Or rather not to notice said tomato covered scoundrel.

I do think a national law which allows constituents to pelt their elected officials with rotted fruit would greatly raise the national awareness of the problems we citizens face. Kinda hard to take notice of a tomato plumed politician trying to make a speech. Now you must be a registered voter who voted in the last election to do so. But I do wonder, does that mean Chicago voters get to throw twice for every one everyone else throws?

Not really, with sales to private citizens all over the country up, this action will have very little effect on their bottom line except to increase market share as people vote with their money.

And "a later" should read, "at a later date or time" However, in most states, if a person who was shooting at you, is coming back at you, at a later time or date, and there is the reasonable expectation he is coming to hurt you, in most places you are allowed to act defensively.

Exceptions include but are not limited to when an innocent stands to be injured by your return fire, such as if the bad guy is standing in front of a glass window that would not stop your bullet and you can see people on the other side. If the gang member is doing a drive by, you may, in most cases return fire as he is coming toward you or directly engaged in firing at you. You may not fire upon him as he is fleeing the scene, in most states. I do hope that gives you some clarification of defensive fire. And the place in the above comment, where it say "Illegally", should read instead "illegal"

As a NRA certified instructor, allow me to weigh in. First, in all cases of self defense, if you, or another, are in illegally in threat of immediate danger of life or limb, you may, in most states, respond with what ever reasonable force is needed to defend yourself at that time. You may not come back on someone a later. So, lets take your scenario of a gang member shooting at you. As a private citizen in a state that allows expanded castle doctrine and you are legally armed, you are usually allowed to return fire.

As for the absence of "malice a forethought", it can be shown that with ties to anti-gun groups, certain parties at the "newspaper" would stand to profit politically and their interests financially. They would then have a very hard time convincing the court of that defense. They could also be prosecuted criminally as their actions could reasonably lead to a crime or aid it in its commission. They may still be sued due to violations of privacy.

http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/papers-shade/StatisticalMisgivingsandLies.PDF http://www.thegunzone.com/rkba/rkba-43.html http://home.comcast.net/~dsmjd/tux/dsmjd/rkba/kellerman.htm Kellerman has some time listed in ER work and is not a dentist, I stand corrected.

For further reference, try googling "Kellerman".

The CDC "data" was largely discredited years ago ( the infamous "Kellermen Report"). Turns out the then head of the CDC had a buddy who was a dentist, part of the anti-gun crowd, who needed some money. The CDC head got him a grant to write up the anti-gun study, even though such crime stat studies are not within the perview of the CDC . When a new Congress was sworn in one of the first things they did was oversight of over spending. The CDC head and his buddy were both brought in to show the data. Neither of them was able to produce the data or even able to explain how it was collected in the first place. Outcome? The CDC lost funding equal to the amount that was wasted on this study. The head of the CDC has since been replaced.