Perhaps you're thinking of a different version of "Family" than me, Jaque. I can think of the old days of "Family" where bully would attack kid, kid would call on big brothers, bully's big brothers would call on parents, and pretty soon you have two armed gangs going hell-for-leather to kill each other. Maybe some ppl would like to return to the days of the lynch-mob and Italy's vendetta system, but I'll give that a miss, thank you very much.

Self-defence is allowed at any time, so long as you're actually defending yourself - or even if you only think you're in danger. If you confront them, they run away, and you shoot them in the back, I'm afraid that's not self-defence.

Your assumption is that every criminal attack is endorsed by "them" to let "them" control you more thoroughly. Excuse me if that sounds just a _little_ paranoid. You reckon there's some evil giggling genius sat in Washington, just trying to curtail your freedoms? Hell, your President can't hardly tie his shoe-laces, so what do you reckon the rest are like?!

The problem isn't that there's an integrated plan to screw you over, the problem is that there's no plan at all. So whilst one lot are pulling in one direction to get more control over guns by passing new laws, another lot are implementing those laws really slackly, which gets you right back to square one. Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

Graham.