Bam Bam Thank You Ma’am
At a time when many cities are doing gun buyback programs, Texas ain’t having that crap.
Hell, we are giving those suckers away!
Strain’s northwest Houston community of Oak Forest is the first neighborhood in the country being trained and equipped by the Armed Citizen Project, a Houston nonprofit that is giving away free shotguns to single women and residents of neighborhoods with high crime rates.
Residents of Oak Forest say their neighborhood, made up of older one-story houses and a growing number of new townhomes, has experienced a recent rash of driveway robberies and home burglaries.
So, here’s the deal. This neighborhood has had a rash of driveway robberies. Most driveway robbers are very uncooperative with allowing you to open the trunk and get your shotgun. And, as anyone knows, toting a loaded and unlocked shotgun when you exit the driver’s seat of your car is an entertaining circus trick. The would-be robber will be so taken with you trying to exit your vehicle while untangling your shotgun from the steering wheel and bashing it against the side of the door that they will leave in gales of laughter figuring anybody that stupid ain’t gonna have any money. And, in that way, this program would probably be effective.
The only way I see a shotgun possibly working in a driveway robbery is that you have someone riding … well, shotgun. Oh Lord, bless us, we’re back to stage coaches.
By definition, most burglaries mean that nobody is at home. If somebody is at home, it’s generally a robbery. So, unless you have trained the dog or your sofa to use a shotgun, you’re gonna save plenty on ammo.
The biggest problem with this plan is the Yahoo! factor. People with shotguns are more apt to take risks. They are during so damn anxious to be the Rifleman that they will more than likely shoot a neighbor’s uncle coming out to help carry in the groceries.
Free shotguns! What could possibly go wrong?
Thanks to Lorraine in Spring for the heads up.
And in a burglary, that shotgun gets stolen and now belongs in the hands of a criminal. Nice of Armed Citizen’s Project to advertise where to get free shotguns. What could possibly go wrong?
1I keep hoping all these gun nuts will get into a giant shootout with each other..is that unrealistic?
2Now that we have cars that can drive themselves we need to program guns so that they can only shoot other people with guns.
3I mentioned to a [delightfully responsible!] gun-owning friend the other day that I don’t mind if she has all the guns she wants, as long as her weapons of mass destruction are treated the same way as mine: licensed, registered, inspected annually, and insured. She asked if insurance would include a farm allowance, which seems reasonable to me since we have allowances for farm vehicles, and with that she thought the idea was great (and agreed that the insurance companies should eat it up).
I went away happy to know that some gun owners have brains and can use them!
4Will they issue a bumper sticker so the innocent drivers around them will know to avoid them like the plague…epically with Chill Wills riding shotgun…just saying…or maybe a giant “R” on there chest for “Rifileman”
5I think that God has abandoned us, but not because of the Kristian ideas–any group that ignores reason and responds with fear –because it is either love or fear, you can’t have both–has lost reason and that is God’s requirement of us
If you have not love ( and love is sometimes harsher than we want, when based on reason…then you have nothing
Watching the insanity is fun from a safe distance–but they are out of control
I’ll pray (Jewish-Buddhist prayers) for Texas and all of us to come to reason, and there find God/love/kindness
Someone once very grandly told me that they were members of NRA and displayed the sticker all over their windows and storm doors. I replied that that was the best way to tell the world that you had an armory to steal.
By the way, all the cop cars I have ever seen have a sawed off in a special receptacle in the door. No fighting with the steering wheel for them. And unless ordinary passenger cars can be equipped like this, that shot gun ain’t worth ***t!
And I do wonder how many folks turned down the free artillery! When the NRA member I just mentioned asked me what I did to cope with the druggies across the street from me, I told her that I used my inimitable brain. She was confused. The druggies are long gone, a new nice family has taken over the place and damn near rebuilt it and I’m still here.
6So you have to be a single woman to qualify for the shotgun give-away. Is there a further qualification of being heterosexual, not pregnant or on welfare? ‘Cause that’s real important to know if you’re a Republican.
