likearock

Where did you get that information? I realize it wasn't the case here, but if people are shooting at you from a car it's permissible to shoot back.

http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_5589.aspx So first they heckle him, now they want to cash in on the anger they provoked? Sure, he went over the top, looks like that Kramer thing wasn't an act after all. I would concede he owes an apology to the other blacks in the audience, but to the schmucks who heckled him? I'd say no.

I'd have my pistol ready and try to peek out a window to see for sure who it is. I'd yell back to let them know I was there. As for that 20-second rule, it's rarely used. As I mentioned before, announce/kick takes paperwork but, that's how it's done. Where I live now, I don't worry about that kind of thing... that's why, I moved to the mountains! Right, but not everyone has the luxury of moving to the mountains. In particular, that 92 y.o. woman probably didn't. She was just stuck in a dangerous neighborhood where a lot of bad people had guns. And if you had been in her place and would have acted differently, please let us know.

The question remains. What would you do if you heard a pounding on your door, people yelling that they are police and you have 20 seconds to unlock and lie spread eagle on the floor. And there was no way for you to know if they really were cops or not.

The problem is not so much whether intel is good or bad, we nothing's perfect and mistakes will be made. There's always the chance that the 20 second rule will come to your door. But even that, in and of itself, isn't the problem. The real problem is that the 20 second rule allows people to impersonate the police and thereby gain entry to your house. If the police had to slip a warrant under the door to get in, you would never be faced with not knowing whether you're resisting the police or simply defending your home. That's why the 20 second rule is bad law, in spite of its tactical advantages in certain situations.

I'd probably end up like Granny... but there'd be more yelling back and forth so that I could determine what the situation was. So maybe it's not such a great idea to legally sanction the "20 second rule".

100% right on. Funny how the same people who are consevative pro-gunners are the ones denouncing the actions of a startled person who has her door kicked in. Wrong again - the pro-gunners are saying that the cops did what they were trained to do - respond to fire. It's "the madding crowd" that's trying to say that the cops murdered the woman. But you still haven't addressed the issue. Suppose it was your house. Someone, without offering any corroboration, yells that they are police and that if you don't open the door in 20 seconds they're going to kick your door down. What do you, as a gun owner, do? Just because they say they're police doesn't mean they're not lying and just want to rob you or worse.

That's a ridiculous argument. With the sheer amount of DNA and other evidence, anyone else would have been convicted with a bowl of chili for the prosecutor. Cloudburst got it right:

Sure. Hogtie him, too! Apply chloroform to him, get a litter and carry him out. Jesus - I have a hard enough time moving my freaking two year old. I'm no cop, but I reckon that partners and workmates of the 150 or so killed every year say to themselves, "HE shoulda tased him." WE have an incidents forum to learn from the often lethal mistakes of others. Tasers are non-lethal. (To you guys who mention those dudes that OD around the same time as being tased, I won't arue wiht you). SO, the choice is to either neutralize the target without pummeling his ass, breaking his wrist, causing nerve damage, etc., AND doing so at close range, or move in to close range and hope you don't get clobbered. I'll tell you my choice. Tase his ass... What the hell are you talking about? This guy wasn't a criminal, he was simply a student who thought he was being singled out and reacted to it. If you don't think it could be you next time, you're dreaming.

How can you say that? Even assuming that there was good reason to detain the student, they had to use a taser on him? Would it have been so difficult to handcuff and apprehend him instead? Is that the kind of society you want to live in, where citizens are subjected to electric shocks in order to get them to obey?

Come on, these guys weren't even LAPD, they were campus police. Their recreation of the familiar WWII "your papers please" combined by their subsequent overreaction was completely over the line. BTW, you should check out the video if you haven't already:

So how about someone answering my original question? Do base jumpers prefer zero-p PCs because there's some evidence they perform better in sub-terminal deployments?

Interesting comment. I don't know a single jumper who uses a pc that isn't zp. I believe that all container manufacurers provide zp pilot chutes as standard. It looks like you believe wrong. At the very least, Javelin and Mirage both have F-111 as standard for their PCs.

As much as I dispise that clown of a president(?), I think it would be much worst if that Nazi of a vise president(?) were to take his place. Yeah, but then if he died, Nancy Pelosi would be president!

The trend in skydiving PCs is away from zero-p pilot chutes. Is it more important to have zero-p for subterminal deployments?

I thought you liked their salads? Lightly tossed?

Absolute bullshit. What is this, a sarcasm-free zone now?

That may be but it's very uncommon for an experienced jumper to transfer the pilot chute from one hand to the other, a very dangerous maneuver in any jump particularly a base jump. That's the thing that really distinguishes this from the normal "freezing up" of brain lock and highly suggests that sensory overload was involved.

You see the same kind of thing when seasoned RW skydivers try to learn to freefly. However, it's by no means a universal attitude. With base jumping I would think it would be an even rarer occurrence considering the elevated stakes of "getting it wrong".

Although i understand your point here, in this particular incident the jumper exited with the pilot chute in his hand. So locating the pc was not an issue. All he needed to do was open up his hand and let it go.In my OPINION i think he MAY have had a little "tunnel vision" due to the unstable exit. My bad, didn't know that he exited PC in hand. Of course, as you suggest, the ability to exit stable would be another fundamental skill. Needless to say, that skill is also more likely to be present in a current jumper.

Stefan, You make a lot of good points so I don't think it's necessary to go into them one by one. I would just add this: I myself am not a base jumper. However, I am a skydiver who knows that a lot of skills we take for granted were not necessarily there for us at the start. I remember in particular the many precious seconds it took on one of my early AFF jumps to simply locate the hackey. It's not unusual for FJC students to struggle with this during freefall in spite of going over the procedure numerous times on the ground. Fortunately for those of us jumping from planes, there is a good deal of freefall time in which to locate the hackey and successfully deploy. How long do you have from NRGB? Five seconds? I can't possibly know if this was what happened in Brian's incident. However, if his only previous skydiving experience was decades ago on much different, ripcord-based gear, it seems a distinct possibility. The point I'm trying to make is that Bridge Day is a highly publicized event as the recent news reports have made abundantly clear. No one should be allowed to make their first base jump there unless they have certain fundamental skills "wired in". At a minimum, those skills should include the ability to quickly deploy a throwout pilot chute and the ability to successfully land a canopy. Sure, there's no way to guarantee that everyone at Bridge Day will have those skills. But there should be some kind of currency requirement that at least addresses the need for them.

All due respect, the purpose of these forums is to discuss and learn from incidents as they occur. If Brian wasn't current that could very well be a factor. In terms of what we can specifically learn from it, I notice that participation in Bridge Day requires 50 prior jumps but says nothing about when they can occur. I believe this is a serious oversight and some kind of currency requirement should be added. This is truly a tragic incident, especially considering this man's history. We should honor him by allowing his death to make the sport safer.

Actually the hot and wet was significant. The thick jungles of Vietnam were ideal cover for the guerrillas as they moved about South Vietnam. The US was so obsessed with it that we spent millions trying to defoliate them. I'm sure the Iraq planners were confident that there could be no such mobility in their case. Unfortunately, Iraq has proved that in a war where the insurgents are difficult to recognize, they can cause a lot of damage without sneaking around. It would be a lot harder to mount a full-scale offensive like the 1972 invasion though.

As a whole, the left defended Clinton and is attacking Foley. They say such things as, "No one died when Clinton lied." and "It was just a BJ." No one on the right is defending Foleys actions. Right, they're just defending Hastert. Don't forget, "It's not the crime, it's the coverup."

Dr. Strangelove.