If you don't want what you say publicized, don't say it. Simple as that.

@mcdawg: I realize that the majority of those on this forum are woefully misinformed and many will never see your or my point of view, but if you don't attempt to fight for unpopular but just causes only the popular ones will prevail.

At one time slavery was popular in the South. Discrimination against gays and woman not having the right to vote were popular nationwide. But there were always voices of dissent that eventually carried the day.

I feel like I am a voice of dissent within the reactionary crowd that inhabits this place.

Thanks for your kind words of encouragement.

@melmarino: I see I am not alone in immediately seeing this for the utter quatsch it is.

Thanks for initiating this debate. We really need one now. For too many years there was only one voice, the NRA, who controlled and stopped any effective and meaningful debate on gun control.

You may be on the wrong side of this issue but I welcome your contribution.

@melmarino: Sure I can. This resurrection of a 2 year old story that never materialized into any real threat serves no other purpose. Refute that.

Between 2002 and 2005, more than 400 guns legally purchased at gun shows in Richmond, Virginia, were later recovered in connection with criminal activity.

The Department of Justice reports, "after reviewing hundreds of trace reports associated with guns used in crime recovered in the New Orleans area and interviewing known gang members and other criminals, ATF Special Agents identified area gun shows as a source used by local gang members and other criminals to obtain guns."

In 2003 and 2004, the San Francisco ATF Field Division conducted six general operations at Reno, Nevada, gun shows to investigate interstate firearms trafficking. During these operations, "agents purchased firearms and identified violations related to "off paper" sales, sales to out-of-state residents, and dealing in firearms without a license." The "ATF seized or purchased 400 firearms before making arrests and executing search warrants, which resulted in the seizure of an additional 600 firearms and the recovery of explosives."

ATF's Columbus Field Division conducted its anti-trafficking operations based on intelligence from Cleveland police that "many of the guns recovered in high-crime areas of the city had been purchased at local gun shows." The state of Ohio is one of the top ten source states for recovered guns used in crime.

The ATF's Phoenix Field Division reported that "many gun shows attracted large numbers of gang members from Mexico and California. They often bought large quantities of assault weapons and smuggled them into Mexico or transported them to California." Garen Wintemute, a professor at the University of California at Davis, calls Arizona and Texas a "gunrunner's paradise."

Gun shows linked to the Pentagon Shooting:  In March 2010, John Bedell – who was prohibited by law from possessing guns – shot two Pentagon police officers with a gun purchased from a private seller at a Las Vegas gun show.

30% of trafficking:  One ATF study found gun shows involved with over 10,000 trafficked guns a year – about 30% of all criminal trafficking.

New York City Investigation of Gun Shows:  35 out of 47 sellers approached by investigators completed sales to people who appeared to be criminals or straw purchasers.

Gun Shows linked to Columbine:  All four guns used in the Columbine school massacre were bought at gun shows without background checks. 

Gun Shows Linked to Terrorists:  In 2001 in Michigan, Ali Boumelhem was caught attempting to ship to Hezbollah a shipment containing ammunition, shotguns, parts of AR-15 assault rifles, flash suppressors, and speed loaders.  He and his brother Mohamed had purchased the arsenal of weapons from Michigan gun shows.  Other investigations have linked gun shows to potential terrorists in Florida and Texas.

Source: Wikipedia

...there are a number of sources that allow guns to fall into the wrong hands, with gun thefts at the bottom of the list. Wachtel says one of the most common ways criminals get guns is through straw purchase sales. A straw purchase occurs when someone who may not legally acquire a firearm, or who wants to do so anonymously, has a companion buy it on their behalf. According to a 1994 ATF study on "Sources of Crime Guns in Southern California," many straw purchases are conducted in an openly "suggestive" manner where two people walk into a gun store, one selects a firearm, and then the other uses identification for the purchase and pays for the gun. Or, several underage people walk into a store and an adult with them makes the purchases. Both of these are illegal activities.

The next biggest source of illegal gun transactions where criminals get guns are sales made by legally licensed but corrupt at-home and commercial gun dealers. Several recent reports back up Wachtel's own studies about this, and make the case that illegal activity by those licensed to sell guns, known as Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs), is a huge source of crime guns and greatly surpasses the sale of guns stolen from John Q. Citizen. Like bank robbers, who are interested in banks, gun traffickers are interested in FFLs because that's where the guns are. This is why FFLs are a large source of illegal guns for traffickers, who ultimately wind up selling the guns on the street.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/guns/procon/guns.html

The Virginia Tech massacre prompted the state of Virginia to close legal loopholes that had previously allowed Cho, an individual adjudicated as mentally unsound, to purchase handguns without detection by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). It also led to passage of the first major federal gun control measure in more than 13 years. The law strengthening the NICS was signed by President George W. Bush on January 5, 2008.

