Voice of Reason

It DOES take a certain type to desire to put themselves in harms way to protect others, to risk their own lives to make this world a better place. It's an honorable profession, and horribly underpaid. It is chock full of uncertainty and danger and terror and sometimes sheer boredom. As simple call to a house because someone is yelling can easily wind up with another police officer in a body bag. Heck, as we see in Dallas, just walking down the street in uniform can mean instant death.
Yeah, not many are willing to put their lives on the line for the rest of the country. Not many are willing to risk their lives to actually make a difference, or to try and turn the tide into what they believe is right. The majority would rather sit back and talk about what SHOULD be, rather than get up and make it happen. But if they raised the annual salaries of police to say, $150K per year, I bet you'd see more people willing to join the fray.

When I first saw the video of Castile in the car with his GF, my initial reaction was that the cops made a grave mistake. Of course, that was before more details started rolling in. I know some here will really not like this, but just saw it this morning:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/07/08/confirmed-philando-castile-was-an-armed-robbery-suspect-false-media-narrative-now-driving-cop-killings/
In a word, Castile matched the description of a thug who had robbed a store days prior just a few blocks away, as did his car. So when the police approached the vehicle, it WASN'T for a busted tail light, as the woman claimed on the video.
Here's hoping more details come out, as well as police video, that can Un-muddy the waters.
One other thing that I mentioned to a guy I was talking to right after the event is the calmness of the woman taking the video. Too calm. Almost as if it were expected, a staged thing. I have been around guns all my life, but no way I would have been able to pull out a cell phone, start up a video, and stream it live to FB while someone lay bleeding next to me after being shot in front of me. I'd be a basket case, or so in shock as to not be able to move.
Something is starting to smell of fish nearby...

Like Sterling and Castile, Hughes was legally carrying a firearm
In the case of Sterling, with two previous gun charges, registered sex offender on the state website (diddling a 14-yr-old girl), and a conviction for domestic battery he had no business and no right to either possess or carry a gun under the VAWA.
He had a 20-yr unbroken history of crime up to his drug charges a month before he was shot for threatening someone with the gun that he has no business carrying.
I really take offense when liberals try to mold this man into some kind of victim because of his skin color. He threatened someone with a deadly weapon and got shot while the cops were trying to take him down for doing it. Good riddance.
As to the guy in MInnesota, that looks like a flat out case of murder and the sooner they convene the grand jury the better.
As for Hughes, do you seriously believe it is unreasonable to want to question a man dressed like this and walking around like this with an assault rifle right before someone opened up and started shooting police officers with an assault rifle? He was questioned, cleared, and let go.
It does and is doing the black community no good at all to lump every interaction with every black person equally

Fail to do it elsewhere, and the. Officer may literally bust out shooting at you.

The same Obama that in 2008 called Hillary a liar, dishonest, and untrustworthy, now endorses her as the next president. My, how times have changed.

As always, it's easy to make snap judgments sitting behind a computer. But the expletives being shouted by the cop who shot him sound to me like someone who knows they made a mistake. Doesn't look good for the cop.

I think perhaps I have caused you to misunderstand my stance, and that is probably the fault of the meme(s) I have posted that perhaps were not very accurate. Sometimes, I post things that I don't necessarily agree with 100%, as I am sure many here do. They are sometimes posted out of frustration, other times to show what other people are thinking. So let me put things into my own words, in the hopes that you will not misjudge me for things I have not said.
First off, I have never hated a muslim. Nor do I think all are extremists. Only a complete idiot (well, a bigot, technically) would think that. I have only personally known a handful of followers of islam, and they were some of the nicest, most respectable people I have ever met. Never once did I "fear for my life", nor harbor a desire to get them out of my neighborhood. In fact, I am so NOT anti-islam that I applied for two different jobs in islamic-predominant foreign countries, knowing I would have to adapt some of their ways if I were to live in peace with them and was willing to do that; however, neither job transpired. Which is sad, not only because the jobs were interesting, but it would give me a chance to live in another culture and experience their ways.
I also don't think we should turn our backs on the Syrian refugees that require asylum based on their beliefs. If they can pass a thorough vetting process, then by all means, let them in. What DOES chap my cheeks, besides a brisk, cold wind, is when you see reports of a group of muslims moving into an area, then saying how everything around them offends them and their culture/religion. THAT is BS, IMHO. If you go somewhere other than where you were born, expect there to be challenges fitting in, and expect that YOU may have to change your ways to adapt, not the people who lived in the area (city/state/country, etc.) for decades.
I made the statement that you were not a true muslim, or dabbled, because you were not born into the religion, nor do you live in a place where it is the all-encompassing belief system. Whether you did it because of your wife, or because you wanted to see what it was all about, or because you wanted to strap bombs to your chest (I jest, I jest)... that is completely up to you, and thankfully in America, you have the freedom to do that. And because we live in America, you probably also have nothing to fear if you try it, don't like it, and want to move on. As far as I am concerned, I do not care if one calls him/herself a muslim, christian, catholic, buddhist, jew; whatever they want to claim as a spiritual reference point, as long as that person is what I call a person of good moral character. After all, that's the premise behind every religion (mostly), is to get people to live a good life and treat others well; in other words, to control the masses. I am not a religious person, per se, but I do believe that good morals are vital to our existence on this earth. Kind of separates us from the animals, eh? So to summarize, if I offended you by alluding to you not being a devout muslim because you did not have it ingrained into you from the moment of birth as many do, I apologize. If you take it seriously, and live a good life because of it, then good on you (though I must throw this in... if you ARE a good muslim, living a good life, and caring for others around you, it probably has very little to do with the quran, and more to do with the core YOU in the first place. But that's just my non-religious way of thinking.)
So now you have MY words, and if you want to use any of them against me, feel free, we can discuss at length.
The memes I re-post, the article I posted here, are not (in entirety) my words nor my thoughts. I may agree with some, or most, or very little, of the things I re-post. Rarely all. I do it to share what I have read, to allow others to learn what I am learning, so that they may form their own opinions. So please do not assume that by me posting an article that says muslims are responsible for millions of deaths over the years, I think all muslims are extremists. I do not claim to know it all, and in fact, I learn things on this forum that I would otherwise never have learned, because there is quite a diversity of backgrounds and thought processes, and some very intelligent people on here. It's nice not to always "hang with" people who feel the same way I do, because it encourages growth, understanding, and perhaps even a shift of beliefs. Anything is possible, if one only opens his/her mind.
As for your dedication to the religion, I don't judge like some bugs from the middle of summer do. If you want to eat a McRib sammich, go for it. I'd never ask you to give up a meal in favor of an archaic religious "norm".

