Randy
Thats the mini-30 and it's a beast. 7.62x39 has to be one of the best rounds on the planet. It knocks the hell out of whitetail.
I have my CCW permit and I carry a baby Glock when I get in an area where I feel it necessary. I carry in a quick release fanny pack and when I have the rest of my gear on it's barely noticeable. I want to be able to approach neighbors in a neighborly manner.
I have a steel lock box in the truck for when I don't have the gun on my person. I have to say that I cringe when I hear about guns in glove boxes or under seats. They have a funny way of showing up at crime scenes.
As for requiring crew members to carry, check with your insurance carrier for a go-to-hell policy in order to cover a bad shoot, it's a great way to decide if a work place policy is a good idea. You could easily loose it all to a cowboy who hits an innocent bystander when he pops a cap at an irate adjoiner, or blows his foot off trying to defend himself against a garter snake. Bear in mind that that protection of property is often not a legal reason to even draw a weapon, let alone shoot someone. That will vary by state.
My attitude towards carrying is that if you want the robot, fine. I am insured.
I will, however be going home at the end of the day. End of story.
I work solo much of the time, and many times in rural areas. I hold a valid handgun permit, and do carry when I feel it necessary. Some of my work deals with foreclosures, and I help keep an eye on some of the properties for one of my clients.
I have been in one or two houses, just checking on things for them while I was surveying, and been walked in on. It will make you think. Thankfully they were friendly people interested in the house for sale. It could have just as easily been someone not so friendly.
ruger ranch rifle
ruger makes a model in 6.8 whatchamacallit. 6.8 SPC ?
JB,
All fine points as usual... I think that who ever said that they want someone with a "CCW permit as a point of employment" or whatever was thinking of a larger aspect or issue... that if you can hold a CCW permit that you can pass a pee test, have a bit of intelligence, don't have a long list of priors and are semi sound of mind. But, of course... I'm just guessing here. I usually just need a guy that can get through the court house doors without locking down the building... And I've been wrong at that before.
Good night.
Carl
A bit off topic, but I had a co-worker who was picked up for an outstanding warrant while on a job site, and when he was arrested they also charged him with carrying a concealed weapon ... for his plumb bob! I think the cops eventually dropped that charge, but when the boss bailed him out, they wouldn't return the plumb bob, and said it was destroyed.
> Seeing how Wisconsin has recently passed a concealed carry law (one of 2 states left that did not allow concealed carry), I have been thinking about the issue.
>
> I started to wonder how many surveyors carry while working.
>
> I'm not going to ask if you do, but rather, what percentage of surveyors do you think carry while working? Is it 2%, 50% or 90%?
I don't believe in concealed carry, people should carry in full view. Just like in the Wild West.
JB hit the nail on the head. I've had my permit for over a decade and I carry anytime I feel that the location or job warrants it. Weapon of choice varies from a compact 22 cal to a full frame 9mm. Like JB said, if someone wants my equipment they can have it. If they want my truck, I'll help them load the equipment in it and give them the keys. They'll never know I'm armed until I feel like my life is in danger, but then.....The rules change.
I carry now and then due to wildlife but it basically becomes another piece of heavy metal to carry around so yeah,I do take chances now and then leaving the damn thing behind. But there are other methods of defense that I prefer not to get stale by over reliance on the artillery.
I had an employee bring a gun to work one time, told him never again and would have fired him had he done so. Carrying a gun on the job is a much greater liability than any possible benefit. Imagine shooting someone while out on a job. Maybe if I was in bear country in Alaska or something. If I felt a neighborhood or job was so dangerous I needed to carry a gun....I would drop that job.
I was working with a guy that was in town from our Gainsville office.
He kept his gun in the glove box.
We were in "a bad part of town" and as soon as we got 300 +/- feet from his truck, 2 "gangstas" smashed the window and went right for the glove box, grabbed the gun and ran off into the woods.
