Crazy Crime

Having everyone armed, and on alert that

they may have to shoot someone to death,

is not a solution.

 

Several months ago, my husband and son were out cycling when a young man and woman, both with guns, ordered them off their bikes.

The man boasted, "I could have killed you."

Then he and the woman sauntered off.

Honestly, it would have been less freaky if they had stolen something. Crazy crime is scarier than crime that seems to have an understandable purpose. Someone demands your wallet, then flees? Yes, it’s wrong but it makes some sense. Someone decides to torture young girls to death or shoot up a kindergarten? Terrifying.

When we told people about the incident, many said my husband and son had no business being in the (poor, high-crime) neighborhood the bike trail passes through.

But should we have to cower, afraid of everyone around us?

Should that neighborhood stay “high crime” for all the innocent people who live there?

Plus, this kind of thing can and does happen anywhere. That same day, a young girl was held up at gunpoint -- in Bellaire, a wealthy neighborhood. Days earlier, another young girl fought off an armed attacker... View more as she left a busy, high-end mall.

Maybe it’s soothing to think that if you follow a set of self-imposed rules, even if they hem you in, you will be safe (and you can blame other people for the bad things that happen to them). But it isn't true. And I don’t find it soothing.

As for guns, my husband, who has handled firearms since he was a boy, said he thinks if he had had a gun, it would have been more likely, not less, that he or our son would have been shot.

But those two doing something so senseless, so stupid, so dangerous (including to themselves), that’s what I can’t stop thinking about.

They were, not so long ago, someone's babies.

 What happened with that?