Clearly, residents of this state are the problem. Look what this wretched Minnesotan did.
A Minnesota man who admitted shooting a 17-year-old girl multiple times because she asked him to stop trespassing on his riding lawnmower has been charged with attempted first-degree murder.
According to a criminal complaint obtained by The Associated Press, 40-year-old Chad Pickering shot the 17-year-old girl in the chest, right thigh and left ankle while she was standing on the deck of her Bemidji home on Monday night.
“The victim herself was able to describe what had happened and talk to us and tell us that she’d simply been shot when she stepped out of her house to check on her dogs,” Sheriff Phil Hodapp explained to WCCO.
The teen told investigators that she had asked Pickering not to ride his lawnmower through her yard. She also said that he often carried a pistol with him on the lawnmower.
That’s just the way Minnesotans are…
Oh, wait. Wrong word. Not Minnesotans, but rather assholes with guns.
This asshole thinks the world is so dangerous he needed to carry a gun with him while mowing his lawn. This is the world that the right wing has helped create. People like Pickering are exactly the kind of person that should never be able to own a gun. He’s not responsible. Yet there aren’t measures in place aimed at preventing irresponsible assholes from acquiring guns: measure like psychological screening prior to gun ownership.
You hear a lot of stories from the NRA about homeowners using guns to fend off trespassers. I wonder how often we’re going to hear them quote this story, in which a trespasser used a gun to attack a homeowner?
Oh wait, I already know the answer. If they mention it at all, it’ll only be to claim that 17-year-olds should all be armed.
@Tony!
It’s the Benjamin Franklin Effect (here described by one of my favorite blogs). [In particular, search down for “Self perception theory” and “cognitive dissonance”.] He’s an asshole, therefore the world is bad and dangerous.
More from the link:
This guy is a dirtbag.
Well if they charge him with attempted murder and he is convicted he can be sentenced to 20 years. Hopefully that happens.
Well “asshole with gun” isn’t one word. Can I suggest “gunshole” instead?
@ Tony:
Not just a dirtbag, but bleedin’ stupid as well.
[FADE IN. Pickering has just re-entered the house, in the full grip of ephebiphobia. His faithful dog is in the center of the living room, looking concerned.]
Dog: I heard gunshots! Are you ok?
Pickering: Just shot a 17-yr old in full view of the public! I was in danger!
Dog: A 17-year old?
Pickering: She threatened me! I think.
Dog: Maybe you should get rid of the gun…
Pickering: Second Amendment! You can’t take my gun away!
Dog: Seriously, that gun is evidence? And what about the casings?
Pickering: I stood my lawn! Freedom!
Dog: People who think Law and Order is realistic look smart compared to you.
[Knock on door]
Policeman: Police! Open up!
Dog: That’s it, I’m out of here.
[END SCENE]
Pathetic attempt at humor* aside, it’s the sheer idiocy of these people that makes them a menace to society.
* Chalk this one up to laughing so I don’t cry.
Particularly stupid, since the asshole did this with premeditation:
I hope this guy goes away for a long, long time.
Of course he was. Of COURSE he was. I wonder if he got fired from his position for being a fucking danger to the juveniles placed in his authority. And if he got to keep his gun. Sheer speculation, of course.
I’ll stop spamming the thread now. Sorry. This shit just pisses me off, which is why I almost never comment in these threads.
PatrickG:
Thank you for providing my daily allowance of LOL.
Jake Harban @ 2: Or to demand to know why the gun-grabbers are using this isolated incident to score political points.
The guy is a good example of why heavy gun restrictions are good. I’m tempted to call him a ‘nut’, which won’t be popular (speaking as something of a nut myself). But really it’s lazy. There’s no pre-screening, no evaluation, no waiting period that can really clear up whether you are the sort of person likely to decide to stalk and try to kill your neighbours over a minor dispute. And would the girl being armed have helped her any?
But anyway, I find stories like this one more telling of the supposed need for guns. It should be more famous than the Martin case if you ask me..
An otherwise ordinary non aggressive (apparently) guy kills a lost drunk girl looking for help, it would seem, from behind a locked door no less, because he was scared.
They say an armed society is a polite society. The mistake is thinking you can remove emotion from the equation by having a weapon. In their particular myth of rational actors is crime going to go away? Or bad days? Or fear? Or race? Everyone ’round here knows this already, but no, of course it isn’t. So what is the rational option in an armed society where anyone else could be the crazy one, the mentally impaired one, you name it? Shoot first, always.
Does anyone know where I can redeem “political points”? I only ask because there seem to be a lot of these “isolated incidents”, and I think I can make a real profit of something or other.
Muz:
I’m confused. You’re saying the tragic death of Renisha McBride at the hands of Theodore Wafer is an better example of the need for guns?
I see the shooting in the OP as someone acting out of anger, while the actions of Wafer were borne out of fear. In both cases, neither man took the time to make a risk assessment and determine if they were in danger. Clearly, in the case of Pickering, he was in no danger. In the case of Wafer, for a split second I could imagine being in his shoes and maybe (I can’t stress this enough maybe) feeling scared upon hearing someone attempt to open his front door. I can buy that as a justification for grabbing a shotgun and shooting the intruder (though in my case, even if I were to own a gun, I can’t imagine aiming at someone’s head. I don’t ever want to be a killer.) Except that’s not how things happened:
She’d been knocking, and hadn’t tried to break in. Why the hell did he need to grab the shotgun to answer the door. Why did he open the door and see an injured woman and shoot her in the face?
No, I’m having a hard time seeing how this is an example of the need for guns.
