Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition

By Capt. Fogg

He pulled out his gun and then he said,
If you make a crooked move, you both fall dead.

. . . He loved the women and he hated the law
and he just wouldn't take nobody's jaw.

Doc Watson -Otto Wood the Bandit-

___________

When I first heard that a Texan by the name of Joe Horn had shot and killed two men he saw exiting his neighbor's house carrying a bag, my reaction was that he was a long way outside the "castle doctrine" law that allows one to defend one's life with deadly force without the requirement to wait until an intruder shoots you or to first attempt to flee.

At least in Florida, my state of residence, this law does not allow one to shoot someone to protect property or to shoot someone in the back as he runs away. Air America spent a lot of time yesterday discussing this case and while listening to the callers, two things struck me forcibly: In Texas it's legal to kill somebody over a watch or a toaster, even if he's no threat and is running away, and that public sentiment seems to back the idea that anyone can shoot anyone observed to be engaging in criminal activity even long after the crime has been committed.

Just how far down the freeway of fear have we traveled that one reads comments in the New York Times like these:

"His actions were absolutely and inflariously [sic] justified. It was his Christian duty to protect and defend his neighbor."

"Anyone who breaks into someone's home with the intent to steal, rape or whatever is a worthless human being and deserves to be shot."

" so as far as i [sic] am concerned, the thieves gave up their right to life when they broke into someone elses [sic] home."

The idea that theft is a capital offense and that any witness has the right to enforce capital punishment without even a casual nod to due process or Jesus is something that would have been radical in the illegal mining camp of Deadwood in 1875. Do I have to admit, after half a century of believing in the basic decency of most people, that all that now separates my fellow Americans from unprincipled savages is the threat of violence at the hands of the law?

Of course the years of Republican fear mongering have had an effect. Of course years of Reganite insistence that Government has no answers to any problem have had an effect. Years of declining violent crime rates have done nothing to convince much of the rabble that civilization itself is not the culprit and that the wages of lawbreaking is and should be instant death by the hands of any vigilante or self appointed deputy with the few hundred bucks it takes to buy a decent firearm. Of course this case has been further inflamed by the fact that the burglars were illegal aliens and you'll read that fact cited in may of the arguments that such people have no rights at all much less the right to remain alive.

As for now, I still cling to my childish naivete, but I'm coming close to the point where I will have to declare that I live in a nation of vicious, bloodthirsty, bigoted and stupid cowards more like a baboon troop than a nation.

Cross posted from Human Voices