Long-time readers here know that Funny is a left-wing crazy who happens to stand up for the Second Amendment and is prepared to defend herself inside her own shack. Uhm. Castle. While I do think that certifiably sane, nonfelonious American citizens have a right to own a gun, the fact is that gun ownership bears with it the same burden as car ownership. A certain degree of responsibility is required. And as we know every time we have to share the streets with our fellow homicidal drivers, whether your weapon weighs 12 ounces or two tons, a healthy number of IQ points should be required of operators.
Did you read the story from Montana about the moron homeowner who shot the moron kid for poking around in an open garage? Here is a case in point — no, make that “in spades!” — about the IQ points. One early report said the homeowners left their garage door open because they wanted to be able to pop out for a smoke. Right there, we have an IQ issue: it being well-nigh impossible to dwell in ignorance of what tobacco does to your body, you’d have to be a mite on the stupid side to be smoking at all. Then we were told they had a baby-room video monitor set up in the garage, because there had been a few burglaries in the neighborhood. Knock off a few more IQ points…you leave your garage door hanging open when you know prowlers are roaming the ’hood stealing stuff? Right. Then — oh, yes, it gets better! — the chucklehead blasts the kid not once, not twice, not three times, but four times with a shotgun.
Stupidity on that order should be a capital offense. You shouldn’t even have to kill someone to be convicted of capital stupidity.
More recent reports say the door was hanging open because the chucklehead and his airhead wife had deliberately set a trap for the supposed perps. One wonders exactly what they were smoking.
But let’s be fair and share the stupidity points.
We have the kid. What is he doing? Sneaking into an open garage, after dark, using his cell phone as a flashlight. At least you can’t shoot someone with a cell. Good thing the Germans are into disarmament; otherwise we would have had two fools dead on the concrete floor. And we are told, ostensibly by his pal, an Ecuadorian exchange student who has fled back home, that the young men were “garage-hopping” at the time they got themselves into this mess.
“Garage-hopping”? Would that be a euphemism for “burgling”?
Stupid layered atop stupid.
Welp, I have this to say about that:
The guy who owned the gun is the guy who should have been tested for IQ points. He was the adult, and he was the fellow with the deadly weapon. Given the idiocy of the circumstances and the fact that the kid did not represent a serious threat to life or limb, the gun owner bears the greater responsibility for the outcome.
One question for the gun owner’s IQ test:
What is the most effective way to deter burglars?
a. Shoot them on sight.
b. Engage them in friendly conversation and offer them oatmeal cookies.
c. Bribe them to move on to the neighbor’s house.
d. Close and lock the door.
Image: Winchester Model 1897 Pump-Action Shotgun. Asams10 at en.wikipedia. Released into the public domain (by the author).
The most effective way to deter burglars?
a. Shoot them on sight.
Certainly deters them from the next people, but not you.
b. Engage them in friendly conversation and offer them oatmeal cookies.
What if they only want Oreos?
c. Bribe them to move on to the neighbor’s house.
I’m pretty sure I can’t offer a big enough bribe.
d. Close and lock the door.
While this sounds like the correct answer – why do I have to moderate
my behavior because of the bad guys?
I think everyone should have the right to shoot a home intruder. And I think we forget the possible fear factor that may make a person shoot someone more than once or empty a clip into an intruder. Tho, I gotta say I did not know shotguns had the ability to shoot 4 times without reloading, but maybe that was because there was a 2nd person there – the Ecuadorian exchange student.
My mother almost shot someone through our front door [Dad out of town, 2 young daughters, several break-ins in the neighborhood, in the wee, dark hours]. Whoever left before she made her mind up, which was good, because they hadn’t actually been in the house. A girlfriend of mine, at about the same time, across the street and two houses up, had to call the police when someone tried crawling in a window in their home in the wee hours. That person went to the State Hospital near our homes, he said he wanted to know if other people slept in their sunglasses as he did.
