[delta13soultaker]

Inplanotx, that is one fine tutu. You need a chaperon to walk around like that. My tutu is getting scratchy and kinda tight so I think I'll put back on my faded loincloth and sweaty headband.

On my street the last guy that said "Texas" instead of "Republic of Texas" was skull dragged down to the pasture and branded, but he is getting it mostly right now. (He is still on probabation and must kiss your spurs if at any time your beer pitcher is less full than his.) Texas is a good state in that it does give the honest citizen more room to defens himself than many others. However, people do fall through the cracks even here; and since a lot of people don't live in Texas, there are other considerations.

No matter who you are, regardless of capacity or your intention, homeowner or ranch hand or state trooper, I believe (speaking for myself here) that when you pick up a weapon you inadvertantly owe certain responsibilities to your community and obligations to every citizen. You can be doing your best to be the good guy, but if you disregard those obligations then you are at risk of being reckless and not too different than a drive-by shooter or mugger. I think of it this way, when the anti-gun lobby flaunts statistics they use gun crime numbers because they are the most infamous, BUT when they recite instances, they use documented cases of well intentioned gun owners who made poor choices at the needless expense of innocent life and never mention the difference from those crime numbers; this hits us the hardest where it hurts as gun owners. Every time a well intentioned person does this, they shoot another hole in the bottom of our boat. It is easy to be our own worst enemy and we are.

Another thing. I know a defense lawyer from Chicago, who is a part time Devil Dog officer when his one weekend a month, two weeks a year, six months when USMC says so comes around. We've had some interesting conversations. A creep that kills a lady for her car gets charged the same fees as a man protecting his family who went too far. Right now there is more than one decent fellow who thought he was in the right at some point that is sitting in a cell the next three years beside a punk who shot a store clerk.

Having said that, a man will do as he wants, Texas or otherwise, and that's the way it should be.

Shooter45, you summed up my gist in a few skillful sentences.

Armedandsafe, SAS is so tuff the can eat cream of mushroom soup cold from the can with no spoon. The first time I ever met a Brit trooper he said to me "What's closer mate, a taxi or a whorehouse?". I was at a NATO patrol course in the middle of Sheepscrew, Bavaria, while they and others from the multinational units were doing some evasion/resistance stuff, them running around in below zero night wearing clothes they made from garbage and no equipment at all evading dog teams and helicopters and all that. We came across one trooper who had dug in frozen ground mostly with his bare hands for concealment or warmth, and I mean he was missing finger nails, and was not about to quit either. I think that kat had sores on his but that if left to fester would eventually become a decent SPETSNAZ team. Man there are a lot worse organizations to get beat up by than the SAS.