@melmarino: At first I could not figure out why you would use such weak sources for this...then I realized you were using the sources that suit your agenda.

Attacking the source again and not the message? Can you dispute the message?

The gun control debate that will be in focus next week should take into consideration that weak gun control laws on background checks will enable any nut, terrorist or criminal to have LEGAL access to purchase firearms.

Take your meds guys and gals and have a great weekend. TGIF.

@Digdug: What is this allergy thing folks are talkin' about?

If the town was painted blue, we'd know it was you out pollinating.

nowheregirl - To add insult to injury, they spread chicken manure on the field next to our house. theold33 - Mine too.

@theold33: I paid good money to have that truck dump the manure on your property and they screwed up. Think I can get my money back?

Was he tested for rabies?

@pevaguy: From the look of him in the picture, it looks like carma has delt him more punishment than any court can. Not condoning anything he has done but any legal action aginst him will be a waste of money and effort. The most a court can do is lock him up where the taxpayers get to pay for his care. It would be better for him to have house arrest for 50 years and have to pay for his care himself. Sorry but capital punishment or torture are not legal options.

Sort of the same argument against Nazi war criminals who were caught years later when they were old. You're never too old for punishment and should be made an example of what happens when the law does not forget the crimes you commit.

So you'd let him live out the rest of his life in the comforts his wealth can provide, huh?

@geronimo509: I see where Avenger gets his cleverness. I don't understand the apparent fascination that you and Avenger have about the size of my 'manhood'. Perhaps the two of you are in fact some type of internet stalkers or simply have deep seated confusion about adult sexual behavior. I encourage you to seek counseling to assist you in resolving those issues.

No one talked about size until YOU brought it up. You are the only one fascinated by size. I encourage you to answer some of those penis exnlargement kits that are advertised on the internet. No one needs to know.

@Save our Republic: Actually, I DO know....It is the people that use these terms without knowing what they are that are the ignorant. And they are arguing about guns!

I was in the military and I know exactly what I'm talking about. I used clip as a slang terminology. But let's get real: do you support allowing terrorist to purchase semi-automatic weapons and extended magazines without background checks? Sure you do if you are against universal background checks.

@Ben Had: I wonder how many of those disability claims are vets?

Republicans love our troops when they are overseas fighting their battles but want to forget about them when they come back home. And when they can't, they treat them like moochers. Such patriots. Maybe they should look in a mirror and see who the real moochers are.

North Korean Missile Test Delayed by Windows 8

PYONGYANG (The Borowitz Report)—North Korea’s official news agency announced today that the military’s planned missile test had been put on hold because of “problems with Windows 8.”

Intelligence analysts said that the announcement gave rare insight into the inner workings of North Korea’s missile program, which until last year had been running on Windows 95.

The announcement from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) did not indicate a new scheduled time for a missile test, saying only that it was “working with Windows 8 support to resolve the issue.”

In the words of one intelligence analyst, “That means the test been delayed indefinitely.”

A source close to the North Korean regime reported that Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un is furious about the Windows 8 problems and is considering a number of options, including declaring war on Microsoft.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/04/north-korea...

Congratulations!

Don't care if he's older than Methuselah and had several strokes, if you molest kids you should have to pay the price. And not the price he paid them but in a court of law with jail time.

This is not the first time Marsh has been accused of sexual misconduct. In 2001, four lawsuits against Marsh that alleged imprisonment, sexual misconduct and harassment of teens were settled. No other details were made public.

In 1998, Marsh pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of unlawful restraint and criminal trespassing as part of an agreement that dismissed five felony charges including kidnapping, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and indecency with a child. He served 10 days in jail and paid $4,000 in fines.

In 1996, Marsh settled a lawsuit with a youth who claimed Marsh sexually abused him.

The civil suits alleged Marsh gave teenage boys cash, alcohol, drugs and in one case, two BMWs, to perform sex acts with him during secret encounters at his office.

According to CBS affiliate KFDA, the civil suits allege Marsh gave several teens cash, alcohol, drugs and cars in exchange for sexual acts to be performed with him.

In one of the civil cases, a teenager claimed he had more than 100 sexual encounters with Marsh in his office and Toad Hall home in Amarillo. Amarillo police say that they found evidence in Marsh's downtown offices that corroborated "the accounts of sexual exploitation of minors." Police seized computers, couch cushion covers, a photo of a nude male and signed confidentiality agreements, among other things, according to a search warrant inventory report.

@Watchman: Actually Avenger, you are incorrect.

