JayC

The news article is a mess, who can tell exactly how many people were involved and what each of them did... As a general rule I believe most law abiding citizens with a HCP are trying to do the right thing most of the time, until we get an article that explains who did what to whom, I'm going to reserve judgement. I'd encourage everybody talking about retraining, hold fire until we have more details. But, I'll point out that confronting somebody you see committing a crime is LEGAL in TN, and if in the process of that the criminal pulls a gun on you, you'd be legally justified under our 'stand your ground' law to use deadly force. Whether it's smart of not, I don't think it's likely we'll see any criminal charges against the HCP holder, unless something else not reported happened.

That sounds like a voluntary admittance, so he should be good to go, let us know what happens please. These forms are pretty complicated, but as a general rule if you'd marking YES to one of those questions it's going to cause you to be denied.

I agree, but if the stay was voluntary, a simple call to Lisa, and filing an amended renewal form should be enough. In theory the state would then have to prove you were ineligible... but TDOS does some very stupid stuff that probably isn't legal on a regular basis.

Not unless there is something more to this story not disclosed in the original post. The way I read her post, her husband was prescribed Lyrica by a doctor, and she didn't indicate that he was addicted or abusing it, only that he had an adverse side effect and stopped taking it. Use of a controlled substance prescribed by a Doctor is not a factor that can cause you to be denied a permit, or even the purchase of a firearm. (With the exception of pot, but there are 4 people who are prescribed pot through a federal program who can legally own firearms). So unless he is currently unlawfully using Lyrica, and/or is addicted to using Lyrica (or some other drug) then he wouldn't be denied a permit or have his rights to possess firearms revoked. I really think his issue is #13A, he either marked yes when he shouldn't, or he was involuntarily committed and won't be able to get his permit back.

Look, we probably should break up the current cable and telephone companies like we did AT&T years ago. Force the companies to separate last mile infrastructure away from TV channels, movie studios, and copyrights holder parts of their business. This would create a free market in the space of entertainment, while treating the data services part of the business as a simple utility much like how we treat land-line telephone, electric and water/sewer companies or coops. Doing this would remove a lot of the 'profit' motive from messing with access. But, that would require a federal anti-trust lawsuit by the DOJ and would take 20 years to work it's way through the federal court system like the break up of AT&T did. Until then, we should regulate ISP's as common carriers, since they can only operate by granting of public easements or licenses, just like other public utilities. Otherwise we're all headed down a very bad path of walled gardens that we're forced into and will in the long run kill innovation on the Internet. Trust me, I don't like to admit defeat, under the best of times the government in a necessary evil, and we're far from the best of times, but there is no other solution to this problem other than the FCC regulating basic common carrier rules onto last mile ISP's. And unlike Crowder, I worked in the 90's as VP of Operations for an ISP, before transitioning to Computer Security for the last 18 years of my career. I understand just how bad the Deep Packet Inspection hardware Comcast and other ISP's are using could be turned against customers to censor the Internet we've had for the last 25+ years. And while Google, Facebook, and other should scare you a lot, last mile ISP's are the real immediate risk to censorship that we face today, and the only legal roadblock to such behavior was just removed.

I doubt there is anything they could do, if he answer YES to #13A they're going to deny him period. Either he answered #13A incorrectly, which means he should appeal the denial, and submit a corrected form... or he answered it correctly and there is nothing anybody can do to get him a permit.

