cyclops

I agree with Moxieman. Find a blanket that you like and then have a one-off ebroidery shop to customize it. I used to do this to cool-weather jackets because the 'official' stuff just doesn't fit right. BSA isn't going to worry about something you don't sell and keep at home anyway.

In case you didn't notice, my question was a 'yes' or 'no' answer question. You didn't answer. You responded but you didn't answer the question. SeattlePioneer glibly made a 6-word characterization of my faith that he may have thought was cute or he may have thought was fair but it was neither. For the 30-odd years I've been a UU I've suffered this kind of prejudice from members of nearly every other faith in this area but I didn't expect to read it from a so-called 'scouter'. To read it from a scouter makes it all the more offensive - I am offended. I believe that I have never made any such mischaracterization of anyone else's faith in these forums and I think it is not too much to ask to be treated with similar respect. Evidently, since you agreed with him, you think it IS too much to ask. As for my understanding of the issue, I was involved with the issue from day 1 and have followed all of it closely over these many years. If your bloated opinion of your own authority is warranted in some areas, I seriously doubt that it applies to this topic.

LOL, I blame all of it on smart phones.

I hope a moderator will dump this miscogynistic bad joke and demonstration of poor taste. I add that my feminist friends propose no such thing. To respond to Howarthe, we have never used swords during my involvement. Perhaps that is due to some past complaint or maybe we just never thought of it. Anyway, what we DO use is a staff that is a poorly done (but recognizable) imitation of Gandalf the White's beautiful staff. No dubbing, just a raise of the staff, then brought down hard enough to sound like a loud drum beat on the wooden floor. It seems sufficient.

Would you agree that it is unscoutlike or 'incorrect' behavior to disparage someone else's faith with a statement based in prejudice? I add in response to gumbymaster that my take on it was that BSA was attempting to limit the UUA's First Amendment right to say whatever it wanted in its own literature. I can't believe that all this hasn't been hashed out long ago in these forums back when these things happened. I'm going to dive into the archives if I can figure out how, and see what's there.

Same as Fred, our state doesn't require registration. There is no title, just a bill of sale. It is 'owned' by the CO.

LOL, I bet these little tykes know more scoutcraft that anyone on these boards and they've never even attained Tenderfoot.

I have to agree with Merlyn's response to your post. He was asked to cite something as if he had claimed its existence (a fact not in evidence, so-to-speak) and you came in demanding the answer as well...which makes no sense at all, especially after he had just written that he had said several times that their policy did NOT say that. I think the moderator might want to take a little more time, and maybe a deep breathe or two, before moderating.

Yep, and I was thinking about the possiblities for Halloween! Awesome!

One of them might be mine.

Plus you can use it in a boat without accidentally shooting holes in the hull, lol. But snakes and gators don't seem to notice the noise. Works great on seagulls. I knew you knew...

That was, ahem, a joke. But the best noisemaker I've ever seen to repel a bear (and just about everything else, including fellow campers) is one of those boat horns. That is as loud and obnoxious as anything I've ever heard.

In the spirit of that 'other' thread, if you're carrying concealed you can use even a tiny 22 to take care of business. Just make the bear stand really still while you move close enough to aim carefully at its eye. That'll take care of things. I'm joking of course. But I think the NPS site has the better advice. Except there was one time when I did have to run like heck. I could see a low hanging tree branch that I was pretty sure I could grab and swing up into. The trouble was that the bear was closing on me faster than I was closing on that tree branch. It was a realy tense situation, 'pucker factor' was high.

