peacefuljeffrey

OMG! I have a Glock 27 -- haven't put nearly that many rounds through it -- but I also have had exactly one stovepipe and no other malfunctions whatsoever. I love the .40. I bought my first .40 back in 1993. It was my first gun, and since I knew very little at all about handguns at the time, I let the dealer sell me something based on his recommendation. (I probably would have gone with 9mm if not for him.) He explained the pluses and minuses of having a larger round (slightly lower capacity than a 9mm gun) but better ballistics (.40 over 9mm). I'm glad he steered me that way. I sure am hoping that the ammunition capacity limit expires as it should in September. Just to kick the gun banners' intentions in the balls, I plan to buy at least 5-10 high capacity mags for my various guns. Quote.40 is a great defense load, very powerful and versital, plinking ammo isn't too expensive either. Ok, end of story, get a Glock, Sig, Kimber or H&K. I favor Glock & HK (which stands for Heckler & Koch, and since it's German, they say it "COKE.") Glocks may not be the most recommendable guns for someone new to them, though it pains me to say that. I guess it shouldn't be that way, because technically one should not be relying on mechanical safeties to save the day in the first place. If you get a Glock, make sure to have someone get you reallly familiar with how it will operate, particularly the fact that there is no manual safety, so it operates almost like a revolver. Good luck. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well, by that token, you can pretty much say that anything is dangerous and be correct. Why not equate gun ownership with crossing the street? If I personally want to make sure I don't hurt myself, I can -- and I know this is a bold statement -- be ONE HUNDRED PERCENT SURE that I won't hurt myself when handling my gun. I just have to do things the right way. Same goes for crossing the street. Make no mistake: crossing the street is dangerous. People die doing it all the time. Since you can get killed just about anywhere, doing just about anything, why not say that living is dangerous. You could be at a knitting store taking knitting lessons and someone walking by with her project stumbles and falls and *splorscht* you catch her knitting needles in your eye and your brain is pithed. These are things that can happen. How dangerous the activity is depends on how often they happen, and how controllable their occurring is by the user. Shit, cutting vegetables in the kitchen is dangerous. I could give myself a cut that I could bleed to death from. Have I ever? No. When I cut, I go slowly and carefully and I watch what I'm doing, and I make sure to remind myself to do it that way. I think that the danger in these activities (or any activities) is almost 99% the human element, and we are supposed to control that individually. Yes, some deaths are the result of the actions or carelessness of others (i.e. Roger Nelson's), but that is not what makes skydiving dangerous, that's what made that person's actions dangerous. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Yes, here's the problem I've always had with this so-called "freewill": If you actually exercise it and choose the NON-god-endorsed behavior, you go to hell for eternity. That really leaves very little choice in how to behave, now doesn't it? God says, "Sure, you're 'free' to choose how you will behave; but if you choose 'gay' you go to hell. Oh, and by the way, I've wired you to have a natural predisposition to be that way. Have fun choosing!" That is a fucked up claim of being "FREEwill." FREEwill would be if the ramifications of each behavior were equally weighted. What god has set up here amounts to COERCION. You inferred in a previous post that religious people were illogical thinkers; however, I truly fail to see the logic in your comparison above. Physical characteristics are traits which we cannot control. The way you behave is very much controllable. My natural instincts tell me everyday to cheat on my wife but I choose not to. Cheating on your wife is not hard-wired into your biological being. Maybe the example was confusing because it dealt with physical traits. Okay, how about someone who is born with Tourette's Syndrome. Tell him it's a sin to swear, but look at what his brain chemistry forces him to do. It's not a simple matter of telling him that god says not to, so don't do it. It's not the same for him as it is for you and me. I don't have homosexual tendencies, and apparently neither do you. So it's nothing for either of us to stay away from sinning in that way. Just imagine for a moment that GAY was the way god wanted you, and STRAIGHT (like you are now) is the way you really felt. Those are not grammatical or spelling errors in any strict sense. Those are salted in there for emphasis in expressing (venting?) my irritation about the subject -- nothing more. And I proofread, yes, but I work on ads, not editorial copy. (My paper is much the worse for the fact that they say I don't have the "experience" to work as a copy editor. I regularly see the stuff that their current copy editors miss.) - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I hate myself for wishing that he and the DEA and the school district get sued, but it's hard to stop myself... Either way, we are talking about the kind of idiot who is either stupid enough or intellectually dishonest enough to actually work for the "war on drugs." That tells me something about him. I respect that about as much as I respect someone who worked for the Treasury to enforce Prohibition. You have to be an abject liar in order to attempt to justify what you're doing, telling us that if we just "keep at it," we'll win this "war." What a load of shit. No wonder we get a bullshit story about how this moron shot himself in the leg. I hope he gets gangrene in his balls from the wound. