Jonnin

  I get reliable coverage on a pre-paid wal-mart phone that costs me around $10 per month.  No frills, I can get "texts" and make phone calls and play blackjack.  And not much else.   It may not work if you go some places... Ive traveled a bit with it (up to DC and to the other side of Alabama and points between, all the way to the east coast too) and had no issues but it loses coverage out in the boonies, always works in a town of any size / population hubs / interstate / etc.   I wouldn't trust it on a 2 week hiking trip thru nowhere.

they can't be expected to insure you for stuff you don't actually own.   They do the exact same thing on every other itemized thing you get insured, from musical instruments to jewelry to art.  They usually want positive ID on the item and appraisal / replacement value.   Its just self defense, too many people have tried to cheat the insurers for "losses" of nonexistent items after a break-in or fire or the like.   Any reputable insurer is going to be able to be trusted with the info.  However, they are subject to the same information hax and issues as any other company, and the occasional crooked employee.  I would print it up and ask them to keep it in paper form only locked in their file cabinet, ironically probably the easiest to steal there but safest as well.

yep, is a good cleaning oil.  I use it to spritz and wipe down my rustable blued guns mostly, and sometimes down the barrel to clean, other times CLP for that.  I have not had any trouble with rem oil on wood finishes, but YMMV.  (I don't use it for that, but it does get on the wood some).

  the hunter's guide thing has details but to the best of MY memory: it would be legal for turkey. it MAY be legal for deer, its unclear (slugs are legal, and I don't recall a bore size minimum requirement) but its seriously underpowered for it.  It might be OK with the 3" shells,  but the standard 410 is wimpy.

All the slugs I see for 410 are listed as .40 caliber.   45 is much, much bigger.   You could probably take a 45 LC case and a .40 cal bullet and make a safe slug load if you had all that stuff but no shotshell reloading equipment.  That's if the 45 even fits at all.  It would require running the 45LC case thru "something" to neck it down, ruining that case for 45 most likely.  All in all it would be a huge amount of trouble with dubious results.  Just buy a box of 410 slugs. 

  wireless is horribad for gaming or reliable real connections.  Its ok for just messing on the web, but it has spurts of high speed and then lags out, but its never consistent (unless you are a grandmaster network guru with an unlimited budget).   Ive tried it off and on for decades and its yet to deliver playable online gaming.    

  Its not that bad but it can be a pain to find the hunter's education class -- a requirement for a license -- at a good location an a reasonable time and date etc.  There just are not a lot of em each year.   Its all done by volunteers and they work it in when they can and where they can find a facility etc.    And again public land is a bit confusing about when you can go where.   All the info is out there but it can be a bit of a chore to get it all set up -- you have the summer, so a few months and it will be season ....

welcome!   the classes and hoops to jump thru for deer season ... youll want to get right on that so as not to miss your chance to get the license.  You will also want to figure out where you can go to hunt way in advance  --- public land is weird, you get stuff like "you can hunt these 2 acres every third Wednesday between date and date".   Best of luck with that.   The 30-30 would be ideal for deer.   The 308 would also work of course, and you could load 308 to perform like 30-30 if you like as well, saving a bit on the shoulder.   Its not the one shot you fire at the deer.  Its the 25 you fire sighting it in the week before that bruises you...

roughly  --- model 15 straight up is '57 - '59 best I could glean from the web.   it can probably hand 38+P in small doses, they were well made back when, but I would not shoot a LOT of them.  Beware of any that were made for 357s ... some 38s are nearly disguised magnums with the online load data sharing sites (it says so if this is the case).  That would always be home-cooked hot loads.  Factory +P should be ok but again, don't shoot thousands of em.  More likely than pressure problems would be hot gas cutting from too many hot loads.    it looks blue to me.  picture is hard to say.   take it apart is easy.  Putting it back together takes 4 or 5 hands but it can be done by anyone with patience and carefulness.   But its likely rusty inside... youll need to polish that off and maybe give it a light protective coating (blue ink pen type) and keep it oiled after.   Odds are all it needs is a de-rusting pass on the internals and a refinish on the external.   Its largely a hunk of metal... it should mostly be ok apart from cosmetic damage.  I think S&W will refinish it, if no one else will. Its hard to find anyone with a real bluing system anymore, EPA has made it unpossible to work with it for small outfits. 

Some models have, or long ago had, a real holster velcroed into the hidden compartment.  You could swap it out if it did not fit, it was one of those black cloth cheapos  that fit a wide variety of guns.  If you can find one like that you  can just put in whatever you are comfortable with, a couple of those Velcro with glue strips and it should stick to the purse and allow a retention draw.

have you tried the usual ammo fix?  Often an under-used gun will start working if you load it with hot ammo, cci mini mags being the recommendation of choice back when you could find them...

  whats wrong with 380?  Its the same as 9, pretty easy to do? I tried 25 acp but the lead bullets I found were the wrong size and the copper plated bullets I found cost as much as a box of loaded ammo.  I tried to squeeze the lead down to fit but it didn't.  The best success I had was with shot (yes, for a shotgun, one of the pellet sizes is exactly 25 sized) but it loaded too short and caused a lot of jams in the pistol.   That has been a nightmare, not because its hard to make the ammo (its a little tricky to sit the bullet on the case, but otherwise its all the same) but because I can't fine a reliable projectile for cheap.   Grumble.

