6th Grader Shoots Potential Rapist

[Sandjube]

That's crazy. People never do this to me when I walk into their homes and take all their belongings from them while they watch.

'Course I usually do that in games, so...

 

[Legion]

Sometimes I feel that this site should change it's name to "The Judgementalist". Or the forums at least should come under that title.

Anyway, I agree that the 'potential rapist' part is just sensationalism. If a person breaks into somebodies home and finds it occupied then the logical trail of thought is going to be to either run in case they call for help, or find them and stop them from doing so.

The fact that he went looking for her does not indicate a sexual motive.

 

[Sansha]

Sometimes I feel that this site should change it's name to "The Judgementalist". Or the forums at least should come under that title.

Anyway, I agree that the 'potential rapist' part is just sensationalism. If a person breaks into somebodies home and finds it occupied then the logical trail of thought is going to be to either run in case they call for help, or find them and stop them from doing so.

The fact that he went looking for her does not indicate a sexual motive.

People like you are why people get fair trials and are considered innocent until proven guilty. Don't ever lose that attitude.

 

[Vegosiux]

Last time I checked, people don't get sanctioned for what they might do, only for what they have done. But hey, whatever makes people sleep eaiser at night, I'm honestly too weary to go though a discussion like this again.

Let people shoot each other's heads off over there for all I care, as long as I know what country not to visit.

 

[Loonyyy]

It concerns me that the girl was able to so easily access a loaded firearm.

Is there any proof on the whole rapist thing? Because all we seem to know is this guy broke into her house. To me that makes him a burglar, not a rapist. I'm also concerned about how a 12 year old girl had such easy access to a firearm.

Clearly her parents saw fit to trust her with access to the pistol, and that she was able to retrieve it from wherever it was, hide, cock it, know when to aim and fire under extreme pressue, and hit her target to injure, not kill, tells me that she's obviously been well trained in its mechanical and sensible use.

Or the pistol was kept loaded, and cocked, or she knew where it was, or she knew how to cock it and/or load it from other sources. There's no reason to decide she was trained in undestanding the mechanisms of the pistol. She was told to get it by her mother, and it says in one of the articles she'd never fired it before in her life.

I've had zero firearms training, just hours of FPS's. I went to a naval display last year and they had a large amount of weapons on display, they let the public handle them. I scared them all by cocking first what I think was a Benelli M3, and then later a FN Five-Seven. It's easy. You pull the slide back. A round will slide into the chamber if it's in the magazine, which you can see as it loads into the breach. Fire selectors are clearly labelled.

Turns out they were rather paranoid about it. I mean, they probably should have removed the firing pins and there wasn't any amunition, so I've no idea why they were scared but yeah. Movies and videogames can teach you the basics of handling a weapon.

As for aim, guns are relatively easy to aim, especially at close range. I'm not deriding her efforts, but it's entirely plausible an untrained person firing blindly at a door can hit someone on the other side. I mean, it's not as if she was doing a lot of thinking about it if she fired at the door. Her intent to injure seems irrelevant-she fired blindly through a door. That says nothing about her training or anything of the sort.

In any case, young children, even if shown how to use a firearm, and taught to respect it, should not be allowed to use it in the absence of a licensed adult. It might end in that child successfully defending themself, as here. Or it might end in the child causing harm to themselves or others. Granted, the mother told her to get the gun, so it may have been locked up or hidden, the story doesn't elaborate. But it's still not something we should be encouraging. A girl did what she was told to do with a firearm by her mother and by the police dispatch. She did not demonstrate that we should be training and arming children to be able to fight of home invaders.

A bit early to judge their firearms training, especially in light of your lack of understanding of the OP, no?

 

[JoJo]

That's pretty awesome, congratulations to the kid, although I disagree with the idea of people keeping guns in their houses (or on their person). For every rare case of a person possibly saved like this, there's accidents and the use of guns for crime to consider. I understand it may be different for our American friends since they have a large border with a poor crime-ridden country (no offence any Mexicans) which guns can leak over into the hands of criminals but I stand by my position in theory at-least.

