Twocubdad

Good thing leaders are being "requested" to use this approach as it will be ignored in our unit.

Driving Statement Balances? Is this a crew specializing in accounting? We have a directions to our most frequent campsites in anyone wants them. If it's someplace new the guys putting the trip together provide directions. We ask anyone driving to the campout to park in a line behind the troop trailer. Once everything is loaded, the SPL has the troop go stand with their driver and car as one last check. But the boys decide where they ride. We don't pay or track it. Our rule is "A Scout is Courteous." The courteous thing to do is to offer to help your driver with gas money. It's up to the driver to accept it or not.

And General Franco is still dead.

I didn't WRITE it, just read it. It was a link from some Facebook post. If you're looking for a defense of modern online journalism, you've got the wrong guy. But yeah, it's plausible. Didn't the administration threaten something similar back in the fall? That's politics. Edited to add: Semi-raw footage (four minutes worth) at: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-34222_162-57563029-10391739/biden-meets-with-gun-safety-advocates/ Decide for yourself. Skip over to the about 3:40 in the clip. (This message has been edited by Twocubdad)

I read a different article on the same thing earlier in the day and my take away from that was the administration would act with or without Congress. Who knows.

Under the heading of Your Tax Dollars At Work, here's how the CDC breaks out Firearm deaths: Total 31,347 Unintentional 554 Suicide 18,735 Homocide 11,493 Undetermined 232 Legal intervention/war 0 The CDC report lists which "mechanisms and indtents" are included in each category, but, alas, I've loaned out my copy of the "International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Second Edition." If any has a copy, let me know. One interesting statistic is the relatively low number of unintentional firearm deaths. The homocide number is really somewhat of a catch-all for our purposes, since it could include both criminal activity, heat-of-the-moment shootings and mental health-related things. I did read one abstract from 2007 which appeared to be a legitimate, peer-reviewed journal which made the case the instance shootings by real homocidal mental cases is fairly low. Interesting. I didn't bookmark the article and I doubt I could get back to it so I really don't have more detail. From the data, it's hard to draw any conclusions about the number of homocides which could be prevented by requiring gun owners to better secure their weapons. But to the point of my earlier post, that number will certainly be higher than the number of people killed in mass shooting. I don't think there is any question a large number of suicides could be prevented by better securing guns. I'm not sure I found your list of "notions" Beav. If I'm looking at the correct post, your thoughts on insurance and liability seem like the Civil Litigator Full Employment Act of 2013. I'm not sure that helps. For one, only law-abiding folks will pay attention to it. Secondly, I don't see how it prevents shootings. If I'm so enraged that I'm going to shoot you, I'm probably not too worried about my insurance premiums going up. If your intent is to make the cost of gun ownership higher, it may work, but again only if I follow the law and buy the insurance. The focus needs to be on getting folks to better secure their guns, not on collecting restitution after they're used in a suicide or unjustified homocide. The point is often made that almost all guns used illegally were purchased legally a on point. I asked before about the legal liability of an unsecured gun and I still don't understand that. If you leave a gun unsecured and I get shot with it, I don't know why I can't sue you along with the shooter and anyone else in arm's reach. If you're the guy in the chain of liability with the biggest house, I don't know why I can't go after you. That should include guns which are stolen and later used in the commission of a crime. Our state has a relatively good law which requires folks to secure firearms from access by minors. It does a reasonable job of describing what constitutes "secure" and a variety of exceptions -- for example, a gun being legally carried on your person is considered secured even if someone takes it from you. Even if failure to secure a firearm is a relatively minor offense, I'm going to think twice about leaving a gun laying about if I know I'm on the hook for how it is later used. I also think this can get leveraged into insurance companies denying cover for stolen guns which were unsecured. I know there is such a thing as "vault coverage" for jewelry. Maybe if gun owners are covered against theft only if their guns are really secured that will provide a little economic incentive for more responsible ownership. We need to see a smoking hole in the side of your gun safe.