Actually, I think I responded positively to Stosh's question. I stop to sleep and sometimes I start replies again (like now) once I'm home from work and have time to do it. But for the sake of these fantasy arguments, OK, let's go with Jpstodwftexas's crazy person attacking a scout camp dining hall. Let's assume that you and Stosh, maybe other leaders, are carrying concealed when the shooting starts. Stosh is already in the dining hall enjoying his salad when he hears the unmistakable sound of gunfire and screams outside the entry door. There are multiple shots outside where people are coming and going from the building and he reacts quickly getting his boys down on the floor and at the same time pulls his piece and levels out at the door, ready to fire. Sure enough a person charges through the door, gun drawn, pointing all around. Stosh ends this with a single head shot and hopes that he can somehow minimize the emotional impact on his boys and the others in the room. But now other boys are screaming in terror and grief. They are gathered around the man whose brains are now splattered on the wall above where he went down, blood spreading over the floor. When the crazy man first attacked, another adult who was also carrying concealed instantly engaged the shooter and in an exchange of gunfire, he wounded the attacker multiple times but the attacker kept calling to his 'accomplice' so the adult decided to check inside the dining hall just in case there was another perp. He had his brains blown out by mistake by Stosh who mistook him as the original shooter. That man's scouts watched their adult leader have his brains spewed over the wall and then die right in front of them. Stosh is thinking...but...but....and he too is devastated by the mistake. OR, it might not be Stosh but rather some scared leader who just got their carry permit with almost no training at all and they have just made a tragic error. That's maybe even more plausible. This is just as plausible as the fantasy of Stosh or some other 'hero' stopping the crazy shooter... especially IF there are multiple concealed carry adults who don't know about all the 'guns in the room'. Other variants amount to adults even less trained than Stosh accidentally shooting boys or other adults when they accidentally fire their weapons in nervous reactions. These 'hero' scenarios in which some hero with a gun stops a tragic crime are less and less plausible as we multiply the 'heros' in the room who are carrying, especially if they're anything like the yahoos I've observed at summer camps. Yes, a LEO might be present. A LEO would be a very different matter. Much more highly trained. Much more analytical in the moments of crisis. Much less likely to kill innocent persons. He's a pro. The others are engaging in fantasy.

Hey, this is MY fantasy, now! 'Popular'? Rap would sure keep me away.

OK, you must really be into humane kills. We'll have a trough full of beer waiting for them and when they pass out drunk, the boys can slit their throats with their pocket knives.

You didn't like my solution to the pigs? OK, we'll go with AK 47s instead, or something equivalent. That better? Whatever it is needs to be autoloading, rapid fire, need to spew as much lead as possible in the shortest time.

Yes, it was answered in a manner of speaking. You drew a blank and so did Krampus. Jpstodwftexas was silent so I take that as another blank. It's safe to conclude that we'd all be talking about "that famous incident" if it ever had happened in over 100 years of scouting. It didn't. But it is possible to imagine all kinds of implausible situations in which all the solutions look like they require discharge of a firearm. When 'Be Prepared' translates to firepower, every problem begins to look like it needs a bullet solution. Got a marauding gaggle of ravenous wild pigs? AR15s with large cap magazines are the ticket. A charging bear? My choice would be a 375 H&H Mag, no compromise. Drug-crazed terrorists? 44 mags....lots of them. Sound ridiculous? There's a reason for that.

I'm using the scenario set by jpstodwftexas: some psycho starts shooting up a mess hall full of boy scouts. That is the person to whom I originally posed the question. But you and Krampus seemed to want to respond to it.

Are you comparing airlines to scout dining halls? If you know of a single such attempt to commit mass murder in a scout camp dining hall, I'd like to know. Stosh, given enough time almost anything becomes likely. But that was true for the entire >100 years of scouting so far as well. Did we allow mass murder in dining halls because we didn't carry concealed during that first 100 years? During that same time (referring to the comment by Krampus) there have been plenty of airline hijackings. And yet no one has taken over a dining hall to dive it into a skyscraper, not even a single time.

