>>>I am a little bemused when I see intelligent people like Charles and Bill Kuhn talking about their home security in terms of firepower. I think if I lived in a place where my home defence had to consist of more than securely locking my doors at night I'd want to move.
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>>I think if you read my reply to Bill that is exactly what I said.
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>>http://www.levelextreme.com/DataEntryThreadView.aspx?ID=1560445
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>Apologies Charles.
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>How come you haven't moved to the UK (or Canada) then :-)

My heart is *always* in the UK. :-)

Actually, like many if not most Americans I live in a place where I don't even remember whether or not I lock my door at night. Our local police blotter for a week usually has 4 or 5 items, usually teenagers drinking or partying loud and somebody filching a newspaper out of a neighbor's box would be considered a crime-spree. I don't think property crime - much less violent crime - is as common here as the media would cause one to believe and the areas where it is a major problem are pretty well defined.

On many levels life is all about risk assessment. And often the people who thought they would get AIDs from toilet seats, be invaded by ,marauding zombies or be poisoned by something they read about in a newspaper article that somebody died of ten years ago on the other side of the country are the folks who buy lottery tickets.

I figure the way I've lived at various times in my life pretty much proves life can't be nearly as dangerous as it is made out to be. (though it is true nobody gets out alive )