Before the sale can be completed, the gun dealer must then call the FBI or other designated agencies to ensure the customer is eligible to purchase a firearm. Among the criteria that would make someone ineligible: having a criminal record, specifically felony convictions or violent misdemeanors, such as domestic abuse; being deemed mentally ill by a court; or involuntarily committed to a mental health facility; or being in the United States illegally.

If Murray met any of those criteria then he'd have been denied. Otherwise he has every right to purchase a firearm. Right?

@JackP32: Man, I hate revisionist history. The U.S. invasion of Grenada was the first major U.S. military operation since the end of the Vietnam War. Indeed, it may have in part been a test of the so-called "Vietnam syndrome," the purported "affliction" that makes it difficult for the American public to support U.S. military intervention without a just cause. As with Iraq, the initial justifications for the invasion proved to be either highly debatable or demonstrably false, yet it still received bipartisan support in Congress and the approval of nearly two-thirds of the American public.

The major justification for the invasion was the protection of American lives. Reagan administration officials falsely claimed that the island's only operating airport was closed, offering the students no escape. In reality, scores of people left the island on charter flights the day before the U.S. invasion, noting that there was not even a visible military presence at the airport and that customs procedures were normal. Regularly scheduled flights as well as sea links from neighboring Caribbean islands had ceased as of October 21, however, though this came as a direct result of pressure placed on these governments to do so by U.S. officials. Apparently, by limiting the ability of Americans who wished to depart from leaving, the Reagan administration could then use their continued presence on the troubled island as an excuse to invade. The Reagan administration admitted that no significant non-military means of evacuating Americans was actively considered.

Particular concern was expressed over the fate of 800 American students at the U.S.-run St. George's University School of Medicine. The safe arrival in the United States of the initial group of happy and relieved students evacuated from Grenada resulted in excellent photo opportunities for the administration. It appears, however, that the students' lives were never actually in any danger prior to the invasion itself.

Grenadan and Cuban officials had met only days earlier with administrators of the American medical school and guaranteed the students' safety. Urgent requests by the State Department's Milan Bish to medical school officials that they publicly request U.S. military intervention to protect the students were refused. Five hundred parents of the medical students cabled President Reagan to insist he not take any "precipitous action." Staff members from the U.S. embassy in Barbados visited Grenada and saw no need to evacuate the students.

The medical school's chancellor, Charles Modica, polled students and found that 90% did not want to be evacuated. Despite repeated inquiries as to whether Washington was considering military action, he was told nothing of the sort was being considered. As the invasion commenced, Dr. Modica angrily denounced the invasion as totally unnecessary and a far greater risk to the students' safety than Grenada's domestic crisis. Vice-chancellor Geoffrey Bourne and Bursar Gary Solin also declared their steadfast opposition. The U.S. media focused great attention on the students who were first evacuated and "debriefed" by U.S. officials who generally supported the invasion. However, virtually no attention was given to those who stayed behind, who tended to be more familiar with the island and who largely opposed U.S. intervention. There were no confirmed reports of any American civilians harmed or threatened before or during the invasion. It was three days after U.S. troops initially landed before they decided to take control of the second medical school campus, raising questions as to whether the safety of Americans was really the foremost priority.

A second major justification for the invasion was the reported Cuban military buildup on the island. President Reagan claimed that U.S. troops found six warehouses "stacked to the ceiling" with weapons that were earmarked for Cuban military intervention in Central America and Africa. In reality, there were only three warehouses that were only one-quarter full of antiquated small arms that had been confiscated a few days earlier by the coup leaders from the popular militias. Furthermore, Grenada was a most unlikely place for the Cubans to have stockpiled arms: Grenada is three times further from the Central American isthmus than is Cuba itself and only marginally closer to Cuban bases then in Angola, more than 12,000 miles away

Despite administration claims to the contrary, less than 100 of the 750 Cubans on the island were military personnel. Furthermore, despite initial press accounts that the U.S. assault was resisted almost exclusively be Cuban forces, it appears that the bulk of the resistance to the invasion was done by Grenadans. Many observers speculate that this was the primary reason for the refusal by the Reagan administration to allow media access to the island during the initial phases of the invasion when most of the fighting took place. The U.S. estimates that only about 35 Cubans died, but has never released Grenadan casualty figures.

Why, then, did the United States invade? Many believe that Grenada was seen as a bad example for other poor Caribbean states. Its foreign policy was not subservient to the American government and it was not open to having its economy dominated by U.S. corporate interests. A show of force would cause states with similar leftist nationalist ideals to think twice. If a country as small and poor as Grenada could have continued its rapid rate of development under a socialist model, it would set a bad precedent for other Third World countries. In short, Grenada under the New Jewel Movement was reaching a dangerous level of health care, literacy, housing, participatory democracy, and economic independence.

