Fun With Guns: Harmonic Convergence of WalMart, Craig’s List, and a Concealed Weapons Permit Edition
Sometime things just come together in a way that you know the gods of weird are at work.
A guys puts an ad on Craig’s List that he wants to sell his iPhone 5. He agrees to meet a potential buyer inside the WalMart in Missouri City. Missouri City abuts Houston.
The potential buyer becomes a real life jerk, steals the phone and hits the owner in the face.
The owner of the iPhone is Luke Kwan and he has a license to carry a handgun, which he figures is a license to use one wherever he damn well wants to.
He chases the thief out of the store and … you know this is not going to end well, right?
According to investigators, Kwan ran after the thief. During the pursuit, Kwan pulled out a gun and fired several shots in the middle of the busy parking lot as the man ran away.
The thief was not hit. Police said he jumped into a white SUV and drove off.
During their investigation, Missouri City police found that a bullet hit a nearby home on Horizon Drive.
It’s a damn iPhone. All you had to do was install the Find My Phone feature before you sold it, but nooooo …. you wanted to be a Craig’s List iPhone Cowboy.
Thankfully no one was hurt in the home.
Good grief.
1Was Kwan charged with anything? Be interesting to find out. Around here he would have been: discharging a firearm in a heavily occupied area; reckless endangerment of innocent persons, etc. But then I am sure there are others who would look at this in another way and think we have no fun at all!
2One of those idiots who thinks bullets just stop when they miss what the idiot was shooting at. Like they don’t just keep going….
3@ Corinne- either that or one of those idiots who thinks he’s Steven Seagal and that every round he lets off is going into the 10 ring just like in the movies. I’ve noticed most gundamentalists tend to fall into one category or the other.
4Stoopid spelled with zeroes, st00pid. Just take his gun. He’s too st00pid to learn big words like velocity and trajectory. Holy gohmerts, aim is beyond his vocabulary.
5“Rule 4. Know what it is, what is in line with it, and what is behind it. Never shoot at anything you have not positively identified. Be aware of your surroundings, whether on the range or in a fight. Do not assume anything. Know what you are doing.”
6Gunz. Criminy. Just stop it.
7I’m surprised a “good guy with a gun” didn’t take this fool out when he started shooting. Sometimes there just ain’t no justice.
8Let’s see, we have an iPhone seller who thinks it’s a good idea to shoot in a Walmart parking lot. A robber who doesn’t just drop the phone once bullets start flying.
I’m pretty sure the only one with any intelligence in this situation was Siri.
9We are getting another 10-16 inches of snow.
10Our snow/ice man has been here since before Christmas.
Sigh.
It may be a good thing he didn’t hit the thief. Shooting a man in the back while he is running away is not self defense of standing your ground. It is murder.
11Yeah, Ralph, but in Texas it might be defensible to shoot someone who steals your stuff! I mean, that kid in San Antonio was acquitted of murdering the hooker who showed up, took his $$$, and strutted around his apt without, er, delivering the goods, so to speak. So if you take a guy’s iPhone without paying the agreed upon price, maybe he IS allowed to shoot you. It’s probably explicitly explained in one of the 400 kazillion amendments to the Texas Constitution; or one that is more specifically written about “cattle” and/or “horses” is deemed applicable (see also “property rights”); shooting someone to protect your neighbors’ property is frowned upon, at least by law enforcement (relatively recent case in Houston!!) but THAT guy may have been nobilled!
12Step one: The only way to stop a good guy with a gun, is with another good guy with a gun;
Step two: Is anyone still standing?
Step 3: If yes, go to step one, else FREEDOM
I’ve said it many times: I don’t trust the average US citizen with a loaded weapon – I’ve seen how carelessly some of them drive, and figure that they have even less skill in hitting what they aim at…
13The point that bullets that miss the bad guy don’t just stop is pertinent. I don’t know how many posts and articles I’ve read wherein some manly man fantasizes about how he’s going to protect his family with his manly gun.
