...coupled with skyrocketing gasoline prices is kind of making me feel like stopping by the reloading store for a couple of extra pounds of powder, a couple thousand primers and bullets. I also found myself browsing the DPMS web site.

There was a story about the looting in New Orleans and a man defending his home described a pack of miscreants armed with knives demanding his generator, to which he responded with a couple of warning shots from a .357 Magnum and this line:

He didn't need a gun, he could have called 911.

That's Scott Smith's advice.

And Sarah Brady's,

and Rebecca Thoman's

and Dianne Feinstein's

and Chucka Shuma's

and Kofi Annan's

You get the idea.

I don't believe in warning shots.

If it doesn't scare them off that's one less round to end the threat with.

My warning shot would have been to center mass on the closest thug.

Ammo is too expesive to waste on warning shots, especially good quality self defense ammo. I wouldn't even waste any of my inexpensive reloads that way

This is getting unbelievable. It's like effing Somalia down there.

Disasters always bring out the best in people and the worst in people. I hope the good guys have plenty of ammo.

It's getting ugly, and it'll get uglier.

In every day life, I agree, however this'd be quite the test case -- can a homeowner use deadly force against a potential threat when it is not on his property?

The upside is that considering the Haiti-like conditions (and that's probably an insult to Haiti!) in New Orleans, it's unlikely anyone would even know, let alone blame you. I don't remember prosecutions when Koreans fired on looters in the LA riots, and that was in the PR of California.

The downside is the Governor of Louisiana insisting that YOU be one of the examples of her anti-vigilante/anti-looting/civil order policy. Then you spend the rest of your life at Angola Farm, trying not to get turned out as "the man that shot one of the brothers trying to get by in the flood".

What is Louisiana's stand on guns under usual circumstances?
Are they more like Texas, where from what I've heard citizens are given a little more lattitude, or more like here in MN, where you have to mind your P's and Q's?

I'm in agreement that with the current state of affairs down there, this may be a moot point.

*IS* there a law here or anywhere else governing "unusual circimstances" such as times of riot, natural disaster, or other times where civil authorities cannot enforce the law? It would almost seem to be the opposite of a "shoot whoever you need to shoot" -- typically martial law or other states of emergency have the opposite effect on civil rights.

The media isn't helping things, as usual.

I heard Matt Lauer play the race card this morning. Mentioning that in the photos, all the people hurting that couldn't get out are poor and black. He's so upset that they were allowed to "slip thorough the cracks" and not have the same opportunities as the wealthy white people. He's demanding that someone be held accountable for them not having the means to get out of the situation

Even though I shouldn't expect any different, I still get so wound up about it...

I think in yesterday's Red Star Tribune, they ran an editorial on racial bias in the reporting of the hurricane aftermath.
They showed 2 photos of people who appeard to have taken things via looting. In one photo was a person of color, the other photo was someone not of color. The caption was "Guess which one was labled as a looter, and which one was labled as someone only trying to survive"

I saw where the "journalist" was trying to steer the reader, so I didn't bother to read the accompanying article.

How about just reporting the facts for once, and keeping your holier than thou attitued out of it?

You'll never get the media to do it:

Check out this book, "Coloring the News" it is VERY worth the read.

http://www.amazon.com/...

It's about how the media's obsession with diversity, both within the newsroom and outside the newsroom, results in misleading & skewed news reporting.

An excellent example is immigration; the media won't report on the problems of unfettered immigration because most of the immigrants are non-white, non-white immigration means "diversity", and they won't allow criticism of diversity.

[edited to shorten the displayed link; it was making the whole thread too wide for some screens - Matt Payne, forum moderator]