What do you arm yourself with at home?

eodmatt wrote:

She's an MBA - business development.

Not nearly as threatening.  My mother in law is/was a northerner who married a VC who went North.  She was an accountant with the government but still wears her blue checked VC scarf to the market.  My would be father in law, now deceased, moved from the VC in the Mekong to the regular army in the north but had an office job because he was the sole male in his family line; a remarkably humane policy but certainly in line with East Asian customs.  After the war, he was a game warden and actually had a gun that he brought home nightly.  I understand the US had a policy called "sole surviving son" but I think your brothers had to have been killed in the same war.

Daughter and I just talked about that particular law the other day, and I looked up the info:

"Where a family member has died as a result of military service, the remaining family members should be protected insofar as possible. If a draft resumes during a war or national emergency not declared by Congress (Vietnam was such a war), a man (along with any of his living brothers) who had another brother, a sister, a father, or a mother killed or missing in action while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, will not be drafted. There must be a military service-related death of an immediate family member for a man to receive this deferment.

The surviving son deferment does not apply if the war or national emergency is Congressionally declared.

The present law provides a peacetime exemption for anyone whose parent or sibling was killed in action, died in line of duty, or died later as a result of disease or injury incurred in the line of duty while serving in the armed forces of the United States. Also included are those whose parent or sibling is in a captured or missing status as a result of service in the armed forces during any period of time. This is known as the "surviving son or brother" provision. A man does not have to be the only surviving son in order to qualify; if there are four sons in a family and one dies in the line of duty, the remaining three would qualify for surviving son or brother status under the present law."