Shoot anything that moves: Hair trigger gun nuts standing their ground.

During the past 7 days in the US, 3 young people have been shot, 2 critically & 1 fatally, for mistakenly approaching the property of firearm enthusiasts:
1) 16 year old Ralph Yarl was gunned down for ringing a doorbell at the wrong address in Missouri
2) 20 year old Kaylin Gillis was killed for turning around in someone's driveway in upstate NY
3) 18 year old Payton Washington was shot when she mistakenly opened the door to the wrong car at a gym parking lot in Texas

All 3 shooters are being charged, but this seems like the natural result of stand your ground and open carry laws and 2nd amendment worshippers anxiously looking for a chance to use their precious personal protection to kill someone. Seems like a different topic for discussion than the mass shootings thread, but hopefully it won't get bumped with new examples as regularly.

chekhov's gun seems relevant

I think these things happen ALL the time, there's just more media coverage

Remember the policewoman who shot a guy in his own apartment, thinking it was her place?

Trayvon Martin in 2012 seems like another example, another teen shot while mistakenly thought to be trespassing, but Zimmerman had called the cops and fought with him before shooting him, leading to his bullshit acquittal by self defense. Also Ahmaud Aubrey suspected of trespassing in 2020, but he was actually hunted down, fought with and killed. All 3 shooters this week just came out shooting.

I just read about the third of these in the paper and it was finally too much for my brain. What the fucking fuck

"An attorney for Kevin Monahan, the suspect in Kaylin Gillis’ death in upstate New York, said his client “did not intend to hurt anyone” and “a series of errors” were made “that he is part of.”

A defense lawyer can't just say "my client is crazy as a bedbug and guilty as hell."

how do you put this in the passive tense: "He aimed a firearm at the vehicle and pulled the trigger"

"Mistakes were made"

"I think these things happen ALL the time, there's just more media coverage"

But why now?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65330696

Sorry this is example no 3. Just saw it now.

AGAIN: Kinsley White, 6, was shot by a North Carolina neighbor who was upset that a basketball rolled into his yard. The gunman also shot her parents and other family members. White was released from the hospital overnight. #ncpol https://t.co/86gUUmvQXq

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) April 19, 2023

I know at least one person who bought their first firearm recently due to what seems like a ramping up of gun violence news in the past few years. What makes a person who identifies as "progressive" and doesn't come from any kind of firearm background (family, ex-cop/vet, whatever) suddenly buy one: Fear.

xp - that's gonna be awkward during the summer block party

Wtf at that tweet

I swear to god I’m not making light of these incidents but it’s not even summer yet

What has happened to us?!?

Was in Gastonia last year, a pretty grim
Looking place.

Sorry for the unnecessary line break.

I know a guy who was running for office a few years ago and said that he almost got shot while door-knocking by a guy who came to the door brandishing a gun and said "I thought you were breaking in." This was a white guy in a suit ringing the doorbell in a suburban neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon.

In some ways it's a little surprising our carnage isn't higher than it already is. So many guns, so many terrified dumb people.

In Louisiana, man shoots neighborhood kid playing hide and seek in his yard.
https://www.sunherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article275197271.html

that's gonna be awkward during the summer block party

There need to be follow-up stories. How do the other neighbors treat the guy who shot someone for just walking across his lawn, or whatever? Are they civil? Do they pull their kids inside when they see him? Does he move away?

Sounds like this was a dead end street where only the shooter, the victim/family, and other relatives of the victim lived. I hope that the shooter is too ashamed to move back there when he gets out of jail.

so yes this person was charged, but look at how many times they aren't (i.e. the recent Davie case).

the cops already have a low threshold for what is considered a 'good shoot', but civilians in these stand your ground states (like mine) have an even lower threshold. they don't have to make any real assessment as to what the people are doing on their property, shout any kind of warning, or really assess anything other than "someone's on my property".

if the kids hadn't been running away when the shooter shot, I bet he doesn't get charged.

the sheer glee people take in speaking about how these armed psychos are in the right for executing teenagers because they were scared despite being the only person who actually has machines of death at the scene makes me want to just punch holes through a wall.

Texas is the reason...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boy-arrested-for-murder-keene-texas-sonic-worker-shooting/

the sheer glee people take in speaking about how these armed psychos are in the right for executing teenagers because they were scared despite being the only person who actually has machines of death at the scene makes me want to just punch holes through a wall.

this times one fucking thousand percent

when i was growing up in rural east tennessee there was a guy ostensibly named “Peanut” who lived up on the hill between me and my best friend’s house, and one time he told our parents that we shouldn’t walk down the lane to each other’s houses after dark because he’d shoot anybody walking down the lane. our parents were like, you’re not shooting anybody you fucking psycho, this is our lane too. i never thought much about it. i guess today, you probably would think about it pretty hard

i went back home years ago w/my wife and kid, rural IL. heard some commotion outside, apparently the bernie bros across the street from my mom had backed their car into the mailbox of the trump guy next door to my mom's house, all i heard was something about "it's just a fuckin mailbox" followed by "oh a gun, now you're gonna shoot us?" or something along all those lines. the *other* trump guy who lived across the street watching from his porch, probably locked and loaded too but who knows. anyway, the police arrived and things settled down quickly, everyone went back inside. fast forward to now, my mom still lives there but everyone else is gone, totally apolitical folks all around these days. who knows what would have happened though, everyone was on edge. this was on christmas night.

