The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

 A woman was shot and killed in upstate New York last Saturday night when the car she was riding in pulled into the wrong driveway. The homeowner came out onto the front porch and fired twice. Whether the homeowner's marksmanship was very good or terribly bad, he managed to kill one of the four occupants of the vehicle, twenty year old Kaylin Gillis. 

A sixteen year old in Missouri, Ralph Yari,  was shot and critically wounded when he knocked on the wrong door looking for his siblings. The homeowner in this case opened fire through a glass door "fearing for his life." He picked up the gun before answering the door. 

You know, like we all do.

The way we tend to pull pistols when we get cut off in traffic, like William Hale did when he fired into the car in which after the driver he was arguing with at high speed shot at his vehicle, wounding his daughter. Did Mister Hale stop immediately and try to get his daughter to a hospital? Nope. He sped up, and fired several shots of his own at the offending vehicle, one of which went through the back of the car, striking the other driver's fourteen year old daughter in the back, collapsing her lung. This highway escapade took place in and around Jacksonville, Florida. 

In doing the research for this blog, I was hampered briefly by the sheer number of road rage and "mistaken identity" shootings that I needed to cull through to find the specific events about which I am writing. These were some of the most recent "accidental" shootings that have taken place with innocent victims under the age of twenty-one. Somewhere in the heads of all these gun-toting individuals' heads must have been the thought, "I'm going to be a hero. I'm a problem solver." 

That thought was stuck underneath a heap of fear and anger, and all the thoughts and prayers for the victims will not get the guns out of the hands of these ninnies who believe they're living in Dodge City. Stand your ground, by golly and expect that a jury of your ninny peers will absolve you from blame when the case comes to trial. Driving erratically can be just as deadly as using a semi-automatic pistol in traffic. We should all just assume that there is a "Trespassers Will Be Shot On Sight" sign on every doorstep in these terribly dangerous United States. 

And if we raised the age of gun ownership to twenty-one, none of these victims could have shot back.