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Not the reporter, the woman who gave comments. She said that her son now wants nothing to do with guns. She did not get comment from any parents who are gun owners (surely there were some there) saying, "Gee, I guess this points out that incompetents can hurt themselves with guns, but it depends on the user." I myself have used and owned guns for 11 years, if you count only firearms (and not BB guns). Add BB guns and it's 24 years or so. I have never shot myself, never almost shot myself, and never had an unintentional discharge. I would say that indicates that guns are not inherently unsafe. Now, consider, if guns are so easy to mishandle, resulting in property damage or injury, why don't we have hundreds of thousands of incidences of this each year, given that in the U.S. there are approximately a quarter billion privately owned firearms, and the total grows by several million each year? The story ends with an implication that I think is hard to miss: the GUN caused the accident somehow -- and since there is no refutation of the response "now I'll stay away from guns," that is, by implication, the "right" conclusion to draw from this incident. And I strongly disagree. If that were true, we should all give up skydiving because we all know someone who has either been hurt or killed while using skydiving equipment and doing skydives. Is that the case? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Unless they stripped him of his license to practice, I believe his name is DOCTOR Octopus. I always hated the Venom storyline in the comics. Honestly, Venom had Spiderman outclassed, and should really have kicked his ass. For similar reasons, I don't understand how they could ever do a "Superman v. Batman" series (Superman would make Batman into a grease spot); nor how they could have made a movie (coming soon) about combat between "Alien v. Predator." Come ON. Humans killed Aliens by the score in the various Alien movies. And the Predator is an expert killer! What kind of lopsided-ass fight will this be?! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Um, maybe the agent should sue the audience member for falsely assuring him that the chamber was empty! How does the notion of, "the gun was never pointed at anyone" square with the FACT that it DID SHOOT SOMEONE, specifically its handler?! Is the illogic of that asinine statement lost on the person making it? So witness told police the agent kept the gun pointed at the floor? If that were not a lie, the hole would be in the fucking floor, not in the agent. And I know guns. A released slide does not so jerk the weapon that it would go from being adequately pointed in a safe direction to being pointed at the leg. With the proper grip, the muzzle barely moves at all when the slide release is performed. This whole story is about "CYA" for this imbecile agent. He should be fired and prosecuted. His negligence, from using live ammunition to having a negligent discharge to injuring himself and costing our federal government money for his medical treatment, all should be punished. His negligence is inexcusable. How the hell can we not hold our federal law enforcement agents to a higher standard than to shoot themselves in the fucking leg in front of a bunch of kids at a gun safety seminar?! Is this not the height of irony?! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

QuoteIn God's eyes, homosexuality is a sin just like what a mugger does is a sin. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love that person. He just doesn't love the person's sin. Whatever it is. This outlines one of my major problems with god, and why I cannot and will not believe in "him." Any god that made all things made the sin, the sinner, and all potential for good or bad, righteousness or sin. So this god made humans, made our sexuality, made any and every possible permutation of how a human being can be, live and behave. And then he wires some people to be heterosexual, and some to be homosexual, and then says that you'll be hellbound if you act homosexually. That's really fuckin' cheap. A god who does that to the people he supposedly "loves" is a real fucktard. It's like saying that only people over 5'8" will be allowed into heaven, and then saying he has nothing against people who are short; all they have to do is act tall. All gay people have to do is deny their very nature, is that it? Gee what a wonderful god this must be. And if you deny that homosexual people are wired that way, just ask yourself who would choose an ostracized, ill-accepted, denigrated, persecuted lifestyle if they had the choice of being the other way. Believing that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice is beyond question, ignorant. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That is sad Jeffrey, and I'll tell you what kind of world it is. It's the kind of world where the kindness you extended to those girls was a noble and dangerous idea, especially letting one of them sit behind you. I'm glad it was nothing, but hitchhikers are bad juju. If someone needs help on the side of the road, I'll stop and give them a hand, but I will not pick up a hitchhiker. Understood. Agreed. However, it was a judgment call; I do not make that type of call often; and it was not actually the most risky call of its type I've made (did this once before with a girl who was almost molested by a guy who was following her about 20 paces behind). I'm not without a knowledge of how to defend myself, or extricate myself from a situation-gone-bad. On the whole, though, your comments are correct. (BTW, the rear passenger was not directly behind me, she was on the right, sitting with her feet across the seat to the left. Not a "lying in wait" sort of position.) - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Exactly! I loved it too. I got taken to it by a friend and it was one of those movies that I had little or no idea what it was about, having not even seen any reviews or ads about it! I was totally blind to what was coming. I love the way the bad guys are given no sympathy, no quarter, no mercy. I've been waiting a long time for a movie like that. Denzel did a great job. Should be award-winning, in my opinion. And little precious blond Dakota Fanning, who played Lupita, should get best supporting actress. At her age, her performance is a true phenomenon! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Context: Noun. 1 : the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning 2 : the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs. Wasn't there a less smarmy, smug and trite way to respond to an honest question? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Yes, I admit it does rile me to a certain extent. That's based in part on the fact that the harm I see religion doing goes well beyond anyone harassing me alone with their dogma. That I can handle. It's when religions as a group do major heinous things around the world in the name of their "god" that a bigger, more "rile-able" problem reveals itself. Christians living their lives with their religions are not a problem to me, though I think it is a life lived on the basis of untruth and fairy tale and myth. (That makes me wish those people would live a more rational-thought/logic-based life.) But when Christians (or any religious people) hold as part of their beliefs the idea that they must extend their reach, convert unbelievers, fix the world to match their religion's view, that's when I get riled. No, I disagree. Imagine a world in which the Christians kept to themselves, knowing about the existence of homosexuals but leaving them alone to do what they want to do consentually. The gays would not come out picking a fight with people who were not seeking to deny them rights, or condemn their "lifestyles." However, the Christians DO come out unprovoked to protest and condemn the gay people, who as a general rule do not make attempts to "turn" Christians into pro-gay people. They just want to be left the hell alone. It's only because they KNOW that Christians are actively trying to turn the public against gays, and trying to get gays to "go straight" that they protest the Christains' presence in a venue where they're holding anti-gay discourse. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Negative. You are supposed to hand the gun over with the slide locked open, with no round in the chamber. In the case of a revolver, you hand it over with no rounds in the chambers, and the cylinder open. It is not proper gun safety to hand over a gun with the action closed. I don't know to whom this guy was going to hand his gun: his audience was kids. In these pathetic times, you'd probably have an anti-gun parent sue someone for letting her kid even just handle an empty gun, for fear it's indoctrinating the kid in the "gun culture." - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I have a question about that. Follow me on this, hopefully someone can understand what I'm describing (since I'm not a gun expert): If I remove the magazine, when a round is already in the chamber, then I pull the slide back, but not far enough to eject the bullet, but enough to see if a round is in the chamber, and I have a finger on the trigger, the safety is off, and I let go of the slide (allowing it to snap back), wouldn't that fire the round? Later on, I'll take out one of my guns and mess around with it to see if this would happen. I believe it would fire. You'd have to have your finger pressing the trigger, not just "on" the trigger, but yes, I believe that if the trigger is actuated while the slide comes forward, the round gets chambered, the slide goes into battery, and the trigger mechanism operates to drop the striker or hammer, and the gun fires. Betcha that's what this moron did. It should cost him his leg and his job, but unfortunately it looks like it will cost him neither. Now a whole bunch of kids will probably be indoctrinated that guns are unduly dangerous even in the hands of "trained professionals." I wonder if anyone is going to go before those kids and explain to them why the nice mr. drug enforcement man was WRONG to do what he did, and caused his own accident? I wonder if anyone will point out to the kids that if the guy had been following the rules of gun safety, he would simply have made a loud bang and a hole in the linoleum. No, for the anti-gun school admin, they're probably much happier having instilled a fear of unpredictable, dangerous guns in their students. If I were a parent there, I'd sue the shit out of the school and the DEA. And I'd donate half the money to the NRA. