joshmmm
Regular Member
imported post
Ok, so some of you may have read my short rant in the silencer thread but I wanted to make sure this gets the proper attention.
When a board member poses a question such as "I can't find a definitive answer to whether I can legally attach a silencer to a gun..." or "Does anyone know for sure if a liquor store is or is not off limits for carrying" or states "you can't carry a gun into a montana rest stop restroom" etc. it is NOT ok to respond with an answer such as "illegal" "certainly it is banned" etc.
If Lonnie posts a short reply I have good reason to trust him as an authority on the subject. Dave Workman is another person I would trust to have researched something before posting. (If you don't know them either through these boards or personally--you should not trust them) However, if either of them simply made either of these statements I would still want to know where or how they know the answer. It is even more important for people who haven't spent years working on Washington gun rights to qualify their opinions with articulable, citeable facts.
Don't post for the sake of posting. Just agreeing with a previous statement clogs up the board with useless posts. As does disagreeing. I feel as though lately people have been trying to simply increase their "post number" for their profile. If you want to write back please do some research and write an insightful post. Provide new information. Think back to school and the guy who always had to answer every question and comment on everything--how often was what he had to say useful, interesting, new, etc? Now, being that we are all sitting at computers, we have access to a wealth of information and the ability to do research before hitting reply.
I am very concerned for the non-discerning reader, the person who stumbles upon our site or even an anti who reads our site... If anybody goes around giving out false information because they read it on this site it is bad for everybody and will ultimately kill this board. No information and "I don't know" or "I think this but I am not 100% positive" are all 1000 times better answers than a non-researched, possibly incorrect statement. Imagine the consequencesof being wrong. A person is told it is OK to carry openly in a liquor store but a WSLCB agent knows otherwise and has the person arrested. Or, knowing that it is legal to carry in a Montana truck stop Lonnie enters the restroom carrying his gun openly. A trooper on a bathroom break, who happens to have read the thread stating that it is illegal, relies on the thread as correct information and arrests Lonnie. Both situations are equally bad--a person is arrested who had reason to believe he wouldn't be and neither would have been had correct information been posted to this board.
Back to the original posts to illustrate. We have been debating, mostly finished as we couldn't find a correct answer, whether persons under 21 are officially allowed in liquor stores. Nobody has found a definitive answer from any official source or person. Today, a new poster states that since the liquor control board doens't allow anyone under 21 in a liquor store it is not allowed to carry a weapon. We all know that if they ban minors from a liquor store guns are not allowed. We DON'T know if they ban minors-- the closest we have found, which is certainly very weak anecdotal evidence at best, is that they have a sign posted at most stores that allows minors with a parent. Does this answer whether we can carry guns? NO-- we don't yet know if that sign is official, based on a law, etc. Would we have a good defense if chaged with violating the applicable statutes--probably--but who wants a good defense--I'd rather be 100% in the clear and not spending months of time and thousands of dollars presenting a pretty good defense. I'd also like to legally carry my gun if it is in fact allowed by law. Not knowing sucks--and knowing the wrong answer is worse than knowing that you don't know.
Please don't take this whole post as a reason to not post--just think before posting baseless opinions--or at least inform the readers that it is your opinion and how you came to that opinion.
Ok, so some of you may have read my short rant in the silencer thread but I wanted to make sure this gets the proper attention.
When a board member poses a question such as "I can't find a definitive answer to whether I can legally attach a silencer to a gun..." or "Does anyone know for sure if a liquor store is or is not off limits for carrying" or states "you can't carry a gun into a montana rest stop restroom" etc. it is NOT ok to respond with an answer such as "illegal" "certainly it is banned" etc.
If Lonnie posts a short reply I have good reason to trust him as an authority on the subject. Dave Workman is another person I would trust to have researched something before posting. (If you don't know them either through these boards or personally--you should not trust them) However, if either of them simply made either of these statements I would still want to know where or how they know the answer. It is even more important for people who haven't spent years working on Washington gun rights to qualify their opinions with articulable, citeable facts.
Don't post for the sake of posting. Just agreeing with a previous statement clogs up the board with useless posts. As does disagreeing. I feel as though lately people have been trying to simply increase their "post number" for their profile. If you want to write back please do some research and write an insightful post. Provide new information. Think back to school and the guy who always had to answer every question and comment on everything--how often was what he had to say useful, interesting, new, etc? Now, being that we are all sitting at computers, we have access to a wealth of information and the ability to do research before hitting reply.
I am very concerned for the non-discerning reader, the person who stumbles upon our site or even an anti who reads our site... If anybody goes around giving out false information because they read it on this site it is bad for everybody and will ultimately kill this board. No information and "I don't know" or "I think this but I am not 100% positive" are all 1000 times better answers than a non-researched, possibly incorrect statement. Imagine the consequencesof being wrong. A person is told it is OK to carry openly in a liquor store but a WSLCB agent knows otherwise and has the person arrested. Or, knowing that it is legal to carry in a Montana truck stop Lonnie enters the restroom carrying his gun openly. A trooper on a bathroom break, who happens to have read the thread stating that it is illegal, relies on the thread as correct information and arrests Lonnie. Both situations are equally bad--a person is arrested who had reason to believe he wouldn't be and neither would have been had correct information been posted to this board.
Back to the original posts to illustrate. We have been debating, mostly finished as we couldn't find a correct answer, whether persons under 21 are officially allowed in liquor stores. Nobody has found a definitive answer from any official source or person. Today, a new poster states that since the liquor control board doens't allow anyone under 21 in a liquor store it is not allowed to carry a weapon. We all know that if they ban minors from a liquor store guns are not allowed. We DON'T know if they ban minors-- the closest we have found, which is certainly very weak anecdotal evidence at best, is that they have a sign posted at most stores that allows minors with a parent. Does this answer whether we can carry guns? NO-- we don't yet know if that sign is official, based on a law, etc. Would we have a good defense if chaged with violating the applicable statutes--probably--but who wants a good defense--I'd rather be 100% in the clear and not spending months of time and thousands of dollars presenting a pretty good defense. I'd also like to legally carry my gun if it is in fact allowed by law. Not knowing sucks--and knowing the wrong answer is worse than knowing that you don't know.
Please don't take this whole post as a reason to not post--just think before posting baseless opinions--or at least inform the readers that it is your opinion and how you came to that opinion.