TL;DR: Please flame me

Self defense cases aren't rare, they outnumber crimes, suicides and accidental deaths using firearms by a substantial ratio, as in multiplicative. http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

Thanks for linking that to me, I'll definitely have to do some more research into this topic, however I'm not entirely sold on those particular statistics. 0.5% of the population reporting an incident where they "would have almost certainly been killed if not for a firearm" seems an unrealistically high number and could well include a lot of people exaggerating past events in their own minds. I will have to look for some official statistics some time as I might have to reconsider my position.

Alright, that is really fucking ignorant. As a Mexican I've never EVER been mugged (mind you, I still use public transportation most of the time since I don't like driving in the city because it takes longer than the metro) and have not even witnessed a crime in my 20 years of life. Get your ignorant ideas of how a foreign country works and shove it, it's offensive and would be like saying everyone in South Africa fights lions on a daily basis, just overall ignorant.

EDIT: Also double whammy if you think Americans like and keep guns in their house because of Mexicans.

Woah, chill dude, the "please flame me" bit was a joke. I've never been to Mexico but the statistics speak for themselves:

Spoiler: Homicide stats by country

You've got about 3 times the homicide rate of the U.S. and about 8 times the rate of my native England. Sure, some parts of Mexico may be more dangerous than others but you can't deny there isn't a problem. I never said every Mexican was a criminal.

 

[Sansha]

It concerns me that the girl was able to so easily access a loaded firearm.

Is there any proof on the whole rapist thing? Because all we seem to know is this guy broke into her house. To me that makes him a burglar, not a rapist. I'm also concerned about how a 12 year old girl had such easy access to a firearm.

Clearly her parents saw fit to trust her with access to the pistol, and that she was able to retrieve it from wherever it was, hide, cock it, know when to aim and fire under extreme pressure, and hit her target to injure, not kill, tells me that she's obviously been well trained in its mechanical and sensible use.

A bit early to judge their firearms training, especially in light of your lack of understanding of the OP, no? A bit Judgementalist?

Just as much as you are for the assumption that the gun is kept loaded and live out in the open where children can pick them up like toys. Yeah, I saw that bit of snark before you sneaked it out.

And you don't just do that. You don't just pick up a firearm and cock it like that, even if it's lying on display like that. A gun club will kick your ass out for doing that. It's irresponsible, and your idea of them 'being paranoid' is a bit disturbing. You treat every firearm like it's loaded and live. I agree with you in that children should be entirely supervised when handling firearms, but I'm going to contradict myself a little, given the extreme circumstances she was in, and I personally wouldn't classify a twelve year old as a 'young child'.

I've had very little firearms training, living in a country that grossly suppresses firearm possession, but I can tell you the process of preparing, holding, aiming, firing and reloaded does indeed require some time and practice to get used to, and I can't imagine the mental pressure on you when you're in that very real situation of aiming at and firing on a person who is a potential life-threat. And it's not like they fitted her with a gun and told her to go shoot him, they sent her back to her room to hide with a defensive tool, he came looking, she responded.

Yeah I'm glad this guy wasn't shot and killed, for his sake and the girl's, but for fuck's sake - how hard is it to not invade somebody's home?

 

[Monsterfurby]

Not only did she shoot him, she also managed to not kill him and instead just render him unable to harm her. Whether intended or not, that's perfectly reasonable self-defense.

Good job, little girl, many adults can learn from you. ESPECIALLY in the US, where people tend towards unproportional restribution...

 

[Piorn]

Imagine coming home drunk, so drunk in fact that you can't even use your door key, so you enter through the window, naturally. Trying to get yourself together, you scramble into what you think is your room, and try to open the closet to put your jacket away, and suddenly *BAM!*

But on topic now, it's nice the girl didn't get raped, but she could've easily accidentally shot her mother, hurt herself with the gun, or something else. There are enough cases where people accidentally get shot by their own family members, just saying.

 

[Mr Cwtchy]

This man is a 'potential rapist' like I'm a potential astronaut.