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Do you understand gun function? It does not come down to whether his audience was correct in telling him, "Yeah, Bob, there's no cartridge in there, go ahead and close the slide." The closing of the slide does not fire the round -- if it did, you'd have an uncontrollable full-auto pistol there. You should be able to safely close the slide on a live round. That is a primary action performed with any semiautomatic gun! It's called "chambering a round"! You can't get ready to fire unless you do that! So either the gun was defective and fired from the act of chambering a round, or the idiot fed, who didn't follow the simple gun safety rule of "always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction" had his finger on the trigger as he released the slide. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Are the gay pride people carrying signs saying, "If you're not gay, you're going to hell?" or "God will smite you unless you're gay"? I didn't think so. That makes the two groups hardly the same. Heh, which version of the bible has this stuff? How do you know that it was in the original bible, and not added into one of the many versions that were written centuries later? Are all bibles written with such abysmal grammar? Like this: ""Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind it is abomination." Leviticus 18:22 (KJV) OHKAY now. If the bible is so much the definitive authority on how we should treat homosexuals, why are you not advocating PUTTING THEM TO DEATH for being gay? The very quote you cited says that they are to be put to death! Are you in disagreement with the course of action laid out by the very bible you quote?! This kind of thing is why I think the bible is a great evil. It was not written by god's own hand; it was written by MEN, flawed like any other men. And it has been passed down so many times and rewritten, reinterpreted, revised, that NO ONE can know how true to god's original supposed word it really is. Even between different Christian sects, there are differences from one's bible to the other's. Who the hell knows which one is authoritative? And even if they all agreed word-for-word, there would still be the issue of whether they were true to the thousands-of-years-ago text. To me, the bible is worse than worthless. It poisons minds, and prevents mankind from living in peace with each other. - - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well, you've struck upon the major fuck-up/flaw in religion: It's not enough for these people to live their lives in accordance with their relgious dogma and try to get themselves into eternal paradise: they take it upon themselves to worry for every other person's sin and soul, regardless of whether those people want their concern. It is truly the height of arrogance. Maybe I've considered believing in your religion, and made an informed decision to not believe in it! If that is the case (and it is) then you are arrogant beyond words to still attempt to foist your beliefs on me, telling me that I'm unknowingly condemning myself to hell. Ever have an annoying person come up to you while you're doing a job, and start showing you, "No, here's how you gotta do that, no wait, do it this way..."? Religious proselytizing is like doing that but a million times more arrogant. I think it would be fun to taunt the protesters, saying something like, "Your god doesn't even exist; you're wasting your lives; you have no soul; you'll be just so much dead meat when you die; you're fucking weak and pathetic" and then leave knowing that there's a good chance they'll go home that day all unsure of themselves and full of self-doubt. Assholes like that deserve to be plagued with doubt, just for being arrogant and proud and condemnatory of others. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Here is the clicky (CNN.com): Idiot Fed shoots self This goes into the "Yeah, right -- only the police should have guns" file. Story: Speaking of Zero Tolerance... We will expel and prosecute a girl who unknowingly had an electric stun gun in the back of her borrowed vehicle, but we don't have zero tolerance for shithead FEDS who accidentally have guns go off in front of CHILDREN?!" Where are the fucking Million Mom Marchers NOW, screaming to get this "trained law enforcement officer" "off the streets"?! Is it lost on them that only by the grace of god was the gun pointed at this moron's leg and not the assembled children?! This shithead deserves to be FIRED for incompetence, and PROSECUTED for endangering the welfare of minors. If there was actually a fault with the gun, it'd be news to me. I dunno if he had a Glock, Smith & Wesson, Sig Sauer or any of the numerous high quality/reliability guns that the DEA issues, but I've never heard of any of those ever firing simply because the slide was closed on a live round. The trigger has to be in a pulled position, period. So IF there was a flaw in the gun, the guy should still have had it pointed at nothing but floor. So even in the case of a defective gun specimen, the fact that he hit his own leg tells me he was being criminally negligent. And they tell us that we civilians are incompetent to have guns, and that only law enforcement and military should have them. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

