Shoot first, then call cops?

The latest incident of gun owners taking the law into their own hands happened in Missoula, Montana.  A German exchange student was killed because he foolishly tried on a lark to snitch something from a garage.  See “An Open Garage, a Dead Exchange Student and a New Debate on Self-Defense”, Jack Healy, New York Times, 2014-05-07

What is is about some gun-owners that they follow the supposed credo of the 20th Century Westerns to shoot first, ask questions second?

The most egregious killing was by Byron David Smith of Little Falls, Minnesota.  He not only shot teen-age, unarmed invaders multiple times, but he waited three days before calling the police.  He didn’t want to bother them on Thanksgiving!!!  See “Bryon David Smith killings”.  Smith was sentenced to life without parole.

Yoshihiro Hattori, killed in Baton Rouge in 1992 for going to the wrong house, didn’t receive similar justice.  His killer, Rodney Peairs, was acquitted.  He admitted at trial that he didn’t call the police first.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Yoshihiro_Hattori.  His parents did receive a cash settlement that they used for funds for high school students to visit Japan and for gun control.  Peairs had said that he would never own a gun again.

This same Wikipedia article has a couple other cases of foreign visitors being killed by guns, including one who knocked on a door to ask for directions.

Maybe it was the movie Westerns of the 20th Century that fostered this cult of “self-defense”.  See “How the Gunfighter Killed Bourgeois America”, Ryan McMaken.

Republican Party and community

In 2009, David Brooks chided the Republican Party for learning the wrong lessons from Hollywood Westerns.

"Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice. They would once again be the party of community and civic order."
"The Long Voyage Home", New York Times, 2009-05-04.

It seems with their obsession with gun ownership and worship of large corporations, they haven't heeded David Brooks who is called a conservative by many.

On how movie Westerns are not a reflection of life in many western communities, see "How the Gunfighter Killed Bourgeois America" by Ryan McMaken.

Pistol-packing principals?

"Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, was the sole representative of gun rights' activists on the various Sunday talk shows. In an interview on 'Fox News Sunday,' Gohmert defended the sale of assault weapons and said that the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who authorities say died trying to overtake the shooter, should herself have been armed.

"'I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn't have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands. But she takes him (the shooter) out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids, Gohmert said.'"

- "Senators call for ban on assault weapons, want commission to examine gun laws, mental health", Anne Flaherty , Associated Press  Updated: December 16, 2012 - 2:52 PM

Do we really want to live in a country where every citizen is armed?  Do we have to add weapons training to the curricula of our schools of education?  When I went to high school in the 1950s, we didn't even have cops in the schools.  What has changed in our country?  Maybe it was too many westerns in which the hero was always the fastest draw and the most accurate shot.  For a couple of more realistic views, see "Myth of the Hero Gunslinger" and "How the Gunfighter Killed Bourgeois America".

As for the proposed year-and-a-half waiting period "to discuss this volatile matter" the U.S. has been averaging two mass murders per year for the last thirty years.  "And in most cases, the killers had obtained their weapons legally."

- "11 facts about U.S. gun massacres", Ezra Klein, Washington Post  Updated: December 15, 2012 - 7:10 PM, retrieved from Star Tribune