I live about 20 minutes from this neighborhood. A little background: that gang of illegal immigrants had been terrorizing that neighborhood for over a year, robbing and beating residents. And yes, even MURDERING them. The residents have understandably been on edge and there is a serious citizen flight going on.

Old Mr. Horn knew exactly what he was facing when he stopped those criminals. He WAS in extreme danger, and he did his town – and the rest of us – a friggin’ monumental favor.

Redhead Infidel on July 1, 2008 at 9:24 AM

And for anyone not familiar with the murder rate in Houston…in 2006, they were #2 in the country, behind Philadelphia. I lost my brother to robbery in Houston in 2007, so don’t give me this crap about not fighting back. Add the illegal & Katrina influx to Houston’s criminal element of all races, and Houston’s crime skyrocketed. My brother was just one of its many victims.

But don’t believe me. Read the articles for yourself:
http://www.click2houston.com/news/13448543/detail.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,223319,00.html

2008 Houston Murder Stats:
http://www.houstoncrimemaps.com/offense/murder/

You can also search by offense, neighborhood, date, district, beat, zip…and you’ll see how my former adopted hometown has become a warzone.
Joe Horn has done us all a huge favor.

Esthier on July 2, 2008 at 10:08 AM

Esthier, you may not feel your property is worth much, but wait until you’re robbed. You may change your mind. Right now what you’re writing smacks of Socialism, whether that’s your intention or not. Our Founding Fathers meant for all of us, regardless of wealth, to enjoy or property rights. So celebrate that this 4th for me. I have some trouble doing that, since I lost my father around the 4th two years ago.

After losing what I’ve lost in the last 2 years, I’ll be d$mned if they take anything else from me, including my weapons. And yes, I will somehow learn to live with taking the life of anyone stupid enough to try & enter my abode. That is something each gun owner knows they have to possibly face…when will criminals learn they may have to face the working end of a gun?

a) we all have an interest in preventing crime or stopping it in progress;

b) police are only rarely in a position to stop a crime in progress;

c) unless house burglars are caught during the commission of a crime, they are rarely caught and the crimes rarely seriously investigated;

d) while there is no obligation to intervene to stop the commission of a crime, citizens should be permitted to intervene as long as they don’t screw up. If they screw up, they should be held accountable for screwing up.

e) when it comes to intervening to stop the commission of a crime, given the urgency of the situation and the potential for irretrievable loss of property or injury, I don’t believe that citizens should have fewer rights to intervene than police do;

f) the criminals in this case were challenged and given the option of not fleeing;

g) the rule is pretty straight forward: if you don’t want to be shot in the commission of a crime, don’t commit crime.

Johan Klaus on July 2, 2008 at 11:28 PM

You should read carefully all my statements in this thread before giving an opinion that has nothing to do with what I think. My main disagreement with Geministorm (and others) are only related to the obligation of confronting the crooks in defense of others’ property thus risking your life in the process.

Geministorm on July 2, 2008 at 11:32 PM

Horn’s DOB and SS# are bleeped, why not his address? Although the police could have done the former, in any case I believe that is puttiing him at an unnecessary risk.

If you are ever in a position of getting robbed, and I hope you are not, I hope that a policeman is near.

Johan Klaus on July 2, 2008 at 11:28 PM

The police are employed to arrest criminals. The fallacy in our system is that they are not criminals until they complete their crime. This is why communities employee security agencies to advert and discourage crime.

During the years I live in Houston I was burglarized 4 times. If you have never come home to find your domain violated and your stuff taken, you have no idea just how personally shaking that experience can be. To know that someone was in your home taking things that you worked years to acquire and decided they had a right to take them from you.. that feeling is indescribable. In one of my burglaries they tried to kill my precious dog who tried to stand them off and was met with a violent blow to her head. Thankfully she did survive.

I personally think that those that are crying for Mr. Horn’s head do so because of their own personally responsibility in creating this underclass that has been fed on entitlement, who make their “living” by taking from others what they themselves won’t work honestly for because they have had everything handed to them by the government coffers.

I applaud Mr. Horn for his courage to stand up against these criminals and I have no doubt that he understood that if they were allowed to succeed, his home would be in danger of the very same.

If my neighbor’s house is invaded by rats, should I wait for those rats to move to my house, NOPE. I eliminate the rats.

It is really despicable on the part of the Houston Chronicle not to bleep the portions of the audio where the address of Joe Horn is mentioned.

