Stugein

We don't like, break everything back out and full on tailgate, but a bunch of us hang out to talk about the game and celebrate/commiserate while letting traffic clear a bit.

My younger son.

Depends on when I leave from NJ. I'm at the whim of the hours of the pretzel joints. It's most likely yes but I didn't wanna say for sure in case something screws up.

I'm in! Cornhole boards, beer cooler, maybe soft pretzels!

NFL.com reporting now too.. https://www.nfl.com/news/carson-wentz-trade-commanders-acquire-colts-qb

Beer, some non-alcohol options, cornhole for sure. Will check back in with other stuff later in the week.

I will be there. Can't bring cornhole but I will have beers for everyone.

Can't wait to see y'all again! I don't have RZ parking for this one so I'll be coming light, but I'll still be bringing the cornhole boards and a cooler of fancy beers to share with everyone. :)

And that all sounds great, but the fear is that the people in charge won't be as reasonable as you are. Anti-control folks' fears can be all reasonably accommodated for; you're absolutely right. But that doesn't change the concerns that they won't be and that, if they are, the next person that comes along doesn't just turn it on it's head on a whim. Checks won't be completed in days/weeks. They will stall. The fee will be hundreds of dollars and go up every year because something something funding/tax/spend/excuse. Some nigh impenetrable barrier will be placed on the system so most people couldn't use it, suppressing private transfers. Hurdle after hurdle will be put in place to ensure as many people are kept from using the system as possible. And they aren't unreasonable fears; we see it today in many states with regard to other aspects of gun ownership. If someone proposed a system with a low bar to entry where private background checks could be performed quickly and cheaply with solid privacy protections in place then we'd probably get all but the staunchest anti-government gun hoarder types on board with the idea. But to allay those very reasonable concerns of abuse it'd have to be made (no pun intended) bullet proof. And that's the rub.

I think the problem is less about the what and more about the "how". I'm all for background checks for private sales/transfers, but the process would have to somehow be protected against becoming burdensome, intentionally or otherwise. It would have to be either free to perform the check or only be a nominal administrative fee. You would either have to open NICS up to everyone to perform checks (prone to abuse and privacy violations) or let private sellers initiate a NICS check through a local FFL in which case the FFL would need to be reimbursed for their costs. The thing that worries me are anti-gun folk getting a workable private background check system approved and running, then making it impossible for anyone to actually use (exorbitant fees, unreachable hurdles/requirements, etc.) in order to suppress private transfer entirely. It's the problem we are currently struggling with here in NJ; guns are allowed, carry permits are allowed, licenses are issued, etc. but the requirements are so onerous that relatively few people are able to actually exercise their rights and it only gets worse here every year. That's, I think, the core fear of universal background checks; that it will be used as an avenue to back-door restrictions as we can't trust that whoever is administering such a program will act in good faith.

I get that, yeah. Watching events unfold on video after the fact isn't the same as in the heat of the moment. At the end of the day the dad shouldn't have initiated violence.

I'm of 2 minds about that one. Yeah, he was attacked. If he had pulled and shot, then I'd say it was a bad situation but it was self defense. But as soon as the gun was pulled the attacker backed off. Showing the weapon was clearly enough to stop the attack. But after the attacker backed off then the dude shot him. I don't get how you can still feel deathly threatened when you're holding someone at gun point who is walking away. I am generally OK with Stand Your Ground type laws, but I don't think it was employed correctly in this instance. The man should not have shot; it wasn't justified IMO.

I can appreciate where you're coming from. The problem is that Dont Taze Me Bro is a good guy who follows the law and wouldn't do that. The dink that wants to shoot up an art festival doesn't care. Nobody is made safer by telling Dont Taze Me Bro he isn't allowed to carry outside of his home, or that he can only have 10 bullets. To be legal in NJ we have to go through multiple layers of background checks, fingerprinting, mental health history reviews, character references, and other red tape. In many cases it takes months to legally qualify for and purchase a gun. And even after navigating and passing all of that, if you're the cleanest, most well adjusted and competent gun owner, we have a de facto ban on carrying (you can transport the gun, cased and unloaded, in your car to use at your nearest approved range which could be an hour's drive away, just don't stop for gas or you're an instant felon). On top of that we already have low magazine limits (which just recently got made even lower; I now have 6 months to get rid of my standard sized 15 rd. magazines or risk jail), and all the other feature restrictions, ammo restrictions, and "assault weapon" bans that everyone clamors for as "common sense". Despite all of this we have some of the most violent cities in the country with depressing rates of gun violence and clowns like the ones at the art festival this past week are still able to do what they're going to do. It doesn't exactly fill one with faith that enacting the same at the federal level would have an appreciable effect if the underlying causes of the violence aren't addressed. There's no 100% solution to the problem. Economic inequality, gang activity, the war on drugs, lax enforcement of existing state and federal regulations, racist social policies, incomplete and poorly updated NICS databases, and a myriad of other deficiencies all contribute to creating environments that are conducive to gun violence. Until we address the core faults that allow a culture of violence to fester in our cities, no amount of specific device restrictions or new controls are going to stem the bleeding. Telling Dont Taze Me Bro he isn't allowed to carry a gun isn't saving anyone's lives.