I like Crowder a lot, he's really funny and insightful, but understands this regulation about as much as my 6 year old, he uses the if liberal companies like Facebook and Google love it, I should be against it as his main line of logic. Which is a straw-man argument, because it's liberal companies on both sides of the argument. Again, using cellphone companies (which we only have 4) when compared to broadband is another straw-man argument. But, since you brought up the argument of data throttle and free market pressures forcing Wireless Providers to change, they didn't. They're still throttling wireless traffic, violating the principals of Net Neutrality, and there is nothing anybody can do about it legally. All 4 of the main providers are doing the same thing, there is no alternative where throttling isn't in place. So how are those 'free market' forces working? You live in Nashville, if you're lucky you have 2 broadband providers, Comcast and AT&T, but there is a 50% chance you only have 1. There is no free market when you have liberal company #1 and liberal company #2 providing service, and no regulation in place to prevent misbehavior by either. If your home phone company (land line) started to block Sprint cellphone numbers, what market forces can you and other customer bring to the table? You can't switch home phone providers there is only 1 LEC in your area, just like for most people in Nashville, they only have 1 (or maybe 2) broadband Internet Providers. But your LEC home phone provider can't do that, because they're regulated by the FCC and are forced to follow common carrier rules. So, if there are no free market forces to change these government backed monopolies and duopolies, we should push the regulation to the local or state level right because it's a good principal of small government conservatives? But, we're in a catch 22, since the Internet is by it's nature an Interstate Telecommunications Service, FCC rules (or lack of rules) preempt state and local government from regulating them. So, there aren't free market forces to correct both wired and wireless providers into not misbehaving, and we can't regulate them at the local, or state level into not misbehaving... Our only option is to regulate them via the FCC, which is what we did since ~2005 under both republican and democrat administrations. As for using 'violation of existing law' that is what the FCC just voted to remove the existing regulation under which ISP's have been fined and sued in the past. And the next question you're going to ask, is well before 2005 there wasn't any problem how did we survive then? Well two things to keep in mind, first before 2000 if you asked ANY ISP attorney they would have told you ISP's were already covered by the plain reading of Title 2 of the Communications Act of 1934 and they were required to follow 'common carrier' regulations. Second, between 2003 and 2007 we started to see ISP's violating common carrier rules, and the FCC started to step in and remind these ISP's they weren't allowed to violate common carrier status. So, how exactly do we prevent the blocking of websites by wired based ISP's if we don't regulate them at the federal level with the FCC?

So, here is the tough question... Was your husband stay in the hospital an 'involuntary commitment'? IANAL, If your husband went to the hospital voluntarily, then he should have answered NO to Question #13A - see https://www.tn.gov/content/tn/safety/handgunmain/handgunfaqs.html#Q10 If your husband went to the hospital under an involuntary commitment, then he would be prevented for life from getting an HCP, and most likely be a 'prohibited person' under federal law from possessing any firearms for the rest of his life. There seems to be some exception depending on the verbiage of the commitment, having to do with 'substantial likelihood of serious harm' and a 7 year sunset. If it was a 'voluntary' visit, then I'd just fill the form out again, answer #13A as NO (see the link above), and if denied find a lawyer to appeal the denial. If it wasn't voluntary, I'd probably find a good lawyer and get a professional option on how this limits your husband's firearm rights. Let us know how it turns out please.

I'm sorry but you're missing understanding what the FCC did, and where the government backed monopolies get approved. First, the telephone and cable companies didn't 'invent' the commercial Internet, lots of small companies that were already pushed out of the market 15+ years ago did... MindSpring, AOL, etc provided dial-up service to end users, and started the Internet revolution. These companies received no government money to do this.... They provided the critical 'last mile' of service to end users when nobody else would. At some point around 2000, telephone companies, and cable companies saw an opportunity to leverage their 'last mile' infrastructure to dominate the ISP space, and did just that. The rest of the Internet is mostly 'unregulated' and is doing very well today. 4 years ago it cost $1 per month per Mbps of service at a data center in Dallas, today it's around $0.15 per month per Mbps, so the free market is alive and well. Every major city has an 'Internet Exchange' that is a privately run organization that provides peering services to anybody at cost, to make exchanging data between companies easier and cheaper. Most ISP's considered themselves 'common carriers' under the FCC rules regarding telephone companies, and they didn't attempt to mess with customers traffic. But around 2003-2005 some of these large companies got caught violating common carrier rules.. In one case a telephone company in NC blocked all traffic to Vonage, to prevent customers from switching away from their more expensive telephone service. Comcast got caught 'forging' Internet traffic to prevent some customers from downloading, or using VPN technology. By 2007 Comcast was caught intentionally slowing down Netflix traffic, and when customers called to complain, they recommended their own more expensive service instead. At this point the FCC stepped in to try and prevent these large cable and telephone companies from leveraging their monopolies, to create walled gardens where they got to pick winners and losers in the market space. They started by making ISP's follow basic telecommunication company rules called Title 2 which had been in place for 50+ years. Verizon and Comcast fought these regulations in court all the way to SCOTUS, the ruling basically said the internet wasn't a 'Telecommunication Service' (yet another example of why 60+ year olds in black robes make bad rulings) and therefore couldn't be regulated under Title 2, but the FCC did have the authority to regulate under Title 1. The FCC following the courts ruling moved the regulation under Title 1, and nicknamed it Net Neutrality. All this regulation said was that ISP's must treat all traffic the same, nothing more. We've had this rule in place with telephone companies for decades, where telephone companies were required to treat all calls the same. The rule guarantees that if you call a Sprint Cellphone from your AT&T land line the call with go through. This is called 'common carrier', and has been around since before AT&T was broken up into the baby bells. We've all see problems recently where conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment content is being censored on Youtube, Facebook, and other giant social media sites, because of liberal pressure (internally and externally), today there is NOTHING stopping Comcast (or any other ISP) from blocking access to websites they don't like, or to bend to public pressure to block websites that aren't socially acceptable. I'm not a huge fan of Youtube and Facebook, but I can choose not to use those sites... I only have 1 option for broadband Internet, and if they start blocking Internet sites, there is nothing that I as a consumer can do other that turn the Internet off.... Which in today's business environment would make me unemployed. I'm as libertarian as they come, but until we remove these government backed monopolies, the government should force them to behave as 'common carriers'.

