Greetings from New York.  Skyscrapers and everything.
So I’m here with my fiancee.  Yesterday morning, we watched the news and heard something about a “controversial” shooting in Houston.  Here’s the 911 transcript of the shooting.
I just wanna know one thing–where’s the controversy?
First, it should be noted, for those unaware, that I’m from Houston.  Lived there from when I was 7 until I graduated from high school.  As a result, I’m very aware of the law as it relates to shooting people in the dark.  In Texas, deadly force is allowable if someone is threatening your property in the dark.  The law’s a bit wild-wild-West for some, but I get it.  I mean, it’s highly unlikely someone’s breaking into your house with only his fists as a contingency plan.  That’s not the time to give people the benefit of the doubt on not having a gun.
However, the rub in this case that makes things “controversial,” I suppose, is that the shooter is the neighbor of a man who had his house broken into.  The shooter wasn’t protecting his property but, instead, someone else’s.
To me, that would make things controversial if he were shooting into the house to stop the burglary.  Nope.  He shot these dudes while they were getting away.  Shotgun blasts, no less, all while on the line with a 911 dispatcher that was telling him, repeatedly, not to go outside with a gun.  Instead of taking heed, dude went out and said, “I’m going to kill them.”
Again, I ask you–where’s the controversy?
Texans like guns.  And they don’t just like having them.  They like shooting them and want you to know, at all times, that they’re quite comfortable with turning that gun on you and letting you know who really runs things.  That’s how they’re wired.
It’s disturbing, but that’s how it is.  And, again, I don’t wholeheartedly disagree with allowing deadly force when someone’s breaking into your house.  I went to high school with a dude that got killed breaking into someone’s house.  He jumped into a bedroom window and was greeted with a shotgun.  I felt bad for his family and found it tragic a young, promising life ended so soon.  However, I was fully aware that those are the breaks when you break into someone’s house, and I harbored no malice toward the shooter.
But this dude?  Put him under the jail.  Deadly force can be used in the name of self-defense.  This was not self-defense.  This was murder.
Controversy?  Please.