You're right. I'm sure if NJ's super strict laws were enacted at the federal level there's no way these guys would've had guns.

The fun part is that here in NJ we have some of the strictest gun control laws in the country and they just recently made them even stricter. I'm absolutely shocked that the shooter in this incident didn't follow them. It's almost like someone who would go out to murder people doesn't care about the laws. Crazy. :|

I've had 4 seats for years and dropped 2 of them for this season (circumstances decided that I could only afford 2 this year). A couple weeks ago someone from the ticket office called me to let me know that 2 seats were open right next to mine and they wanted to give me the chance to grab them. Yeah, they tried to sell me back the tickets I had just dropped. In any case...getting antsy for my tickets to arrive. I'm jonesin' for that new ticket smell.

I was originally going to drop from 4 seats to 2, but it looks like the federal government doesn't want me to be able to afford tickets at all this year. Damn.

Yeah exactly. Hell, I've got "hundreds of rounds of ammo" laying around just because Dick's had a good sale and I haven't been to the range lately.

Edit: Deleted; embed won't start where I want it to.

It's not even that uncommon. From addicts to obvious straw purchases to people who seem depressed, gun store owners will often deny sales before even getting the the background check phase. This one just happened to make the news because of what they think the guy was going to do.

As funny as it would be to think about, an individual private citizen (in this case the gun dealer) can't violate someone's Constitutional right in that manner. The 2nd amendment, like the others, guarantees that the government will not make laws/take action to infringe on an individual's rights. As much as some of us might like to be, we're not the government. The 2nd amendment doesn't force me to sell you a gun any more than the 1st amendment forces me to let you have a protest rally in my living room.

Aren't we all? Yeah not saying the guy wasn't planning on doing something bad, but the article makes it sound like he had a lot of ammo queue'd up there when it really sounds like a fairly common (even light) purchase he was about to make.

""When we arrived, he had almost 50 rounds of 20-gauge shot gun shell ammunition ready to purchase," Sheriff Lanny North said." To be fair, that's not even a lot. That's like, 2 standard boxes. You'd go through that in less than an hour shooting clays.

It's not so much the pricing scheme that I have a problem with. It's more that they put it forward as this was them "listening to the fans". If they had just said, "Hey, we're moving to variable pricing, preseason is cheaper but regular season got a bump so your season ticket invoice didn't change" I would've been like, "Oh, OK". But to say, "Hey we totally listened to the fans and now finally you don't have to pay as much for meaningless preseason games! Oh and we also jacked up all the other ticket prices. And raised parking..again. It's just what you asked for!" just feels dirty and wrong. I can just see them pouring over the feedback from all those surveys and season ticket holder questionnaires, seeing everyone's complaint about preseason pricing, doing this and checking off the box as a fan relations "win". It's frustrating. Yeah so...it's less what they did and more how they put it out there that feels insulting to me, if that makes sense. ... "Hey Redskins fans! We heard that YOU think beer prices are too high at FedEx Field! That $9.50 is too much for a 12oz Bud Light! Well we've listened and we've worked with our vendors to lower the pricing to $8.50 per bottle! We've also added a $1.00 per bottle uncapping service fee!" *checks off box on Fan Concerns to-do list*

This feels like a slap in the face. The letter that came with the invoice talking about how they "listened" to us about preseason pricing..I can just see the marketing ween snickering as he wrote it. I would've rather had just a general price increase than this. This feels like an intentional directed insult.And then to jack up the parking yet again was just an extra little bit of a "screw you" that I could've lived without.