Except in this case these are government backed monopolies that you can't compete with no matter how much money you have. Look at what happened to Google in Nashville, even though the government bent over backwards to let them come in and compete, AT&T and Comcast were able to slow them down and block them at every turn.

Your costs are going up because you provider doesn't have any competition. I can buy bandwidth much cheaper from a data center today than I could just 3 or 4 years ago, 85% cheaper. But Comcast, AT&T, and Charter keep raising their rates even though their costs are going down. Also remember that Net Neutrality was passed by Republicans in 2007/2008 when the FCC labeled Internet Providers a Telecommunications Service under Title 2 of the Communications Act of 1934. And basically started to treat ISP's as 'common carriers' just like Telephone Companies have been regulated for the last 50+ years. Comcast and Verizon went to court, and got themselves exempted under Title 2, so the Obama FCC dropped the 'Net Neutrality' regulations to comply with the courts ruling. Basically, net neutrality has been in place since the Internet was created, except for a 2 or 3 year period when ISP's started to behave badly, and the FCC (both republicans and democrats) tried to enforce 'common carrier' status on them. And common carrier is a good thing, it basically says you must treat all 'traffic' equally no matter the destination.

Most folks here know I'm about as libertarian, small government as anybody. But, net neutrality was a good thing, and was needed regulation. First thing most people don't realize is this regulation has been around for decades, since before AT&T was broken up. It was called 'common carrier' back then, and has worked out well for us over the last 50+ years. Telephone companies were basically required to connect all calls regardless of the destination. So if you were an MCI long distance customer you didn't need to worry about BellSouth dumping your call on the floor because you weren't paying their high long distance rates. Why do we need this regulation? Because we don't have a free market. In TN most citizens have a single or at most two broadband providers. These are government backed monopolies or duopolies. You can't enter the market place without government approval, and often times even if you get that approval the telephone and cable company fight tooth and nail to prevent you from having fair access to the public easements. Don't believe, go read the games Comcast and AT&T played with Google Fiber in Nashville. We have proof it's not a free market, when we look at bandwidth prices at data centers around the country... These prices have been falling for the last 10 years. Just 3 years ago the going rate was $1 USD per Mbps of bandwidth, today it's $0.15 USD per Mbps. Has your cable internet bill be going up or down? Of course up, and it's cheaper and cheaper for Comcast to provide you service today than just 3 years ago. The only reason they get away with these price hikes? Because you have no other choice. Also, we've caught last-mile ISP's doing bad things with traffic over the last 10 years. We've caught ISP's blocked VOIP providers to prevent customers from leaving their lucrative telephone service. We've caught Comcast blocking traffic and then lying to customers about it. We've also caught Comcast slowing down Netflix traffic and when you called to complain they recommended a streaming service they had an ownership stake in that wasn't intentionally slowed down. So, we have government backed monopolies, who was violating the 'common carrier' status quo of the last 50 years, there isn't a free market, and we've finally removed all limitations on them from building a walled garden that you can't escape from. And that is a good thing? Just remember, the 'evil' net neutrality was also preventing these last mile ISP's from blocking websites such as the NRA, TGO, and other right wing 'extremists' sites. Don't be surprised that the folks who are pressuring YouTube to take down conservative videos, don't start putting pressure on Comcast, Charter and AT&T to start blocking the 'terrorist' websites of the NRA etc.