We routinely let our grandsons (age 4 and 6) run 'wild' in the 10 acres or so of forest behind our home. They enjoy trying to push over dead trees and dig through rotten logs to try to find all kinds of insects. The terrain is very steep and once in a while they topple over and roll a ways. Then that turns into 'sport' and they eventually return covered with dirt and leaves and ravenously hungry. We have no concerns whatsoever about their safety, short of brier scratches or perhaps a bruise or two. They are loud and active and any self-respecting wildlife will avoid them like the plague. I'm looking forward to the day they're old enough to turn loose on the 20,000 acres of forest just across the road near the lake.

I've seen billboards in the past but only the faintest memories of any kind of television commercials. Mostly we just stay visible in the community and that 'says it all'.

Yeah, what resqman and Stosh describe is pretty much how it works here as well. And like Stosh, this unit does not have ISAs for the same reasons. Shrug it off and start over with the new unit. I wish the best of success to your son. (How did this get stuck in I&P?)

And that's the arms race, isn't it, until everyone realizes that the problem can't be solved by adding more and more arms. "...if hardly anyone had a gun?" Around these parts there are daily shootings, not all fatal, in which mostly relatives shoot each other for different reasons. The obvious answer is to have fewer relatives, right? Most of these involve alcohol (potential solution there), illegal drugs (and here I confess that if they'd just all kill each other I might not shed a tear). But remove illegal drugs, alcohol abuse, and a tendency to escalate emotional interactions and things would be better. But does adding firearms to that mix help anything? Yes, a knife could be used instead and that does happen frequently. Mostly non-fatal though. The thing about a gun is that once the firing pin hits the primer there's no calling back the result. And with the ability to reach out from some distance (300 yards as JoeBob suggested) the kill becomes very impersonal. Not so much with a knife. You have no option but to be close enough to see the person's eyes, hear his breathing and other sounds, probably feel some part of his body as the blade slices into the flesh. You can call back that cut at any time or you can decide to repeat it as many times as necessary...but there is something very personal about the warmth of human blood being spilled over the hand holding the knife, its slick, sticky warmth, and the knowledge that life itself will surely follow if this is allowed to continue. Not so with a gun. The bullet has its own trajectory and it will dissipate its energy in whatever manner that aim and chance see fit. It will dispense entropy to the recipient until there is no more energy to spend and there is no 'feeling' to the act, nor any way to change the outcome once the round is fired. It is impersonal. You are free to view the target as any level of object you wish. There is scant chance that 'empathy' will be part of the interaction. There is a big difference and to respond to Ian's question, if society was NOT awash in firearms, it is implausible to predict that risks from firearms would be just as great. So what are we left with? We have the right and ability to arm ourselves to the teeth. The more of us who do so tend to make the rest of us all the more nervous. So more of us 'join the club'. One of my neighbors had a small arsenal (which I define as more than 20 weapons) for precisely these reasons and after he had all of it robbed while he was working one day, he continues to worry that some of his 'toys' might someday be responsible for someone's death(s). I asked him if he's going to re-arm? No way....he's done with it. As for me, I have a few toys. I recognize them as such. They're fun for target practice. I have no illusions about possibly being some kind of 'hero' and I have no illusions about how I'd respond if threatened. I still value the lives of others enough not to want to even entertain the possiblity of taking one of them, not matter what. (and those 'what if' situations are to me just part of the illusions as well). I live in a great community of people who all know each other and care about each other and while most of us own a firearm of some sort, we nearly all of us understand that these things are little more than adult toys and rather than arm ourselves against unlikely external forces coming into the community, we rally around each other for those things that most surely will happen: loss of power, a tree falling on someone's home, lost dogs, making sure the children can play safely, that the elderly can take quiet evening walks safely, everyone knows to check on so-and-so to make sure they are doing ok after their surgery, etc, etc. And when I drag one of my guns out of the safe today, I do so with the hope that in all this bad weather, I'll have the edge on one off those big hogs....and there will be a community barbecue in the near future.

An opinion about the best concealed carry weapon from someone who is opposed to it is worth what? JoeBob, that's a pragmatic answer, thanks. I'm leaning toward something like a lightweight 9mm with +P Hornady Critical Duty? Sound about right?