, so we didn't have to test that avenue further. I've known a couple other people that have had cutaways that landed in neighborhoods but by the time we were able to get to it someone had apparently run off with it. Both had success with their insurance companies when they explained the situation. "I had an emergency, I released the main, I saw where it landed, I went to recover it, someone had stolen it."

I found that writing people's first names in my logbook when I was logging for the day helped me remember names and that I had jumped with people before a lot better.

Is that where you live is Southern California (with all the immigrants) and write everyone you know to tell them you're "Dreaming of a white Christmas" lamenting how things used to be and warning others not to let the same thing happen where they are?

That's what I was getting at, yes. On the bright side it does make this thread title awesomely bad. Rivaling the "riots over a shoting" one. "Lining up hood rats" means something very different from what regulator probably pictured. Anyway, back to snowshoeing in RMNP.

Side note: a "hoodrat" is probably more specific of a term than you intend. (ref: 2 Live Crew - Hoochie Mama)

/edited because my phone apparently ate my post... weird I suppose if it were a 9mm revolver it would be a slightly less ridiculous thing to say (though still not the best way to say it.) Not much to go on yet regarding what actually happened, but throwing bricks and molotovs at police while the scene is still under investigation is generally not helpful.

Only thing I had to disagree with was the "run toward the sound of guns" as bad tactics. Active shooter in school/mall etc.- the longer you hang back the more victims there are. That's just part of the job! Other folk run away...... Running towards the gunfire only works if there has been gunfire. Anvil keeps reposting his list where he's picked out the "obvious" good shootings. I made a post in another thread to a spreadsheet with a couple thousand shootings and a suggested "escalation rating." I think I may go back and do the rating... But right now I'm on vacation.

Thanks for the response. I've watched a couple hours of video of that type of training (guy fumbling around outside shed saying he's locked himself out, stressed out woman answers front door with hand behind her back, etc.) and was wondering if the balance was reasonable. I know they have very similar scenarios that can go both ways but I wonder if that puts too much focus on the split second. What I mean by that is I hope they make the scenarios different enough such that both types of successes and errors can be debriefed effectively, realistically, and in a statistically meaningful way. As I've agreed before, split second decisions suck. LEOs should spend at least as much time training how to make fewer of them as how to make them better.

Out of curiosity... If you put someone through the simulations, at the end of the day how many scenarios were "shoot" and how many were "no shoot."

Yes, but then United States v. Dorsey (albeit not a SCOTUS decision) determined that if you just add the words "interstate commerce" to the law then you're good. If you're doing absolutely anything whatsoever then, by way of opportunity costs, you are most certainly not doing at least one thing that affects interstate commerce.* *NB: I don't support this, I just think it follows from the Supreme Court decisions on the matter. I think said decisions should be dismantled.

How many cops have been killed this year by people WITHOUT guns? Actually quite a few. Many are accidents, but not always. It always strikes me as strange when people imply or state that guns make it too easy to murder people, as though the difficulty of the physical/mechanical act of damaging another person's body until it stopped functioning was the biggest thing preventing murder.

Well. This is certainly not a good way to quell "Us vs Them" attitudes.

Not at all, sometimes my posts here wander. I agree with your assessment of what happened behind the scenes at theaters and why. But when I said, "as the civil liability bar is lowered to include failing to heed less and less specific threats" I was taking a shot at lawyers/judges (and later in the post actuaries) for actively pushing that bar into the ground and therefore being the real driving force behind the regrettable situation. It's not the theatre owners, nor the movie executives, nor is it even the hackers who were making the threats. The threat of terrorists hijacking planes and crashing them into your theater over a Seth Rogen movie is fanciful and fairly easily dismissed, but anyone can picture themselves in a web of lawsuits. Again, though, following the parallel with the permitting requirements discussion, I don't argue that lawyers are doing this in a vacuum. People are readily drummed up into this kind of behavior.

If you're talking about following the Florida story link in your article you might want to read more carefully as one of the examples was in France. In any event, calling this "not really an uncommon occurrence" is absurd.

Ya In Iowa, if a spouce or live in partner get a restraining order against you, the police can (and many times do) come get your guns California passed AB1014 recently with revised language limiting it only to relatives and police, but the original language would have allowed anyone to file a restraining order against you on behalf of your firearms if they simply believed it was dangerous for you to have them. As I've said before, I don't believe there's some amount of crazy you can be where taking your firearms away, and only taking your firearms away, is an appropriate response. I think that law, even in its final form, is a due process violation lawsuit waiting to happen. Opposing that bill and supporting this decision are not advocating arming dangerously insane people. Some people need to be reminded that simple, easy solutions to complex problems are often wrong.

This is the civil angle of a criminal issue I was talking about the other day. In that case, if you have to forego select rights to be legally allowed to do more and more things, you less and less actually have those rights. In this case, as the civil liability bar is lowered to include failing to heed less and less specific threats prior to exercising free speech, you less and less have the right to free speech. The tag-team version of this is finding it in the best public interest to require insurance in order to receive a permit to legally do more and more things.