It's almost like they knew where to look. Uncanny.
:good:
I had a friend that was surveying in downtown Memphis. It wasn't that bad of an area. A guy approached him just walking down the street. He went to step out of the guy's way, and the guy tried to pull my buddy (not a small guy) into the alley, but stumbled because my buddy was bigger than he was. He saw the guy's gun, and my buddy pulled his and shot him before the guy could get him.
I have had another friend that was working in a decent part of town have three guys pull guns on him, and when his crew members walked up and pulled their weapons, the other guys backed off.
Point is, I want to make it home to my family every night. I have many more years that I want to aggravate the wife and kids. I used to say that I would beat the living heck out of some one for trying to steal my stuff, and probably still would, but as I get older, it is just stuff, and it's insured. I don't want to loose my life to some crackhead or idiot.
Most of the time, it equals the playing field. A halfway normal person does not want to get shot, or worse yet killed. Criminals use guns to intimidate and instill fear. Most of the time when confronted, they will turn and go the other way.
A couple years ago, I was almost stabbed in the back by a crackhead with a steak knife but I turned around at the last second and he was standing there knife in "I am gonna stab you" position, five feet from my back.
This is the one instance I would have shot somebody if I had a piece at that moment, I had a shovel and it was good enough to run him off. I called the po po but they could not care less.
After that, I changed my habbits with regard to c c, and also trippled my prices for surveying in the ghetto.
I have surveyed plenty of ghettos in the past 25 years and since there had been no incidents I guess I got complacent thinking it could never happen, I am back on point now.
I try not to set foot in the ghetto but if I do you can bet I have caps with me, both kinds.
:good:
:good:
i prefer open carry while working
but i can't carry a burner. company policy. i carry a machete openly, 100% f the time in the field. seems the knuckleheads wouldn't want to get cut. they stay away from me.
maybe its a "dont want to get cut by that thing, looks like it hurts a lot". the samurai sword burglar killing a couple years ago must have changed public opinion as well, at least in maryland....
from baltimore sun a couple years ago. very popular subject in maryland to this day:
Hours earlier, someone had broken into John Pontolillo's house and taken two laptops and a video-game console. Now it was past midnight, and he heard noises coming from the garage out back.
The Johns Hopkins University undergraduate didn't run. He didn't call the police. He grabbed his samurai sword.
With the 3- to 5-foot-long, razor-sharp weapon in hand, police say, Pontolillo crept toward the noise. He noticed a side door in the garage had been pried open. When a man inside lunged at him, police say, the confrontation was fatal.
He was backed up against a corner and either out of fear or out of panic, he just struck the sword with force," said Baltimore Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. "It was probably with fear for his life."
Pontolillo, who rents the house in the 300 block of E. University Parkway in the Oakenshawe neighborhood, struck the intruder no more than twice, police say, nearly severing his left hand and inflicting what police termed a "spear laceration."
The intruder, Donald D. Rice of Baltimore, a 49-year-old repeat offender who had been released from jail only Saturday, died at the bloody scene.
Pontolillo, 20, of Wall, N.J., whose identity was confirmed by law enforcement sources, was released late Tuesday afternoon. Guglielmi said it would be up to the state's attorney's office to determine whether he will be charged in the incident.
In a statement Tuesday, Hopkins officials told students there had been more than a half-dozen burglaries in the area recently, and that police presence would be bolstered.
Diego Ardila, a Hopkins student who lived with Pontolillo in the three-story, five-bedroom house during the summer, said Pontolillo owned a samurai sword and generally kept it in his room. He described Pontolillo as somewhat outgoing, but said they didn't talk a lot.
"You don't expect to hear that someone you know killed a guy with a samurai sword," said Ardila, 19. "From what little I know of him, he wasn't some guy going out to kill."
It is legal to possess a sword in Baltimore, Guglielmi said, and "individuals have a right to defend their person and their property." He declined to comment on whether its use in this case was appropriate.
