Stopped Motorist Shoots at Deputy...Deputy Handles It

No objection from me there, don't you guys have 20mph zones?

I live in one.

Outside of a school zone and private community or commercial roads it is near impossible to get below 30 or 35 mph from what I understand. There are roads created around things like malls where the property owner sets the speed limit, but I am not sure if the police can come in and ticket people on those roads.

As for municipal roads not under construction there are a ton of things a small town has to do to get below 35 or 30. Money does not actually help this either. I spent the first 25 years of my life living on roads where rich Westchester, LI, and NYC people had their horse farms. They always were trying to put them on the dirt roads where I live, and have horse buggy rides through the northeast foliage without having to get beyond the Hudson. They were always trying to get certain roads below thirty because it stirred the horses up and disturbed the rich people riding. They also fought tooth and nail against paving certain roads. This annoyed my family to no end being we had to deal with the spring mud and could not get cable because cable would not go down a dirt road.

I don't fully know what the argument against it was, but we knew that the big money visitors really wanted it and were fighting against pavement because it was better for the horses to be on dirt roads even though they could have shoed them for pavement. The roads were supposed to be paved for decades, and one or two of them remain unpaved because of the opposition.

But 30 seems to be some standard limit, and I don't think I have seen a slower limit outside of private or commercial roads. The only time I have ever seen a regular road below 30 is school zones, and even that is often limited to school hours. However, during school hours most school zones are a speed trap. Here in Floriduh it is the only time a speed limit seems to be obeyed.

Nice try @NotDayton. You can't pull one over on us yet again.

you don't get it. I mean take the entire distance of the 40 MPH road (all five miles or whatever) and cut it to 20 MPH. If it saves one life it's worth it! BTW your personal obesity does affect other people if you are the sole breadwinner in your family. Everybody needs to step on the scale!

Side note (humorous) - I read that some people trying to make weight (or just get an accurate reading I guess) are so fucking stupid that they actually suck in their gut hold their breath when they step onto the scale. Holy shit that is terrifying to me.

Here, police have no authority in motor vehicle incidents on private property unless there is an injury of some sort. I remember a fender bender in a convenience store parking lot I had years ago. It was pretty minor and I wanted to simply give the guy my insurance card and get on to work but the other guy insisted on calling the police.

The police officer arrived, got out and asked "anyone hurt?". When both of us replied no he snapped "Then why the hell did you call me! Police don't fill out accident reports for something where no one is injured on private property! Exchange insurance and be done with it!"

Then the police officer got the hell out of there.

FYI this is not a true story, since both of the things I have bolded are false.

40MPH speed limit would actually be faster than average speed on highways around here. I set my trip computer for average MPH and got 32 for the whole week of highway commuting.

Nope, that's two steps right there. It's direct for the other guy, but one step removed for me.

Just going by what police officers have told me. More than once in different places at different times.

I highly doubt that any police officer ever told you such a thing anywhere even once.

And why would I bother lying about something like that?

What's far more likely is that they are not communicating the truth effectively or you misunderstood them. The local municipal police department has a policy of not getting involved in automobile accidents on private property because, ultimately, it's a civil matter. However, saying they lack authority to get involved is not correct. They can take an I/O about anything for any reason.

That said, I do take minor delight at small things like that. In the State of Alabama, traffic control markers and devices on private property do not carry the force of law. Feel free to run that stop sign in the supermarket parking lot. No one can stop you, Super-villain.

It depends on the area. Locally? No, we do not. In the State of Alabama, when there is no posted speed limit and you are inside a municipal boundary, the default speed limit is 25 miles per hour.

Hard to see any direct connection. I didn't kill any one, nor was my gun used. I'm no more responsible for that death than I am for drunk driving deaths because I own a car and consume alcohol.

I used 40 MPH and 20 MPH as nominal speeds to make the math easier for my argument about safety (cutting speeds in half).
Generally the speeds where I live are 25, 45, 55 & 70. And on the written Georgia drivers license test some questions ask about 30 MPH zones, 40 MPH zones and other things you will never encounter. No doubt the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing when they develop the tests.

Of course on the actual roads you will encounter things that you will never see in a driver's manual. The manuals and tests are designed around theoretical "perfect world" scenarios.
Suicide lane right-of-way is a science unto itself.

@Dayton3 making shit up? No way! Not Dayton. He is so honest and sane. He would never lie and make up shit to sound like he knows something. Next thing you are going to tell me that water is wet or the sky is blue. You are just too much with the crazy mister.

Other things the police have told Dayton:

Sir, please get your dick out of the chicken.

No I will not give you a body cavity search

The school has issued a restraining order against you and you are not allowed within 500 feet of the campus so please stop pretending to be a teacher.

You are fired.

Stop drinking on the job.

Yes but the individual rights to drink and to drive aren't in question. The right to own a gun is. Removing that right can be linked to a substantial decrease in murder rates (not @oldfella196 's "one death" fallacy). Using the UK - US comparison which seems to have become de rigeur here the difference is in the order of a multiple of four. That's not marginal or a disproportionate goal to consider removing the right to a recreational activity (and I'm sorry, that's all we are talking about here, everything else is just glorification) for.

An hypothetical right to drink-drive would be a closer analogy (although not perfect). Prior to 1966 in the UK there were no drink driving laws and the introduction of that law massively improved public safety. It also impinged on the rights of thousands of people who till that point had regularly drove under the influence of alcohol without directly causing harm. By your logic that law was effectively overreach because those drivers were being treated in a punitive manner due to the actions of others.

No, it isn't. Aside from the plain text meaning of the 2nd Amendment, there's a Supreme Court ruling that says yes, I do indeed have the right to own a gun. That question is settled.

