Test your blood pressure:

I subscribe to Democrats Dot Com Unity. They send me entertaining email alerts. This last one read as follows:

Dear Activist,The irresponsible arms trade fuels serious human rights abuses, armed violence, poverty and conflict around the world.Next week, world leaders will gather at the U.N. to negotiate an international Arms Trade Treaty to establish global arms trade controls to keep weapons out of the hands of war criminals and human rights abusers.Tell President Obama: we need a strong Arms Trade Treaty now.Thanks for all you do!Bob Fertik
Friend –

Join us: fight for an arms treaty that puts human rights first! TAKE ACTION Tell President Obama: We need a strong Arms Trade Treaty now >>

No one – not you, not me, not the millions of responsible gun owners here in the US and around the world – wants to see arms and ammunition fall into the hands of war criminals, terrorists or human rights abusers.
Yet, there are no binding international laws – not one – to regulate the global arms and ammunition trade, making it fairly easy for those dangerous actors to access conventional weapons and commit atrocities.
Such a large global problem requires a global solution: a legally binding Arms Trade Treaty to prevent the irresponsible global transfer of weapons without infringing on domestic rights to bear arms.
Take action: Ask President Obama to support a strong Arms Trade Treaty.
Later this month, world leaders will gather at the United Nations to negotiate the Arms Trade Treaty. Oxfam has been campaigning for a strong treaty for more than a decade, and our fight has never been more important than it is right now.
What's making our work even harder? The National Rifle Association and its allies are spreading lies and misconceptions about the Arms Trade Treaty – and, unfortunately, it's working. That's why we're setting the record straight, right here:
The Arms Trade Treaty will prevent international arms sales to known war criminals while protecting millions of people from human rights abuses. It will have no effect on the Second Amendment right of US citizens to bear arms – domestic rights fall outside the scope of the treaty.
A bulletproof arms trade treaty – and the safety it can bring to families around the world – is a vital part of the fight against poverty and injustice. President Obama needs to know that you support a robust arms trade treaty, and that's why we're asking you to speak up today.
Act now: Write to President Obama and ask him to support a strong Arms Trade Treaty that will save lives and make the world a safer place.
Poor regulation of global arms trade threatens the security and rights of millions of people, exposing them to death, rape, assault and displacement. For people working to lift themselves out of poverty in communities plagued by armed violence, easy access to conventional arms threatens both lives and livelihoods.
It's our job to speak up for those communities and to fight for a strong Arms Trade Treaty – so thank you for taking action and standing with us today.
Sincerely,
Judy Beals
Oxfam America

The green links go to the following online petition: 

We need an international arms trade treaty NOWResponsible gun owners don't want weapons to end up in the hands of criminals. Responsible nations shouldn't either.The irresponsible arms trade fuels serious human rights abuses, armed violence, poverty and conflict around the world. In many areas of the world, armed conflict and poverty go hand-in-hand. For people working to lift themselves out of poverty and living in communities plagued by armed violence, the poor regulation of conventional weapons threatens both lives and livelihoods.From March 18 to 28, world leaders and their negotiating teams will gather at the United Nations to hammer out an international arms trade treaty. The proposed treaty would restrict arms sales to war criminals and human rights abusers, while at the same time not infringe the Second Amendment rights of US citizens.A bulletproof arms trade treaty – and the safety it can bring to families around the world – is a vital part of the fight against poverty and injustice. With it, we can help save lives, prevent human rights abuses and protect the livelihoods of people around the world. President Obama needs to hear that you support a robust arms trade treaty – speak up today.Act now: Ask the President to support a strong Arms Trade Treaty that will save lives and make the world a safer place.

Because it always works so well when we put the ability to defend ourselves into the hands of other nations.


Just thought you might want to know what they're up to.

"Arbitrary and Capricious."

I don't drink sugar soft drinks*. Oh, I love them, but I came to grips a long time ago with the fact that I have to watch my calorie intake, and that I'm a slob. That slob part references the fact that sugar drinks make everthing sticky, once they spill. I spill. I know this about myself, and I've taken the measure of avoiding sugary drinks. Also, there is the fact that two of my immediate family have adult-onset diabetes. While my sugar levels are good, I don't care to tempt fate. So, in addition to unsweetened coffee and tea, I will often enjoy a cold diet soda.

It has likely been 20 years or more since I had a Big Gulp full of sugary soft drink.

