South Africa: Ready to bite the bullet to get a firearm licence: "No more. It appears that the Chinese torture of applying for a licence renewal and certificate of competency is successfully disarming an innocent populace without a single shot being fired. ... I took myself off to an authorised firearms dealer in order to obtain a proficiency certificate for a pistol I had owned for 26 years without incident. ... Time passed slowly on the hard wooden benches, not because of a lack of manpower assigned to the task. ... I have no doubt there are some really nasty people out there with guns. None of them appeared to have chosen that morning to queue up. I believe it costs the hopeful applicant about R400 and more than four hours of his/her personal time to apply to be legal. I suspect that it will consume at least two hours per applicant for the total processing (including home visits) by the constabulary. At the end of this are we all better off? Are the good people of this land safer? Has the vast amount of money and time involved by the applicants and the police been well spent? Or have the majority of my law-abiding friends simply been disarmed because they did not have the stamina to see the process through, while the bad guys laugh all the way to the nearest cash-in-transit van?"


Tough Hispanics: "A Milwaukee father and son said they thought it was a joke when two men with guns entered their home on Friday night. But once guns were at their heads, they fought back, reported WISN-TV. Police said two armed men walked up the stairs, knocked on the door and planned to rob the home of Alfredo Hernandez and his son. "I saw the pistol ... to my son's head," Hernandez said. "If they were going to shoot anybody, they were going to shoot me." While one of the men attempted to make off with his son's recording equipment, Hernandez said he wrestled the other man to get the gun away from his son's head. Hernandez's son also didn't give into the robbery. "He clenched onto my arm and I just kept punching him till finally I ripped my arm out," said the son, who didn't want his name publicized. "Then we got him down, then I kicked him a couple times." The man who nabbed the valuables was able to get away, while Hernandez sat on the other robber, trapping him. By the time police arrived on the scene, Hernandez told WISN-TV, they had injured the man so badly that an ambulance had to come to the home. Hernandez said he stabbed the man three times in the leg with a cheese knife and his son hit the man in the head with a snow shovel, which authorities took for evidence. According to Hernandez, the man was screaming for help, begging not be arrested by police. Hernandez also said the crooks pointed the loaded guns at his daughter and his 3-year-old granddaughter. With his family in peril, Hernandez said he did what he had to do. "Oh yeah, I messed him up," Hernandez said. "He came in walking and left in a stretcher."