From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Fri Apr 07 2000 - 12:30:17 MDT
On Fri, 07 Apr 2000, john grigg wrote:
> Of course in a situation where the parents are already dead or incapacitated
> and the ten year-old son picks up the gun from the floor after a major
> struggle and the criminal is almost on him, there would be a problem. This
> would be a rare and worst case scenario.
In households with guns, where the children are often taught the proper
handling and respect for guns before they can even lift one, this
situation plays out more often than you would expect. The criminals go
after the parents and ignore the kids, only to find the kids holding a gun
and with the skill to use it. Most criminals do not consider an
apparently unarmed kid to be a real source of resistance.
> I am very sorry for your loss. I have a friend who used to be a farmer in
> Idaho. A biker gang gang-raped a fourteen year-old girl from her town and
> drove to their nearby headquarters thinking they could get away with it.
> The whole town mobilized with the leadership of the sheriff and they
> surrounded the biker hangout. A gunfight ensued and thousands of rounds
> were fired. No bikers survived the incident. Some bikers may be cool guys,
> but these were not and got what they deserved.
I find Idaho to be a very interesting place. The people up there are
generally very friendly to the point where they don't even lock their
doors in many places, but they have zero tolerance for sociopaths and you
can pretty much expect an armed response if you decide to engage in
violent criminal behavior.
In a similar story, several years ago the asian crime gangs decided to
expand their influence into Boise, Idaho from where they were operating in
Salt Lake City. The trademark crime of these gangs in the U.S. is the
home invasion robbery, where half a dozen guys with guns kick in your door
in the middle of the night, and if you are lucky, they steal your stuff
and leave you alive. Idaho being Idaho, when they attempted these
robberies in Boise, more often than not they were met with a hail of hot
lead, creating a rather large spike in self-defense shootings. The
police would then come by, bag the dead, and arrest the wounded. Within a
year, the asian gangs had suffered such serious losses that they left
Boise for greener pastures. Sounds like natural selection in action to me.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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