Dude you are a FREAK! Put the fucking Shot-Gun away!

The BBQ Pit
1

So I did the Trick or treat thing with my 4 year old neice on Holloween. We were in our all American neighborhood (set up in blocks, houses all on half acre squares, nice little neighborhood) we come to one house…it’s yellow with a half wrap around porch, upon the porch sits a man in a chair with a shotgun laid across his lap.
Thinking he was just trying to be scary, and that he must have some candy for the 200 neighborhood ghosts and goblins running around we proceed with Dora the Explorer up to his porch. Immediately the man stood up and shouted in a very gruff tone, STAY OFF MY PROPERTY! I MEAN IT!.

He then pointed the gun in our general direction but not at us. This sparked something in me, something dark, something angry…
I looked at my wife who looked slightly scared, and then at our little munchkin neice (an absolute doll, blond hair, big blue eyes) and I told them to go to the next house…I needed to say my peice to this guy…

I walk up to him as my wife and neice go to the next house…

Hey, what the hell’s your problem… you like pointing guns at innocent little kids…?!

The further I got up to him the more aggitated he became…

Then the police came. Apparently, we were not the first people rushed off “his property” and a mother ten minutes earlier called the police.

Two officers came up and the guy started to get very aggitated. The officers asked him to put the gun down, and he did. they asked why he was sitting on his porch with a gun, he said it was his God Given right…then he got really freaky…

I don’t want those kids Com’in for my wife or daughter…By this time I could see a young teenage daughter…maybe 13 in a window.

What kids sir…have you been threatened? the officer asks.

There’s a bunch of crazies out there, especially tonight…I don’t want them on my property…he said…

By this time I had had enough, and I said maybe one more choice thing, regarding him threatening little girls…and I left.

Digusted…I mentioned it to my sister-in-law when we got back to her house… She said the cops are routinely at the guys house, he is a paranoid guy. He never lets his wife or daughter out of the house, and some weird middle aged man does most of the work at the house. She was not even sure the daughter went to school. WHAT A FREAK!

I feel bad for the wife and little girl…why live in suburbia if you really want to be a reclusive person/family.

2

OK, that’s pretty nuts. Did the cops cite or charge this guy with anything?

I’d be pretty angry by all that nonsense.

3

Wow… that’s really scary knowing that you’ve got a paranoid neighbor with his finger on the trigger.

Here in DC it’s a little fairer- we make sure that the kids are armed as well.

4

Okay, the agitated guy with the shotgun is most certainly a freak. But you, Phlosphr, are by all indications a first-rate idiot who is lucky he didn’t get his brains scattered all over the crazy man’s lawn.

5

That’s putting it pretty harsh, minty, but I kinda agree. Philosophr, remember how you felt a few weeks ago when you thought your wife might have gotten hurt in a traffic accident? Remember your utter terror that you might have to live without her?

What would possess you to risk putting her through the same thing?

Guy on porch with shotgun? Call the cops. Please don’t put your family at risk like that.

Daniel

6

Trick or treat
Smell my feet
Give me something
meant for skeet.

7

Brandishing a gun for no real reason is enough to get a talking-to from the cops, and maybe a little more.

I say this as a Second Amendment supporter, NRA member, and believer in the right to carry.

This chucklehead was breaking the First Commandment of gun ownership, namely don’t point your weapon at something you don’t intend to shoot. He makes us all look bad.

8

Let’s not turn this into another gun debate, eh?

Suffice to say that if this guy is truly as delusional and paranoid as he sounds, I feel really sorry for the wife and daughter, and a little frightened for them as well. What’s to stop him from one day coming to the horrifying realisation that his wife and child are actually government agents sent to spy on him?

I just hope no one gets hurt in future, and I’m just glad you’re okay too, Phlosphr.

9

Don’t ask me how, but I could tell he was not going to shoot anyone. He looked freaky, but not murderous… And he had told a few other trick or treaters to get off his property. there was people everywhere.

I understand Dan and minty - and I got a hell of a mouth full from my wife. ok maybe not the smartest thing to do…

And yeah he was definitely an NRA type of guy…he had ASP security stickers on every window as well. I feel even more bad for the wife and daughter…terrible they have to live like that.

I don’t know what the cops did, we left. But my SIL said they had been there before, so they most likely new him…

10

[QUOTE]
What’s to stop him from one day coming to the horrifying realisation that his wife and child are actually government agents sent to spy on him?

[QUOTE]
The right medication.

11

“So, what did you kids get?”