I tell you this to explain that it is not any kind of personal addiction to high-fructose corn syrup-laden beverages that makes me so very pleased with the ruling of Justice Milton A. Tingling Jr. of New York's State Supreme Court in Manhatten, when he recently struck down our largest city's ban on large sugared soft drinks.

In his ruling, Justice Tingling made clear that the ordinance was not only questionable in its justification, but in its jurisdiction, as well. The city of New York's Board Of Health was interpretting its own jurisdiction to be whatever it said it was. 

That interpretation, the judge wrote, “would leave its authority to define, create, mandate and enforce limited only by its own imagination,” and “create an administrative Leviathan.”

The schadenfreude. It tastes sweet.

Are you listening, Feds?

___________________
*As a general rule, this is the case. About twice a year, I will indulge in a nice cold Coca-Cola, especially when in the company of friends, and when a dram or two of rum and perhaps a lime might be involved.

Thoughts on violence.

--This nation is split right now. There is little in the way of a "conversation about guns and violence." It is two sides, squaring off. It's not pretty, and it's not really effective.

--Under the New Public Service model of governance, we are supposed to engage in a dialogue until we decide what to do, without regard to completing our goal, or achieving a real consensus.

--Those of us interested in maintaining the right to keep and to bear arms are acting calmer than those who blame firearms for the violence in which they are used.
This isn't because we're less upset. 

--Belief that ONE SINGLE POLICY will stop the violence is pretty naive. Thus, even though I believe that there are things that we can and probably should do to reduce the violence, I don't present them and then nod self-assuredly and declare "that's what will finally fix the problem."

--I've said before and I will say again that this nation has a serious problem in identifying and managing our mentally ill. We don't even deal with the emergent ones.

--If I truly believed that we could put the genie back in the bottle, and eliminate all firearms from this planet in an attempt to rid the planet of gun violence, I might well consider it, even though I agree with Marko's excellent essay, here. But it's not possible, so why entertain the mental exercise? If we're going to do that, why not settle invisibility versus flight for a superpower?

--If guns are the problem, why is my life not steeped in violence? Even though I literally am dispatched to every call involving violence in my jurisdiction for half of every other day, I have seen very little in the way of gun violence in the last 12 years of service. I've never been shot at. I've never shot at anyone. I've never arrested anyone for intentionally shooting at another person (true story!). I've only a handful of times arrested people for pointing guns at others. This is in Texas, where private ownership of firearms is almost unrestricted: No limit to number of guns, no registration of guns, no waiting period, no state restriction on private sales, no state restriction on ammunition* or magazines. If you get it federally registered, you can even own an automatic weapon.

--Some folks will see that above comment and say, "well, he works in a small town, so that's different." Well, which is it? Either we're back-woods hicks who are armed to the teeth and seething in violence, or I'm working for Mayberry, and we all get along so great, no one would ever be so unkind as to shoot someone else.  It must not be the guns, though, because EVERY home here seems to have a collection of firearms.

--Firearms were virtually uncontrolled before 1934, then more so in 1968, and more so in 1986. Yet school shootings have increased almost exponentially since just the late 1990s. Why? Yes, there are more guns. Yes, more people live in urban environments. But those aren't the answer. The problem of mass shootings has grown far faster than the rate of gun ownership. Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman, when I saw him speak, opined that the problem grew in direct proportion to the proliferation of first-person shooter video games. Hm.  I don't think that blaming the games themselves is the answer. But I'll for damn sure agree that there's an inured effect upon the players to distance themselves from the perceived consequences of their actions. 

I see evidence of dissociative behavior among youth that I didn't see much before. Youngsters engaged in online debate move quickly to direct each other to kill themselves. We've got individuals scattered among us who genuinely don't see other people as real. We've always had such sociopaths (for such they are), but it seems like we've started distilling them, and creating a higher likelihood that we'll have to deal with them.

--I am real. And so are you.

--The world will never be Nerf'd. We cannot stop violence, much. But maybe we can attenuate it. Maybe we can actually get a handle on what we can do to help reduce the chance that future sick persons will decide to destroy others.  I'm going to try. Please try in your way, too.

--Let me know what you think. I'm interested.
_____________________
*Except armor-piercing handgun ammunition.

NEVER read the comments.

Matt Inman at The Oatmeal writes about the troublesome nature of comments for a content-provider.

While I can't really comment much on how all these comments would affect my production, I can tell you that they really affect my pleasure in consuming online content. Inman nailed it here:

Screen capture used without permission. Taken from http://theoatmeal.com/comics/making_things  on 11/14/2012.