On Friday, I was at a busy intersection and noticed two girls at the corner who were trying to get a ride from someone passing. I was at a red light, saw them get turned down, and when one of them made eye contact with me, I took sympathy, and jerked my head like "okay, get in." They were polite, appreciative and nice. The one in the front seat was 20 and the one in the rear, her sister, was 19. So I took them onto the highway to drop them where they needed to go, even though it was out of my way. Along the drive, I got their story. They're crack addicts. One of them is supposed to be going to a court-ordered rehabilitation, but instead, they're still on crack. The only good thing about their situation is that at least they're in it together, and are good at watching each other's backs. It is heart-breaking to me to see these two intelligent, pretty, sweet and friendly girls addicted (since the age of 13) to drugs. I hope that something happens to get them out of that lifestyle. I fear that they can't go long the way they are. They are completely lucid and can talk intelligently about their own situation, right down to the moment-to-moment cravings for more crack. I think I have never seen anything so sad in my life. And they told me they can't see their way out of it -- they can't see a life not on drugs, because they say they don't even know how to deal if they're not on something. What kind of world is this? This is right here where I live, not some faraway place I don't even think about! This problem is now so incredibly real to me, like I never thought it could be. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I am so sorry to hear that Paul has died. I've read so much positive regard for him here that I wish I had been able to know him. Sounds like a person who will long be celebrated for his life, loves, and accomplishments. It is surely a shame that he has been taken from this world and from those who love him. I give my condolences to you all. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Seems to me that a lot of this issue is property rights, and if a building owner does not wish to have the negative press of someone splatting after a failed base jump from their property, I can see their side of it. I have never understood why I haven't heard of any DZO buying some property for a tower to be erected so people could do BASE jumps off of it. Once erected, there would be no fuel costs, just maintenance and the cost of operating a light. The type of tower could be specially designed to be suitable for BASE jumping, and it would not be some major microwave-emitting thing that heats up fillings (or so I'm told they do). How about it? Are there any LEGITIMATE BASE structures around? Isn't there money in that? Build a tower once, have people jumping off it for decades. Haul in the cash with very little overhead. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I'm thinking "KEG" oughta cover that. Give the money to someone who can buy it for you. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I'm not a believer. I'm a skeptic. I think that when people want to believe that the cause behind an unexplained occurrence is paranormal, they'll "find" the evidence. For instance, how many times have you had a phone ring and heard no one there, and no one died shortly beforehand? You thought nothing of it. Same thing happens and then you find out someone had in fact died, and now it's the spirit using the phone. Just how does the spirit world interface with the telephone system, anyway? And dogs, dogs alert and bark on all sorts of things. When you DON'T find out that there was a dead person around, you think little of it. When you DO find out that a dead person's proximity was involved, you say, "ooooh, it must have been the dogs sensing the dead person's spirit." I think it's hooey. I'm as eager as anyone else to encounter a ghost and once and for all find out whether to believe in them or not -- and as open to it as I've always been, I've never had a paranormal experience of any kind. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Oh, okay, I just figured out that the "cgi" thing that threw me appears there when you click on an individual listing. It looked like a fraudulent "ebay site" at first. So I guess, yeah, there may be drag queens out there who want just what the guy is sellin'. It takes all kinds. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

What the fuck? Is that even a legitimate ebay site? What is www.cgi.ebay.com? That better not be some sort of predatory site that puts fucked up shit into my computer. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"