Amazingly, we agree on something. Perhaps it was purposeful on the part of the Houston Chronicle?
BTW, thanks for the link, those were interesting to watch.

And I think you need psychiatric help…

I think I’ll wait for a professional opinion, thanks.

And I think you need psychiatric help. Go figure.

Ropera on July 2, 2008 at 10:05 PM

If you are ever in a position of getting robbed, and I hope you are not, I hope that a policeman is near.

on the 911 tape Horn says (still inside his home): “I’m not going to let them get away with it, I’m gonna shoot. I’m gonna shoot.”

the dispatcher’s response: “Stay inside the house and don’t go out there. OK?… I know what you’re feeling, but it’s not worth shooting someone over this. OK?”

…and in the first tape of declarations to the police (previous post) he says that his intention was to stop them, not to shoot.

Getting out of the house was a bad call. Luckily for him these guys were career criminals, if they were kids with no priors he’d be in deep s**t by now.

http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/special/07/templates/lineuppop.html?mcVideo=1631239835

After watching the first one, the latino community can not argue that it was motivated by hate against Hispanics.

Geministorm on July 2, 2008 at 9:04 AM

And I think you need psychiatric help. Go figure.

But, then I wondered why if any plainclothed officers were there, why weren’t they taking action to stop the robbery?

I’ve wondered about this also. Given my work experience and based on the fact that I know that area to have a gang unit I wonder if the plainclothed was an undercover gang office who heard the dispatch of the PD on the radio and made his way over there to take a look and wasn’t willing to jeopardize his cover. If that’s the case, it seems to me that his testimony before the GJ is why they didn’t indite Mr. Horn. From what I remember from hearing the tape months ago, it went down pretty fast.

1. Mr. Horn did *not* know the neighbors whom were broken into. He said that he knew the other side well, and if it had been their house, he would have already been over there and taken care of it.

2. He stated he wanted the police there right away. Over and over again he said to hurry up and get them there quick or he was going to have to take matters into his own hands because he wasn’t going allow them to get away with it.

3. He said he saw they had at least a crowbar, because they used it to break the window. But, he only saw one of them well and was unable to describe the second man other than being “black”.

4. The operator repeatedly said for Mr. Horn to stay in the house and that no property was worth shooting someone for (btw, does our government take that same attitude? I mean, throughout the history of man, isn’t property and land exactly the cause for most wars and innumerable killings?). Mr. Horn said he wasn’t going to stand for it. G.Gordon Liddy correctly pointed out to the first caller that the operator is in no way an official acting law officer and that his statements were simply advice.

5. Mr. Horn said point blank that he was going to shoot them and then later said that he was going to kill them. It was apparent that he was very anxious and distressed by the brazen behavior of the two men robbing his neighbor. But, he said he was going to tell them to stop and drop the loot or else.

6. The 911 operator seemed to think that Mr. Horn might accidently shoot one of his officers. But, then I wondered why if any plainclothed officers were there, why weren’t they taking action to stop the robbery? Mr. Horn was watching the entire time, he would have seen the officers and reported that to the operator.

7. I didn’t time it, but it seemed that the call lasted about 4-5 minutes before Mr. Horn put it down and exited his house to confront the robbers.

8. As the robbers were exiting the house they had robbed, the conversation between the operator and Mr. Horn became a many times repeated;

Operator: “Don’t you leave your house Mr. Horn”
Mr. Horn: “I’m going to do it, I’m going to stop them”

9. From the tone, it sounded like Mr. Horn was scared, but resolved to stop this from happening in his neighborhood and for them to get away.

The Founding Fathers were, and most people are. If you have no right to protect your property, you have no life worth living. Innocents die all the time, from any number of causes; the % from people in the process of protecting their property is a minuscule number.

Well, I’m not a Founding Father. As far as I’m concerned, my property, as meager as it is, is not worth an innocent person’s life.

It’s worth a guilty person’s life maybe under certain circumstances, but I don’t know if I could enjoy the things I own knowing innocent blood was spilled to protect it.

And I’m not talking about a right. Yes, people should have the right to protect their property, but people also have a responsibility once they’ve decided to take a life to make sure they’re taking a life that is a threat, either to property or to themselves personally.

A gun is a very powerful tool. I’m only saying it should be treated as such. Most of you already seem to agree, at least in your own lives.

I don’t entirely understand what your getting at, but my point is that there is only one way to make sure that something never kills an innocent person, and that is to eliminate the object.

I got that, really. It was all over your last post and couldn’t have been missed. But that’s not what I’m advocating.