I was commenting on the need for the device to be in space instead of on a missile once it's in the atmosphere... Agreed, they can for sure reach space. Unlikely, the ISS is high enough to above the zone where EMP's are generated, possible but very very unlikely. Much easier to blow a nuke up in the path of the ISS and kill them from radiation when they pass through it.

Yes, EMP threat requires the device to be detonated in space. While it's true there would be a EMP present in a traditional ballistic missile denotation, it's well within the 'kill' line of the device itself. Otherwise stated, if your watch dies from an such an EMP, you're dead anyway.

Well, a polar orbit from North Korea could place the device coming over the United States from the Gulf of Mexico, where we have no missile defense coverage. Our missile defense coverage is designed to destroy missiles in 2 of 3 phases of flight, the boost phase when the missile is launching out of the atmosphere, and the terminal phase when it's either about to or entering the atmosphere. While we have shot down a satellite in orbit before, there are a couple of issues that pose an 'issue' for doing so in this case. We had very accurate orbital data on those satellites because first we owned them, and second they had been in space for weeks or months and were able to gather very accurate data ahead of time. Second, we haven't shot a satellite down at the height of the above example. So to recap: 1. Our current missile defense system designed to destroy incoming ballistic missiles has a very poor track record in real world tests, with a 50% hit rate. 2. It only covers missiles on a ballistic path from China and Russia. For example there is no coverage along the east coast or the gulf of mexico. 3. We've never demonstrated the ability to knock satellites down in this type of orbit, with as little information as we'd have, and at the altitude of such an attack. Could we have some type of un-demonstrated ability yes, but these systems are complicated and big, it would be VERY hard to hide testing in this domain from the public, or other major powers.

How so to which part? The real threat is from HA-EMP devices placed into orbit, or that those devices are at an altitude that would make shooting them down much much harder, or that we should be cautious about starting a shooting war where 22-24 million people live within range of Norks massive artillery and mobile SCUD launchers?

I'd didn't say it was a 'great achievement', only that they demonstrated the ability to place 2 satellites into polar orbits, which is harder technically than placing satellites in a more traditional geocentric orbit (requiring more delta-v). It also hints at their goals, a sun-synchronous orbit while good for spy satellites, is also good way to place a 'device' over the Central US in such a way as to render us defenseless to such an attack with our currently deployed anti-missile technology. Also remember this latest launch which could have easily placed a satellite into orbit, was launched from a mobile launcher which would make hunting them down much much harder. Norks are a major problem, and we should be cautious about taking military action that might result in 10,000's of deaths in SK, and could result in an EMP attack against the home land.

That just isn't accurate, based on publicly known information on their weapons program. Here are some highlights: 1. They have put 2 satellites into stable polar orbits. They are higher than the space station. This is no small feet and only a handful of countries have the ability to do this. 2. While the distance laterally on their missiles isn't very far, it's the distance in height that is telling. If you throw a baseball straight up in the air and it reaches a height of 100 feet and lands 15 feet from you... Do you think you can throw the same baseball more than 15 feet at a 45 degree angle? 100 feet at the same 45 degree angle? Or much farther? 1&2 show the ability to lift a payload into orbit, and on a ballistic course that could easily impact CONUS. They're missing 2 more items needed to target us directly, 1. they need a reentry vehicle that can protect the payload, they haven't shown the ability to do this. 2. They need the ability to make mid course and reentry course corrections, to properly target city sized targets. BUT, the real threat is from a simple High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse, they have demonstrated all the need technology to pull off this type of attack, there is little that we could do to stop the attack, accurate targeting isn't needed, and the results would be devastating to the American people. One device detonated over Lincoln, Neb could disable all 3 power grids within the United States, for days, and would leave a large area of the country without power for months. It would kill far more people than a single missile hitting a major US city, which is pretty hard to do accurately.