Yeah, what Barry said, Beav. On the one hand that's a typical, federal government lots-of-money-and-a-huge-bureaucracy solution. On the other its just a good, old-fashioned red herring. I go back to an article I linked on page two of this thread which was written two years ago. http://www.policeone.com/active-shooter/articles/2058168-Active-shooters-in-schools-The-enemy-is-denial/ If you havent read the article, youve missed one of the most rational, tangible solutions out there. Without repeating the whole post, the point of the article is we have ELIMINATED school fire death not one death in the past 50 years by systematically changing the way schools are built and operated. This wasnt done with a new tax and massive federal spending, but by engineering rational fire protection codes and implementing them over the years as schools were routinely upgraded and replaced. The same could be done with to protect school kids from intruders locate and harden ancillary spaces like offices and store rooms to be used as safe rooms, make automatically-closing fire doors secure to limit movement of intruders in schools, reduce glass-walled spaces in favor of more secure space. And so on. Before running off and adding $10 billion a year to the deficit or amending the Constitution, lets look at some numbers. Step back from the immediate horror of Sandy Hook and think about the big picture. If were going to devote billions and billions of dollars to saving lives of school children, is this the most effective use of that money? According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but its the only compiled list I readily found) there have been 99 shooting accounting for 273 deaths at US schools and universities since 1966. That's 4.5 deaths per year. So lets say the Wiki list of off by half and double that number. Still..... Of the 99 shootings, 56 of them involved only one victim and another 21 had two fatalities; in other words, over three-quarters of the incidents. It is unlikely assault weapons and high capacity magazines have much bearing on single or double murders (but you would have to look at each individual situation to really know.) It also suggests armed guards would be rather ineffective. Again, you would have to look at each particular situation, but it seems a reasonable assumption in many cases an officer would get involved only after initial shots are fired. Also note that four incidences Sandy Hook, Columbine, Va. Tech and Univ. of Texas in 1966 account for exactly one third of the 273 fatalities. These mass shootings are rare occurrences. Point #1 spending $10 billion a year on guards to prevent a tragedy which occurs once every 5 or 10 years isnt a wise use of resources. According to the NHTSA an average of 137 kids are killed every year in school bus accidents. How many seat belts can you buy for $10 billion? Ill work both sides of the street here by noting in our school district, like Barry's, EVERY SCHOOL already has a regular, full-time, armed police officer assigned to it as a school resource officer. So net us out of the $10B. It is also worth pointing out that these officers do more than stand guard they teach drug awareness classes, deal with discipline issues, direct traffic and Im sure a number of other duties Im not aware of. So if there is a need for armed officers in schools (and again, the school district decided that here years ago), a little cost accounting shows their time needs to be billed out as more than just guard duty. Bigger picture still: According to the CDC, ( http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_03.pdf page 81-82 ), who I hope we can agree is more reliable than Wikipedia, in 2009 there were 31,347 firearm deaths in the US. Of that number 18,735 were suicides -- 59.8%. Compare that to 21 total firearm deaths in 2009 attributed to mass shootings (those with a single gunman and five or more deaths, usually including the shooter). That's 0.00067% of all firearm deaths. Point #2 if youre really interested in doing something about shooting deaths, the most effective changes (its really hard not to use bang for the buck) will be to deal with suicides, not mass shootings. Im just spit-balling here, but Im guessing few suicides are accomplished with a Bushmaster and even fewer folks offing themselves empty a full 30-round clip to do so. The assault weapon/large-capacity magazine argument falls short. Clearly, this falls back to the mental health issue. Your flight medical argument is a compelling one, Beav. Im not a pilot, but my understanding is the stuff which will get you grounded are those conditions which could cause you to pass out/drop dead at the controls heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, etc. So whats a comparable list of mental health conditions? Will telling your doctor youre feeling a little blue get you bounced? Anti-depressants are the third most often prescribed in the US. How many of those folks are a threat? I spent about an hour last night reading articles on gun violence and mental health issues looking for one which provided some concrete criteria for denying access to firearms. I didnt find one. I did learn since 1968 federal law bans gun purchases by folks with adjudicated mental defect although that mean a court finding of mental incompetence and/or institutionalization. Of course we clearly dont do that anymore or at least very rarely. Somewhat disturbingly, I found a good many articles arguing against a correlation between mental illness and gun violence and expressing concern for the stigmatization of folks with mental health issues by the creation a national registry. I certainly did not find what I was looking for a concise list of markers we lay folks can use to differentiate between a run-of-the-mill wing-nut and those with real mental illness. That a fifth of all injury deaths were suicides tells me the professionals arent too good at making that differentiation either. There are a number of states which do require health care providers to report patients and includes those reports on background checks. But its Swiss cheese, and I never read what the reporting threshold is. Even at that, there are the patients rights folks working against it. Until the mental health community gets this figured out I dont know how some guy in a gun shop or Joe Schmo gun owner can be held to enforce this.