I would like to think I am smart enough to have a gun for protection in my home. But, I do not know how I would feel about actually using it now that my children are grown and out of the house. I would have been far more aggressive back then.
It will be interesting to see other comments.
Yeah, won’t it? I sure hope others will comment. This could be interesting.
Yeah, what IS “Garage hopping” anyway? ;o) Although the homeowners shouldn’t have left the garage door open, especially after dark, the intruder was at fault. He was trespassing, looking for trouble and he sure found it. It’s tragic, but as Ron White says, “You can’t fix stupid.”
Having said that, I must confess that I wouldn’t want to live close to Kaarma and Pflager because they are too hair trigger for me to feel safe around them. Too paranoid and sneaky. But even paranoid and sneaky people have the right to defend themselves.
True.
But what about reports that the homeowner dude and his wifette laid a trap? Let’s suppose that’s so (yet to be proven, but let’s imagine). Then what’s the implication of that?
Do you have a right to lay a trap for the morally weak and then murder the weakling when he falls into it?
To throw another thought out there.
Police are less enthusiastic about policing property crime and yet burglary makes many people feel unsafe. Certainly, statistics suggest that many people escalate their crimes as time goes on, so ????
We had in our broad neighborhood [a block away], a group of teen boys who would go into garages and steal beer and booze from fridges and shelves. Those neighbors caught the kids and turned them into the police, but those neighbors were relatively calm about it.
At my house, we had kids break into my kids cars and steal tools and stuff, the police came and more or less shrugged it off – not enough dollar value and no obvious way to determine ownership.
Neighbors, two houses down from us were broken into, they got in the garage and into the house [yes, Dad, I know you say lock that door, but then I’ll just lock myself out of the house!], while the parents and 3 young children were sleeping! Now that bothers/bothered me. The perps were caught quickly because the father heard something and went down stairs and they ran out of the house and into their car.
Burglers were in the house and a threat to the lives of my kids and spouse – why should I care that they are or aren’t armed – why don’t I have the right to prevent them or anyone else from doing this again?
You might occasionally fix stupid, but no way can you fix vicious, and how is anyone to know which a burglar is?
Why should I be in fear for my life and those of my family?
So maybe it should be ok to set a trap and use deadly force. I mean mothers against drunk driving don’t care that you drove after drinking and hurt no one they think you should be locked up for life – just because you might. Using their logic, I guess, you should trap and shoot.
Oops, another long and rambling comment. I tried to check my spelling, at least.
Yes, I surely agree with the argument that you should be privileged to protect yourself if some intruder is in your home. In your garage with a locked door between you and it? Hm… Depends on whether he’s trying to pick the lock into the house ( 😉 )
It was lucky that I heard the cops setting up a ruckus outside the day of the Garage Invasion — the racket caused me to get up and lock the kitchen/garage door about five minutes before the perp took refuge in the garage; had I not done that, he very certainly would have entered the house. By then, though, I was locked in my office, and you can be sure that if he’d tried to get through that door, I would have shot him, right through the door. I believe a .38 will do the job, even when confronted with a solid-core door.
However, these kids were inside a garage whose door had been left open deliberately in an attempt to lure them into the garage. That puts a different light on the scene.
Some people — yes, even German-Turkish exchange students — are morally deficient. We know this to be true, and in response to that knowledge, we lock our doors and change our bank account passwords regularly.
To my mind. luring a nit-wit 17-year-old into committing a petty crime (and yes, burglary in general is a petty affair, as annoyed as we may feel about it) and then pumping four shotgun blasts into him: that is not good. The best spin you can put on it is “irresponsible.” But the fact is, it’s homicide.
I have to say, the four shotgun blasts does boggle my mind. Maybe I am behind the times, but only remember double barreled shotguns. I can understand, during stress, keeping a finger on a trigger, but I must say reloading when someone is down and not moving [or not much] seems a mite excessive.
But I do think that while burglary may seem petty, we tend to forget that it is an invasion and can make people fearful to the point of paranoia, and we should remember every animal that feels cornered and afraid, real or not, is very unpredictable.
