I'm not trying to be a contrarian to everything you're saying, but...

Actually that second video impressed me the most. A human torso is only so deep, and I think I just as soon have a large pattern like that, and that stays embedded in the attacker. Minimal exit wounds to me means maximal force of the blast absorbed by the attacker's body, and minimal chance of drywall penetration into other rooms (or neighbors' units).

And I'm pretty hesitant to assign much meaning to ballistics gel videos, beyond the cool fireworks and lavalamp-like visual aspects. As implored in the old video game Doom when you pick up the chainsaw weapon: Find some meat!. Here's one, of lowly birdshot making a hamburger wound in a mock assailant.

Granted that's at only 10', but my intended defense chokepoint, the long part of my staircase, is 12' from upper to lower landing, which is right around the same as this vid's 24" muzzle plus 10' distance from the muzzle. You might have a bigger house, and no neighbors, so YMMV.

Now what if the attacker is superman on PCP, you might wonder. If a shotgun can hold four shots, I probably do have four shots since each would probably blast the guy back down the stairs after each charge up them. I suppose for the first I'd aim for the stomach, the next one in the genitals, and the one after that in the face. And then maybe your slug as the fourth. And then planning on spending the rest of my life in prison, I guess. Except I'd rather die than be in prison, so I guess I'd just let him get me then, at that point.

Maybe the fourth your 00 buckshot, to one of his knees. After all that he won't be able to walk or see, so I should be able to get away.

But more realistically, to the ordinary intruder (and potentially partner(s) in crime), the kerchunk will cause him(/them) to not even want to think about going upstairs, if it means hazarding close-range shotgun blasts in a narrow corridor with nowhere to go or hide.

Now if bad guy(s) is armed and decides to shoot through the floor at my estimated location... Install steel plating under the drywall of the corner I'd shoot around, and under the carpet where I'd stand? (This home warfare thing is crazy.)

That's good, because now I'm thinking I might need to be prepared to fire twice in the worst case; the first time with MH42's advice for ammo and the second with yours.

It's not about power, it's about morality. For politicians it's partially about power, but they are less than 1% of us. For the average Slashdotter for example, it's not about ruling you and me just to rule us, it's about achieving certain outcomes.

Eve didn't tempt Adam with the apple because she wanted to herd him. She was duped. Lefties know not what they do, or who they serve. They and propagators of other types of anti-wisdom are merely the instruments through which the dedicated tormentor of mankind operates. They're not interested in multiplying misery in the world; they cling, through faith, to the idea that their ideas (not really their own ideas though) will genuinely improve things. Because, afterall, this is all there is to them, so they seek their sense of redemption in trying to perfect this world, in vain.

I learned a new word a couple of months ago, coming across it believe it or not in a Wikipedia article, in a section on the early life of Julian Assange: agitprop. Your vocabulary level is lofty so I don't assume your not knowing it, but as a summary for anyone else, it's basically the long-known practice of insertion of communist values and messages and urgings (ergo "propaganda" and "agitation") into art and entertainment and other things.

This so-called intellectual dead headism will never "have gone on" (until all of this world has passed away), because it's what can more aptly be described, vice upside-down pentagrams and whatnot, as Satanism; that is, the infliction of misery on man and the spiritually-driven compulsion to do so. Anti-wisdom, if you will (which to me is also what sin is).

With the exception of a few highly notable social issues, public policy does not have a large overlap with morality, strictly speaking, for the Right for the most part. But for those who don't believe in the existence of either the master we serve or the one they do, politics and morality and one in the same. Leftism is a major world religion with billions of followers, and will not die out any more than the others will. (In fact, it has the advantage, by dispensing with traditional trappings like showing up mostly on Sunday mornings and sitting in long wooden benches, of giving the appearance of being the most "modern".)

And even if the white Liberal establishment that now p0wns most of this country's major institutions were to eventually die out, they are replenishing the country with idealogical heirs from Central and South America, who, like the Black community in this country, have fallen for, for generations and generations, the promises of a better life from free stuff with Leftism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

It's a silly name because it doesn't serve up Structured Query Language, it consumes that. "Microsoft Relational Data Server" would've been better.

(And for anyone old enough to remember, yes I know the product originally started out licensing Sybase's SQL Server engine.)

The database name is not chopped off in an abbreviation, that's the server (and instance) name that's being abbreviated, and the database name is not visible at all on the tab.

Luckily you can customize which things get put on them. For example in SSMS 10.5, menu Tools/Options, expand Text Editor in the tree view, and select Editor Tab and Status Bar. My preference is database name and file name.

Dunno why the tabs don't expand to show everything when there's available space. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen that. Tabs in Firefox are fixed width too, truncating with an ellipsis instead of using the available space.

Sure, cuz they want to get home in one piece. But I've never seen a drunk step carefully once they're out of their car. Because it's primitively understood that falling down is generally vastly less dangerous than getting in a car wreck.

