This is probably a pretty appropriate time for this to be posted.

Some time ago the hypothetical question was posed to me about a hypothetical situation involving a school shooting. The scenario was that a sniper was picking off children in a school yard and the from my house I had a good shot at the sniper.

He asked me if I would take the shot.

I countered by asking where this hypothetical schoolhouse was located. He asked my why that mattered.

"If we're talking that the schoolhouse in in Texas, Oklahoma or Arizona I would take the shot in a heartbeat," I responded. "The chief of police would most likely give me access to the department counselor to help me wind down and get my emotions back in check. Shooting someone is not to be taken lightly."

"How about where you live?" he asked.

"It would be somewhat iffy, but I suppose I would try and take the shot and chance that the DA would give me a pass," I said. "If we're talking about Jersey, New York or Massachusetts I would not fire unless I had authorization of the authorities which is not too likely to happen there. Those states have hamstrung themselves with laws that would turn me into a instant criminal."

The truth of this scenario is that if one does come charging into the rescue it is pretty likely that he is going to face charges of some sort. In Massachusetts or New Jersey there is almost guarenteed to be SOME kind of charge thrown at the guy that exercised some iniative. It may not be a murder rap, but it certainly may be either manslaughter or some firearm violation of some sort. There will be something and if you take action you are going to wind up in jail for at least some time.

The rule seems to be the bigger the nanny state the more trouble you will get into for showing some iniative.

The likelyhood of going off scot free is pretty damned slim. You have no defense. You can't say that you saved a schoolyard full of children simply because you did. The kids are OK and there is no way to calculate how many of them your action has saved.

The parents of the children you have saved are not going to come to your rescue by writing you four-figure checks, which you are certainly going to need for your legal defense. If you are damned lucky, the parents might hold a bake sale on your behalf and raise a couple hundred bucks but that's about it.

The truth is that I have been on this planet long enough to know how things work and at this late game I am not going to risk what little I have accumulated for someone that isn't going to help you out in return. Sorry about that.

What I would do in that situation is call thepolice and stay on the line and have the police come into my house and take the shot. Of course, it would likely be too late as when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

Of course, I would hate myself for quite a while after I sat back and watched such a horrible thing unfold and did nothing but I would simply have no choice. I have a wife that depends on me and I sure as hell wouldn't be doing her any good while sitting in a state prison somewhere.

It would take me some time to get over and I would have to simply tell myself over and over again that it really wasn't my choice. It was the choice of the people.

You get the kind of government you vote for. You voted the people in, live with it.

Texas, Oklahoma or Arizona are different birds. I would take the shot and remove the threat in the blink of an eye knowing that a grateful police department would likely offer me the services of the counselor they keep on retainer. I'd likely need it, as I have said before taking human life is a grave matter.

I have been no stranger to violence, the difference being I have simply dug my feet in and refused to be a victim. Between 1976 and around '82 there were three incidents that took place and while nobody got hurt, I attribute my living to my 61st year on my refusal to be victimized.

The third incident was pretty much a nothing incident until we read the newspaper a couple of days later. I was with a friend in eastern Washington camping in a pickup camper when we heard a scratching on the door. I jacked a round into the chamber of a shotgun and was rewarded by hearing rapid footsteps leaving the area. My partner checked the lock, I emptied the chamber of the shotgun and we simply went back to sleep.

A couple of days later I happened on a newspaper I was trying to salvage the crossword out of and read that the same night we ran someone off that about a mile away someone in a different campground got hacked up by a nocturnal prowler with a knife. That's when we both stood there aghast and shook like leaves for a good half-hour. It very well could have been us.

The second incident took place on an interstate when I was hitching to Alaska back in '78. A pickup tore past me and the passenger threw a beer bottle at me and narrowly missed my head. Impulsively, I shouted, "You missed!"

It should be pointed out that if I had been hit I very well might have been killed or have wound up as a pants-pissing vegetable. A bottle thrown from a vehicle doing 70 is deadly. It isn't a joke.

The pickup pulled over and I threw my pack down, uncased my rifle and hit the ground, resting the rifle on my pack. I didn't say anything because I was afraid to open my mouth and let them hear my teeth chatter.

