It's not recent. It's been pretty steady for many years, at least since Mary Kay Letourneau was in the news in the 90s. Many cases are just local news. When I was a teenager (pre MKL being in the news) I had a friend who was sleeping with her English teacher (female student/male teacher). Everyone knew. It was an open secret among the teenagers. We didn't really care (now that I have kids that age I look back and am like what the crap?!?!). Everyone loved that teacher. When Dawson's Creek started and had the Pacey/Ms. Jacobs storyline, it didn't even seem weird to me because of my friend's experience. The president of France is married to a teacher he had when he was 15, though they did not become a couple until he was 18. Since he is just a few months older than I am, I'm going to go with this sort of thing having been common for a long time.

Lanny, have you read his full apology?

Do I or Don't I: Nothing today. Weekly Traditions: No. I'm really not good at traditions. I just forget to do them! Thanksgiving: Sort of. No one in the house especially likes turkey or ham so I'm not sure what main dish we'll have. I've actually considered getting lunchmeat and having sandwiches with all the trimmings lol

I love pretty much all Christmas songs (I've been listening to them on our Echo since the beginning of the month... don't judge). But my very favorite is Mary Did You Know? and specifically the version by Donny Osmond.

No. I figure I'm far more likely to die in a car accident like my grandparents than in a mass shooting and I still drive wherever I need to go.

Get my act together: Mostly I just need to clean out my parents' room. I've been avoiding doing it for a long time. But they close on their house in less than 2 weeks and will be here 2-3 weeks after that so we have to be ready for them soon. I got the shelves in the craft room all cleaned and ready over the last few days. But now I've got to get to their giant room, giant bathroom, and giant closet (their master suite is literally a third of our house). Make a decision: Nope, not me. Personal chef: That would be fabulous!

I think I'd call it "So That Happened..." I actually got more out of the Sidetracked Home Executives than FLYLady.

Stagnant: Nah. Not at the moment at least. Weekend: Friday we went to SpaceTime Park where we got to walk from the sun to Mars at the speed of light. Today: School, work for the big kids.

Yup, 2008. Or at least it was on the NYT bestseller list in 2008. I read it for the BAW Bingo square for bestseller written in child or spouse birth year. That's the year Adrian was born :)

I finished reading The Host by Stephenie Meyer. I never thought I'd say I liked a book by her. It was good, though slow at times.

My older two kids did a few competitions season before last (ATA season starts in... June I think). Ani ended up getting second in sparring at districts so her season ended there. It's expensive, but it was tons of fun. They got to know a lot of the other competitors that they saw over and over. Now Ani's too sick/health is too unstable to train and Cameron's a head instructor at a school that just opened so competing isn't really an option for either of them anymore. We know several kids who regularly compete. In fact, one of them did a clean sweep of her ring yesterday (7 first places). Another was in the invitational for XMA forms at ATA Fall Nationals last month (2 chosen from video entries compete live at the invitational). He didn't win, but it was still cool to watch (on ESPN 3 lol). The chief instructor at the school where Ani works (she's a program director - so behind the desk) was on a World Champ Demo Team two years in a row when he was younger. Some tournaments are run well, some aren't. But they always had tons of fun no matter what.

68-82 upstairs, 70-79 downstairs year round (we have one of those fancy thermostat thingies that you set to upper and lower limits and it keeps it between those temperatures). We live in South Texas, though, so like right now the temperature in the house is naturally 74 with no heating or cooling happening.

We spend 2-3 hours each day (less for the arts) doing all together work. We were doing a week's worth of together subjects on one block before, though, so this was not a change for us.

We use LoL and LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it. We've used so many things over the many, many years. The boys are engaged in what they are learning. They are enjoying the activities. They are learning and, more importantly, remembering what they learned. It's a lot of work for me to plan, but it's totally worth it. (We used it for history only about 8 weeks last year and everything this year for 11 weeks and I think 8 units so far.) I blog about everything we do. https://thefamilywho.wordpress.com/

I finished Out of Play by Joy Northram. It's about a woman with a husband who starts LARPing and their marriage is a mess so her therapist recommends she try it out, but instead she spies on him and ends up convinced he is having an affair and then a big twist is thrown in and it just wasn't good.

No. Because assuming they are all gross would be pretty much the same as assuming all women are making it up.

Netflix already does have parental controls...