Allow me to assist you in never feeling ashamed again!!
As with any subject, the more one knows, the more likely they are to know the correct terms. Words have different meanings, and I think English is one of the worst languages with having multiple meanings for one or similar words, such as clip/magazine, to/two/too, there, their, they're, and some family-unfriendly word that would make most cats roll over in anguish and shame.
Clips are used to package and hold rounds/shells/cartridges (not bullets) and make it easy to feed them into a magazine or weapon directly. The clip on the right below can be used to quickly fill the magazine on the left, which is then inserted into the weapon and feeds the rounds (not bullets) into the chamber.
Why do I say not bullets? The bullet/round debate. A bullet is something that is fired when the primer is struck and ignites the powder within the shell (the brass part), causing the bullet (often copper-clad as pictured below) to swiftly depart the shell, travel down the barrel, gaining some twist as it goes so that it may more accurately travel to the target (preferably not human) at some distant point. Take a shell casing, fill it with powder, finish it off with a bullet, and you have a cartridge, or "round".
Another misused term is gun nut. A gun nut is not someone who owns, shoots, or defends ownership of guns. A gun nut is someone who cares not for the life, liberty, nor the pursuit of anything of another person, and feels no compunction about using a gun to threaten, intimidate, or kill said other person. See also: "nut job", "basket case", "murderer", "criminal", "insane person", "wacked-out crack-head", etc. Basically, a person who does not respect other peoples' lives.
I hope someone finds this helpful. "Conjunction junction, what's your function?"

If I had to to give the penultimate on guns it would be this.
Ownership rates of guns do not really effect crime...either way within the US. CCW rates really do not effect crime or mass shootings either way.
More guns for the general population means more accidental deaths.
If you train, store your firearms safely, follow the rules of safe gun handling your personal odds of accidental death drop precipitously. If you are scared, buy a gun and throw it in your closet, your odds of dying increase.
If you carry a CCW, you personally have better odds in a mass shooting....its just that you are such a minority the chances you or any other CCW will be there are slim.

Good points. And at the end of the day, regardless of what a gun looks like, or how many bullets a magazine holds, the danger lies in the heart of the holder of the weapon.

Something to think about before you go about your day defending islam. I had no idea the number of murders committed with the backing of this religion. Particularly against blacks. One would think that with islam doing so much to eradicate blacks from the face of the earth, there would be more said about it, and less acceptance.
http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/world/heres-the-true-non-politically-correct-history-of-islams-violence

And while we are on the subject of slavery, do all of you LWNJs realize that your democratic party were the ones who voted almost unanimously to keep slavery? That the republicans voted to do away with it? Ahhhhh, parties...

No one is keeping you anywhere. Stop your whining and live where you want to live. Unless, of course, you already ARE living where you want, and you have been doing so for many years, but just love to whine about life in general. Let me guess, the military was unfair to you???

Something to think about before you go about your day defending islam. I had no idea the number of murders committed with the backing of this religion. Particularly against blacks. One would think that with islam doing so much to eradicate blacks from the face of the earth, there would be more said about it, and less acceptance.
http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/world/heres-the-true-non-politically-correct-history-of-islams-violence

A booth at the county fair, aiming to win a big ole teddy bear, does not lend credence to one's views on being a responsible gun owner.

In the past 7 years?
Or do you mean coherent?

For those who do not understand why/where the reluctance to excuse a religion from playing a part in the destruction of mankind, I offer you this as a thing to consider.:
"We are told again and again by "experts" and "talking heads" that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unquantified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is, that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is, that the "peaceful majority" is the "silent majority" and it is cowed and extraneous.
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by the fanatics. Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they dont speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others, have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life."

This one pretty much sums up the concept of concealed carry and the added value it brings when responsible people carry guns:

In the past 7 years?
Or do you mean coherent?

Ohh dear. Another child left behind.

Surely you cannot be serious?
FBI Stats
Or a picture, if you prefer:

Fixxored for ya. No need to thank me.

And there it is, folks! Winner, winner, chicken dinner!!