This stinks!

[MachIVshooter]

Your adrenaline kicks in, you fear the worst, you grab your home defense weapon, and head out to deal with this attack.

Therein lies the problem. We preach over and over on this board that venturing outside of your home is the worst idea if you in fact fear for your life. So we can't very well say now that his decision to do so unnecessarily and put himself at greater risk makes his actions defensible.

Going outside with the shotgun to scare off the offending teens would be an acceptable show of force. But (assuming that the article is correct and the teens didn't assault the man) shooting them was just plain wrong.

 

[COMPNOR]

That was to destroy someone elses property.

I highly doubt that their intent was to destroy.

 

[kfranz]

Could one of you TP apologists please explain the purpose of TPing someone else's property? I know I did some vastly foolish things as a kid, but TP wasn't one of them...

 

[CannibalCrowley]

I didn't realize most bad guys these days carried around white rolls of TP for break-ins.

You saw rolls of TP in the hands of the kid who was shot?

That's a pretty big switch. Maybe that some kind of liberal situational ethics - "think of how he felt." Shooting a kid who is TP'ing your house is wrong. You can gussy it up with all the victim speak want - it's wrong

Most things are situational, there are very few absolutes in this world.

I'd say it depends on what the kids in question were doing at the time. Standing in the middle of the yard throwing some TP up in a tree certainly doesn't deserve a bullet; but none of us know what any of the kids were actually doing at the time.

I don't buy into that whole situational ethics nonsense - particularly when it come to the use of lethal force. Some thing are right and some things are wrong. You can dress it up with all the words and hypotheticals you want, that does not change right and wrong.

Is it right or wrong to shoot a kid who has a toy gun in his hand?

 

[DeathByCactus]

please explain the purpose of TPing someone else's property?

Well, my reason when I was young was there was no reason. It was mischievous, it was an adrenaline rush because it was frowned upon, it was fun. I remember it was Halloween night and we got chased by a old guy in a car on our bikes through a neighborhood eventually escaping through the golf cart road access.

Some of my friends in high school wrapped this girls house because she well... deserved it. She humiliated one of my friends who was shy as all hell because she thought she was too good to be asked out by him to homecoming.

Then I got wrapped, because people are stupid (IRONY HERE). Then I got wrapped again, but I caught them and shot them all numerous times with a paintball gun. I found out who it was the next day as they were the only ones with welts and evil looks.

Look, it isn't funny or fun when it happens to you, which is why people "GROW UP". I did. So does everyone else who has partaken in these sorts of things. I think that this kid should be able to grow up also. People need to exercise a little thought, what is that saying, with great power comes great responsibility? If you are not in immediate, life threatening danger. Take a few moments to think people.

Is it right or wrong to shoot a kid who has a toy gun in his hand?

Depends if he pointed it at me with his finger on the trigger and how he reacted when I pulled my carry weapon and yelled at him with a no BS voice while circle steadily circle strafing him.

 

[COMPNOR]

You saw rolls of TP in the hands of the kid who was shot?

Nope.

 

[eldiabloe1]

Good shoot or bad shoot really doesn't matter. The situation was started by the teens and ended by the shooter. Teens didn't have to tp anything and ZERO action would have been taken. Yes I was a very bad person when I was young but I did not get caught because we planned for everything like a military operation. This is no different than the idiots who are hopped up on drugs, get tazed and die and the family starts a civil suite. If they hadn't been doped up (against the law), doing something to attract the officers attention (probably something against the law), resisting arrest (against the law) they wouldn't have been tazed and dead. Passing the buck has become a way of society these days and it is total crap. They tp'd someones house and got shot. Remove the initial action and the resulting reaction would not have happened.

 

[RPCVYemen]

Could one of you TP apologists please explain the purpose of TPing someone else's property?

It was considered a very innocuous prank when I was growing up - mostly because the first rain washed it all away.

It was very common mid 60's. It was sort of a "gotcha" - high school kids would do it back and forth endlessly. I wouldn't say it was every weekend, but most weekends one house or another in the neighborhood would get hit. About any house that had one or more high schoolers would get hit once or more a year. We'd usually see the evidence on the way to Mass on Sunday morning. Our next door neighbor had a girl about 6 or 8 years older than us, and she must have gotten TP'd a half a dozen times a year. We'd all be trooping to station wagon on Sunday morning in our "Sunday best" and there would be great loops of toilet paper hanging from their tree, which was right next to their driveway.

Truth to tell, when I discovered my son and his buddies in marching band were doing it to each other, it sort of tickled me. It seemed pretty innocent and wholesome - compared to car jacking and smoking crack and all of the other things kids are allegedly doing nowadays. Seemed to me to be relatively healthy rowdy behavior, and as American as Friday night football games.

