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I agree.
However picking up a hitchhiker has always been a risky proposition compared with rendering aid to a stranded motorist.
On a side note (I am not defending the driver in this story) I was once pulled over on the side of the road in a rural area without much traffic. A van with three guys pulled up behind me, about twenty yards back. The driver eventually got out after sizing me up and yelled to me, asking if I needed help. Something struck me very strange about this guy.
I didn't need help anyway, and told him no thanks, I am fine. Then the passenger got out, and the side door of the van opened and another guy got out. I instantly knew they were up to no good, as they started to approach.
I told them in a stern voice I didn't need help and to not come any closer. They continued to walk toward me, so I reached into my car and grabbed my gun and held it behind me. I warned them I had a gun, and they still continued to walk toward me and got within about 30 feet. Though I didn't draw down on them, I brandished it for them to see. That stopped them in their tracks, and they slowly walked back to the van, one with a smile on his face.
They sat there for a minute, then pulled away.
The moral of my story is that had I not had a gun, I likely along with my family could have been harmed or killed.
Who knows exactly what strangers intents are now days. I do believe there are a lot more predators in todays society with the moral and social breakdown we have been experiencing. Sure evil has always been around, and always will be. However it seems to be getting worse. We all need to be responsible for our own families safety first, as police can be minutes away when precious seconds count.
You never know what you are coming up against in either the party stopping to offer help or the state of mind of the person sitting on the side of the road.
If they say they don't want help move along. You can discuss the state of the person in question and whether to call the police as you safely drive away. You are only showing aggression to push your help on someone.
It is not a bad idea to be armed in rural and remote areas, but it is a silly idea to bluff being armed. Its a better idea to be on your cell phone calling 911 if you truly are not armed.
My husband and I traveled as show and entertainment vendors across the country for about 10 years on weekends. Honest and hard-working people are not all you encounter out there on the road, and we experienced several frightening encounters in that time. It only takes ONE bad encounter to end your life.
Problems with guns seem to be attached to the dissolution of the Draft system is this country. Men learn gun safety in the military, and not everyone becomes a policeman or correctional officer as their career.
If you own a gun, take the steps to learn HOW to use it and store it, and teach your kids the same. Never pull a gun for show, as a criminal could show you how that gun can be used against you.
It is a sad situation, but people should learn from it - at least then, the lives lost would not be a complete a waste.
Be safe!
Last edited by ConeyGirl52; 01-26-2016 at 06:11 AM..
The suspect will whine about diminished capacity ..eating Twinkies.. And not being breast fed... By the time he is done he will be a star for women's rights on the view.
I have no problem with people owning guns (I own them myself). But if you are daft enough to think that just because you own a gun that you have some unassailable right to start slinging lead at a moment's provocation, you deserve to be locked up with other morons who are just as stupid as you are.
This tragic story isn't about guns. There are other places where people own guns but it does not result in daily instances of tragedy. What must be present in any society where we the people have unrestricted access to lethal force, is a well distributed and healthy economy. Where groups of people are shut out of opportunity, be it by race, class, gender or some other intrinsic, where large groups of people are just left to fester in their own filth and ignorance, the people outside of their social strata start to fear, and you start to nurture a State of Fear in the population.
There is little point to putting up threads like this unless it is simply for entertainment purposes. There is no lesson to be learned here. No takeaway whatsoever. Next. I'm sure a new tragedy is jockeying for center stage in our collective unconscious. America seems incapable of doing either a better job of distributing education and opportunity to those who need it, OR disarming society so that loss of life becomes less of a given when individuals from disparate levels of society interact.
What can I say. The mechanics of it are above my pay grade. But at least I can put it out there that that is what is going on. To many of you want to make it about the shooter. Hanging... guillotine... prison rape. Really? That's going to bring the Samaritan back? In one of those other places i alluded to that shooter would get six years maximum in prison. There is very little chance that he would shoot anyone in anger ever again. A just society would recognize that. In America we sentence black kids to life in prison without parole and a lifetime of prison rape because they had a joint on them in a zero tolerance Red State. Someone like the shooter we are discusing will get two years or less even though most of you want to see him rot.
It will mainly depend on what race he is (which I don't know) that would determine whether he rots or not. That's too bad. It makes a mockery of the term "blind justice". Electing Bernie Sanders would be a step in the right direction but I have to wonder how far one man can go towards turning 400 years of xenophopbia and Class Division around. We really need Occupy Wall Street back. Or not. We can just keep on the same path. In that case we need not get worked up over news stories like this. Why? There will be another. Soon. Just as tragic. Just as saddening. Get used to it.
In America we sentence black kids to life in prison without parole and a lifetime of prison rape because they had a joint on them in a zero tolerance Red State. Someone like the shooter we are discusing will get two years or less even though most of you want to see him rot.
Give us a case where a black kid got life in prison for a joint.
And, do you really believe this murderer is only going to get two years?
This is tragic. After I'd read the story it sounded like the killer was mentally unstable or high on drugs/drunk? RIP to the dad.
Per the article he was drunk...once the men who stopped to help realized that, they decided to call the police and let them handle it...the driver overheard them talking among themselves saying they were going to call police, and got out shooting, and unfortunately hit the one man.
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