Wow omar. That whole story is bad but the last sentence is heartbreaking.

I wonder when the next shooting is going to happen at my RV park. The group of people who were friends with the person who did the last one are dead or gone, but there's a person who was shooting squirrels (not sure if it was for fun or food) until recently.

that's so scary : (

evidence of how this is influencing my thinking now - last night I had an AirBNB in St Petersburg. for some reason, when you click the directions link from your AirBNB email, it sends coordinates rather than the address to Google Maps, meaning it often shows you the wrong address, off by a few house numbers.

yesterday, that happened, and when I figured it out, about 2 minutes from my destination, I thought to myself "man, with people getting shot for merely pulling into the wrong person's driveway, I'm glad I figured that out now. imagine if I'd tried to enter the door at the wrong house". now, given the usually racist motivations behind said shootings, I am probably not as likely a target (which is even more fucked up). but these are things that would never scan as anything but hilarious embarrassing moments even, like, 5 years ago

(I'm not trying to pretend things like this couldn't have/didn't happen prior to this year, and I know sometimes stories that happen in clusters happen because news organizations often seek out similar stories when a big news item breaks. but the awareness of the trivial things people get shot over is higher than ever now, and it's influencing all of us)

Every day things get more and more like Parable of the Sower

Another shooter mad about neighborhood kids playing in her yard, this time shoots and kills their mom through a screen door right in front of the kids. https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/calls-to-arrest-florida-woman-after-alleged-fatal-shooting-of-black-neighbor-180557381940

I don't really know how anyone can think the U.S. isn't an absolute dystopia. It requires public outcry to get someone arrested for straight up murder in front of children.

Guy in Illinois dreams that he has a home intruder, shoots himself in the leg and wakes up. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-shot-himself-dream-intruder-illegal-possession-lake-county-illinois/

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Lol of course this is some (very likely, given the area) some rich douchebag with more money than common sense and a revenge fantasy boner.

Night Gallery episode

But, when he fired the revolver, Dicara shot himself in the leg instead and woke from the dream, a subsequent investigation found.

v good sentence

(prob still in the dream tho.)

he was incepted to shoot himself

Would love to see this become a trend... anti-woke conservatives literally shooting themselves in the foot as they sleep, the headlines write themselves.

A Man Killed 4 Neighbors After Teen Masturbated In Front Of His Family, Police Say
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/idaho-family-killings_n_64935376e4b0aec6b7fe1c00

Are we allowed to wonder what might have happened if this man had not owned a gun when he allegedly "snapped"?

Uber Passenger Who Mistakenly Thought She Was Being Kidnapped Shoots Driver, Is Charged with Murder

https://people.com/uber-passenger-who-mistakenly-thought-she-was-being-kidnapped-shoots-driver-is-charged-with-murder-7552617?hid=a94026e92979680181b5df63f61606df768969ba&did=9509225-20230624&utm_source=ppl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=people-news_newsletter&utm_content=062423&lctg=a94026e92979680181b5df63f61606df768969ba

…. what?

When Karl Polek, a 33-year-old pool cleaner, arrived at a Dunedin, Fla., home he carried a flashlight because it was already dark. The homeowner inside didn’t recognize him and within minutes, Bradley Hocevar fired his M4 carbine 30 times. https://t.co/yh1tzs2iqo

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 28, 2023

"no crime was committed" jesus f christ

lawful but awful

invoking castle doctrine when used against someone you literally invited to do work at your house....jfc

not that I believe in castle doctrine ANYWAY (or at least, not fully), but good god

yeah I'm not legal genius but doesn't this open up the possibility of inviting someone to your house in order to legally murder them upon arrival?

xpost and shithead lawyer blaming the pool guy for 'not announcing himself'.

when you've been pool cleaner for six months and the family is expecting you at some point of the day, they usually don't show up at the door and say "hi I'm here". I've sometimes been housesitting at a friend's to find pool guy already on the porch working when I woke up.

yeah seriously

"hey come over later tonight for a few beers, just come by when you can"

*blam blam*

"man you didn't tell me when you were coming over, sorry"

like it's basically at the point where social faux pas are considered appropriate moments to shoot people now

Hopefully the pool cleaner will invite Karl over to his house to return the favor to share a beer and patch things over.

and the guy didn't try to gain entrance to the house

sorry, but I think murdering someone out in your yard is not standing any ground

Impossible to comprehend being consumed by paranoia such that your response to seeing someone outside is to just start blasting.

otm

now that WaPo broke what was originally a local story, hopefully this shooter gets daily harassment for months

Well, he'll probably have to start cleaning his own pool

now that WaPo broke what was originally a local story, hopefully this shooter gets daily harassment for months

― sad Mings of dynasty (Neanderthal), Wednesday, June 28, 2023 8:42 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well, he'll probably have to start cleaning his own pool

― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, June 28, 2023 8:50 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wait until you know he's not home and take a shit in the pool. Every single day.