I understand that innocent people sometimes die. The method of an innocent person’s death isn’t something that keeps me up at night.

We will never live in a world without innocent deaths, so outlawing one weapon does nothing but change the manner in which an innocent person will be killed.

I’m just saying that we don’t live with innocent lives being lost. As a nation, we do something about it.

The wellbeing of the intruder is not a secondary consideration, at best.

Understandably, but it should still be a consideration.

The vehicular analogy to this case would be somebody driving down the street, having a child run out from behind a parked car and the driver not having time to stop or avoid hitting him.

FloatingRock on July 1, 2008 at 7:06 PM

No, that’s not quite the same. There was nothing the driver could do in that scenario to save the child. This man could have put his gun down, realized the door bell had been rung, looked at the man’s tuxedo costume or any number of things to have figured out that he wasn’t a threat.

Of course it’s an accident. I don’t disagree. But it wasn’t an unavoidable accident.

Misha already spoke for herself, but I’m sure all of you here who own guns think about situations like this and go through in your mind the thing you should do to prevent something like this from happening.

I’m not saying it’s a mistake others wouldn’t make, but I am saying that it’s a preventable mistake.

There was another, similar case that happened around that time. A kid shot his friend with a gun he thought wasn’t loaded.

That too was an accident, but he spent two years in jail because of it.

Now, I’m not saying they’re the same. The kid obviously didn’t make sure the gun was loaded and for that reason was being reckless with the weapon.

While I believe the other man was being reckless with his for not making sure the teen was a threat to him, I would still agree that the other kid was more reckless. I’m just using that story to explain why I would support some sort of punishment for that man even though the life he took was by accident.

That’s just my opinion.

All of you have made very compelling arguments (sincerely, I have thought long and hard about them), but in the end, I just believe innocent life is worth so much more than property that people should be given the responsibility to make sure the person they’re shooting at is not innocent.

I am more than happy to respectfully disagree with you view when it does not match mine as you present it logically without any projection.

Voidseeker on July 1, 2008 at 7:08 PM

Thank you. I was getting frustrated yesterday, but you are all very incredible people. I appreciate it that you took the time to assure me I hadn’t become the enemy. I overreacted and am glad none of you completely called me out on it.

And I agree. We disagree on this issue, but that’s alright. Ultimately it doesn’t change anything, and on the next red meat issue, we’ll likely agree again.

Voidseeker has done an excellent job in some of the above posts in pointing out the Founding Fathers beliefs on a citizen’s right to defend his property.

I’d like to add that (for most people) property represents the results of their hard work. Those who work for what they have should never have to surrender it to those too lazy to work but willing to steal.

Probably right. I think the only time our soldiers should be tried for killing a civilian is if it was done with malicious intent.

FloatingRock on July 1, 2008 at 7:10 PM

The only problem with that idea is that we generally find out whether or not a civilian was killed with malicious intent at trial.

Which goes into the two posts by flenser.

flenser on July 1, 2008 at 6:44 PM

I agree that things would be better if our soldiers could fight without their hands tied behind their backs; however, I agree with our insistence in ensuring as few civilian deaths as possible.

Maybe there’s a better solution out there, one that would give them more freedom on the battlefield and also ensure less civilian casualties, but, not being in the military myself, I really wouldn’t know.

flenser on July 1, 2008 at 6:58 PM

Having studied up on the Haditha killings and trial, I find it to be a setup, and I wish it hadn’t taken as long as it has to see our soldiers get justice. So many people who were involved with reporting the incident had an obvious grudge against America and our military and so many had dubious evidence.

Murtha is a piece of scum for saying what he did about our troops and if he were in any way decent, he’d at least apologize.

Clear enough?

I want the military to take every precaution it deems necessary to both fight the war effectively and see to it that no civilians are targeted and few are caught in the cross fires.

Because if you accept that it was some one-off long-ago event and you’re still obsessing over it on this thread …..

flenser on July 1, 2008 at 6:40 PM

The thing is, I’m really not obsessing about it. Until this thread, I never even knew it existed.

As I said earlier, one poster brought it up and said what I thought was slanderous, that people here would live with things like that, and I said that couldn’t be true was surprised to find it wasn’t and have spent the rest of my time trying to explain why I don’t want to live with incidents like that while trying to keep my second amendment creds intact.

That’s it.

I don’t like the incident and don’t see how that should be a consequence of allowing gun ownership in this country.

