Reply #80: Once again, if you make the assertions, you assume the burden of proof

[Euromutt]

Now, as to all my bulletproof assertions: would you like to offer any evidence that any of them are false?

Care to provide any evidence they're true? Or, for that matter, bulletproof? (I assume you mean "bulletproof" in a metaphorical sense, since it would be impossible to literally shoot holes in them.)

I really do think a planet on which those two things look exactly alike would be quite a lot of fun.

I don't quite understand what that's supposed to mean, since the two scenarios quite obviously do not look exactly alike. That's the entire point. In one scenario, an innocent person is victimized by a sadistic assailant (with all the concomitant emotional trauma on the victim's part); in the other, such an assailant is effectively halted. Quite different outcomes, I hope you'll agree. (As an aside, let's not assume the the assailant who ended up shot was "only" there to take the woman's material possessions. He sought her out in her hiding place, on the other side of a locked door, strongly indicating that his primary intent was to inflict physical harm on her.)

Now, I'm sure everybody here would prefer an outcome in every scenario in which the assailant could reliably be prevented from inflicting harm on his prospective victim without recourse so lethal force. Problem is, the method that would reliably allow that to happen has yet to be developed. That's why law enforcement personnel continue to carry firearms, even though they have an increasing variety of "less lethal" methods (OC, tasers, etc.) at their disposal. So the most desirable outcome cannot be counted upon to be achievable, to put it mildly. No, actually, the most desirable outcome would be no assault occurring in the first place, but the violent crime statistics indicate that we really can't count on that happening.

Exactly where that wolf-murderer Palin necessarily comes into this is unclear to me. Why not bring up Eleanor Roosevelt? She carried a revolver while doing civil rights activity in the South.