I'm a little appalled at how ghoulish folks on this thread sound -- as if we're all dancing in the blood of this 14-year-old child.
Yes, yes, I'm aware he presented what looked like a deadly threat. And if the facts are as stated, I believe it was a good shoot. I don't see what else the guy could reasonably have done.
I just wish y'all didn't sound so gleeful about it.
pax
Maybe "gleeful" is not the most appropriate word, but it does please me when I read that a violent criminal scumbag
of any age has been removed from the midst of us, the law-abiding honest people. Think of it as the feeling you get when you're on a sports team and your team scores against your opponents. You feel a bit of glee. Only in this case, the stakes are much higher, hence the "glee" is that much more justified. This gang-banger-wannabe with the deuce-deuce
taped with a bigger magazine was asking for trouble and got it. He could easily have been equipped with a
loaded firearm and used that against the victim here. Luckily he was not. But as we all know, we are justified in reacting with deadly force when a weapon is presented as a threat, and it matters naught when after-the-fact it turns out to have been unloaded/fake etc. We are not expected to make those determinations while under duress.
This appears to be a case where Darwinism actually was in effect, since I will assume (though there can be no certainty with his ilk) that the decedent had not yet reproduced. [
]
The only person I feel sad for is the victim -- and by "victim" I surely do not mean the kid who died. And call me a hardass bastard, but I don't even feel for his family. In this case, it seems pretty clear that they bear some culpability for what occurred -- and at the least, I don't believe that they were unaware of his criminal tendencies. What, did he leave the house on the bicycle empty-handed and pick the rifle up from where he stashed it in the bushes?
The least they could have done was buy a freakin'
air conditioner! Seems that would have alleviated the need for the kid to go out to rob someo-- er,
get some cool night air.
-Jeffrey