I guess I was wrong about he "innocent and wholesome" part. My son and his buddies were "punks" and "scumbags" - unbeknownst to me - and should have been shot.

Mike

 

[RPCVYemen]

Most things are situational, there are very few absolutes in this world.

I'll buy situational ethics right up the point of lethal force. At the point where you use lethal weapon, you're no longer in the "it's all relative" realm.

Mike

 

[jerkface11]

The people condemning this man would be supporting him if he had a badge.

 

[CannibalCrowley]

Most things are situational, there are very few absolutes in this world.

I'll buy situational ethics right up the point of lethal force. At the point where you use lethal weapon, you're no longer in the "it's all relative" realm.

Then it should be rather easy for you to tell me whether it's always right or always wrong to shoot a kid with a toy gun.

Fletcher's four examples should be easy as well.

 

[waterhill]

When I was 14, friends and myself would sneak out our Enduro bikes and haul ass all over town ( Arlington, TX ) in the middle of the night, we were quite the nerds, and our alcohol consumption was minimal at best, and no racing mufflers of course. Arlington was tiny back then. BUT, the only trespassing we did was on city property!

We knew better than to F around on 'rural property'. or private property. Arlington was quite rural then. )sigh)

Way over 20 years ago cant catch me!

 

[DeathByCactus]

The people condemning this man would be supporting him if he had a badge

No. I would be calling for his job. If it was a cop that did this... well...

"POLICE OFFICER SHOOTS TEENAGE BOYS ATTEMPTING TO WRAP A HOUSE"

That is about how the headline would read.

 

[p2000sk]

yawn

 

[theotherwaldo]

Maybe I was raised differently. Breaking curfew was one thing, entering someone's property in the middle of the night is entirely something else.

One can get you a night at the police station.

The other gets you a wooden overcoat.

 

[Almond27]

You DONT shoot unless your life is in danger. Nuff said

 

[Stevie-Ray]

Really?
You are elderly.
You are inside your house.
Someone you don't know is running around your house -- maybe several someones -- climbing on things, making a racket, and covering the windows so you can't see out.
Your adrenaline kicks in, you fear the worst, you grab your home defense weapon, and head out to deal with this attack.

There are any number of endings possible.

+100 to Arfin's entire post. And that's all I have to say.

 

[XavierBreath]

Then what are we talking about it for? We have to make almost all the important information up to have anything to discuss. Homeowner A shot 14 year old B who was on his property because Homeowner A says he thought a break in was about to occur.

We don't know if the homeowner shot through a window or door because the people outside were pounding on it making him think they were going to break it in.

We don't know if the homeowner went outside and shot the kid because he told the kid to clean it up and the kid taunted him.

We don't know.

But we sure gotta talk about it like we do.

There is only one thing I have to add to hso's post...............

Closed.

 

[ArfinGreebly]

What Do We Know?

There were FIVE kids . . .

. . . the victim and four other teens . . .

It was SATURDAY NIGHT . . .

. . . 1 a.m. Sunday . . .

In seriously rural township (see also here) . . .

. . . in Solon Township . . .

Three shots from a 12 gauge . . .

. . . three shots were fired from a 12-gauge shotgun . . .

At a fourteen-year-old boy . . .

. . . striking the 14-year-old . . .

What can we derive?

Evidently this was not at "point blank" range and/or the homeowner used light loads (birdshot) . . .

. . . striking the 14-year-old in the chest, stomach and leg.

And the sheriff's dept guy had an OPINION . . .

Kent County sheriff's Lt. Jerry Miedema said the teens were intent on draping the house in toilet paper, while the homeowner's "intent was to come out shooting."

Lt. Miedema is imagining what went on in the minds of those involved. He's not speaking from statements made by them. Trust me, if the homeowner had actually said that, the press would have been all over that.

Notice that the newspaper managed to leave out nearly all the useful information that would allow you to assign cause.

That way, without knowing any of the relevant scenario beyond "some kids trespassed on some geezer's property and one of them got shot, and the Deputy Sheriff is makin' zingers about it," everybody can have a nice energetic argument about the ethics and morality of doing . . . whatever they imagine was done.

I see a lot of righteous indignation above, along with a lot of incredulity that a) kids would be that dumb, b) the homeowner would be that dumb.

I see justifications for a) it's okay to play pranks on people at 1:00am, especially if it's only five of you and the homeowner is sound asleep, b) it's okay to shoot people who deface my stuff.

You don't know what happened.

You're arguing as though you did.

You might want to step back a bit and notice that the press delights in feeding you enough data to get indignant and angry, but not enough to actually know what happened.

Take a deep breath.

Don't make me turn this thread around and park it.

EDIT:

I see senor XB has already done that.

Saves me the trouble later.
​