[MaggieL]

My point being that "useful" is a relative term about which people disagree. Fortunately I don't have to submit everything I do to some bozo for a "usefulness" review. At least not yet.

Sorry I missed that you're an alcohol abstainer. Maybe you should try some; it might loosen you up, and that might be "useful" from some points of view. But failing that, then I suppose you advocate prohibition of alcohol too? Since you imply it's not "useful", along with heroin and psylocybin? But marijuana *is* useful?

Again: attempting to control behavior by creating new classes of contraband has never worked, and always creates another black market, and thus expands the criminal economy. Whether a particular prohibitionist law is already on the books or not has nothing to do with whether having such laws is a good idea...which *is* what we were talking about, I thought.

The naked drunk who was shot while breaking into his neighbors house demonstrated he was a hazard to himself and others. He *almost* managed to make home to bed without killing himself or anybody else. But it was only *almost*.

Anybody who tries to break into somebody else's house is doing something very *dangerous* (even if they're fully clothed), and being too drunk to realize he was doing it doen't make it one whit less dangerous. Breaking and entering *should* be dangerous...and having it *be* dangerous is a much better deterrant than classifying crowbars and glass cutters as "burglar's tools" and taking them off the shelf at Home Depot.

Of course, *nothing* will "deter" someone who's too intoxicated to know he's comitting a crime. And I'm not in favor of making the world safer for drunk drivers...even if they *almost* make it home before they finally screw up permanently.

If a naked, incoherent man tries to break in my back door at 3am, he's in *danger*. Of course, I'm always responsible for restraining my use of deadly force against such a person to the minimum necessary to ensure my own safety...which is something the shooter in this case apparently (based on the published evidence) did not do...the evidence is he was so frightened that he continued firing even after the drunk turned around and fell down.

But if the *first* shot had been a killing shot, while the drunk was still pushing his way into the house, it would have been a righteous shoot in my opinion, and the fault *entirely* with the naked drunk. He's not entitled to rely on the homeowner being a bad shot or recognizng that the naked incoherent man trying to break down his door at 3am doesn't have crminal intent, any more than he's entitled to rely on the other drivers and pedestrians on the road on his way home giving his car a wide berth because they can see he's "driving like a drunk". But even his survivors aren't acknowlegeing his resposibility for the outcome of his actions--not only have they sued the homeowner (and his company) for the shooting, they're also suing the bar where he was drinking, for letting him get that drunk.

Your words were <i>You always counter with "well, that hasn't happened" - because you're lucky, and because your daughter "knows better"...</i>. I guess I mixed up the causes I offered and the silly idea you were inserting in the middle of my words. I'll have to watch for the quote marks next time. It certinaly seemed you were saying that *I* claimed I was lucky. I see now you were trying to sneak your *own* claim that I'm lucky by in the midst of that.

But it's *not* "luck" that my daughter knows better, nor is it "bad luck" that Pearl, the WSJ reporter, was kidnapped by the terrorists he was trying to interview, nor "bad luck" that the wandering drunk happed to pick a armed household to try to break into. These are *all* forseeable consequences of people's actions. Making posession or use of *things* illegal in an attempt to forclose stupidity or malice on the part of *people* is misguided, and always rife with unintended consqences.