Tom’s Big Picture

The second greatest commandment meets Castle Doctrine in Houston:

In a case legal experts say may “stretch the limits” of the state’s self-defense laws, a Pasadena man shot and killed two suspected burglars during a confrontation as they attempted to flee his neighbor’s property Wednesday afternoon.

In the minutes before the fatal shootings, Pasadena police said the man called 911 and reported that he had heard glass breaking next door and saw two men entering the home through a window. Still on the phone with police, the man, believed to be in his 70s, saw the suspects leaving from the back of the home.

“I’m getting my gun and going to stop them,” the neighbor told the dispatcher during the 2 p.m. call, according to Vance Mitchell, a spokesman for Pasadena police. “The dispatcher said, ‘No, stay inside the house; officers are on the way.’

“Then you hear him rack the shotgun. The next sound the dispatcher heard was a boom. Then there was silence for a couple of seconds and then another boom.”

After the shotgun blasts, the telephone line went dead. But the neighbor called police again and told a dispatcher what he had done.

My favorite part: the 911 dispatcher tells the man that “property isn’t worth killing anybody over” and “if you go out there, you’re gonna get shot”. To which the man says “the hell I will.”

These were the wrong things to say to a Texan with a gun. The Scots-Irish moved to the state to get rich, even though doing so put their lives at risk with some of the nastiest most aggressive Indian tribes of the frontier. And to tell a Texan that if he engages in a gunfight, he’s going to get shot…well, even if he were inclined to not fight, by saying that you force him to prove you wrong.

What’s the old saying? You can tell a Texan, but you can’t tell him much?

This brave man loved his neighbor as he loves himself. Go and do likewise.