Thanks to a heads-up from looooongtime reader Garrett Banse, my coffee doesn’t taste good anymore this morning. Check this out from the AP on MSNBC.com:
The sidewalk outside the Harlem store still was smeared with blood Friday, and the glass on the door still was blown out.
Above the entrance, someone had scribbled the words, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
Less than 24 hours after a deadly showdown at the shop worthy of a Clint Eastwood script, Charles “Gus” Augusto Jr. entered his store — oblivious of the inscription taken from Dante’s “Inferno.”
The 72-year-old wholesaler of commercial restaurant equipment had been up all night, questioned by police about how he’d drawn a shotgun and killed two of four armed robbery suspects who entered his Kaplan Brothers Blue Flame store Thursday afternoon.
Two of the young men died on the street. Two remained hospitalized in stable condition with gunshot wounds.
This man’s a hero. At the age of 72, he took on four young, violent criminals — and put two of them on the ground and two more in the ground. Instead of celebrating his feat, MSNBC sneers at him as kind of an “oblivious” old Dirty Harry, who “smeared” the sidewalks with blood.
The closest the AP can come to publishing someone defending Augusto is this quote:
Frida Rodriguez called it “a sad day” for the neighborhood.
Augusto “was defending his work, his business, so you could perceive that as being heroic,” she said. “But on the other hand, these kids died.”
Those same kids who came in, pistol-whipped one employee, directly threatened another, repeatedly demanded money, and refused to leave even after Augusto fired a warning shot.
New Yorkers should pass the hat around for Gus Augusto.
Yeah, I think that’s what irked me the most. They pounced on the guy even after he tried to warn those SOBs off.
That’s a better chance than those bastards would have gotten in this part of the country (Texas).
And sorry about the coffee sir.
I see New York is drifting back into the mindset of tolerating broken windows again. Far better to put up with the bad stuff becoming part of the scenery, than to risk giving cute little pistol-whipping would-be murderers a boo-boo.
The world we live in is a long way from perfect. But this morning it is a little better and a little safer than it was Thursday morning.
“But on the other hand, these kids died.”
That’s a feature, not a bug.
RTFA:
Police said Augusto didn’t have a required permit for the weapon…
But he was a victim, police said, and no charges had been filed on Friday.
“I’d rather not have done it,” Augusto said, “and I’m sad for those mothers who have no sons.”
Which makes him smarter than anyone here.
Alternately, if he’d been a short crippled Harvard professor who committed the crime of answering the door to his home for the police while black, then the police should arrest him.
Try consistency; cognitive dissonance spoils coffee.
JD, you’ll skip the blanket insults or I’ll ban your account.
You can stop JD from calling you stupid, but it won’t stop the facts from saying the same thing.
Dashed inconvenient, what?
From what I read, Gus and his guns would be welcome here in Texas. He was defending his store from an invasion of violent criminals that were threatening to kill him and his employees. When good people are disarmed, criminals may be tempted to think that they can commit a crime and get away before the police arrive. On the other hand, “An armed society is a polite society.”
Historical background on why Texans are generally strongly pro-gun.
http://www.comeandtakeit.com/txhist.html
I’ll give Janus and der wafflehouse the benefit of the doubt and assume they read the story AFTER the AP changed the headline.
This morning when that story was first posted, the headline referred to Augusto as an ‘elderly vigilante’, a highly pejorative term however you look at it. Now the headline uses the much more innocuous term ‘shopkeeper’.
So, some of were a bit pissed at how the AP chose to refer to this man. Until they retconned the whole thing to seem like they didn’t slander the man.
Google ‘AP elderly vigilante’ and you can get a whole page of references to sites that linked to the original story on MSNBC when the headline was much different that it is now.
So waffle is right in the sense that the facts say what the facts say. They just aren’t the facts he thought the were. Inconvenience is a bitch, what?
Wow. Drunk monkeys type better than I do. And I don’t even have alcohol as an excuse to fall back on.
I plead early onset Alzheimer’s. Or that hot girl in Junior year Typing class.
“Vigilante” can have very different meanings. I’m glad there are vigilantes who take out robbers as they pistol-whip their victims. I’m not so glad about the vigilantes who tell people of the “wrong” color not to live in certain neighborhoods. Same goes for people who have “pride”. I’m all for people having pride in who they are, but the people who have pride in who they aren’t make me worried.
