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XKCD of the day[^]
The wonderous thing about it is the tooltip... "You can win every exchange just by being one level more precise then whoever talked last."
That's exactly how you play "chapeau"[^] 
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Back in October, I completed a(nother) gun safety course online while attending a course in Las Vegas on designing electrical distribution power lines. Yes - I multi-task, and I won a bit in poker while I was there, too.
Anyway, having passed that trivial class, I printed the certificate, spent a couple hours at the local jail watching a deputy try over and over again to get a decent set of fingerprints on a card for me (they really should train these guys a little), then sent the whole mess with my application to the Arizona Department of Public Safety to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Arizona is a "must issue" state, that is, unless they can find a legal reason to deny a permit, they are required to issue it. There are a number of things that are legitimate reasons for denial, but I've committed none of them in my life. The law allows them 60 working days for the background check, then 15 days to either issue or deny a permit, and a denial is allowed to be appealed.
Since tomorrow (Friday) is, by my count, the 60th working day and I've heard nothing, I was getting nervous last weekend. Most people I know who have permits got them in 3 weeks, as I did twenty years ago when I got my first one. So I called last Friday about it, and was told that my application had been pulled for additional background checks, and that I should call back in two months! 
On the weekend I did some checking and discovered that nowhere in the statutes are they given any right to delay approval or extend the background checking period, so I emailed them and challenged this bull. Okay, writing to the State Police and threatening them with prosecution is probably not the smartest thing to do, but it was late on a Saturday night, and there might have been some liquid courage involved, and email is a medium which confers false security for some. Needless to say, I fully expected to be arrested and carried off in chains from work on Monday, never to be seen again. Instead, nothing happened.
Much to my surprise, yesterday I found an email reply from AZ DPS that said, "Your background check is approved. The permit will be printed and mailed tomorrow, Jan 16."
Others I know are still being stonewalled, and they're being told that the backlog extends to applications received clear back into July 2013. Should I suggest to them to try the email route, or just let them figure out their own way? 
Will Rogers never met me.
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Why the sudden stonewalling do you think ? Is the government just sick of random shootings in your area ? :P
Christian Graus
My new article series is all about SQL !!!
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Nah, I think the cops are starting to feel unneeded, since more violent crimes are prevented by concealed weapon carriers than police. Cops are really good at solving crimes, but rarely prevent a crime from being committed. One of the best things about living in Arizona is that the bad guys never know when the little old lady they intend to mug might be packing. That keeps our crime rates low, and makes the disarmed bastards in the Peoples' Republic of California a lot more attractive targets. They're not allowed to shoot back, or even resist. Poor slaves...
Will Rogers never met me.
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Roger Wright wrote: since more violent crimes are prevented by concealed weapon carriers than police.
Sounds just like the wild west. You're saying that this happens without people getting hurt ?
Roger Wright wrote: They're not allowed to shoot back, or even resist.
I do agree that in a society already awash with guns, it makes sense to be armed. It just makes more sense to live somewhere safer.
Christian Graus
My new article series is all about SQL !!!
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Christian Graus wrote: You're saying that this happens without people getting hurt ?
More than a million violent crimes a year are documented as having been prevented by the victim either displaying or drawing a weapon. That is something that CNN and the rest of the Liberal media will never let you see. The number of people who are actually harmed by a firearm is far lower, but you'll never learn that unless you dig deeply into records that are never publicized. In an ideal world, no one would be armed. But in the real world, bad guys usually are, and passing laws against decent citizens having guns only makes their workplace a lot safer. Only the law abiding will obey gun laws, and they will become, by definition, defenseless victims. I don't like the violent, fearful place that my country has become, but that is entirely because of the successful efforts of Liberals to disarm decent people. An armed society is a polite society, and nothing will ever change that rather simple fact. I carry a gun, and it would never occur to me - even in anger - to draw and fire it, unless my life was threatened. Whether you believe it or not, and I don't blame you if you don't given the crap you've seen broadcast by the media, most gun owners in this country feel the same. We don't wish to cause trouble, we just want to be in a position to stop it, if trouble should happen to occur. Police are great people, for the most part, but they don't prevent crimes from happening - armed citizens do. Police are great for finding the bad guys that got away, and that's an awesome skill. But it doesn't help much when some crack-head is holding a knife in front of your face and demanding your wallet or your life. I have a license that gives me the right to have a weapon on my hip that trumps his knife, and I'm allowed to use it if my life is threatened. I think that's a good thing.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Roger Wright wrote: We don't wish to cause trouble, we just want to be in a position to stop it
Playing "George Zimmerman", eh?
Sorry, i don´t want to be offending, but i cannot even see a glimpse of logic in your Argumentation...
stop These weapon-freakiness.
stop whining about your delayed licence or whatever you needed to get...
and, ultimatively, start crying about the children that got killed!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, but this is completely cr@p!!!
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Pahh... mere facts, you lose.
Peter Wasser
Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
Frank Zappa
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Haha, yeah! 
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Interesting site - Thanks!
I'm always interested in finding new facts, and that's a good site. Not entirely accurate, but still a good source. Thank you, again!
Will Rogers never met me.
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Violent crimes such as texting in a movie theatre?
=========================================================
I'm an optoholic - my glass is always half full of vodka.
=========================================================
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Most gun crimes are committed with illegally possessed firearms. Slowing the issuance of gun permits would not decrease gun crimes.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Entirely correct. Only decent citizens obey laws; criminals don't give a damn.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Nor would it increase them.
The issue is a society awash with 'legal' guns, which makes it easy for criminals to get them. If my home in Australia was invaded, I'd grab an axe and take them on. In the USA, I'd assume they had a gun and hide under my bed.
Christian Graus
My new article series is all about SQL !!!
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Christian Graus wrote: The issue is a society awash with 'legal' guns
No, what's at issue is a society where we believe that the people are the final check on government power.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I agree. The sheer idiocy of thinking that gun ownership is some sort of check on the government, is depressing in a people who show other signs of being intelligent. It's essentially a religion, something otherwise rational people believe blindly.
Christian Graus
My new article series is all about SQL !!!
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And you show signs of being intelligent, which I why I expected better than an ad-hominem attack.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I guess you're right!
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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*grin* and it's always good to remember that such things cut both ways.
Christian Graus
My new article series is all about SQL !!!
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I'm going to get flamed for this for sure, but I always fail to grasp the reason of carrying fire arms even after being thrown with countless arguments.
I can, to some degree, understand you have one at home, near your bedside eg.
But why on the street, in schools, or any public place for that matter?
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It's July 20, 2012 you're sitting in a movie theater in Aurora, CO and a gunman walks in and starts shooting, since you don't carry a weapon would you rather be sitting next to someone that had a gun or would you just hide and hope he either ran out of ammo, got tired or someone with a gun showed up?
In this day and time you don't know where danger lurks and if you're not ready for it you're a victim.
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See, we don't have that problem here ... 
Yes we do have a shooting, once every X years, we also have lunatics. But the number of crazy persons with a gun is lower in Europe. Much lower. I mean, compared to the States it's nearly non-existent. Hence we don't need a gun to protect ourselves (and it is difficult to get one, and if you do have one, it is illegal to take it with on the street)
But as I said it in my previous post I always fail to understand the arguments thrown at me. Perhaps (and probably) your argument is plain logic in your eyes. In mine it's pure lunacy.
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