Gun Rant

I recently heard the 9-1-1- tape for this case, and this guy SUCKS!!!! The dispatcher pleaded with him NOT to go outside and confront the burglars, but he INSISTED that he was going to go shoot and kill them. In fact, he even tried to be all dirty-Hairy on them and said something brilliantly-witty like, "FREEZE, you're dead!" And in TX, they let him off…


http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/30/burglary.shooting.ap/index.html



It just seems to me, like any kind of burglary or robbery or anyone's property they own is NOT worth another human being's life. And the guy was TOTALLY playing wild-west-vigilante-style-justice. Don't get me wrong, at the end of "New Jack City" when the crack dealer mastermind guy (Nino Brown) gets killed by the old guy who was originally from the neighborhood Nino destroyed, I cheered for that. But it's a MOVIE.

On the 9-1-1 tape, the guy sounded like a trigger-happy redneck. The two robbers were absolutely no threat to him if he would have just stayed in his house. He had already called 9-1-1 and the police were on their way. The operator TOLD him to stay in his house. Begged him to stay inside. But he was out for blood and WANTED to shoot these guys. The shooting also seems racially motivated. The guy who did the shooting was white, and the two robbers were Latino. Since they were "others" and looked different from him, it was probably even easier for him to take their lives (which I find appalling).

I was just explaining to my friend Ramon yesterday how I never think of him in terms of his race, I just think of him as my friend, and I can't BELIEVE that people gave him a hard time for being Mexican when he was growing up. The only time I ever think about it is when I hear him speak Spanish (so very well...). When I was growing up, my parents had so many friends who were all so different from each other that I never think about the differences as being bad or good... just different. My parents have friends of all different races, religions, sexual orientation, disabilities, financial status, political affiliations.... I have just always thought of people as people, so racism has never made sense to me.

I can't even begin to think of a way to implement it, but I think the U.S. would be better off without guns. I saw an episode of Morgan Spurlock's "30 Days" last night where a woman who is a gun control activist was sent to live with some gun-culture enthusiasts (and work at a gun store) for 30 days. By the end of the episode everyone (on both sides of the issue) had changed their minds a little, and come to more of a compromise. But we do have too many guns, too much gun violence, and way too many accidental shootings and deaths because of the wrong people having guns in our country.