In the dark, a drunk would've tripped on the single step up to my stoop.

I wonder if one's ears are pretty much blown out when firing any kind of serious firearm indoors, without ear protection. That's another reason I don't want to have to reload, as I might be pretty disoriented after the first shot.

This'll make RG cringe, but it occurred to me that I'm not looking for "stopping power" (as in putting the guy down) in a firearm and load, I'm looking for "repelling power". Because, as I said, I don't want to kill or seriously harm anyone. I want him to run off, not bleed out in my living room.

It seems like if someone wants to kill me, they can just jump me as I come out of my house, or follow me to work and jump me there, or to the grocery store and gun me down in the parking lot. I'm not worried about people wanting to come into my house to kill me, and who are willing to risk their own lives to do so. There's easier ways. And I'm not going to get into a shoot-out in my home, nor am I going to try to flush them out if they lie in wait somewhere downstairs.

I can't do anything about my vulnerability to someone wanting to kill me, so I'm not trying. I just want to be able to get an intruder to leave my home immediately. So I'd favor something typically non-lethal, especially considering in California they like to charge people with crimes for defending themselves and their homes/businesses, so it would be a plus if I had the legal standing of using something that didn't qualify as "deadly force".

But unfortunately the less the lethality of a load choice, the more that reloadability comes into play. For me it would be a balance of potentially killing or maiming, versus having to only say it once. And I think I would weight it in favor of the latter. I.e. I don't want to have to reload in a panic situation, so it's got to be a strong enough single response, to dissuade those even high on something, but should be no stronger. Or as close as I can get to this, I think.

> We can impeach our way through the whole federal government,

<drool>

<devil's advocate>
We don't like it when the Left tries to get technical with certain language, where we suggest that original intent should win out. Could it really have been the bill authors' intent to only sport subsidies in certain states?
</devil's advocate>

In any case, a part of me says the American idiot people voted for this guy, twice, and he gave us Obamacare, so that's what we should have. Attempted scratching away at by a few cuts seems to fly in the face of respect for democracy and representative self-governance. Get a majority by a healthy margin wanting it stricken from the law books (and indicated indirectly by their voting, and not what they may say only in telephone surveys), and that's when action against it would seem legitimate to me.

> ... 12 gauge shotgun ... .45 ACP ...

Ouch, I'm not 6' 200 lbs; meassumes the kick on those kinds of things would be a skosh jarring in my as-yet-un-powder-burned hands. Besides, even with practice I don't assume I could really hit anything whilst in freak-mode. But I've got a decent flight of stairs between two walls barely 3 feet wide, that I ought to be able to spray some pain down if need be across most of its width, I'm hoping.

So yeah, I figured I'd need to practice, so the tip on cheap ammo to do so with is appreciated. As long as that stuff has roughly the same "feel" when firing as the home defense load you mention.

For myself, I would probably never own a handgun, just because of that form factor's association with crime. Like (part of) the reason I gave up alcohol in my late twenties, with all the negative stuff associated with its use/abuse. Just a personal quirk of mine.

My sis and her hubby just bought a place out in the country, and I want to go build a berm on that land and do my practicing there. It's a bitch getting there I'm told, but I don't know if gun ranges in town let you bring in a shotgun, and outdoors seems more fun anyways.

Ouch, but this was back in the "eye for an eye" days. I would interpret that and it's immediately following "on the other hand" verse as, if you strike out at an intruder in the dark, you can't see well enough what you're swinging at to consciously avoid trying to kill the intruder. Nowadays we have implements of instant light. (Altho I suppose one could intentionally leave it dark so as to be able to exercise said loophole! ;)

But then there's the whole thing about the OT times being pre-JC, and all they had was the Law, until its ultimate fulfiller came. I kinda see the OT as trying to teach us (among other things) that God is resolutely about justice, and then the NT that God is also firmly about love. I see the lesson of the OT being over, and as followers of Christ we should be looking to forgive others as much as we can, and strive to turn the other cheek to the extent feasible.

But I don't doubt your perspective is highly motivated by your having a family, and can't rule out that mine might be different too if I wasn't only responsible for myself.

> I ask you to make fewer assumptions in the future based on the author's name alone.

No, it's still overall a sound policy, it's just that you're so bonkers in politics, it's easy to forget that, as far as I can recall, you seem like a pretty normal guy when it comes to everything else.

> Now granted some would say that if you wait you are foolish, and gambling with your life or whatnot.

Luckily for me it's my life to gamble with. I'm perfectly satisfied with cowering upstairs with a shotgun while I'm being burgled out of my entire downstairs' possessions, if it means not risking killing someone.

I was also thinking about getting a baseball bat for behind the front door. But I think you have to be above average in size, really, to look enough like you mean it with one. And I'm not. (I would need something more like this!)