Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Guns Texan kills burglars next door, citing 'castle doc

I think the trouble I will always have with this debate is that there was also a time, not too long ago, when one could look a stranger in the eye and not feel the need to be armed.

Jeff, I'm not saying you're wrong, please understand that. I'm saying my experience was - and remains - much different from yours.

It's as though we grew up on different planets. It's why I normally absent myself from gun discussions (and will again after this post.) I don't doubt the truth of the environment you described. I just know I've not been there.

That gap...I think it's hugely responsible for the difficulty in discussing the whole gun issue.

PS Of course I'm fortunate to have lived in the environments I have. I'm very aware of that.

Actually Julia, it was precisely that environment that made it possible to look a stranger in the eye without feeling the neede to be armed. Politeness and civility was understood and expected from everyone.

The only reason I discovered that this rather solid veneer could give way to sterner stuff was because in my younger days I was very much the abrasive, obnoxious punk who respected almost nothing and I thought the world owed me a nickel.

I encountered an ambuscade while trespassing on someone's private property out there in the Maryland boonies and I was challenged.

However unlike crazy Joe of recent infamy, the shooter took a good look at me and decided his mere presence with shooting iron was enough. He lowered it and demanded to know my business.

When I didn't answer to his satisfaction he ordered me off the grounds, saying I was lucky he had some common sense.

That was the end of it, and the end of my days of curious snooping. After that I decided to take up safer hobbies.

An old ex-Sheriff from Minnesota moved into my neighborhood around the time I turned fifteen. Still obnoxious as ever I had a couple of run-ins with "Sheriff Bill" regarding his granddaughter
(who was a real looker).
Bill caught me sneaking in a back window one night...
He was just sitting there in a chair...locked and loaded.
Again I learned a valuable lesson, and this time I think it stuck.

After the prospects with the granddaughter turned sour I wound up striking up quite a friendship with old Bill.
He turned into something of a mentor in many ways for me.
Naturally once Bill decided he liked me he was forever trying to hook me up with the granddaughter but let's just say "she was VHS and I was "BetaMax" and it would have never worked.

In forty years of law enforcement Bill had never fired his weapon at anyone.

JeffH in Occupied TX

I think we had pretty much the same expectations - politeness and civility from everyone.

As I said, Jeff, I do respect your experience. I just doubt my ability to ever truly understand it.

Well Jeff,

Maybe this will drag you a little more to one side, as the conditions of the encounter are different from what you had been lead to believe, which considerably changes the dynamics of the interaction.

As Joe says he didnt really know the neighbors that were burgled, and on another tape I also heard the dispatcher ask him if he knew the neighbors phone number, which he didnt. So since he didnt really even know them he would have no particular loyalty or obligation to protect their belongings.



link2

I myself have prowled deserted houses just for the curiosity and excitement as a 12 year old, but never one that could possibly have been occupied, and certainly have never faced the wrong end of a gun.

The old Ranger has the right idea, that it is his presence, that kept order.

All old Joe would have had to do, when he saw them entering, would be to yell: "I have called the police and I am armed". And if he wished to emphasize that with a shot into the ground, not into the air in a neighborhood, to prove he was armed, one can bet that they would have exited post haste.

The Ranger knew all of this, and as a result retired intact without firing his weapon. That is a measure of strength of character. Most things can be achieved without violence, and should be.

TAT

Tat, you are correct and after having listened to the 911 tape
(on YouTube) once again I see that indeed Joe Horn did NOT know the neighbors well...I had it switched around in my head.

Clearly this guy was a vigilante nutcase.
I don't feel real sorry for the burglars, but I'd be just as unsettled about having somebody like Joe for a neighbor as I would about having two roving bandits rummaging through my house.

It's a lousy tasting sandwich to be in the middle of, and for those of us like myself, law abiding citizens who use common sense in our firearm habits, a guy like Joe Horn is worse than all the gun control advocates in the world. He's their hero, not mine.

That said, I don't think there is a gun control law that could be passed that could eliminate the Joe Horns of the world, anymore than it could eliminate the scofflaws who wouldn't think twice about obtaining a gun for the commission of a crime, because that's what Joe Horn did plain and simple...he crossed the line between defending his home and property and meddling in the affairs of another.

Had he stayed in his home there wouldn't even be a discussion about it.

JeffH in Occupied TX