So how does that work? Someone was cleaning out their desk and ran across a bad, 10-year-old training module and figured, what the heck, our volunteers have nothing better to do, let's post it? I expect more respect be given of my time. I exect higher quality standards for training materials. Until now, I would would take -- have for the most part HAVE taken -- any training BSA puts out. For one, I'm interested in being the best leader I can for my Scouts. Secondly, I trust BSA will value my time (and theirs, for that matter) and not put out worthless training material. I would think that is an attitude BSA would encourage and not abuse that trust.

Funny. Discovering you are not at the center of the universe can be a real eye opener. Rule of thumb -- no one dies of malnutrition over one week of summer camp.

So the NRA thinks this makes them down with da brothas? Can they possibly be more tone deaf? Note to NRA: just shut up, please.

Been down the same road and know what a burden it can be. Thank you for your conscientious service.

Legitimate (that is, non-rhetorical) question, Beav: My neighbor's 12-y.o. son takes his dad's non-secured gun out from behind the nightstand and decides to see if he can shoot it. He can. In the process a stray round shoots off my left pinkie-toe while I relax in my backyard lounger. What prevents me from suing the snot out of my neighbor? How is that any different for any other stupid activity the boy may engage in such as taking the family car and running over my right pinkie-toe or playing with matches and burning down my house? Does any general liability coverage the family might have treat the negligent use of a firearm any differently from a car or matches? Is is not true that as a general proposition, intentional and/or criminal acts are not covered by insurance?

First, my observation has been that "leading by example" is deeply discounted by the Scouts when it's the adults doing the leading. The Scouts won't eat the chili and think, "gee, we could make that ourselves," they think, "oh, Mr. OX made dinner." Stepping up the quality of cooking is a very long-term process. It's taken us a couple years, but our Scouts have finally taken to it. No, they're not necessarily great cooks, but they do try and are willing to take chances on new menu items and take pride in those things the cook well. I'll take that seven days a week and twice on Sunday. A few things we did -- First, we banned PopTart, Ramin noodles, and similar garbage, as others mentioned. I'm okay with hot dogs for lunch (beats cold cuts) but I want to see chili sauce, cole slaw and a variety of condiments. If you do dogs, do dogs. Extra credit for grilled brats, onions or peppers. Two -- and this was the best thing we did -- we included cooking in JLT/TLT. We put the boys in pairs or trios and gave the boys (relatively) unlimited food budgets. The groups then had to prepare something they had never done before, something they had always wanted to try, or maybe a favorite food they wanted to adapt for campouts. We were doing the training at the Scout House, so we noted there was a grocery store a half-mile in one direction and a McDonald's in the other -- they could totally foul up and no one would starve. We then assigned an adult who worked hands-on with them. We had one pair who wanted to make gazacho! (It was delicious!) Another group wanted to learn to grill steaks on an open fire, so we bought them a couple t-bones. Another patrol wanted to roast a chicken on a spit. The surprising thing to me was rather than exotic stuff, the boys really just wanted to learn to make the basic stuff they like well -- like fried chicken. The real key to this was 1) we treated it as a training exercise which gave the boys "permission" to experiment and 2) we set them up for success mainly by having an adult to work with them. This gave them the confidence they could succeed and take these skills/menus back to their patrols. Third, we do several cooking competitions a year. Our holiday banquet was a pot-luck dinner, but dessert was provided by each patrol making one dessert with the parents all voting on the best. The best competition we do is a version of the Iron Chef TV show. The main thing is to give the boys a box of odd ingredients and make them figure out what to do with it. Just by simply including onions, peppers and mushrooms in with the ingredients meant we got omlets rather than scrambled eggs, stir-fry instead of hobo dinners and cheese steaks instead of sandwiches. Once the boys figure out how easy it is to make something good, they carried it through on the non-competition campouts. Fourth, we maintain standards for cooking advancement requirements. To complete First Class cooking requirements, the boys have to work with an ASM IN ADVANCE of doing the cooking. The ASM makes them go through the planning, develop the shopping lists, nutrition, etc. While doing that he makes sure the menu is appropriate and adequately challenging. He also strongly encourages the Scouts to cook their meals at home for their families prior to the campout -- if you can't cook it at home, it's not going to get any better in the field. The same ASM is also the Cooking MB counselor and makes sure the boys who earn Cooking are really doing the work. While our Scouts make take the Cooking MB class at summer camp, I tell them up front I will only accept a completed blue card from our troop counselor.