Of particular concern was the influence Bishop and his supporters--who were greatly inspired by the Black Power movement in the United States--could have on African-Americans. A successful socialist experiment by English-speaking Blacks just a few hours by plane from the United States was seen as a threat.

This invasion was also an easy victory for the United States eight years after its defeat in the Vietnam War and just two days after the deadly attack against U.S. forces in Lebanon. It established the precedent for "regime change" by U.S. military intervention and served as an ominous warning to the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua that the Reagan administration could go beyond simply arming a proxy army like the Contras and actually invade their country outright.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/155/25966.html

If looks could kill, his face would be a deadly weapon. I know that was childish but the child in me couldn't resist.

@ppensyl: Wasn't asking about your confrontation. If a customer comes in looking for a fight, you have a legal reason to tell him to leave. I have no problems with that and the law wouldn't either.

There's a lot to this story we don't know right now and I'm of the opinion like many of the other commenters that this should have been resolved before the media got involved.

@ppensyl: Was the customer confrontational before or after he was asked to leave? I'd be a little confrontational too if I was asked to leave a business because of my service animal.

What establishment has guard dogs on the premise during business hours? I see a lot of liability in having a guard dog during normal business hours. Customer gets bitten = law suit.

@Watchman: If Mr. Murray has obvious mental disabilities, then I would hope that no responsible gun dealer would sell him ammo or guns.

There is a difference between a brain injury and mental disability.

Brain injury, depending on how serious, is usually really hard to recover from. Huge memory loss, might damage some parts so that you can't see/hear etc. But mental illness, with dedicated time can be recoverable. Basically brain injury is a physical state and mental illness is a mental/psychological state.

Besides, a background check could clear this up real quick. He's either allowed to purchase a weapon or not.

@grove600: No. It does not. If you're purple, you can not come in my building. Stay outside. I'm calling HazMat.

What business do you run? I'll make it a point never to do business with your establishment. You probably wouldn't want my business anyways and I'll most likely be able to purchase any products you'd sell elsewhere.

@ppensyl: Yes, I am sure about that. I own a business and I have the right to ask anyone to leave my property.

In the 1960s, the Unruh Civil Rights Act was interpreted to provide broad protection from arbitrary discrimination by business owners. Cases decided during that era held that business owners could not discriminate, for example, against hippies, police officers, homosexuals, or Republicans, solely because of who they were.

In cases in which the patron is not a member of a federally protected class, the question generally turns on whether the business's refusal of service was arbitrary, or whether the business had a specific interest in refusing service. For example, in a recent case, a California court decided that a motorcycle club had no discrimination claim against a sports bar that had denied members admission to the bar because they refused to remove their "colors," or patches, which signified club membership. The court held that the refusal of service was not based on the club members' unconventional dress, but was to protect a legitimate business interest in preventing fights between rival club members.

On the other hand, a California court decided that a restaurant owner could not refuse to seat a gay couple in a semi-private booth where the restaurant policy was to only seat two people of opposite sexes in such booths. There was no legitimate business reason for the refusal of service, and so the discrimination was arbitrary and unlawful.

In one more complicated case, a court held that a cemetery could exclude "punk rockers" from a private funeral service. A mother requested that the funeral service for her 17-year-old daughter be private and that admission to the service be limited to family and invited guests only. The cemetery failed to exclude punk rockers from the service. The punk rockers arrived in unconventional dress, wearing makeup and sporting various hair colors. One was wearing a dress decorated with live rats. Others wore leather and chains, some were twirling baton-like weapons, drinking, and using cocaine. The punk rockers made rude comments to family members and were generally disruptive of the service.

Ironically, the funeral business had attempted to rely on the Unruh Civil Rights Act, claiming that if they had denied access to the punk rockers, they would have been in violation of the Act. But the court held that the punk rockers' presence had deprived the deceased person's family of the services of the business establishment, which were meant to provide comfort to grieving family members. On that basis, the court stated that the funeral business could have legitimately denied access to the punk rockers.

It's interesting to note that while it is unlawful to refuse service to certain classes of people, it is not unlawful to provide discounts on the basis of characteristics such as age. Business establishments can lawfully provide discounts to groups such as senior citizens, children, local residents, or members of the clergy in order to attract their business.

Like many issues involving constitutional law, the law against discrimination in public accommodations is in a constant state of change. Some argue that anti-discrimination laws in matters of public accommodations create a conflict between the ideal of equality and individual rights. Does the guaranteed right to public access mean the business owner's private right to exclude is violated? For the most part, courts have decided that the constitutional interest in providing equal access to public accommodations outweighs the individual liberties involved.

https://www.legalzoom.com/us-law/equal-rights/right-refuse-service