You know why newspapers and YouTube and other content hosting sites enable contents? Because it increases hits. MaryBeth471 writes about an Enya video: "It's so peaceful." Then Sk8terH8R comes on after her and responds to her comment: "Enya sux like a Dyson with a collapsed star inside! Slayer 4evR!!1!"  Then when ol' MaryBeth checks in again, she gets a little note that she has a response to her comment. She checks back in, and discovers to her dismay that her favorite soporific Irish Ambian Popstar has been maligned, and by someone who loves devil music, no less! This issue MUST be rectified! And she defends Enya. And comes back later to see if Sk8terH8R responded. And, because she did, our troll will come back. This is a big source of hits on YouTube and your favorite online news sites. Remember-- they don't care if it's a chimpanzee checking in daily; all they care about is making that hit meter roll over again and again.

This does nothing for your pure enjoyment of the thing. It will NOT show up your online opponent. He's a troll, delighted to get a rise out of anyone.

The most likely outcome for you is distress. Say NO to irritainment.

TANSTAAFL

Longtime internet friend Larry Correia writes his hilariously on-point reactions to a Yahoo article about people who are getting out of paying their mortgages due to their own misplaced values, and are spun as heroes for it.

I laughed out loud. Seriously.

You want to fix the medical system? You want reform?

I've got a very simple law that we could pass that will go a LONG way toward medical healthcare reform.

Require that, within one business day, the healthcare provider give you a straightforward answer to this question:

"How much is this going to cost?"

Mom is in rehab for her new knee, which she had put in last week. The orthopedic surgeon called it one of the worst --if not the single worst-- knees that he's ever had to replace. He told me that Mom should have come in 10 years ago to get that knee swapped out. Mom's answer (she walked 150 yards in to the pre-op room, unassisted) is simply, "Yeah, but think of how far that replacement knees have advanced, in the last ten years." Good point.

Mom's a super star at rehab, and is actually being released early. This makes her cranky elder son very happy; we've been missing her next door. (Yes, I've been visiting daily, but it's not the same.) But when her family liaison person called me to ask me if I had any questions, I asked her, "What's the cost of this? How much are we saving daily by having her come home early? What is the average daily cost of her care?"

She didn't know, but turned me over to a person at their facility who could "better answer my questions." That lady didn't know, either. "We don't do any billing here," she told me. "That's done from the corporate offices in Pennsylvania."

But she went on to assure me that the bill was to be sent to Mom's insurance companies, who typically covered most of these things, before we'd ever get a bill.

"But somebody, somewhere, knows what this costs," I protested.

"No, we won't really know, until we bill the insurance companies, and see what they pay," she told me.

This is ridiculous.

The attitude that it doesn't matter, because there is insurance, is the reason why the costs are spiraling.

On the first of this month, I changed over from my old PPO to a new Health Savings Account*. Thus, when it's medically-oriented, I want to know what EVERYTHING costs.

I know what I make per hour. I know what the overhead is for my job. I could, after checking a few figures, answer the question "How much does it cost to run the police department in Matt G's little town for a single day?"

Why is this so hard?

________________________________
*I've got a $3000 deductible to fill each year, before my account turns into a classic PPO. My job kicks in $180 a month to a savings account that I pay out of.

That's not fair! You've got more!

It's not fair that I don't have a new car, but you do.
It's not fair that my house is old, but yours is bigger and newer.
It's not fair that my hair is receding while I'm still in my 30's.
It's not fair that I can't fit in the same clothes as you.
It's not fair that I have a size 18 boot (when I can find one) without FULL compensation elsewhere.
It's not fair that, as a child, I had an allergy to wheat.
It's not fair that I had to work when my friends played.
It's not fair that I work nights while my friends work regular shifts.
It's not fair that you have more money than me.
It's not fair that you have more than I do, and I have less than you do.

It's not fair.

And now you're telling me that we don't have enough money to give me more, when you clearly have more than me? That's not fair.

First, we are not either broke. And second, it's not fair that you have more than me:

As Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) pointed out in a little-noticed but powerful speech on the economy in December, “during the past 20 years, 56 percent of all income growth went to the top 1 percent of households. Even more unbelievably, a third of all income growth went to just the top one-tenth of 1 percent.” Some people are definitely not broke, yet we can’t even think about raising their taxes.

Well, duh! There's PLENTY of money-- it's just that you elites* have taken it all.