its a good practical size for rifles for weapons of war.   If you look at the rifles in 30 caliber, the majority of them predate 1950 and were created for WW1, WW2, or some of the smaller conflicts of that era.   The number of 30 cal rounds developed since, say, 1980 are very few ...  300 blackout,  338 lapua, and not much else (might be one or two more, but compared to the 40 or so similar rounds in use by 1945...)   A part of it is going with what you know.   I have a rifle that shoots a round developed in the early 1890s that is virtually identical to the 308 in use today.  When something works, it makes sense to mimic it ....  we see that in the 357 sig, attempting to duplicate the performance of a specific load that was considered to be effective.   And the classic .. 30-06, guess what 06 stands for?   The round is over 100 years and going strong.   As for handgun rounds ...  the smaller 30 caliber rounds have largely fallen out of popularity.   9mm is .35 and is still your most popular choice  --- its the same diameter in 380, 38sp, 357 & sig, 9mm for one thing.  9mm is the compromise of choice to get a lot of capacity with a solid hit.   The 7mm 32 cal stuff is still in use for backup guns and pocket pistols but its not as common as it once was.   There is not a lot outside of these ... if you took away ALL the .32 cal and all the .35 cal (actual diameter of the rounds here) from the pool, there would not be much left --- its effectively variations of 5 or so cartridges (parent child cartridge evolution). 

  lol this is kinda like the guys that blow themselves up stealing copper gas lines.  It just isn't worth the risks and trouble sometimes...

welcome, and congrats on your first gun!   I highly advise you to try to avoid that in the future.  Most gun shops have on hand or can get a very wide variety of guns, and TN has many, many gun shops.  I could probably hit 50 shops in one day if I were looking for something specific.   Antiques, collectors, etc you might need to buy online and ship, and once in a while you can actually get a better deal buying online and shipping, but mostly time you paid for both shipping AND FFL transfer fees you would have come out ahead by just ordering it from a local shop.  ESP a fairly common item like a current production taurus...  just saying to shop around a little and you might save that 20 bucks to put on a box of ammo.

Freedom of speech / press are greatly confused by the masses anyway.   The right simply says that government cannot censor you (you see tons of morons that would claim that a forum like this one censored by David is a violation of free speech, and other such nonsense).   You still can't lie in court.  You still can't do false advertising.  You still can't drive someone to suicide with online harassment.   You also can't display *extremely* crude porn in public as "art/free speech".    Flipping the bird... is questionable.   Is it rude and crude enough that subjecting small children to it in public is acceptable in the name of free speech?  One could argue that both ways -- same as the neverending argument about what is art and what is porn, or closer to home, what is art / entertainment and what is causing people to go on shooting sprees (movies, video games, etc).   I know if I had a 3 year old, I would not want them seeing people flipping the bird nonstop in public, and I do not consider a ban on extremely graphic language or symbols in public to be "censorship" so long as those same things are allowed at "adult" gatherings etc.   Kinda like prime time TV ...  to me flipping the bird in public is on par with allowing a donkey show at 7PM on cartoon network, and regulation of such things is not "government censorship" to me.   As for flag burning, go for it.  Saying that flag burners indicate that we have a problem is not threatening ---  it could be, or he could be stating the obvious that America is full of anti-American idiots --- a very high % of them, actually, and has been for over 50 years.  That indicates a problem to me, too!  I support their right to burn it or whatever, and I support the right of that marine to call them down for it too.  Long as no one harms anyone else, its all fine by me.

disturbingly, it looks almost just like it.

  copper is being sold as "lead free" for people to get a warm fuzzy about protecting the environment while spending $5 per round on ammo.   Some of it is flat nosed, some of it is a form of hollow point --- its not at all being sold as armor piercing.  NO one is selling needle sharp hardened copper slugs which would probably cut kevlar but not really do anything against plates/improved armor.  The light weight of copper and brass will reduce over penetration.  Hardness is only ONE factor of ballistics -- a lead slug that does not break up on impact will overpen MORE -- basic physics -> momentum.   Brass is "supposedly" capable of making "super accurate" bullets for precision shooters.  I have no comment on this, but here again, the legit use is not making needles either, they are just making standard bullet shapes or aerodynamic shapes.     Neither is really *that good* at making *seriously* illegal ammo IMHO.  Get some hard steel and 30% lead filled backside with a wash-on coating to protect the barrel a bit and allow rifleing to bite a little.  Its not that hard to figure out or do.   Copper and brass are both too soft.  And any of it will have issues with being too lightweight if not careful.  This is obvious enough that I don't think mentioning it is really enabling any idiots,  and mentioning it is not saying its a good idea to do.  I am absolutely against anyone actually doing this. 