I even asked one once about bullets going through walls or floors towards his family and he said he used bullets that wouldn’t do that (a bullet that can’t go through drywall?). No word on how he would get the bad guys to agree to use “safe” bullets.
14Aggieland liz, I’m not sure of the law in this case, but ‘self defense’ usually requires an imminent threat, and there was no threat from a guy who is running away from him.
Likewise, ‘stand your ground’ laws usually don’t apply when the assailant is running away.
Shooting a fleeing person in the back is almost always considered unjustifiable. Unless a cop does it.
If I sat on that jury, I would say GUILTY!
15This wouldn’t be a “stand your ground” case it would be a property protection case. My only point is that in the screwy State of Texas, you just can’t be sure how the law will be interpreted. I mean, shooting a fleeing person is not standing your ground, but if the target is found to possess the shooter’s property without permission? I’m pretty sure that would be a mitigating circumstance here! I’m just reporting the sort of stuff that happens; I do not – REPEAT -do NOT approve of such.
OTOH, I strongly approve of the law that allows me to protect my self, pets, and livestock from other people’s badly managed dogs. Many of the people who post here would not approve, and would consider my solutions draconian. We have had 2-3 people in my area mauled or killed by dogs in the last 5 years, but it’s not gonna happen to little Lizzie, I assure you!
16Texas Penal codes sections 9.41 and 9.42 cover this. Probably justified, but I’m not a lawyer. http://law.onecle.com/texas/penal/9.41.00.html
17The unpredictability also includes jury nullification. Some juries may acquit just because they believe the guy deserved to die for stealing a used phone.
But the legal issue here is, at what point does the victim have to stand down and call the police. Usually, where there is no physical urgency, there is no justification for deadly force. Escalating to deadly force changes all the rules.
Even the code of the wild west (as we learned on TV) says only cowards shoot a man in the back.
18Lynn, was this guy using rubber bullets, like the kind used by the Brit army when they were “policing” Northern Ireland some years ago? Rubber isn’t especially penetrating when it comes to really solid objects like walls but when it hits a human it can hurt and even (shades of little Ralphie at Christmas time) take yer eye out. If this is the case, where the he double hockey stix did he get them?
19The rubber bullets used in Northern Ireland were not fired from regular firearms. They were much larger, something like 40mm, and were supposed to be fired to bounce off the ground, not directly at a person.
The shooter in this incident was using regular bullets.
20I guess the guy decided to sell his IPhone because he couldn’t figure out how to use it?
Apparently, the gun was much easier to operate.
21@ Lorraine- I think that’s a standard and given with most gundamentalists. Fortunately, or not, I have considerable experience in the matter imparted by my Uncle during the course of a one years all expense paid vacation by the South China Sea. I have no desire to upgrade to any kind of “smart”phone for fear it would be smarter than I. Which fact would not cause me to shoot at anyone.
22“iPhone Cowboy”? Shades of Glenn Campbell!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kAU3B9Pi_U
23Real manly men don’t use rubber bullets. I believe that this poster was using imaginary bullets.
24Aggieland Liz. I am with you on the dog problem. We’ve also had a dog-mauling death near here and I see loose dogs on our place (not as often as I used to) some of which growled and snarled at me before I routinely carried a pistol. (A branch will fend off a terrier, but not a pack of loose dogs. But most dogs don’t like gunfire, and no dog likes one in the ribs. I have zero sympathy for dog or owner if the dog attacks me–or any animal I own–in my own field.)
Firing a gun in a crowded parking lot SHOULD be a crime. Putting a bullet in someone’s house should be a crime. Unfortunately, when the perp is an officer of the law, shooting people in the back, front, or side is typically treated as the fault of the person shot, and gunaholics like to think of themselves as equivalent to sheriffs. And stray bullets coming into homes is common enough now that it seems to be shrugged off (as by Travis County when complaints of bullets hitting nearby houses didn’t get them to shut down a badly run shooting range.)
25Oy, vey. I installed “find my iPhone” as soon as it was made available. Just yesterday, I put in the new operating system. I don’t have access to Siri, that began with the model after mine, and I have no desire to “upgrade.” The shooter’s a loon.
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