TexasCHLforum.com

The in-laws of somebody I know were shot in a brutal home invasion in Houston a few days ago. They were both 69, sitting peacefully in their living room watching TV. Somebody crashed through the front door, shot the couple and ran off with whatever he could snatch up and drove off in their car. The wife survived, but will need "many years" to recover. The husband had major head trauma and was kept on artificial life support in a vegetative state. Yesterday his family decided to remove the support. A suspect was arrested a few hours later.

What a tragedy. And how infuriating.

It's just insane. Some cities have been virtually taken over by gangs. I recently read of towns in California (where else...) where nobody goes out after dark because it's too dangerous, e.g. if you need to run down the block for some milk or bread, you wait until the next day. Yeah, we need stricter gun laws, eh?

When I was a motorcycle rider, one of the rules of safety was always assuming the worst. If you see somebody waiting at a stop sign, you assume he WILL pull out in front of you. Some of these situations are the same. If you get out of your car to confront somebody, you assume he WILL have a weapon and try to use it. That guy made a BIG mistake following that car into the parking lot, if he already had a license number.

There are some really, really bad people out there. These incidents remind me of some carjackers in, I believe, Temple or Waco. They spotted a single girl driving to work, pulled up behind her at a stop light, and bumped her rear end "accidentally." When she, of course, got out and walked around to look, they grabbed her. They found her corpse some days later.

Not to be morbid at a victim's expense, but it's always somewhat beneficial to put yourself in these scenarios and consider what you would have done.