Fast lane passes

Anybody receive the email from CP about the “biggest sale of the season” being this Saturday? Any idea what it will be about? Haven’t renewed our Platinum Passes yet so might be a good time however I will be traveling out of state most of the day.

Most likely save $5 on a platinum pass, but you must buy online and pay the Accesso $6 handling fee.

It's a President's Day sale. Buy one full-priced ticket, get one free. I haven't heard any word on Platinum Pass discounts yet.

They advertise the lowest prices for Platinum Passes being late summer & fall for the following year, so that has already happened for 2018.

I thought on President’s Day you were supposed to buy a mattress.

Every President's Day politicians go on sale.

But will anyone buy them?

The NRA has quite a few in their pockets.

LightDark18 said:

It's a President's Day sale. Buy one full-priced ticket, get one free. I haven't heard any word on Platinum Pass discounts yet.

They had the deal posted up at $72 when I looked. I also noticed the normal 2 day tickets are on sale for $70. Last I knew those didn't have to be used on consecutive days. I guess the bogo deal would let you bring 2 people on the same day, but I don't see any other reason why you'd buy tickets that way over the 2 day ticket.

-After poking around I see this was already addressed in the trip planning thread-

Kevinj said:

The NRA has quite a few in their pockets.

Entertain my curiosity, what laws do you want to see changed?

Wait, popcorn.
Ok go.

How about no.

Right? But it's so tempting.

To be fair, I've already spoken to the governor's office and our senator's offices about the issue. I'll just keep it as simple as possible; I don't see gun control, which is only one piece of a much bigger pie that we would do well to figure out, as a "picking sides" issue. It should not be distilled down to a Republican vs. Democrat issue, Conservative vs. Liberal, etc. It's that type of polarization that removes any possibility of change.

It is, however, an issue that makes The United States more or less a confusing laughing stock in the developed world. But I get it; it's hard for many people to reconcile that, in many ways, the United States is not the "best" or the "greatest" nation on Earth. It's hard to reconcile that we actually have a lot to learn from other countries. For this issue specifically, countries like Australia, Japan, and (Trump's favorite!) Norway offer models from which we could gleam quite a bit of positive moves to take steps in the right direction.

I think the right to own a gun is perfectly OK. It's not my thing, but it's OK. That said, it should be a lot harder than it is currently to obtain one.

Kevin, very well said. I totally agree.

We must also remember, when the 2nd amendment was adopted, the guns of choice were muskets and dueling pistols. Automatic machine guns, AK47's, etc., were unheard of.

^Fully automatic guns are already illegal (except if built before a certain date in 1986 if memory serves, but those are very expensive) and have never been used in a recent mass shooting to my knowledge. (Although the Vegas shooter used "bump stocks", which allow a semi-auto rifle to fire not unlike a full-auto rifle at the expense of accuracy.)

I don't think getting a gun needs to be a lot harder.

But I do think there need to some reasonable adjustments. Background checks, for one. A waiting period. Some restrictions -- compliments of our friends in Washington, people who have been found incompetent to manage their affairs ( they can't even write and sign a check) can walk into a gun shop and buy a gun, no questions, no backround check.

I just saw a nice piece about two guys in Michigan who were pulled over by the police and felt in fear for their lives. They decided the best way to protect themselves was to walk into the police station with guns drawn.

They're both doing nine months in prison.

Due to government incompetence, the background checks we have in place don't work as well as they should. Passing new laws to include more due diligence in those background checks will do little to prevent headlines with the way law enforcement currently functions at both the federal and local levels. All we ever get is an article after the event where this agency or that acknowledges an existing law should have prevented the event if law enforcement worked effectively.

After 9-11, when it was revealed that one FBI field office had received tips about people wanting flying lessons but not caring about taking off or landing, we got Homeland Security Presidential Directive #5 (HSPD-5 ). A key purpose was to try and prevent failures in the future due to a lack of cooperation and communication inside and between law enforcement at all levels of government. It was issued in February 2003. An application I maintain interfaces with a system at another agency which just implemented one of the key HSPD-5 requirements for shared communication in 2016!!!!

noggin said:

I don't think getting a gun needs to be a lot harder.

You have to go through far more to obtain a driver's license than you do to obtain a semiautomatic assault weapon (in most places).

You have to be 3 years older to drink than you do to obtain a semiautomatic assault weapon.

That just seems... off. And I'm a pro-2A, multiple gun owner.

Ken P said:

Due to government incompetence, the background checks we have in place don't work as well as they should.

That's illogical. It's like saying "airbags don't eliminate all injuries or deaths in automobile accidents, so we should just abandon additional safety measures." Are existing checks imperfect? Of course - there never will be a perfect system to ensure responsible gun ownership. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to do better. "Perfect is the enemy of the good" as they say.

Something I have been mulling around in my head is some sort of system in which people could still own them but some added protection for one single person cracking. At least in all the movies it takes two keys to launch the ICBMs for good reason. Something maybe like licensed gun clubs having control over storage and use of military type weapons where you can go the the clubs facilty or supervised outing and have all the fun you want with them. Hell shoot howitzers, bazookas and throw grenades if they want to pay for the ammo, but having multiple people involved in the control and safety could go along way to preventing someone having a mental breakdown slaughtering the population.

I do not buy the argument that one needs military grade weapons to protect against government tyranny. The government will always have more and bigger guns that you can stockpile.

And it is never to soon to talk about and discuss solutions.

djDaemon said:

That's illogical. It's like saying "airbags don't eliminate all injuries or deaths in automobile accidents, so we should just abandon additional safety measures." Are existing checks imperfect? Of course - there never will be a perfect system to ensure responsible gun ownership. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to do better. "Perfect is the enemy of the good" as they say.

My point was more that believing more gun control and background checks are going to magically fix or prevent this is the illogical conclusion. Several of the highly-covered events of recent years have all come with the caveat that had the government done its job, this person would not have been permitted to purchase a gun, not that the person would not have been involved in some sort of event.

The current headline of the week now includes:

• 7 years of missed opportunities by local law enforcement,
• classmates that were too busy bullying the person to report the issues,
• school staff and administration in an affluent, gated community too concerned about image to speak up,
• and two ignored tips to the FBI that the person was thinking about shooting up the school in revenge.

All of that and the only thing folks are concentrating on is the one moment when a purchase was made. I see the singular gun control focus being sort of like declaring that there are so many data breaches that everyone should have credit monitoring instead of insisting companies do a better job of developing and deploying software in a secure fashion and have respect for customer data they possess. One method is much more pro-active and useful than the other.

More gun control laws without addressing the 7 years that led up to this is a reactive, last-ditch effort that sounds good in a tweet or campaign rhetoric but won't deliver meaningful results by itself.

Oops, my bad. I thought I clicked on the “Fast Lane Passes” thread.