What else are we to conclude? His election has been a boon for the hunting industry. Gun and ammo sales have gone through the roof, thanks to the fears of many U.S. gun fanciers that the government will soon be going after their Second Amendment right to bear arms. The good news for hunters is that the sales are yielding a federal windfall via the 1937 Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, which levies an excise tax (about 11 percent) on the sale of firearms and ammunition. That money is handed back to the states each year for habitat and range projects—i.e., the protection of hunting areas, and the promotion of hunting. It can’t be diverted to other uses. Ammunition and firearm makers paid about $110 million in excise taxes in the first quarter of 2009, a whopping 43 percent more than they paid during the same period in 2008, according to the Treasury Department’s most recent Federal Firearms and Ammunition Excise Tax Collection Report. The deer don’t stand a chance.

Modern American households are coming to resemble those of centuries past, when it was the norm for multiple generations to live under the same roof. Census data show that the number of U.S. households with three or more generations increased by 38 percent between 1990 and 2000. There were about 4 million multigenerational households in 2000, and that number appears to be on the rise. Between 2000 and 2007, the number of parents living in the homes of their adult children increased by a whopping 67 percent. In other cases, grown children with families of their own are moving back into a parent’s house. Experts say harsh economic realities like high housing costs and low incomes are probably a driving force behind the trend. “It is so much less expensive to have one kitchen, one living room, one dwelling to heat,” says Frances Goldscheider, professor emeritus of sociology at Brown. “If you can manage to be polite to each other … you can get all the benefits of the reduced costs.” Other forces at work include immigration—certain cultures favor extended-family living—and increased longevity, since multigenerational households can care for aging parents. According to futurist Andrew Zolli, people born after 1975 could end up taking care of their mothers longer than their mothers took care of them, since women in that generation are likely to live more than 18 years into retirement, when they are most likely to need help of some kind from their children. Philip Cohen, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the upcoming book , predicts that the economic downturn will contribute further to the rise in multigenerational living. “Especially with foreclosures and people losing their homes, where do people turn?” he asks. “They’re most likely to go to their families first.”

People tend to overestimate racial tensions between races other than their own. For instance, two thirds of black Americans said blacks and Hispanics get along well; 60 percent of Hispanics agreed. But only 43 percent of whites thought so. “When it is your group involved, you judge based on your own … experiences,” says Gallup’s Lydia Saad. “You’re drawing on a different set of information,” not just the strife that makes news.

OK, we still have the highest divorce rate in the world. But that’s the problem—”We divorce, repartner, and remarry faster than people in any other country,” says Andrew Cherlin, a Johns Hopkins sociologist and author of the new book The Marriage-Go-Round. Because many of the people racking up multiple marriages are also parents, American kids are more likely than those in other developed countries to live in a household with a revolving cast of parents, step-parents, and live-in partners moving in and out of their lives—a pattern that is definitely not good for children. Cherlin says he was particularly stunned to discover that American kids born to married couples experienced 6 percent more household disruption by age 15 than Swedish kids born to unmarried parents. Experts predicted that the study would find exactly the opposite, since research has long shown that cohabiting relationships are more fragile than married ones. “Remember, we’re talking about the ‘avant-garde’ Swedes compared to the ‘conservative’ Americans,” Cherlin says. When researchers broadened the categories, they were further surprised to find that American families were less stable: 40 percent of American children born into a two-parent family experienced a parental breakup by age 15, compared with 30 percent of Swedish kids. And American kids are 47 percent more likely than Swedish kids to have a stepparent move into their home within three years of a divorce. The further down the economic ladder the parents are, the faster the turnover occurs because splits tend to be less complicated (there’s less stuff to divide up before the relationship is dissolved). The bottom line is that while marriage is good for kids, it’s best when it results in a stable home. Or as Cherlin puts it, “Many of the problems faced by America’s children stem not from parents marrying too little but rather too often.”

The tragic slaying of Byrd and Melanie Billings may be a more complicated case than it seems.

The Law & Order creator has almost certainly told more crime stories than anyone, ever (and that’s not counting reruns). So we asked him which cases fascinate him the most, and why. Nine of his choices are below, but the 10th needs no explanation: Manson, of course.

On the trail of L.A.’s uncaught serial killer.

The dead claim the living through imagined repetition of the horror they endured.

When I was young, we lived the high life. Then it all went up in smoke.

‘Helter Skelter’ author Vincent Bugliosi looks back.