Compared with people of the same age, race, sex, and neighborhood, those who keep a gun in the home (ironically, often for protection) are nearly three times more likely to be murdered in the home--nearly always by a family member or close acquaintance. For every self-defense use of a gun in the home, there are 4 unintentional shootings, 7 criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.

What I've noticed is... when Americans speculate about the now well-known fact that Canada has less gun violence than its neighbor down south, a lot of people seem to suggest that Canada (and all other non-American countries in the world, for that matter) is somehow innately less violent a country. But doesn't it seem more likely that the simple perception of America being a violent country is enough to make that perception a reality? If the self-fulfilling prophecy applies to individual people, then certainly it could also apply to whole societies. Not to say that people should go around hugging everyone they meet on the street, but I think a society as a whole ridding itself of the belief that "everyone you don't know is dangerous/out to get you" will make a huge difference in this unhealthy paranoia we've built up.

So in the midst of my frantic cramming, I found myself wondering what YunJae would be like if they were characters in a Western soap opera. (I've had a weird day, ok. >_>) And unsurprisingly, I ended up with YunJae as the middle-class couple with love problems: Jaejoong plays the part of the nagging, overbearing wifey/mouthy drunk when he's had one too many Spritzers & Yunho is the overworked lawyer-husband/pitiful target of Jae's passive-aggressive snippiness. And YooSuMin would be the musicians who live in a studio on the floor directly above, and the three of them can hear every word of their arguments. :D

...And all of that sounds more like a dark sitcom rather than a soap, but hey, I'm flexible. 8D