Perhaps look to Switzerland and what they do. To buy ammunition: Ammo is only allowed for guns they legally own (permit required for gun purchases so they know what you legally own - basically, legally owned weapons must be registered and they can only obtain ammo for registered guns) Identification or passport must be presented to the seller. Can't be psychiatrically disqualified or identified as posing a security issue. Can't be from one of several countries if not a citizen (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Algeria and Albania). Your address must be presented to the seller. You must provide a criminal record copy of not more than 3 months old. Your weapon acquisition permit must not be older than 2 years old (certain weapons can be legally owned without a weapons acquisition permit) or a weapon carrying permit not older than 5 years old. This information must be sent by the seller within 30 days to the weapons registration bureau where the weapon holder is registered. The same rules apply to black powder/black powder substitutes for firing historical rifles Generally prohibited: Ammunition with armor-piercing bullets, with projectiles containing an explosive or incendiary device, with one or more floors to the release of substances which damage the health of people in the long run, missiles and missile launchers for military explosive, with projectiles for transmitting electric shocks, for handguns with deformation effect So, in Switzerland, registration has not equaled confiscation and there does not seem to be a giant black market/criminal element getting guns and ammo illegally or regular mass shootings (honestly, in both our country and Switzerland, suicide by gun is a big issue). There have been two mass shootings in Switzerland. One in 2001 that killed 14 people and one in 1912 that killed 7. They have 3.01 firearm related deaths per 100,000 population per year. This IS higher than other European countries around them (with stricter gun control), but still MUCH lower than the US which is 10.54 (which is a little higher than our neighbor to the south and significantly higher than our neighbor to the north). Breaking it out into homicides/suicides/accidents/unknown, in Switzerland, that's 0.21/2.74/0.04/0.09 (per 100,000) and in the US it's 3.6/6.3/0.18/0.08. Per 100,000 citizens, Switzerland has 24.45 while the US has 112.6. That makes Switzerland have 0.00012311 deaths per gun per year and the US 0.00009361. Interesting statistics. I definitely think that some sort of exemptions for higher magazines available only at, and only allowed to be used at a range, is reasonable. I don't know much about hunting, but AFAIK hunters don't generally shoot animals a whole bunch of times (by whole bunch, I mean more than 10 bullets).

1.) But it does make it so they don't have to reload as often and so can pull that trigger more times in a certain time period than without a high capacity magazine. Also, not having to reload means they don't have to stop what they are doing and pay attention to something else (reloading) giving people around them a chance to stop them. Even people who can reload very quickly have to pay attention to what they are doing. 2.) I think those are very good ideas. I vaguely recall some call for restricting magazine size after Columbine maybe. Obviously, it didn't happen.

The Nazi gun is a sig sauer. I don't know anything about it. I haven't even seen it even though it occurs to me that my grandfather gave it to my father when he died in 1997 and I still lived at home then. It was very much illegal (or at least very much against the rules) for my grandfather to bring it home from Germany. He was far from the only serviceman to do so, however. So my grandfather technically didn't own it and so could not legally transfer it to my father. It hasn't been used since that Nazi used it before he died. That one is an interesting and unusual case, though.

It's very common. A lot of people I know all around the country have made it so people pay in advance for a field trip that costs and if they don't show, too bad, they are out the money (unless there's some real emergency like getting the flu) and they have to pay to hold their spots for free field trips and get the money back only if they show up. PayPal has made doing that pretty easy. It really ups the people who show up.

How is mandatory registration of guns advertising that a person or home has a gun? I don't have a problem with guns being registered, but I do wonder if unusable antiques would need to be registered. My parents have some antiques (none of which have been used in 50+ years). Two may be illegal (my grandfather's sawed off something or other from the 1930s and my other grandfather's gun he took off a dead Nazi and brought home after WWII).

I am very open not only about what state I live in, but what city I live in. I link to my blog that would make identifying the city pretty easy. But not everyone is open about where they live. And that's just as okay as revealing where they live. Most homeschooling help is applicable no matter where people live and if a specific state's information is needed, people generally state that they live in such-and-such state and need input specific to their state.

dp

Clearly, self-reporting is not going to always end up with honest responses. My question is, if someone checks no in all the places that would preclude them from getting a gun, is a background check then not run? I thought a background check was *always* supposed to be run no matter what the person says. People lie. In this guy's case, if he lied, I doubt he was planning murder when he bought that gun. He bought it over 18 months ago. Even a 30-day long "cooling off period" wouldn't have made a difference in time since he bought the gun to when he killed people. What is the point of background checks if states and military don't always report things that would show up on a background check to stop someone from buying a gun? Right there, that's something that needs to be changed.