Further Proof That Texans Are Some Trigger-Happy Crackers

I don't think he was all that eager to kill. I think in his mind he gave law enforcement a chance, but faced with the choice of watching them get away or stopping them, he decided to stop them. Not saying it was right, but I don't think he was slavering over there at the chance of blowing away some mexican negroes.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I heard "Move you're dead" myself.

Also, didn't the article say something about how when he left the house, he found them in his yard, close to his house, facing him? No one's addressed that.

It's a little disheartening the way some people are mourning these thieves. They had families! So if if I'm stealing a bunch of shit, and I get blown away, but I've neglected to breed first, I'm less deserving of sympathy?

I can't really feel sorry for them. The idea that they'd violate someone's home like that. It's a little like rape to me.

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It's not exactly all that clear what happened when the old man with a shotgun went face to face with the thieves. Some people are operating with the paradigm that he went out there expressly to kill. In which case, the deaths of the thieves are a direct result of their crime.

There is the possibility he went out there to stop the theft from happening. In that context, the thieves could have stopped when he said "move you're dead." There was a decision that could have been made that would have avoided death. They didn't make it.

Kind of like if I run at an air marshal waving a jet black water pistol. I'm aware that the consequence of that is that I run the risk of getting shot. Old guy with a shotgun facing you telling you if you move you're dead, and you choose to move? Yeah the guy shot them, and so he gets to deal with those consequences. Doesn't mean the thieves are blameless in this.

It occurred to me too that I remember some of the people in this thread lamenting the loss of life on the part of the thieves gathered around not too long ago to laugh at some poor sap who committed suicide on the internet.

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Sass, you're all for battered women taking responsibility for shit and doing something about it. You're advocating this guy just sit there and watch a theft take place without doing something to stop it, when he's had no clear reassurance from the authorities they'll be able to do anything? All he's got after 8 minutes on the phone is "Officers are on the way just stay inside."

You look at how critical people have been about officials and their management of crises, and you honestly expect this particular person to be reassured by something as vague as that?

I can't believe some of you people. You're encouraging us to allow ourselves to be victimized.

Also, provoking. Dudes are robbing the house next door. Guy decides to go outside and stop it. How the fuck is going outside to stop something more provocative than the something one is going outside to stop? Further, he says "Move, you're dead."

Now, if a cop yells "Move and I'll shoot," and the perp moves, would you say the cop provoked him? Come on.

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I imagine most of those ways involve some sort of specialized training. I'm pretty sure I could stop a thief with a shot gun though. Don't know how I'd do with hand to hand, or you know, a knife or any kind of target shooting, and running's out of the question, because I'm kind of out of shape, and I don't know how to throw a bolo, and even if they stood still, I probably couldn't tie the right kind of knot. I suppose lasso might work, if I had one, maybe I could throw shoes at them, but then, I'm kind of weak, and they'd probably just laugh. I guess I could dump water out the side window, and hope they slipped on the consequent mud. Or maybe I could have hid upstairs and dropped a brick on their heads as they walked underneath, if they did, but that might kill them via concussion, and if we're killing them anyway, a shotgun's more certain.

And Sass, we're running into differing paradigms again. I'm saying he didn't go out there expressly to kill. He went out there to stop a theft, and since they didn't stand still when he asked, and in fact may not have even run away but rather toward him, he didn't have many other options.

You're saying he went out there to kill them because they stole shit. Two different scenarios, with completely different ethical implications.

I was speaking idiomatically.

That gets into that whole specialized training thing. If Horn isn't a fantastic marksman, and we're talking about a shotgun, then it's unreasonable to take it as far as shooting them, and then say that he should have shot them somewhere specific and non-lethal.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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My main hang up has been that it came down to a binary decision in that guy's head, pretty sure, that he stop them himself or let them get away. Ignore methods for a second. Also I don't think with the knowledge he had, it was all that clear that the suspects would have been apprehended.

In that case, I'm glad he acted. Not jumping for joy that he killed two guys, not feeling sorry for the two guys, but glad he did something to stop it.

However, talking with a buddy of mine about it, and he mentioned that he'd had to break into his own place a few times. Once he locked himself out of his mom's house, and had to crawl through a window. I've broken into my own house before also.

It's extremely unlikely, but I'm just thinking now that, you know, they could have been some incredibly stupid cousins of the neighbor who couldn't find the key under the mat, and they'd been asked to go pick up the guy's laundry or something. Ridiculous yes, but all of sudden that whole presumption of innocence thing pops up, which I kind of like, and it makes it difficult to support a guy who created a situation where the justice of the thing couldn't have been properly investigated.

edit: On the train home I'd tried to sketch out a kind of di-graph of points and ideas that illustrated the argument, but it was too hard, because there were these over-arching cultural paradigms that had to be included too, and I didn't know how to draw a three dimensional di-graph on a piece of paper. =(

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Still don't understand where people are getting "The guy with the gun provoked the other people into a situation where he had to kill them." Now, I'm no lawyer or anything, so I have no idea if there's a precedent here, but it seems to me that you can separate, in this instance, the deliberate and premeditated act of going outside to stop them, and the actual act of killing them.

This provoke thing is really giving me issues. I mean, it's a transitive verb right? So it takes an object. One provokes something else. That something else is then being acted upon by the subject.

There's also this idea that a person in the stronger position doesn't need to provoke anyone in order to act.

The only way I can see the guy with the shotgun provoking the poor "victims" is if you want to say he created a situation where they had to act a certain way, which would necessitate the use of force. That's taking all responsibility away from the thieves. I think that's stupid.

Guy stabbed his ex-girlfriend up at the mall near my apartment. There was a conversation after the fact with a bunch of friends, consensus being that we'd like to think we would have stepped in to help the lady if we had been there. Of course, we might have injured the guy doing the stabbing. And that means we provoked the assailant?

The logic seems all twisty and wrong.

Also, Devo, it occurred to me this morning that this isn't a useless discussion. It's a nice ethical question, and it's always good to hash out tough ethical questions with yourself, you know, if you're open-minded about it. Builds character.

At the very least, I'll know exactly who to rob if it ever became necessary, because you know, they'll think I have rights. <3

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