WHAT REALLY BUGGED ME

There are couple of things that really bug me about the Ohio shooting. Incidently there has been absolutely nothing in the two papers we take. The local paper could devote a third of a page, including cute picture, to a coyote that made its way to Manhattan but nothing to good kid blasted for walking on the grass. I've even briefly searched the net and found two stories. One in a paper from South Africa of all places and one for a British paper.

I guess what really shocked me was the utter willingness of people who knew abosolutely nothing beyond what was in the brief story in AOL to believe the worst, not of the shooter but the victim. I would hope that the very idea that an adult would kill a child (and a fifteen year old is still a child, I don't care how grown up they think they are) is so foreign that there must have been a "good" reason for it. Talk about blaming the victim.

From what I've picked up we're talking about an obsessive compulsive who measured his grass and went ballistic if a neighbor accidentally mowed over the property line. And in a neighborhood with no sidewalks, he believed "his" lawn went all the way to the edge of the road so it was almost impossible for anyone not to trespass. Turns out the person that was doing the harassing was the shooter. According the posting for the English paper almost everyone in the neighborhood with kids had run ins with the man over the years. The kid was just being a kid. Maybe I'll luck out and there will be something in Newsweek next week. I know the local prosecutors weren't terribly impressed with his reasoning and have charged him with murder. Just our luck he'll probably be able to make an insanity plea stick.

I guess what really rocked me were the posters who agreed with the shooter. "Oh yeah, I'd do the same thing." Are we so hung up on what's ours or what we think is ours that we'll kill because somebody touches it? Not protect, the boy was nowhere near the house and not threatening the owner in any way, but just because he basically got on what would be sidewalk and right of way here in Springfield.

I used to look after my sister's kids years ago. I decided then, that there was absolutely nothing in or around the house that was worth a person's life except the people. And if somebody was coming in one door, I was grabbing the kid and heading for the hills. Property can be replaced, perhaps not fully but it can be replaced. Lives can't. 

Too bad family of the victim probably can't afford to sue the NRA. Somehow I can't picture this guy as a member of anybody's militia.