This, my friends, is how we delude ourselves into giving up capitalism for socialism.

__________________________________________
*Defined as "those who have more than I deem to be appropriate."

This is getting old.

The most common (and apparently powerful) attack on the Tea Party movement that the Obama supporters have is race. You don't like the current administration, and some of you who are critical have been outspoken racists. Ergo: Your entire movement is racist. (Guilt By Association. Circumstantial ad hominem. Hasty Generalization. How many logical fallacies can they employ?)

You get people like those at Don't Tea On Me, who point to a single data point, and conclude that the argument is invalid, and thus the only answer for why you're critical of their side is that you're a racist.

The anonymous author of the story seems to interpret that graph differently than I do.

From what I can see, it shows that spending goes up during war. Even that's lamentable. Reagan ended the Cold War by outspending the communist bloc. Bush I spent in Iraq, Bush II spent in Afghanistan and Iraq. While I think that both Bushes overspent, I can't help but notice that the graph goes up at its steepest rate during the present President's administration.

That increase was predicted by the critics that heard the amazing array of government spending projects that were promised during the last presidential campaign. Give our President that: he's a man of his word, who spent and spent with his cohorts in Congress.

Again, though: it's offensive to be called a racist, simply for being the loyal opposition. I have NEVER thought of the President's race as a liability. Nor have any of my friends who are critics of him.

The truth is, the biggest wedge between the current President's administration and its critics are the knee-jerk supporters, who mindlessly attack the critical pundits with name-calling.

Mayor Daley: You're Not Listening.

The new Chicago gun restriction ordinance was just passed, supposedly to come into compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling in McDonald, which effectively overturned the 28 year Chicago gun ban. In McDonald, the Supreme Court said that they based their decision in the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause, which made the right to bear arms an individual right.

Comes now the new ordinance passed unanimously (45-0) by the Chicago aldermen. This ordinance has laughably been referred to in at least one headline as a "gun rights ordinance."

Look for the violations of equal protection:

1. Only one handgun per licensee per household may be operable. All other handguns must be disassembled, and/or locked up.

2. Each firearm must be registered with the city, for a $15 fee. The gun owner must get a city registration card, for a fee of $100, renewable every three years. If you're late to submit your yearly gun registration, there's an extra $60 fee. The gun owner must obtain 4 hours' worth of classroom training, and an hour of range training. Presumably, for a fee. (Too bad if you're poor; rights are for the wealthy.) Firearms training for a Chicago permit may NOT be held in the city of Chicago.

3. Only one handgun per month may be registered.

4. Registrants may not have their handguns on their porches. They may not have them in their yards. They may not have them in their garages. Only in their homes may registrants posses their single working handgun.

5. Two convictions for DWI, ever? No handguns in Chicago. They will not permit it.

6. Ever violated the city ordinance against possessing laser sights or suppressors? Ever violated the ordinance by loaning someone a gun? No license for you, then.

Text of the ordinance is HERE.

What part of "nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" do you not understand?!?

And this last bit amazed me:

Residents convicted of violating the ordinance face a fine of up to $5,000 and be locked up for as long as 90 days for a first offense, and a fine of up to $10,000 and as long as six months behind bars for subsequent convictions.

This is a MUNICIPAL ORDINANCE! In other words, a ticketable offense. In Texas, with few exceptions, a citable offense (class C misdemeanor) may not incur a fine of more than $500. Shoot, there's argument over whether we should even be able to put a person in jail for an ordinance violation. (So far, we still can, but it's a bone of contention.) But, as we know, we here in Texas do not know the Chicago Way.

As I learn more about the Chicago Way (45-0 vote?!?), and consider that our President's career was manufactured by that machine, I get very chilly.

I suppose that we should thank the City Of Chicago for so publicly making clear that they do not consider themselves part of the rest of the nation. Certainly my southern Illinois friend Don Gwinn does not consider Chicago to be a part of the state that he lives in.

Chicago lives Apart.

Come home, Windy City. Abide with us Americans.

Lemme get this straight:

TSA screeners get paid about as much or more than city cops on the street.

They receive the same protections and authorities under the law as real police.

They are training their new recruits to make derogatory remarks about the genitalia of those pass through the screening devices?

Friends, the security theater isn't working. What we should have done, September 12, 2001, was require secure doors on the cockpits of common air carriers, allow the pilots to go armed, and gone on with business as usual. Because we did not, the terrorists have won in ways that they never imagined.

______________

Hat tip to Unc, by way of Tam.