I love my 5.11 soft shell, and if you hunt around you can often find them on sale for under $80.

Which stat do you want a source for? As I said, mass shootings are a rounding error in the total number of firearm deaths each year, trying to legislate away 100-200 deaths per year in a country of 330 million people is not a going to work. Most of the murders are driven by drugs, either turf related, or trying to steal to afford the drugs themselves. Coffee costs less than $50 per kilo for good high quality coffee, yet in TN cocaine costs ~$32,000 per kilo. If we made coffee that expensive overnight, we'd have more petty crime trying to get their coffee fix Oh yeah and it makes the world less stable, and causes our rights to be eroded here at home. Ask any police officer or former police officer here, how much of the crime they see day to day is driven by drugs either directly or indirectly, it's a huge problem. I'm a lifetime member of the NRA, and every time they call asking for a donation, I hang up and give to the GOA. I come to gun forums and complain because the only way to change the NRA is for NRA members to see the problem and demand the organization change.

Can't fix a mental illness But, we need to be rational and point out just how much of a waste the background check system is, and why it should be ended.

The background check system costs ~500 million per year, adding about $100 per firearm on average. In 2009, one of the last years we have stats for, ~6 million background checks were performed. The FBI denied a little over 72,000 of those background checks, and referred most of them to the ATF, where the vast majority of them are deemed to be false positives. In the end the ATF found 62 cases that they thought were criminal violations, and the vast majority of those weren't good enough for the DOJ to prosecute. So we have a system that costs lots of money, where 98.8% of purchases go through with no problem, of the remain purchases only 4700 are investigated the rest are false positives. And then when those 4,700 are looked at only 62 meet the criminal statues to be prosecuted under federal law. 62 out of 6+ million background checks! 99.99+% of purchases aren't criminal, yet we have to waste 500 million a year on the background check system, and all of the expense complying with it. What other right protected in the Bill of Rights can the government take away from us? Require us to ask for permission every time we want to make a purchase? None! And yes, I see no reason to keep the NFA at all, rifles aren't be used to commit crimes, if we repealed the NFA tomorrow, machine guns wouldn't be used to commit crimes in any great number. There were ~11,000 people killed by firearms in 2010, the vast majority with a pistol. Less than 2% (way less) were killed in a mass shooting... ~12% killed by police officers (somewhere between 1100 and 1500 per year)... These are all sad numbers but are footnotes to the real problem.... The failed war on drugs, the VAST majority of gun violence in this country is drug related, make drugs legal, and allow the market to set their price, and the rate of crime including gun violence would drop drastically. But with all of that said, crime is down to 1950's levels even without getting rid of the war on drugs... even with all these crazy mass shootings. Almost half of what it was in 1992... Starting in 1992 shall issue gun permits started to become the law of the land, and access to carry firearms by law abiding citizens increased, crime has decreased. Most mass shootings take place in gun free zones, and the vast majority of mass shootings are stopped by a 'good guy' with a gun. We should be making it easier for 'good guys' those law abiding citizens to have access at all times to firearms, not figure out more ways to waste tax payer money on programs that don't stop crime, only make us 'feel good' that we're doing something to stop it.

The NRA should take a zero tolerance policy of new gun laws, and should be working to repeal as many of these silly laws as possible... instead they're providing cover for Republicans to vote to waste more money on gun laws that only impact law abiding citizens. And remember how we got the Hughes Amendment? A late night voice vote adding the machine gun ban to the FOPA of 1986, which the NRA allowed to go through.

The background check system is a complete waste of money and time. The people causing these mass shootings are going to: 1. Pass the background check anyhow. 2. Commit another serious crime to gain access to firearms. All the background check system does is waste the time and money of otherwise law abiding citizens... It's not fixable, so why throw good money after bad on a 'feel' good system?

Negotiate Rights Away strikes again!