Just took the online Physical Wellness course. What a stupid, stupid, stupid waste of my time. Smoking is bad? Really? So assuming I failed fourth-grade health, why waste time with the insipid banter of Peewee Harris & Co. or restoring health to the cartoon green blob? What's the target market for this crap, adults or Tiger Cubs? I logged-on because I needed to update Safe-Swim Defense and Safety Afloat (not that I have any immediate need for either of those in January) and saw the wellness training. Since I had not previously taken it, thought I'd give it a try. What a waste. Who do I see about getting that 45 minutes of my life back?

My basic outlook is generally against more government control of anything, guns included. So, in general, I'm going to agree with your point of view, JB. But out of simple intellectual honesty, I've got to call BS. Rifles only? When was the argument confined to just rifles? Dice the data finely enough, and you can make any point. I'm sure more people died from unclean nail clippers than pink revolvers with ivory grips. Ban nail clippers! Right? On it's face it's a stupid argument even as sarcasm and does little to advance the case.

Just for you guys, on Burns Night at the end of the month I think I'll wear my Scout shirt along with my kilt. Oh the blasphemy! Slainte Mhath!

So either the kid was suspended for being a kid and pretending his finger is a gun OR threatening to shoot another student is only worth a one-day suspension. Either way, the school is run by morons.

On the Newhart show, do you remember the name of Larry, Darrel and Darrel's business? "Anything For A Buck"

As per usual around here, you'll get a sideways answer: your CC should be handling recharter anyway. Drop it off at his house and tell him to turn in in when it's completed.

I've got no problem with the game, but then I've never been involved when it really went south. The course I staffed it wasn't a big deal. Everyone was so tired they really didn't care. For the course I was a participant, it worked very well. Our patrol figured it out fairly quickly. Truth be told, we were too exhausted to give a flip. What we figured out was we could sit on our butts and quote the Scout Law to the other patrols with little expenditure of energy. At least one of the other patrols in our group were INTO IT. Everytime they won a round they were hooting and high-fiving each other. Even after we were allowed to talk between patrols, they stuck to the "win all you can" strategy. That they looked like asses and felt like crap after the "reveal" was okay with me. Frankly, that's a good lesson for the boys too. I don't suppose I'm the only one to ever see competition and "patrol spirit" get out of hand. It's a good gut check to occasionally be reminded of the big picture.

True story: Back in the days when I was building houses (you guys remember when we used to build houses?) I got really ticked when one of my framing crews didn't show up. These guys were all from WVa and were all brothers/cousins of some degree. Tried calling all day and never heard from any of them. Next morning I was waiting for them when they showed up at the job site. "Where the $)()^%%#$#&! were you guys yesterday?" "Well," the big one answered, "we took our grandmaw to her concealed carry class but when we got there there weren't enough folks for them to put on the class. So we all stayed and took the course so memaw could get her carry permit." I was speechless. These guys weren't bright enough to make that up, so I just mumbled something about working late and trying to get caught up. Gotta love them West Virginia boys.

Not to be snarky, VV, but that's exactly why we quit using age-based patrols. I would add a sixth point that attrition makes it difficult to keep same-age patrols viable over the long-term. Unfortunately, the solution which applies to many of the issues is to gear instruction and activities around the younger patrols. Of course that runs the risk of boring the older guys. Part of our hybrid approach is that we still use new Scout patrols for the new Webelos from crossover through PL elections in the fall. While the NSP(s) are in place we run parallel instruction time -- which is the whole point of our using the NSPs. During instruction time the new boys focus on preparing for their first few campouts, learning to use the troop gear, basic scoutcraft, T-2-1 requirements, etc. The troop guides announce the topics for these sessions and older guys who many need to work on related requirements are free to join in. Depending on the activity, we try to handicap scoring for the NSP during competitions. For example, if we're running a knot relay, the NSP Scouts are only given basic knots they have been taught. Leadership is the nut we couldn't crack. In one of the other threads on the topic, I mentioned my older son's PL quit Scouting in part because of his frustration with being PL to his peers on a competitive camporee. (In full disclosure, the kid also HATED the whole concept of camping, so the PL deal was more of a last straw.) Leading first and second year Scouts is no job for wussies. You need your best, most experienced leader (and those with a knack for working with younger guys) to lead young patrols. Asking an 11-year-old to try and lead a group of his peers is setting that kid up for failure. As you note in point four, it has more to do with the other 11-y.o.s unwillingness to being "bossed around" by their peer than it does the PL's leadership skills. In yet another thread I've mentioned the current patrol I have of all second year Scouts. This is precisely thier issue. I saw this train wreck from a mile away and tried several everything but outright SM veto to prevent it, all to no avail. One of the things we tried to do was to create somewhat of a "buddy patrol" between these guys and the patrol of 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds. That didn't work. Everyone's problem is no one's problem. While the older guys would check on the second-year patrol from time to time, that wasn't what the patrol needed. The second-year guys really needed another year under their belts working along side older guys. Sorry, but my real solution to these problems is to mix these guys up with the older, more experienced guys.