Political Distribution.

There are shades of gray.


It would seem that people are so busy identifying the difference between black and white, that they forget that the vast majority of the world falls somewhere in between.


Most people tend to think of their political affiliations as falling along a single line, like this:

But it's not really that simple. It's at the very least two-dimensional, like this:

The above graphic is one that I sketched from memory, from a lecture by Dr. Robert Taylor in a graduate class on terrorism. This was early on in the class, and we were discussing what drives people that were allegedly on opposite ends of the political spectrum to take up very, very similar positions and tactics.

It's funny how worked up people get in their identity with regard to which side of the centerline that they fall.

I worry about the polarization that I see in our nation.

I worry about the civil Cold War that looms.

Come one, come all! (Sheesh.)

Want to know why the news media are having to beg for audiences? Why newspapers are going under?

Markets are different, sure, but the main thing is: They don't even respect themselves, anymore.

They invite user participation. "What Do YOU Think?" "Sound Off!" "Log On To WWW.NewzKrap.Com, And Give Your Opinion!."

Remember when you had to be a trained journalist to end up in the newspaper? Or at least have your letter vetted by an editor, to appear on the editorial page?

Nowadays, they put up Comments sections of their news sites. Worse, the comments are allowed to be submitted anonymously. Still worse, there's no review of them before they are posted.

Case in point: Yesterday, the story came out that a mentally ill young man was shot with a taser by Fort Worth Police officers, and the man died. They precise mechanism of death is unknown. The precise actions by the officers before the tasing are unknown. The exact actions of the deceased and the description of the setting are unknown.

But there's a comment section following the sparse NBC story. 1/2 of the comments say the cops are thugs who should be put in jail for killing that poor little black boy (Oh, did I mention that there was a racial component to this?), and 1/2 the comments declare that any cop who kills "one of them" is a hero, regardless of the circumstance. The comments run into the hundreds, and eventually turn into a back-and-forth, which becomes less about the story than jibes at each other.

And why?

While I know that this is the Age Of The Common Man, let me just point out that when the journalists seek amateur input and it seems common and natural enough, we'd either be horrified or laugh our collective butts off if an amateur tried his hand at impromptu attempts at other professions, like surgery, or aircraft piloting, or electrical engineering.

Everyone is NOT special. Everyone, including me, is NOT a writer.

Your opinion? Just might not matter enough that I need to read it.

Hey? News venues? Turn off the comments to your stories. The irritainment just isn't worth it.

_________________________
"Everyone is special, Dash."
"Which is another way of saying no one is." (At 6:10)
__________________________

"You won't even go to your own son's graduation."
"It's not a graduation. He is moving from the fourth grade to the fifth grade."
"It's a ceremony!"
"It's psychotic! They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity!" (At 6:12)

Another example that the end times are near:

The Barack Obama Chia Head.

When you hear hoofbeats expect Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, not zebras.

Take my love, take my land...

...take my space station's new tin can.

NASA's newest addition to the International Space Station will be named "Cobert," because the "Cobert Report" television comedian's fictional host asked his viewers to vote him in, in write-ins.

They wrote his name in, all right. They did it 230,539 times, which beat out the next-highest choice, which was a non-write-in choice of "Serenity."

Well, I like Serenity better, obviously, but maybe we could get something a little bigger named for her. Say, the first iteration of interplanetary cargo shuttle.

Bad day at the office.

I'm going to just go out on a limb, reading this article about the three officers killed (and one critically wounded) in Oakland, CA, and declare that community-police relations are not what they should be.

People lingered at the scene of the first shooting. About 20 bystanders taunted police.
Tension between police and the community has risen steadily since the fatal shooting of unarmed 22-year-old Oscar Grant by a transit police officer at an Oakland train station on Jan. 1.
That former Bay Area Rapid Transit officer, Johannes Mehserle, has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Monday. Violent protests erupted on the streets of Oakland in the weeks after Grant's death, further inflaming tensions.

I know that Community Oriented Police is supposed to be all touchy-feelie stuff that violates the principles of good old basic policing, but it would seem that the second of Sir Robert Peel's Principles is being tested, here:

"The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions."

I feel for those officers. I can imagine the rage of the officers that were working the scene of the death and serious wounding of their brother officers, when the citizenry came out to taunt them. The community there is in trouble, and so are the officers.

Life is getting better. And better still.

And yet still we complain.

Resentment? Moi?!?