7PS. I don’t think I will ever go visit my home town of Tucson, Az. It was awful, as a child i saw and was a ” victim” of guns and violence it was everywhere because of drugs now they are joining the giving guns away program…just can’t spell crAZy without AZ.
8“They are during so damn anxious to be the Rifleman that they will more than likely shoot a neighbor’s uncle coming out to help carry in the groceries.”
Sorry, but could you diagram that one for me? Kinda having trouble parsing it.
9Ray – Some damfool is gonna see a man walk up to a woman in her driveway who takes her groceries. He’s gonna think that man is stealing her groceries. He’s gonna pull out his shotgun, fire across the street and take out sweet Uncle Tom here on a visit from Dallas and three kids playing in the street. I can promise you that’s gonna happen. Everybody in Texas wants to be the NRA Magazine centerfold.
10Is this the same community that recently started up the Grenades for Kids program?
11Glad the kid who robbed me in Abilene a lot of years ago din’t have a gun. After many years of living in New York where my purse always got turned in at the Cashier, I was carrying in groceries from my driveway with all the lights on and windows open, when a kid came up to shake hands. DON’T SHAKE HANDS WITH SOMEONE YOU DON’T KNOW WHO IS WEARING RED PANTS AND A HAT. He grabbed my billfold and ran. Nobody could find him. We figure he shucked the red pants and the hat. The billfold turned up next day on another lawn.
12What if the person riding shotgun shoots through the car and hits the driver?
13I guess the folks in the Houston NRA are hell-bent on showin’ us tree-huggin’ libruls that there ain’t gonna be no gun control, no time, nowhere, no how. Not while there’s a gun to give away.
14What’s the final count of dead and injured in Santa Monica?
People who live in high crime areas get free guns. I’m thinking at least some people who live in high crime areas may be criminals. How are the geniuses going to determine who gets the free guns? Background checks? I’m so confused.
15If people handle their shotguns with the same care and attention they pay to their driving, this may solve the nation’s concerns with the future of Social Security. Far fewer people will live long enough to collect.
However, it will help would-be Johns defend themselves against prostitutes.
16Glyn, you’re not the only one who’s confused. Me, too.
So at these popular gun give-aways, can a single mom who has no use for a shotgun and shells sell it all back to them for some grocery money? Now that kinda makes sense.
17There was, years ago, just the weapon for protecting your self from car jackers and burglers. Made by a well-known manufacturer, it was called the “Auto and Burgler” – a 20 gauge double barrel pistol shotgun. They were quality pieces with short barrels, easy to handle, and plenty of firepower for those close encounters of the nasty kind. They are, of course, now very illegal but that does not mean there are not a few still around. I gather they were quite popular back in the 20s and 30s. First one I ever saw was back in the 70s – under the seat of VW bug that was used by an undercover narc. BTW the bug had a Porsche engine and other mods that made it one of the hottest things on the road!
18Slate.com has an interesting file that is being updated every day to show the daily total of firearms death since Newtown, December 14. It includes a map where you can click on a city and see that total. Texas is certainly well represented.
19Current count = 4,892 – how sad.
This is a non-profit group? Some sort of religion or “charitable” group? Thou shalt all have shotguns?
20I am going to write something serious ( and probably also to the Houston paper) regarding crime in that neighborhood. They don’t need shotguns. They need to learn how to fight crime in their neighborhood without guns.
21When I took the reins of Truett Area Crime Watch in 2008, this particular spot in far east Dallas where N. Buckner
and Peavy Road come together was at the top of the list for violent crime in the United States ! Not just in Dallas or in Texas, we were tops in the U.S. It was part of a U.S. Department of Justice Weed and Seed project that was struggling to get off the ground. Today, five years later, we are among the lowest violent crime spots anywhere. And we accomplished that without money and without guns. We accomplished it using Kelling and Wilson’s “broken windows” theory of crime prevention which, in simple terms, means that we worked our City Councilmember, our Code Enforcement and our police department and ourselves (Volunteers in Patrol and members with good eyes and ears) very hard to see to it that all properties were kept neat, clean, all substandard issues repaired and resolved; bulk trash put out at the right times; stray dogs removed; parks brought up to top appearances and care. We went to work and brought our elementary school solidly back from a low rating to not only a good achievement level but a total renovation and a relief school as well, and we have more than 18 languages represented in our school.