I don't care about looks, I have my pretty guns, but I prefer function.  I have a beautiful .22 auto that cant fire 3 times without a jam (S&W escort micro).  I have other pretty guns that work but I wouldn't want to carry/scratch/use too much.  This thing is about as attractive as any other plastic pistol, which is "not very".  If that trigger is short and light, it might find a home since most of the small 9s have hard to use triggers, if it works now.   They will have a hard time selling it after the awful release though --- I would expect a full warranty including shipping paid both ways if I were to buy one now, after that mess.

  To be fair, development of any new tech is expensive unless someone just has a genius moment out of the blue, which does happen but its rare.   It took a while and was expensive to develop the less efficient versions too, for most stuff.   The system is broken, but its not because of R&D costs, its because untenable and incomplete technologies are pushed into the market rather than allowed to stand on their own.   Take the toxic light bulbs... LED was clearly the way to go, but they rushed to make the stupid toxic twisty ones.  Same for ethanol ... we can make a better fuel other ways (propane/butane/methane/etc can run an engine, and it burns clean) but they pushed this crap on us, ruined countless engines, drove up the price of corn/beef/chicken/everything, and still failed to lower the cost of gas or significantly help the problems, and it does not burn all that cleanly to boot.   Let me preach on it... if someone could make a fuel that cost $1/gallon equivalent without costing anything to make it work in existing cars and burned clean, it would be praised by everyone, even the die-hards here.   Such a miracle product would *SELL ITSELF* on the market at a profit *WITHOUT LAWS TO FORCE USE OF IT or PRESSURE TO USE IT*.   That is how the system is supposed to work -- someone makes something *that is actually better* and it becomes profitable/great/wonderful/something for both the inventor/producer and the consumers.    The problem with the system is, again, the pressure / laws/ BS that forces half-baked ideas on the public before they are actually usable -- which is a combination of government muckery and social pressure (leading to companies to buckle towards making/selling/using the immature tech).     Agree about life cycle.  The prius just turned 10 years old and has not yet had to have its battery replaced but its "due in the near future" and they check it a couple times a year to see if it needs it yet.    Making them is indeed a nasty process, batteries have always been nasty.    Probably true about the yard tools.  /shrug again to me its pure economics.  If you can hand me something that saves me real money while working as good or better, I will buy/use it.  If not, stuff it.

  That is an interesting issue.  Need a lawyer on that --- the blasted lawyers did not study grammar and use their own rules about english.    To me, and in normal english, that breaks down to   Prohibits ( list of stuff) during violent crimes.   The comma to me would be following the rules for a "list of items" -- its the same as if the thing read: "TN prohibits solid copper bullets during violent crimes"    to me.   Replace "solid copper bullets" with "excessively long and wordy list of crap" and the grammar/sentence structure is the same flow/meaning.    But again, that would be just standard english, which is not what lawyers use, they use a mix of wrong grammar combined with archaic usage from the 1750s.   I do not know that it IS outdated, if I am correct, since the thing you found would then only apply to violent felons and not normal people.    If it applied to everyone all the time and I am wrong, it would have to be outdated, inaccurate, or buried/ignored since the bullets ARE sold here in TN.

  The charge in the battery comes from braking, a significant portion of it anyway.   It is also powered somewhat by the gas engine, same as a normal battery.  Its not like you plug it in every night or something --- you don't do that.   You can plug in to top it off but that is rare and more of something you need to do if it sat unused for months.   Its not about saving the stupid world for everyone that has one.   It simply costs less to operate under many conditions, ESP. stop and go town-traffic type driving.   It gets close to double the MPG of a macho v8 truck under "trip to the grocery store" type driving habits.     I could drive my dad's old galaxy 7 liter which has a black hole in its gas tank and STILL be more green than these soccer moms in a prius anyway -- but I can't afford that kind of gas at 2 bucks and up / gallon.    Their kids .. grandkids ...etc will burn more gas than I could even in that monster.   I could waste everything I could afford to and still outgreen the ones that whelped lol.  And if you want to see the blank stare... explain THAT to one of these regressive greenie types.

  And, no, it does NOT.   It says that if you are committing a crime, you can't use illegal ammo.   If you are not committing a crime, the rest of this paragraph is null and void, right?    I suspect that if you shot a cop with a needle sharp 223 solid brass or copper round and it cut thru Kevlar and killed him you would be buried under the jail.    If shot shot a piece of paper with the same round,  no one would give a rat's rear.

  Go for it.  Prius represented 50% gas expense and a large tax write off for us.

Armor piercing ammo is banned.   I am not aware of ANY action that would define solid copper as armor piercing BUT it could have happened.   The TN laws do not TO MY knowledge specify ANY ammo by material or such, but use vague terms such as armor piercing.   Hunting laws give more specifics about what you may use on which animals, but the criminal laws... are so vague that its unclear what is and what is not a pistol, let alone the ammo ...   for what its worth I have seen full copper bullets sold in TN including a weird type of 4 - section expanding round.   At places that would probably not have sold it had it been illegal to do so ... legit stores etc.    If you found a legal statute / law, a link would be helpful.   I searched and found some gibberish from 2011 and 2010 about the BAFTE banning it federally for a couple of specific rifle calibers.  And some talk of maybe a ban (unclear if it passed or is real) on solid brass bullets.  And not much else -- none of it official.