I'm glad that from what I've read no permanent harm has been brought to anyone involved, and that proper justice will be done(No, prison rape is not 'justice', it never will be and anyone who considers it so has no moral high ground to stand on).

 

[SextusMaximus]

That's pretty awesome. Logically knee jerk reaction and more productive than hoping he was a good man.

 

[lacktheknack]

Strawman Fallacy: A logical fallacy where the original statement is ignored, and a related yet completely different statement is attacked in its place.

Seen here in: The original statement recommended treating home invasion with extreme care and expecting the worst. You responded with a passive aggressive attack on his statement that media outlets should treat a home invasion as if the worst possible scenario was happening... a statement he did not make.

Please try again.

Oh kind of like his statement being a false response to the original statement about media, and I merely brought it back to the actual subject he was responding to. Perhaps you should try again.

It doesn't matter what Keoul said, seeing how SlaveNumber23's post didn't address him properly, but his response was self-contained and did have its own point.

There's no reason for him to quote it if he was not responding to it. It was clearly a response, just a really stupid one. Unless your argument is that s/he quotes people at pure random. And then I suggest someone get him to a hospital or a psychologist because something is clearly not right if you're pointlessly quoting people.

I have also quoted someone, then gone and said something not entirely relevant because my brain went a different direction than I had anticipated.

Most people can detect these and not attack them for vague implications.

 

[SpectacularWebHead]

FemShep: The early years.


Because let's be totally honest, Kick Ass is terribad.

 

[Meight08]

How do we know the guy didn't just want to tie the girl up so he could search the house without her running to get the police?

 

[KissmahArceus]

I might not agree with the use of the word Rapist in most articles about it, but who knows what he would have done?
With the whole missing girl in Wales thing here in the U.K right now, I'm just glad she isn't seriously hurt or traumatized.

 

[senordesol]

I love the folks coming up with all the weird and improbable scenarios that migh have rendered the man innocent where a very real threat to a young life existed. Reminds me of the scientist in Black Mesa Source who cry "Maybe we can reason with it!" upon spotting a zombie. Too funny.

I'll echo the prevailing concerns here in that we have NO idea what the assailant's intentions were with the little girl (Thus 'Rapist? WTF?') or why she had access to a Glock. But I will say it's lucky she *did* have access to it, that probably spared her and her family much more trauma than the experience of a home invasion had already rendered.

A damn clean shoot says I.

 

[Edible Avatar]

Can't believe people are celebrating this. "Potential rapist?" He might have been a neighbour wanting to borrow some milk.

Teaching a 12-year old this kind of insularity and mistrust is barbaric. In other words, perfectly in line with American values.

How many people wanting to "borrow some milk" smash a window and go in thataway?

I dont know about you, but i always smash my neighbor's sliding-glass window when i stop by for a visit. I also leave a note saying that I stopped by in the form of a molotov cocktail.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

I have also quoted someone, then gone and said something not entirely relevant because my brain went a different direction than I had anticipated.

Most people can detect these and not attack them for vague implications.

So learn how to use a forum properly? It sounds like a personal problem; and the poster I was talking to even admitted already that it was a response to the quoted section though he misunderstood it. So apparently your 'detection' was completely incorrect according to the very person you're defending.

Try again please.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

Am I the only one who would bring a gun with me if I broke into someone's house? Seriously, criminals these days.

OT: We don't know that he was a rapist, maybe he was a robber looking for people before he stole their possessions. I don't know of that many people that randomly break into houses and look for the nearest person to rape... But then again, I don't know that many people who would just break into someone's house at all.

Anyway, possible bad thing averted, that's good, I guess.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

If it's stupid, sensationalist assumptions based on zero facts or evidence that we're making, then we may as well say that the guy was actually Zombie Hitler, and if the brave, little girl hadn't shot him, he'd have started the Ultra Holocaust.

OH SHIT!
Seriously- I don't think it's that common for people to randomly break into a house to rape the nearest thing they see.

I would however find it more common if he was just going to like rob them or something.