We joined other groups in the area and lobbied the City until it took notice of our deteriorating rec center and remodeled it, until our streets got the reconstruction and resurfacing needed, until ONCOR trimmed trees in the alley ways to keep them out of the power lines, and vacant houses were either boarded up tightly or realtors or owners keep them up at all times, etc.
When that is done and the community members are involved, crime just fades away. It’s as if a sign goes up in the neighborhood, “do not come down our streets with trouble on your mind because someone is going to call the police and you are being watched.”
Truett Area Crime watch is a voluntary organization with a leadership team of 8 people and 150 members and growing. Our neighborhood is friendly, neat, walkable and just loaded with wonderful people and young families are beginning to come back and send their kids to Truett Elementary. Our members brought a defunct PTA back to Truett; we are on the Site Based Decision Making committee for the school. We are volunteers for police programs, and we help first-time crime watches get started and become successful.
We are also a taskforce commissioned by our City Council member to complete an area land use study for a large part of east Dallas. We completed that 3 1/2 year project three months ago, and presented the City Plan Commission with the first and only 100% grassroots, community driven Area Land Use Plan that has ever been presented to the City of Dallas, and it was adopted by the City Council on March 27, 2013. At City Hall, they referred to it as “War and Peace, because it was 300 pages long ! We have started our Action Plan now toward the revitalization and redevelopment of our neighborhoods. We were gifted with the pro bono help of a number of very talented and skilled urban planners as well as designers and planners for DART and TXDOT.
We are representative of what people, all people, can accomplish when they decide to form an organization, go to their city with their needs, and , in the words of Winston Churchill, “never, never, never, never give up !”
We don’t need shotguns. In fact, gunfire in our city is illegal, and after hard work on our part and that of our police, we no longer hear gunfire in our neighborhood except on very rare occasions. Boomboxes in cars are illegal and we are piloting a program with Code and the Police to stop the loud noise of those nuisances.
These five years have not been “all beer and skittles” but despite frustrations and financial blows within the City, we have prevailed. We are now working with our Police to reduce crime in the apartment complexes that ring this area. Our goal is for every apartment complex to achieve Gold Star rating, which means low crime, their own crime watch, and a proactive approach by owners and management toward crime in any form.
A man in a small town nearby was interviewed on a local news channel a couple of years ago and he was asked why he had worked so hard to start a community garden. He thought for a moment and then made a statement that says it all. He said, “no one should have to move to live in a better neighborhood.”
No one has to be a superstar, well-educated, or rich to do what we have done to create a safe, pleasant, friendly place to live. This is a work in progress as we go forward, recruiting younger members to help carry it on even as we develop plans for the “aging-in-place” of many of our elder residents. My husband and I are in our 70’s and our members range in age from 40’s to 80’s .
If these people near Houston need a safer neighborhood, then it would behoove them to turn off their tv’s, go meet their neighbors, set some goals, get acquainted with their City Council representatives, their police, and their Code officers . . . . and go to work. And do it all with friendly goodwill, good humor, patience, flexibility, teamwork and above all, absolute relentlessness !
@Ellen Childress … I applaud you and all that you and your group accomplished! Wow!! Thank you!!
22That was a wonderful read on a Monday morning, Ellen Childress! That is exactly how we make the world better democratically, one neighborhood at a time. They can take their free shotguns and stuff them.
23@Ellen Childress
WOW! I nominate you for Person of the Year – Texas edition. Well done, Madam! I’d like you take your show on the road & teach other cities across the country how to save & revitalize them by ACTION, not just by words.
This world is better place because you are in it. Thank you.
24Oh thanks Ellen Childress. While driving through it I became aware of some pretty dramatic changes in that neighbor but I had no idea why. This is wonderful and such good news for friends that live in the area.
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