Scenario: A car pulls up on your lawn, parks, and a large man walks up and starts trying to get in your front door, banging, kicking, and screaming incoherently.
Reply two years ago: Call the cops, and let them sort it out. He's probably drunk or high, and thinks his ol' lady has locked him out. And you need to move to a better class of trailer park.
Reply today: Shoot him! Shoot him! Shoot him! He's trying to get in your castle, and steal your Xbox!
(The above is simply a convenient example--not directing anything at the member who offered it whatsoever.)
Hmmm. Sometimes the mirror can be a fickle thing.
Where some of us live, calling the cops means a car might or might not show up. Not "when" but "if." And for others, the wait time for a cop might be five, ten, fifteen or more minutes.
That's a long time to wait with a large, crazy man beating on your door and shouting crazy things and all you have is an unloaded Louisville slugger propped by the door.
Fact also is, our society as a whole is not getting any nicer, more polite or safer. Period.
That doesn't mean I advocate "shoot first, ask questions later." But it does mean that according to the way I and my wife live and run our property, the person mentioned above's liklihood of being there to collect for his daughter's Girl Scout cookies is very low.
So instead of certain folks here even CONSIDERING what the homeowner may be going through, has been through, has been affected by, etc, we instead get the dreaded Thought Police coming out and deciding what is right and what is wrong.
God help you if you disagree with or resist the Thought Police. Doing so categorizes you as a mentally and emotionally deranged psychopath who drinks blood for breakfast and picks his teeth with a .223 round.
I always thought part of the "high road" as it pertains to life was to give consideration to others and their viewpoints?
There is a fine line between wannabe warriors who fantasize about "busting a cap on some pukebag SOB" and decent people who will do what they need to do without regret and minimal remorse.
Ignore/report the trollish wannabe commandos. But not everyone communicates as well on the internet as they'd often like, so maybe some of you self-annointed officers in the Thought Police can dial it back a little also?
Course, that works both ways. The folks who are more willing to defend vigorously should respect those who would choose to employ more caution.
When you do that, you're on the High Road.
Jeff