New York’s gun laws are stupid. If this guy gets anything approaching one-hundredth of the fines or jail time that the two surviving miscreants receive for their gun use alone, then there is no justice in this world (and there’s likely to be no justice in this world.)
They were warned; he fired a warning shot; next one was business; he was right in doing what he did; he was protecting his store & employees; who was to say that those goons wouldn’t have killed everyone in the store, to keep them from Identifying them….
Please consider this: When a human has to kill other humans, even in self-defense, it is a sad thing.
I am happy it was Augusto and not the violent robbers who suffered. I am happy Augusto had a gun and defended his life. But as a practicing Catholic, I refuse to cheer the loss of life.
And, please believe me, I would have killed all four of these guys. But these violent robbers are humans and killing humans is never a source of celebration.
I know you do not understand my point of view, but as a pro-life liberal who loves Mass and the Body of Christ, I wish you would try.
Thank you for listening.
tom, no one is arguing with your point of view. We all share it at some level, but — speaking for myself now — I’m celebrating the fact that the right thing was done. The thing you said you yourself would do.
Wait, so now what happened to Henry Gates was that he “answered his door while black”?
Gee, all this time I’d thought the big source of misunderstanding was that he was trying to BREAK IN to his own house because he couldn’t get the door open normally. Y’know, the kind of thing that we should all be glad cops are watching out for.
Apparently I’m behind on the narrative. So now the story is that he was just sitting at home, minding his own business, and cops came and knocked on his door, and they arrested him when he came to answer it, because he was black? Do I have it right?
Just wanted to make sure. I’d hate to screw up when they quiz me.
Please consider this: When a human has to kill other humans, even in self-defense, it is a sad thing.
Unless it isn’t.
On a lighter note, the pistol whipped employee was thanking his lucky stars (“I’m breathing, they dead.”) and sharing his view of murderous felons the next day:
Augusto and his employees tried to get back to business as usual yesterday, although it wasn’t easy. When a woman came to place a candle outside the shop, J.B. angrily kicked it across the pavement.
“Who’s this for?” he demanded of the startled woman. “For the guy who died? F- – - him!”
http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2009/08/im-breathing-they-dead.html
Abandon hope all ye who enter here
I have my suspicions about who wrote that quote from Dante. Smells like some Jayson Blair junior reporter inflation crap to me. No wonder whoever wrote this story left it unsigned.
Was that your first visit to Planet Janus? Seems every worthwhile site has to attract at least one value-subtracting commenter, and Janus Daniels has applied for the position here. I think he’s got the inside track, if he can keep from getting himself banned.
They left out the best part–he took out four robbers with only three shots. Now THAT’S gun control.
But deep down inside, I agree with Janus. Better that the employees be dead than the robbers. Afterall, the gun wasn’t registered, was it?
tim, who gives a fat rats buttocks whether the gun was registered? What, we have to fill out the proper paperwork to defend ourselves? In this case, that infraction is on the level of jaywalking.
I’m not so sure about the number of shots, now. The only specific provided in the article was that Augusto fired once, the perps didn’t leave so he “fired again and again.” That might sound like two shots, but both survivors suffered wounds as well. Doesn’t sound like two shots to me.
Stephen Green and Rapewaffle:
My regrets, Stephen, for the misunderstanding, and thanks Rapewaffle (great anonym BTW) however I did not insult anyone. How does it insult anyone to call Augusto “smarter than anyone here,” obviously including myself? He both behaved bravely against people who attacked his employees, and later spoke compassionately for the assailants families. I’d only revise my post to call him wiser, more than smarter.
Parenthetically, police appear to have acted appropriately in this case, given their duty to investigate two deaths and two other shootings from an unregistered shotgun.
Brian Tiemann & McGehee:
You can use google.com and more specifically, The Smoking Gun is a trove of public documents, in this case the police report.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates1.html
Read with a chunk of salt: this is a police report, about police behavior, without even corroboration from another police officer. Note the quote, “Ya, I’ll speak with your mama outside” from the elderly Harvard professor. Sure.