University of Maryland professor David Gray, who specializes in criminal law, said prosecutors must weigh whether Pontolillo felt his life was in danger or whether he became the aggressor.
In Maryland, Gray said, an individual is not expected to retreat from suspected danger in his own home. But it is unclear how the law applies to an enclosed backyard.
If the student felt he was in danger of severe bodily harm, then he was within his right to protect himself, Gray said: "It doesn't matter if he used a gun, a sword or a frying pan."
The sword police recovered from the scene, with a sharp blade and ribbon-wrapped hilt, is a replica of a historic samurai weapon. Though a real one would cost thousands of dollars, Guglielmi said, this one probably cost a few hundred.
The police spokesman said the student who wielded the weapon had no advanced sword training. "He wasn't a ninja," Guglielmi said. "He may have been moderately trained or on the intermediate level."
Hundreds of varieties of samurai swords are available online to collectors and hobbyists, martial arts enthusiasts and students of swordplay through stores such as Steve Dibble's Japanese Swords 4 Samurai site, based in Birmingham, Ala.
His swords range in price from about $50 for the model called the "Kill Bill," after the violent Quentin Tarantino films, to more than $2,000 for a handmade "Katana" forged of steel, a hilt wrapped in leather and silk, and decorative flourishes of silver.
Midrange swords, the type apparently used in the Baltimore incident, are those likeliest used at martial arts schools, he said, where students want a weapon sharp enough to cut.
To inflict lethal damage requires some skill, Dibble said.
"To be that confident with it that he would go grab it, he may have been into martial arts," he said. "You would have to hold it with two hands and be confident that you would really know what you were doing."
Mantis Swords, an online outlet based in Westminster, specializes in sharp weapons. "Our swords are ready for cutting," owner Shawn Salafia said.
Salafia sells mats that people can soak in water so that when they dry, they'll be roughly the consistency of a person.
"You stick them on a stand, and you cut them," he said. "If someone laid their hand into it, you could probably cut into it pretty darn deep."
By Tuesday afternoon, two pools of blood remained on the ground a few feet away from the door to the garage, which is not connected to the home. A gate in a wooden fence surrounding the backyard was broken, allowing the scene to be viewed from the sidewalk.
Michael Hughes, who lives about a block away in the neighborhood, heard screams early Tuesday.
Not many ghettos in SW PA. I do carry my trusty 380 in certain places. I do it more often in heavily wooded areas where there is either the threat of wildlife (or getting lost). When I first started carrying, my crewman asked me what was it for. I said "For bears" His reply was that all a 380 would do is piss a bear off. I simply told him the 380 wasn't for the bear. I didn't have to outrun a bear, I only had to outrun him!! He was very quiet and obedient for the rest of the project.
The liability issue can be divided into two parts:
1) the mere fact that you or someone on your crew is carrying, and that scares the insurance people, because, you know, "something bad could happen." It's the age-old Common Law vs. Commercial Law conflict -- show me an actual event with an actual victim who is not a legal fiction vs. mere potential risk. Read some J. Reuben Clark quotes for a bigger picture.
2) the idea that someone on your crew is a hothead, and that carrying might lead them to brandish (as opposed to legal & necessary presentation in face of a physical threat) or cause a "bad shoot".
#1 is, to me, a sign of everything wrong with modern society. It's what we have to work with, but unless we speak up, perhaps take our insurance business elsewhere when this social control is inflicted upon us, things will continue to slide towards the corporate nanny state.
#2 (and this is for others who brought it up, not Sam) is quite revealing with regard to how the profession regards its grunt labor.
If I can't trust someone to keep a cool head with a firearm and to be astutely aware of when presentation is legal & appropriate AND WHEN IT IS NOT, including property damage/theft or simple verbal abuse, I don't want them on my crew.
If you have those concerns about your crew, I have to wonder about how you can trust them with the rest of your work.
(edited for typos, hope I got 'em all)
