Year: 2007

Paul Helmke is absolutely correct that this incident, and many like it, are horrible:

And then, on September 22, their family life was shattered by a man who walked up to their adopted son, Daren Dieter, and shot him in the spine. The shooter left Daren in a parking lot in Philadelphia, paralyzed from the neck down. Daren happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a young man simply trying to buy a late-night snack for himself and his date.

Now he’s permanently attached to a respirator.

I don’t like hearing about a family having to go through anything like that, and I hope by some miracle their son recovers. I don’t disagree with Paul that criminal violence is a a big problem, and that it can strike anyone if they are at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I can’t agree with him on how to solve the problem, because what his organization advocates simply won’t work. The scumbag who shot this young man is Tyree Bohannon:

Court records show Bohannon has been arrested three times in the last two years on numerous charges, including robbery, assault, firearms violations, receiving stolen property, and providing false identification to police.

He has been convicted only of false identification and was placed in a program for first-time offenders after his arrest last November.

So he had previous arrests for some very serious crimes, yet the DA in Philadelphia thought he was a good candidate for the ARD program, which lets first time offenders off easy.

Philadelphia’s crime problem will not be solved by taking guns away from law abiding citizens. It won’t be solved by one-gun-a-month, by restricting good people from getting concealed carry licenses, or by any of the other measures the city has been begging for in Harrisburg. Until they get tough on the criminals causing the violence in Philadelphia, the problem will continue. The measures Paul Helmke and his organization want to take will only serve to make good people defenseless against cretins like Tyree Bohannon.

UPDATE: More over at Days of our Trailers

Looks like my post attracted the attention of the man himself:

Hey, c’mon fellas, lighten up! Do you get your ramrods all bent out of shape when the fictional crimes are murder? This is just windshields. A lot of us have lost things to gunfire that were a lot more precious than windshields.

Anyway, I look forward to seeing a whole bunch of you at the White Dog on the 15th. Just check your expectations at the door.

White Dog is a restaurant right off my alma mater’s campus. I would actually go, if I weren’t flying back from Reno at that time.

I understand that Mr. Hoffman’s work is one of fiction, and I will admit I have not read it, except for the sample first chapter. I don’t get bent out of shape when fiction portrays murder, but I wouldn’t particularly want to write or read a book where the sympathetic protagonist was a serial killer. While shooting out the windshields of gun owners who are members of organizations to protect their interests does not amount to murder, forgive me if I’m a little indignant about the idea being presented in a sympathetic light.

People have lost more to violence than just a windshield, but neither me, my readers or gun blogging colleagues have anything to do with that.  Would it be fair to suggest the American Homebrewer’s Assocation (a fine organization, BTW) is responsible for drunk driving deaths?  I don’t think so.

I’m sympathetic to people that have lost loved ones to violence, but that doesn’t mean they get to extract whatever political concessions they want out of me. Taking away the guns of law-abiding people isn’t going to fix the problem.