As far as I can see, that was a rare event. If it were a common occurrence, that would be one thing, and maybe a new law would be necessary, but I don’t see how it’s something we just have to live with. The man was punished civilly, and he’ll have to live the rest of his life knowing he killed an innocent boy.

SuperCool on July 2, 2008 at 6:43 AM

Fantastic post.

Do you think that if someone is breaking in your neighbor’s home and no lives are at risk, besides calling the police you have the obligation to intervene? and if you don’t do it you are a bad citizen? You are watching too many Rambo movies my friend.

You must have missed this part of my previous post…

You are a very poor citizen if you witness and allow crimes to be committed without taking action to stop it. I would submit that you must not just ignore or avoid wrongdoing, but actually (and actively) oppose it, or you are guilty by allowing it..

To me it is sad to see that there are those that would allow criminals free reign as long as there was no perceived threat to a person’s life or wellbeing, which is certainly a judgement call…perhaps you don’t understand the consequences of such an attitude? How about the mental well being of persons that are the victims of break-ins, robberies, etc.?

I really can’t even stand to discuss this matter with someone that is so far removed from the idea of protecting lawful citizens (and their property) from thugs.

Oh, and in case you didn’t know it, Rambo was an anti-war movie (you have seen the movie, right?). So, perhaps you were trying to state that I’ve been affected by a movie to think that violence in defense of oneself and one’s rights is a good thing? I’d like to think that I had that value system already ingrained in me, so that when I did see Rambo, I would sympathize with the lead character. Basically, I think your jibe failed.

At what point? A person’s life or wellbeing at stake. What do you think? Or you need help to see the difference? I think that if you can not see the difference between property and a life, you do need help.

Again, yes I need help understanding the idea of obeying or enforcing only certain laws. Perhaps as an analogy, you could explain to me why citizens should only be concerned when the government actually keeps you from speaking freely vs. someone detestable like a white supremist hate group?

In all seriousness, I think you are taking the position that only when a person’s life is demonstrably endangered should citizens get involved beyond the act of calling the police and I think that is a dispicable (sp?) attitude.

Allow me to explain:

I live in the Hartford sub-urbs. As some of you may know, recently, an elderly fellow was run-over by some cretin in broad daylight and while said cretin sped away, no fewer than 4 cars drove past the guy lying in the road critically injured and another (swear to God, this guy should too ashamed of himself to show his face in public ever again) got in his vehicle about 10 feet or so from where the victim was laying in the street and drove away. The message sent by those people is: In this town, you’re on your own. If someone does something to you, something happens to you, we don’t care, it’s not our concern. Pretty powerful message there.

Joe Horn sees a couple of guys robbing his neighbor’s house. He calls 911 and grabs a shotgun. He reports a crime in progress and then goes out to confront the perps. He yells “Stop or you’re dead!” as clear a warning as can be given by a person weilding a shotgun or any other type of firearm. The perps decide they’re going to make a run for it, loot in tow. Horn shoots them both dead stopping the two men, who turned out to be convicted fellons in the country illegally, sending a pretty clear message to any other criminals in pretty much the entire state of Texas that you don’t waltz into that neighborhood and proceed at your liesure to perpetrate felonious acts against the citizens of that community because there’s a really good chance the end result of such endevor is a one way trip to the mourge and slab therein. The jury sent out an equally powerful message, perhaps even more potent though: people have a right to feel safe not only in their own homes but also in their own communities. Also That people should also feel safe enough to leave their homes and live their lives without fear that the moment they leave their homes the dreggs of society, or in this case, the dreggs of someone else’s society, have carte blanche to do as they please with regards to their homes and property.

Brass tacks: I’d rather live in a place full of Joe Horns than somewhere where literally dozens of people would witness an elderly man fall victim to a vicious hit-and-run, and then leave the dying man in the street, driving by, driving away after the fact, or not even bothering to check on him at all.

One is called a community.

The other is anything but a community.

onsidering the outcome it seems that, training or no, Mr. Horn handled the situation quite aptly.

FloatingRock on July 1, 2008 at 1:07 PM
Can I hear an AMEN?!!!

TheSitRep on July 1, 2008 at 11:16 PM

Amen

And they are not “innocent”; they are felons.

I have had to call 911 the past two night because of people creeping around my neighbors house.

I am seriously thinking about buying a gun. I’m not afraid to use it.

A while back while the hubby was out of town, there was an incident at my house where someone was peeking in my windows. I’ve slept with my over/under put together under my bed ever since. When the hubby is gone, two shotgun shells live under my pillow for that “just in case moment.”

I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to pull the trigger.