I don’t want to misread you, and perhaps I have, so can you elaborate on this?
You know there’s a problem when this is one of the happier stories because the girl didn’t die.
Seriously, I was thinking “Wow, this is terrible,” then I read that she survived and thought “Oh, well that’s not so ba- Wait, it’s still terrible.”
@Duth Olec- yeah, that was basically my train of thought, too.
If we outlaw lawnmowers, only outlaws will mow lawns.
–o–
Interesting how he hid he gun and lied. It’s almost as if he’s embarrassed or think he’s done something wrong. I hope the NRA educates him about how proud he should be.
Tony: You read everything I wrote and the the case in question and even the qualifier ‘supposed’ in the first line. I would have thought that settled it
Hey, there are many backgrounds out here on the internet. I know. And I do like to jump a few thoughts ahead.
So, for the sake of it, I imagine gun-fans could muster some defense or dismissal of this as being a case of a rare idiot and dangerous man to maliciously attack his likely harmless neighbour, and thus not relevant to the overall debate. It wouldn’t work but they’d still try this line, I suspect.
For contrast I offer one of a guy who was apparently not dangerous or aggressive, according to people who knew him, who wasn’t engaged in any pursuit or scuffle and who still managed to shoot somebody for no real reason we can see.
The argument for gun restriction is as much about people like him as clearly malicious behaviour like our man Pickering’s at the top there.
It’s a bit of a tangent I suppose.
Notice that if she was still fairly functional after being shot. Even three rounds from a prepared shooter with a heavy gun into a totally unprepared woman did not produce the magical stopping power that guns are supposed to do. One shot hit center, but did not kill, the other two were not accurate (were there more that missed?). In other circumstances, such as against a large and angry man on a mission, the gun would have been even less effective. As a self-defense measure, the gun would have been crock.
The NRA is a shill for the gun-makers. How are they going to play this?
I am glad the victim was not hurt worse, or killed. What a horrible thing to have happen.
Menyambal, I know how the NRA will play this. They’ll ignore it. Just like they ignored the incident in Phoenix when some asshat member of the AZ legislature demonstrated the laser sight on her handgun by pointing it at a reporter. In the state capitol building. Of course no guncreep I knew had ever heard of the incident, given their prime sources of info are from Fox Noise and Limbaugh.
It’s very important to carry a loaded arsenal when jay-driving and trespassing with a lawnmower. You might encounter a snail. Coked in butter with garlic and vin, it(the escargot, not the lawnmower) is tasty. So this was a legitimate case of hunting…
Could make for an interesting side story for FARGO.
The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. However, there were no other guys around, and girls are useless at everything except babies. Therefore, her dogs need to be given gun ownership permits for her own good.
“Sound crazy? Think about it!”
“She provoked him by not wearing body armour. It was all her fault.”
Hopefully that’s not a defence we’ll be hearing from a Faux News gobshite, but who can say for certain?
Well I’m speechless…
OMGWTF! (I know it’s kinda childish but dammit I couldn’t have phrased it better.) Note to self: Don’t vacation in Minnesota, Utah is much safer.
Okay over that. I have serious questions. Does this guy have a permit to carry? (In Minnesota you can’t conceal or open carry legally without a permit.) Did he buy guns with a proper background check or is this a person who bought his gun at a gun show? (Gun shows don’t follow the background check system at all.) Why didn’t someone call the police, when he had his gun in plain view, riding on his mower? (They may have but I would like to know if they ever did.) I know Minnesota isn’t in the top ten when it comes to the strictest gun laws, so yep, it may need tighter gun laws, I’m not against it.
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/gun-show-firearms-bankground-checks-state-laws-map.html
http://www.opencarry.org/?page_id=259
http://civilliberty.about.com/od/guncontrol/a/Minnesota-Gun-Rights.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Minnesota
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state
http://www.deseretnews.com/top/1428/0/10-states-with-the-strictest-gun-laws.html
Gee, gun nut showing his gun nuttery. Handguns should be severely regulated. This is what happens when folks see the gun as an extension of their genitals. His fee-fee was hurt as he was called out for trespassing by a woman. He must get his manhood back by shooting her, teaching her a lesson in misogyny.
This won’t phase the NRA and its supporters at all. They’ll write him off as being unstable and probably a Democrat at that, and what do you know, the NRA members still have a 100% track record of responsible gun use. No true NRA member, him.
One thing which I have never heard them address is how the riff-raff they are protecting themselves from got their guns. It is as if there is a secret factory churning out handguns in the projects in Chicago. Certainly the tens of thousands of upstanding gun dealerships and millions of upstanding gun owners would never let their morally correct guns get into the hands of the very people the NRA members are afraid of. That is such an iron clad fact that there is apparently no reason to prevent such handgun migration.
@6, OptimalCynic
Well, “gun owner” is only two words, and it means the same thing.
Actually, I’m from Bemidji. An asshole shooting or punching or threatening, or beating someone with a tire iron over an imagined slight? That what they call “A day ending in ‘y'”…
teresalhotka:
I’ll take your word for that, but the US has a huge problem with gun violence, hence the need to address it.
Another factor in the McBride case is that this was happening at 3:30 in the morning in Dearborn Heights, Mich., not far from Detroit. I can see why he might bring a shotgun to the door, but to shoot it through a locked door — even a screen door — before assessing the situation is ridiculous.
In this latter case, I guess this guy can get 20 years in prison. In my book, that’s too little.
One word? How about gunassholeschtücke.
I still like gundamentalists. Can’t recall who came up with that. Someone around here.