In late 2001, my wife and I were tired of renting. With a second child on the way, we knew the little two-bedroom apartment was about to get crowded. We looked at our combined income and realized that we might could swing a house, if we kept our sights low. And if our credit was good enough.

It turned out that our credit was great. Credit may be a score, but really, it's a series of Pass/Fail tests. That match play never showed how close to the bone I'd gotten at times-- only that I'd managed to pay my bills. Nowhere on it was reported how I had several times pawned my shotgun, or my .45, to make the rent check. (And then scurried back to pick them up at the next pay check.)

So we bought a little 19 year-old 1440 square foot fixer-uper for $70,000. We fixed it up as we lived in it, doing most of the work ourselves. We lived happily. 5 or 6 years later, we sold it for $96 grand to the first person who looked at it. I think she got a heckuva deal.

We put our little profit in the bank, and rented for a year and a half, until we saw our current fixer-upper. We plunked down about $70k for this foreclosed-on old house, and then spent about $30k fixing it up, and moved in. I still need to re-plumb the master bath's sink.

During the course of all of this, we've been driving the same old second-hand Civic, and my wife has picked up a salvage title Saturn.

I'm not trying to poor-mouth. I've got it pretty good. Damned good, in fact. My credit is just as good now as it was when I applied for the mortgage on that first house, and we're still meeting payments. Sometimes we even go out to eat. :) But I don't have a lot of extra; there is a moratorium on gun purchases until grad school is over with.

What I will NOT have to do is beg my neighbor to bail me out, for having promised to pay more than I could afford.

And if I sound a little resentful for having to bail my neighbor out for having bought a new house, and having parked a new car in the driveway of it every day, then by golly, I've managed to accurately convey my feelings on this issue.

Wrong hobby, youngsters.

In a rural town with crumbling asphalt streets, no curbs, and less than 100 yards of public sidewalks, why not take up a past time OTHER than skateboarding, brainiac?

Might I suggest bicycling? Or roping? Maybe weeding your folks' driveways?

Oh, no. HELL no.

I don't know what these jokers in Tucson wanted from their intended victim, but I know that they were willing to commit aggravated robbery to get it, and have little doubt that they would have stopped at murder. Fortunately for the resident that they were attacking, they were not equipped with a plan to accompany their carbine. Had they been, the homeowner likely couldn't have driven them off with merely a handgun. (Video of the robbery attempt here.)

Even while he had them on the run, the homeowner had trouble scoring decisive hits, only wounding one bad guy that we know of, and creating new business for windshield repairmen. It's hard to do good, fast, effective work with a pistol against multiple attackers under stress. But when out and about, a pistol is at most all you're likely to have on you.

In your own castle, though, you should be able to have access to something a bit more substantial.

Apparently much hay was made about the fact that a house across the street was hit by errant bullets. May I suggest a reliable old semi-automatic shotgun? Your local pawn shop and Gun Broker.com have a multitude of them for under $250, if you're not picky about the way it looks. Make sure that it's reliable, hack off the barrel to just over 18" (measure twice!!), and stick some high-visibility sights and a side-saddle on it. Don't be married to 12 gauge-- the semi-auto 20 gauge is the best-kept secret in home defense.

Practice your order of arms with it, and learn for good and all that you can't depend on the pattern spread to make hits; you need to center your targets. Once you can do that well, practice changing targets faster. Then faster. Then FASTER. The good news about a shotgun is that, if you center-punch your non-armored target at tennis court distances with even #6 bird shot field loads, that target has been effectively addressed. You may move on to the next target. If your adversary is wearing body armor, might I suggest holding on their face?

This is pragmatic, and admittedly bloody talk, I know. But we, here in the United States, must not accept home invasion. It is abhorrent. If a citizen is safe nowhere else in the world, he should feel safe in his own home. If your state does not allow you do effectively deal with the problem, ask yourself these two questions: (1) Are you actively campaigning to change this fact? (2) If you're not so active, then why, exactly, do you still live there?

Don't even start.

Don't start whining to me about how hard it is to rear teenaged girls, when:

For the second time in 4 months, I come across your 15 year old teenaged daughter, in the company of drug and alcohol-addled grown men, and you didn't even have a clue where she was, at 9:00 on a school night.

Or where the 16 year-old daughter was.

And we've received not one single run-away report.

And you lie to cover up that your 15 year-old has been dating her second 20-year-old.

You, madam, are part of the problem. And if it hurts your feelings to hear me say it, get ready to not like me very much.