One of one of my kids friends used to walk into our unlocked house and steal money and my car. It made me mad, but when a store just a mile or so down the country road was robbed and the owner shot and left for dead, I got scared and started locking the doors and planning on how to get to my knives and the rifle my husband had. Fear made it’s way in. Armed robbery nearby just seems to have that effect on me.
I am glad you heard the cops and locked the door and had the means to protect yourself at a distance from that man.
But, I have to agree, if they set a trap to lure stupid kids in and then shot them when closing the garage door would have worked, seems to be more than a bit extreme.
I’m not very sophisticated with semi-automatic weapons, which are not my choice…but I think with a semi-automatic shotgun, you still have to pull the trigger for each shot. That is, the semi-automatic function of a shotgun just obviates your having to chamber a new round manually; it doesn’t allow you to keep your finger on the trigger and fire like a machine gun. I think…but take that with several grains of salt.
One shotgun blast should suffice. If my impression about such shotguns is correct, the guy had to deliberately fire each round.
And yes, to have someone burgle your house (or to enter for god only knows what purpose, sane or insane) when you’re there is extremely threatening. My feeling is that if someone wants to come in when I’m not here, he’s welcome to whatever he can haul away. But I don’t want any unwelcome visitors when I’m in the structure.
The police told me that the reason they became so exercised about the Garage Invader — to the extent of calling in a SWAT team — was that a couple of weeks earlier something very similar had happened… They had chased a couple of armed robbers who entered a couple’s home to hide, and the guys killed the couple. This happened just a few miles from here.
Hm. I’ve gotta write a separate post about this…a tale hangs hereupon!
Well, I am very glad you have remained safe and send prayers into the ether that you will remain that way.
Guess I should have asked the hubby re: shotguns – he says there are shot-guns out there that may hold up to 6 or 7 loads and are or can be semi-automatic, and you are correct pull trigger each time. No fully automatic weapon is currently legal in the US of A, per him. He is still talking – now on no hand gun that is fully automatic in world ?? Not even Seals – just won’t work – given that he just changed the brakes on my Jeep – I’m going to try to keep him for another 40 years [gonna have to try subliminal suggestions while he sleeps to get him to pay better attention to his health though LOL].
Any who – you are correct regarding semi. I bow to you. I only know, back in my college days a boyfriend took me out shooting and I missed the broad side of a barn! I will have to bludgen a burgler to death, cause I can’t shoot for a darn, just ask the squirrels around here!
Yeah, 4 times seems overkill. You should pardon the phrase.
hee hee!!!! God is gonna get us for this conversation.
The shotgun is useful for the non-marksperson — it’s much harder to miss. Target shooting, which does eventually get most of us to the point where we can find the side of the barn, is kinda fun, though with the increasing price of ammunition it’s getting to be a pricey hobby.
Most “automatic” handguns and long guns are semi-automatic. Fully automatic weapons are used by the military.
It’s my understanding that US civilians can own certain models of fully automatic guns, in some but not all states. However, it ain’t easy. You need an expensive ATF license, you have to go through an elaborate background check, and then you have to come up with some unholy amount of money to buy the thing. See, for example, this exchange: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081030191829AA2lyZK . Here’s one that looks a little more credible: http://thearmsguide.com/2349/full-auto-is-legal/ , and of course there’s always the ever-impeccable Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act .
So, apparently if you reside in certain states it’s possible to own one. But…why on earth would you want to?
Nah, I believe God has a sense of humor – he has to! I figure he is like many parents – he’s up there shaking his head and trying not to laugh.
I worked as a teller right after college and back then the Brinks guys bringing in the money used sawed off shot guns – I asked what to do if someone tried to rob them – he said “hit the floor, the shot gun shoots wide”. I have never forgotten that bit of advice.
If I got an ATF license, could I wear a flak jacket and bust down my neighbors door?
I think gun enthusiasts are like any other – they want at least one of everything.
LOL! I think you have to have the camo outfit to go with the flak jacket.