Hearts and minds, people.

Far too many keyboard commandos are making noises about targeting the families of those who are out to crush us.  This is a Very Bad Idea, not only from a moral standpoint, but a strategic one.  American Mercenary elaborates:

Do you want to know how to make a fanatic? Someone who will devote their life utterly to the cause of destroying you? Take something irreplacable from them, like their wife or children. But it is a second/third order effect.

Cause 1: Wife and kids assassinated.
Effect 1: Jack Booted Thug very angry.
Cause 2: Jack Booted Thug very angry.
Effect 2: Jack Booted Thug works harder to punish those he feels responsible.
Cause 3: Jack Booted thug works harder to punish those he feels responsible.
Effect 3: Less freedom of movement and maneuver for insurgent forces.

When you are trying to figure out second and third order effects, the primary effect becomes the secondary cause, which causes a secondary effect, which becomes a third order cause. You could follow this down the rabbit hole as deeply as you want to go, but generally the third order is as far as anyone wants to look into the foggy crystal ball.

RTWT.  Defense--of our lives, liberty and property--is one thing, murder is another.  Let's all remember the words of Nietzsche and keep our moral center.  Else, in the end, we shall become the very thing we oppose.