“I got a Snickers.”
“I got a Milky Way.”
“I got a clay pigeon.”

12

Okay, I was nonchalantly reading this thread, agreeing more or less with what everyone else was saying, but I have to wonder what in the hell the phrase “he was definitely an NRA type of guy” is supposed to mean. There are Dopers who are members of the NRA; merely being in that organization does not make one a gun waving lunatic, or vice-versa, anymore than supporting ACT UP makes you gay.
I know, this isn’t the point of this thread. What the guy did was stupid and indefensible. But let’s try to keep crass, ignorant generalizations out of it, okay?

13

True. Said statement from me is hereby retracted.

14

Did you see that video of the guy trying to kill his lawyer on TV?

Does that guy look murderous? There were CAMERA CREWS around and taping it and it didn’t stop him.

You really need to have a testical reduction operation.

Call the cops. That is what they are there for.

15

Apparently someone already had…

I looked around, there were people everywhere, people had just past infront of us, by this guys house. To me he was clearly there for show. had he lit off a round into the air, I may have ran…etc…

16

For Halloween, I kept the dogs in the kitchen so as not to terrify the little kids with a black shepherd as tall as them. We distributed – quite ironically, I must say – Milky Ways and Snickers, not clay birds or buckshot. OTOH, shotguns can come in really handy.

I’ve only carried my guns IRL under very limited circumstances. A college landlord used to come get me after he would call the police during a period when burglars were working our complex a lot. He wanted someone with a gun quickly. Questionable trying to be a cop for the landlord, but I never had to take the handgun out of its holster. I was more like an insurance policy so he could go peek at the exteriors of the units he thought were affected without getting surprised by a fleeing felon. I’d just stand way back and try to do nothing. Mission accomplished.

Later in the same complex, a drunk neighbor unaware that he was at the wrong apartment sounded like he was breaking in through my skylight. So drunk, he didn’t understand why someone might be concerned about attempted removal their non-removable skylight at 4 AM. He never even knew I had a gun behind my back. No chance for a mistake there, I went outside and IDed the problem. I did NOT shoot at someone I was certain to be a burglar, but could not see. So many people make that basic mistake.

The next day his girlfriend told him how “lucky” he was I didn’t shoot him. Not really. Again, I never pointed the gun. I guess they had their own problems, and she was trying to impress on him how seriously dangerously loaded he got, because not long after that…

…he beat up his girlfriend – still our neighbor and now friend. Subsequently, he began violating a restraining order and sitting around our complex in his car. That was the first time I realized the power of carrying around a 12 gauge vis-a-vis fuckheads. I never had to brandish the gun in reality. Coming back from shooting clay birds a couple times on weekends, I would catch him sitting in front of our apts. Moving my 12 gauge (in a soft case) from the car back into my apt – while staring at him in violation of the restraining order – was enough to convince him to not hang around.

I know he could have armed himself and come after me or his girlfriend – the double edge of the freedom sword. That would have sucked. Didn’t happen.

The guy pointing a gun at little kids is clearly insane. He should have checked “yes” one place where he checked “no.”

17

I agree Beagle, but I should have kept a level head as it was. Sometimes my primal, protective gene get’s the better of me…

18

I don’t understand what kind of deal someone could have with the police that allows them to point a shotgun at kids. I’m on your side on this one. They need to take his guns away before he kills someone. This is exactly the sort of stuff that some day escalates, IMO. He just sacrificed any right he had to bear arms in the future.

I believe in the right of the people to defend themselves or others from serious harm, not kids that want candy. Little girls dressed like angels (saw at least four this Halloween). Shotguns? Something is clearly wrong here, it’s not your protective instinct.

Nor, to be clear, would you shooting him improved the situation. Other than running quicker, in a zig-zag pattern, you did the right thing.

19

The whole idea of guns makes my head spin, coming from a country where guns are not common place and used for hunting only, not (for the most part) self-protection. This guy seems to have a psych problem, not just a dislike of people on his property.
However, how do you let children and adults know that you are not taking part in the whole trick or treat thing?
Granted, it comes from the US so you have had it a long time, whereas we are only just starting. I normally love kids, but having complete strangers, some of them not even dressed up, come begging for candy is something that I’m not into. I’m also not prepared to shut my dog inside during the onslaught, although our property is fully fenced. A notice on the letterbox, does not seem to deter minors who are unaccompanied.

20

You leave your outside light off, and folks know that knocking on your will prove fruitless. I imagine that it works better than sitting on your porch menacing people with small arms. (And short legs.)