They got out of the pickup carrying cudgels of some sort and I waited for them to advance. They did until I jacked a round into the chamber and took aim. I was aiming at the leader of the two and just as I had let out half of my breath and had taken the slack out of the trigger the little one caved in and talked sense into the drunker of the two and they decided to leave.

I sat there in the breakdown lane for some time shaking like a leaf until a car came by and picked me up. It was a minister from Lethbridge, Alberta and he took me into Canada, vouching for my good character while we cleared customs.

I didn't sleep very well for some time after that.

At the time a guy in his 20s with a pack and rifle hitching across parts of Canada was a common sight and when I arrived in Dawson Creek I simply fit right into the woodwork.

The first incident took place in either late '76 or early '77 and it was short, sharp and scary. I was living in a tipi in the Rockies at the time after I got out of the army and it was a warm period and the snow had melted.

I was in the tipi doing homework as I was commuting to school on my GI bill a several days a week in a VW bug. I heard a vehicle pull up and ignored it as I was half expecting company. A couple of seconds I heard doors slam and guffaws followed by gunshots and saw holes appear in my tipi.

I hit the floor, grabbed my rifle and slipped out under the liner and skin of the tipi and worked my way around to some concealment and looked. My assailants were a pair of drunken cowboys with pistols. I was pretty much out of the accurate range of a handgun. I could relax some as I knew that while I wasn't exactly safe, the odds were with me.

They had parked along a lane that had served as an impromptu rifle range for years and ther was a steel gong hanging from a tree limb. I got off two fast shots at the gong, hitting it both times. The first one was to get their attention and the second was to let them know that I could shoot.

They left and I reported the incident to the owner of the land I was camped on, a rancher that allowed me to stay there in exchange for keeping an eye on things. An hour later I was telling my story to a deputy sheriff.

Both of them were picked up a couple of days later and charged with unrelated offenses and convicted. If I recall they both got brief jail sentences.

Over the years I have told nobody about these incidents except my father and he listened stone faced and I'd bet made a beeline to St. Christine's where he made about a dozen novenas.

I attribute much of this to having taken the road less traveled and making myself vulnerable to this. Anyone that has looked into the dark side of the hippies of the 60s and 70s knows that there were an awful lot of youngsters on the road that were crime victims.

They were considered easy targets for any number of reasons and I would imagine that if you go through the numbers of hippies that spent any time on the road you would find that many of them were crime victims of one sort or another, ranging from rape to robbery. Most of which likely went unreported because they simply figured they would get no sympathy from the law.

Likely they were right because at the time the system seemed to have little sympathy for those that were on their own roads. The police would have, in many places, taken a report, listened to them, acted sympathetic and thrown the report in the trash after they left the station.

You also have to remember that a person on the road generally didn't stick around town too long. They simply kept going on to where they were headed in the first place.

While during that period of time I was the victim of theft a couple of times, I never became the victim of a crime against my person. I attribute this to two different thing and in this order: Dumb luck and the refusal to be a victim.

No amount of planning can overcome dumb luck but to this day I feel that refusing to be a victim can change someone's luck.

Incidentally, I have had over over 30 years to think about this. It was the incident in Montana that shook me up the worst. To this day I am grateful the two drunken cowboys saw the light and decided to leave. The experience changed me.

There is only one thing I can think of that is worse than looking at the center of a human being through the sights of a loaded rifle and squeezing the trigger and that is waking up in the hospital a pants wetting vegetable.

I also think that if I had gut-shot the pair of them they would have been found in pretty sad shape on the roadside with cudgels laying next to them and the state police would likely have written the pair of them up as a couple of Darwin Award candidates that had taken second place.

Likely I would have headed off on foot and headed south as I was in a northbound lane and after holing up a while would have re-entered the interstate south of the fight and simply blended in with the hippies headed into Canada.

The ammunition I was using at the time simply would have punched a neat hole through them and been irrecoverable. Forensics at the time would have had little to go on and most likely the police would have written the case off as a failed roadside beatinng attempt.

The part that would be the weak link is likely myself. I would have had one hell of a hard time convincing myself that I had done the right thing even if I knew that it had prevented me from a severe beating or maybe even death.

　

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