Even this police report, about police behavior, still specifies that the citizen had entered his home before the police arrived, that the officer failed to show ID on request, that the citizen did show ID, that after verifying ID the police officer called for more police(!) etc. and eventually arrested the identified home owner at his own home for, talking loudly in his own home while being black. If police did the same to a white short elderly crippled Harvard professor who talks loudly in his own home, it’s still wrong.
A few days later, Boston Police Officer Justin Barrett’s racist and misogynist email proved that Gates had reason to expect bigotry from at least some police officers:
http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/local/justin_barrett_full_email_072909
Parenthetically, entitlement issues:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/08/04/suspended_boston_police_officer_barrett_sues_commissioner_mayor/
I call relevant facts cited with URLs value added.
Extraterrestrial Visitor Janus Daniels, I said at the time the whole thing first blew up that if I’d behaved the way Gates did, I would have been arrested too.
I’m not black.
& I wrote, in the post immediately above yours, “If police did the same to a white short elderly crippled Harvard professor who talks loudly in his own home, it’s still wrong.”
Gates had state law, federal law, and the constitution on his side.
Do you disagree with all three?
Your position at first was that Gates was arrested only for being black. Perhaps you;re capable of learning after all.
If a cop is at my house because he thought somebody was breaking in to steal my stuff, and I act like an @$$hole to him, I’m gonna end up in handcuffs. So would you, so would Bob Dylan, so would Henry Gates.
As for your “disagree” question, you have heard, haven’t you, that Gates was released and the charges dropped?
Your disagreement seems to be that because the cops on the scene lacked your after-the-fact omniscient perspective on events, they were wrong to follow their training.
You’re still subtracting value, so you’ve got that going for you. Which is nice.
Thank you for your reply.
Please help me to understand your point of view.
You write, “Gates was released and the charges dropped…” which seems to me to make my point, as does the absence of any actual charge to do the dropping of.
You also write, “… If a cop is at my house because he thought somebody was breaking in to steal my stuff… because the cops on the scene lacked your after-the-fact omniscient perspective on events, they were wrong to follow their training.”
In fact, the police, being on the scene, had more omniscience than I. The document written by the arresting officer, that I URLed above, specifically states, as I wrote above, “… that the citizen had entered his home before the police arrived, that the officer failed to show ID on request, that the citizen did show ID, that after verifying ID the police officer called for more police(!) etc. and eventually arrested the identified home owner at his own home…”
What “training” do US police “follow” to arrest a known innocent citizen on his own front porch?
As I’ve written in the previous thread
“For the first time, a presidential fast food photo-op that I might actually enjoy seeing.
how refreshing was it during his presser to hear the president say that the arresting officer in the Gates case acted "stupidly?" Now that that’s officially out there, it’s not for Gates to prove he was in the right. Let Sgt. James Crowley prove in this instance he wasn’t stupid for placing a 58-year-old professor in cuffs in the middle of the day.
Republicans want more arrests, less law… less freedom.”
I haven’t got an answer to that.
Further, within days, we knew that if Gates made angry accusations of police racism, at least one police officer gave reason for it.
All libertarians and liberals and even most conservatives agree on freedom. We all want the government away from our property, out of our homes, off our backs and beds, and don’t get me started on Republican bedroom laws.
Again, please explain, what training do US police follow to arrest a known innocent citizen at his own home?
Please help me to understand your point of view.
My point of view is that repeatedly making off-topic, inflammatory comments is one of the more obvious signs that the person making them is a troll, and that the proper way to deal with such behavior is to edit the troll-dropping into something along the lines of “I love your site! I need to get a sex-change operation so I can bear your children!”
But hey, it’s not my blog.
Thank you for your reply. You express concern over “off-topic, inflammatory comments.”
So far as I can tell, as I explained above, I wrote nothing inflammatory, let alone insult. I did refer to what seems to me an inconsistency between this and a previous post; a few replies dealt exclusively with that post, and committed errors of fact which needed correction. I’d have suggested going back to the previous post to continue the conversation, but that had already closed to comments.
In my most recent post, I brought up the off topic problem myself, and suggested that readers refer to my links and to google, rather than asking me for more off topic information.
Does that seem fair to you?