You cannot remove a right from someone without cause. And you can't legislate away a right. Absent me going to prison for some crime, the only way to erase my right to own a gun is to amend the Constitution to repeal the 2nd and to remove similar protections from all the state constitutions.

You're welcome to your opinion, but my rights are about far more than recreation.

Which makes my alcohol analogy even more compelling. If you dispute a right to drink alcohol, then drinking is merely a state-permitted privilege. And drinking has little or no social value (unlike guns which are used for self-defense). And alcohol kills and has large social costs.

So, don't chicken out and say that's not at issue. I'm asking you to tell me why it shouldn't be by the same logic.

There's no right to drive drunk, especially not on public roads.

And the difference is that everyone who drives impaired by alcohol is a risk to others. Everyone who consumes sufficient alcohol becomes impaired.

Similarly, I wouldn't object to a law prohibiting someone from carrying a gun in public while drunk.

I do that all the time. Carefully, of course.

Well, it would seem a significant portion of your peers feel otherwise and would welcome a review of that amendment. So no, not settled.

Of course you can remove a right. I've just given you an example of exactly that. Likewise once upon a time you'd have had the right to own a slave.

Balderdash, you have a gun to play with with your buddies. The efficacy of an armed populace to reduce crime has been debunked to the point of being flat earth territory and let's not even try to play the "defense against tyranny" silliness. You like playing with things that go bang, I get it, but it's not enough to justify the consequences for thousands of other people. If you want to play act being a superhero go to comic con or something.

Your freedom is that of a child who doesn't want to hear an adult saying the word "no"

Except in the UK where the example was set there's no such thing as "state permitted privileges".

But once there was and it was removed in the public good. Much like there was once a right to own slaves until society moved on.

Anyone with a gun is a risk. Sorry to burst your bubble on that but I spend day in day out with apparently law abiding citizens who one day out of the blue killed their wife or neighbour despite being to all intents and purpose completely off the radar to any form of services beforehand and would have passed a psychological screen just as easily as you or I.

No one is risk free, human beings just don't work that way. That's why screening doesn't stop the shootings.

Really? Who? The far left gun grabber crowd whose taken about as seriously as Dayton on a good day? Please. They'll never get a bill passed, never will get it signed by a President nor approved by the numerous states needed to change the amendment. Keep dreaming.

When Spot first showed up, I thought that it was nice that we had an intelligent new poster, even if I disagreed with him.

I should have left out the "intelligent" part. Just another batcrap insane lefty.

Never is a very long time.

People 300 years ago would have made similar comments about abolishing slavery, they'd have made similar comments about acknowledging gay rights only fifty years ago.

History shows a very clear trend with regard to armed civilians in the developed world and it isn't one that fits with your predictions. There's an almost inevitability to the pattern that over time countries tend towards disarmament of civilians. It's a positive step and one that you'd struggle to find reversed anywhere that doesn't also show a concurrent societal breakdown. Countries don't tend to start relaxing gun laws, nor does there tend to be meaningful public support for such a reversal, not because of draconian government overreach but more benignly because the benefits are so obvious.

The US is an outlier thus far but it's also a very young country. If you are going to make such a determined prediction over the long term (again bearing in mind you stated "never") that would make a great deal more sense if you could offer some substantial reason the US would avoid following the established pattern. Saying "but we have a culture which associates guns with freedom" isn't enough, many countries have held similar positions in the past and over time consigned that to history. Carrying swords and dueling pistols was once considered the inalienable right of gentlemen across Europe, longbow ownership and practise were mandatory for all males in England.

A batcrap insane lefty who stands far less chance of coming to an untimely end.

That's the bottom line! If under eight years of Obama little changed concerning gun control on a national level , that pretty much shows that little will change under any other presidency.
Granted individual states, counties and cities can indeed make & enforce their own rules up to a point - gun owners always have the option of moving to another state, county or city.
But on the national level guns are here to stay. The Constitution is here to stay. And plenty of Democrats/liberals might talk a good game but many of them are gun owners as well - and they are smart enough to realize that concerning gun control, the US turning into England or Japan is not in their best interests.

As far as I'm concerned a total gun/ammo ban (or anything even close to it) just took a 12 gauge deer slug to the back of the head. Now let's work on shit that really matters that I personally support like free college, free quality health care, etc. that affect all US citizens or their family members.

Why stop there? Ban all fast food, cigarettes, cars, alcohol, ....if it saves one life let's do it

Oh I'd agree with your point of view if we were discussing one life, or merely self inflicted harm, but we aren't. This is about harm to others and on a scale which is disproportionate to any benefits which accrue.

We are talking about a situation where two obviously related variables seemingly sit hand in hand. The US and Russia both stand out from their economic peers by virtue of the laxity of their gun laws. They also stand out for having inordinately high murder rates compared to the company they keep - the very variable that permissive gun laws are intended to reduce.

The graph is old by necessity since G8 became the G7 but the pattern still holds:



The coincidence isn't proof of causation and I'm not suggesting those murders all involve guns directly but sans any other explanation it's difficult to ignore the sheer scale of the observable differences. The two countries which should be safest according to the "good guys with guns" hypothesis are exactly the opposite. Nor can one make the case for protecting freedom without questioning how that sits next to the oppressive portrayal of Russia in the media.

There's not going to be a ban any time soon, I get that, but that's not the same as saying tighter regulations are impotent or that long term societal change is impossible. On the contrary the historical evidence suggests it's really rather likely.

You know you are looking at very small time frames with all this? Obama is hardly evidence of what might happen in the long term.

I'm gonna disagree - I like the guy. We're dead opposites on the issue, and he pisses me off sometimes, but he definitely posts with intelligence. I prefer that to the insults, snark and ranting.