I've taken a couple bites at answering this, but the answer for our troop isn't as straight-forward as it would seem. The troop has undergone a lot of change in the eight years I've been SM and one of the biggest has been moving from a rookie SM to one with eight years experience. Short answer is we reorganize patrols about every two years. The longer version of that is that how patrols are populated has evolved considerably over the years. When my older son crossed over 10 years ago, there wasn't much method to the troop of any description. Only two campout between crossover in Feb. and the following January when I and another dad finished OLS. PLC never met. SPL was basically there to lead opening and closing ceremonies. Troop programs were either British Bulldog, dodgeball or sitting through a adult-organized MB class. My son was essentially in a NSP, but the alleged troop guide stayed with the patrol two, maybe three weeks. The older boys may have been assigned to patrols, but functionally there were none. Eighteen months later we got a new SM -- moi. Having recently completed all the by-the-book training, we stuck with the NSP (which we still use for the first 8 months) and kept the same-age patrols together thereafter. It only took another year or so to realize that system didn't work for us. My older son's patrol was down to two guys from the original six (one only joined on paper, two moved out of town with their families, and a fourth quit in disgust after a terrible experience of trying to lead a patrol of peers through a competitive camporee.) We were also having a lot of problems with the second-year patrol as well who were essentially leaderless. (Not unlike the patrol of second year guys I have now.) So we changed. As I've posted before, I don't think our system easily fits into either the perpetual, mixed-age method or the age/grade-based method. Every 18 or 24 months we do a "fruit salad toss-up" with the patrol roster. The last couple times that happened it was necessitated by the addition of 16 or 18 new Scouts into the troop. Last fall we reorganized due to some unexpected attrition in one patrol and another patrol falling apart due to some discipline issues. We've used a number of methods for deciding patrol membership giving the boys more and more control each time. This last time we went all-in free market by asking who wanted to serve as PL and having those guys recruit their patrol around them. Except for the previously-described problems with the patrol of all second-year guys, that system has worked very well for us. Thinking about this, it occurs to me our patrols stay together longer than the 18-24 months between shake-ups. Particularly when we give the boys more control over who they want in their patrols, these core groups tend to survive patrol reorganizations. Just thinking about my own son, now a matter of weeks from 18, he's been in a patrol with the same core group for the majority of his time in the troop. After reorganizations they may add a few different guys and may or may not change patrol names but generally speaking, it's the same bunch of fellas. I don't think we have the records to do a real analysis, but I'll bet that's true for a lot of the Scouts. The first few years, as their friendships and interest change, the patrols may bounce around, but eventually they settle in with the guys whose company they enjoy. I'm cool with that. We may not fit in a particular category, but it's working for us.(This message has been edited by Twocubdad)

A distinction with no difference, SR540. I gave you three quotations where the phrase "The rights of the Citizens of the United States to vote..." is found in the Constitution. (And I omitted a fourth, the 19th Amendement -- my apologies, ladies.) I would be surprise if another right has more direct mentions. I'm not sure what more you need. Lesson #2 from my ConLaw professor: the Constitution is not an instruction manual. If you're looking for tab-one-into-slot-A directions, consult the statutes and case law. That the Constitution leaves details -- including voter qualification -- up to the states, doesn't diminish the Constitutional guarantee of a right to vote. Obviously, we've gone to quite some trouble over the years to clarify/secure/expand that right through five different amendments, not to mention "our past unplesantness" as my aunt says. Also note except for the first 10, most amendments give Congress the power to enforce (and consequently define)the amendments through legislation -- hence the various voter rights acts and a whole army of lawyers in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. I do understand and agree with the concept of "native liberty" which you and Beav -- and, oh-by-the-way, Hamilton and Madison -- express. I'm not a lawyer and am not trained the the art of writing law. However having lived 20 or so years in my father's house and now having spent 20 or so years raising two sons, I can tell you "don't hit your brother with that stick" doesn't mean you can hit him with a shoe. I believe it fair to say most civil rights are given a similar expansive reading, particularly in the past 80 years. Could this thread possibly be further off topic?

You're 180 out of phase, Beav. Exclude fire arms from coverage and watch gun safe sale go through the roof. Besides, your proposition supposes there is civil liability in irresponsible gun ownership.