According to the United States Supreme Court police have no constitutional duty to protect you, or any other citizen. That knowledge is not very widespread, and hopefully very eye opening.

Remember, when seconds count police are minutes away. As ruled by the Supreme Court law enforcement has NO duty to protect you. So kiss your "the system works" utopia bye-bye. I've posted too many things about the fallacies of alternatives to handguns and "shoot to wound" philosophies to repeat them here. I recommend you think outside the box and look at all sides of the issue before you make blatant, uneducated statements.

While it would be preferable to shoot the kneecaps, keep in mind that that suddenly gives you multiple, quickly moving, very small targets. In home defense you need to be extremely mindful of stray bullets. Any bullets that miss don't stop till they hit something, and in the case of a house they can penetrate walls, doors and windows before coming to a stop. That is why it is always taught that one should aim for the center of mass. It is a much larger, slower moving target that is easier to hit and reduces the likelihood of stray bullets. Additionally, "minor wounds" such as shooting the knees still leaves the perp able to use or draw his own weapon and use it against you. Finally, in periods of extreme duress the majority of training or whatever preparedness you think you may have goes out the window. I highly doubt anyone would be able to accurately put rounds on targets the size of knee caps (that are moving too!) while battling the fight-or-flight impulses of their nervous systems.

Just my $0.02 worth, not trying to flame your post but just trying to point out why it is not really a feasible goal.

Hahaha this cracks me up! LA has NO room to talk. I was raised here in WA but lived in north LA county for 5 years during/post college. What we consider a light drizzle is already on the high end of the pucker factor for most Angelinos. I worked on a 911-response ambulance alongside LA Co. FD and during the rainy days we would be running almost non-stop to (mostly minor) traffic collisions. Traffic would slow to a crawl in all areas whether it was congested or not.

There would be the timid drivers who would get hit by others. There were the inexperienced drivers who would hit the timid drivers or pinball off of guardrails/sidewalks/etc and then become timid drivers themselves. And also there were the cocky jerks in their jacked up Ford F-350's or their lowered Honda Civics who would go racing around calling the other drivers various forms of "weaksauce". These particular drivers could be counted on to wipe out into spectacular grinders. The jocks would then be found on the sidewalk, their faces wet from equal amounts of raindrops and tears. While snow cripples Seattle after a few hours of intense snowfall, rain in LA cripples anyone in its path from the moment it begins, no matter how light.

That being said, I also lived in Wyoming for a year, and yes Seattle snow is far more treacherous and difficult than in a mountain state that has had snow every month of the year before.

I always felt that Tracy Jordan had an ominous persona...

Keep in mind that the van ambulances (trauma twinkies) are significantly heavier on the left side of the vehicle than they are on the right due to the way they are set up in the back. I went through EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operator's Course) in those rigs and we were required to do both evasive and sudden stop drills and on both the ambulance tended to veer left. A blown R tire would lurch the ambulance to the right and an overcorrection to the left could have occurred. It'd be hard to recover from that safely at freeway speeds.