@Joe Nation,
Joe Nation wrote:When the family first noticed the naked deranged man walking on the sidewalk
weren't any of them within a few steps reach of a phone and 911 call?
As Will Rogers used to say:
"all I know is what I read in the newspapers."
( . . . that and "when
seconds COUNT, the police r only a few minutes away" )
Joe Nation wrote: Then, (is this what they teach Marines?) they turned the porch light on.
(Always expose your position to potential harmdoers?? Really?)
So, who's dead?
The article doesn't even the deceased name.
Talk about your avoidable deaths.
Joe(meh)Nation
Nudists in public places have tended to be
disproportionately homicidal,
e.g. yestercentury, an unarmed volunteer guard, called "police auxiliary"
( i.e., a fool with a billy club ) was attacked by a naked man
and beaten to death (apparently without his consent) with his own billy club.
That was a
gross misunderstanding of the right to bare arms.
Then there was the nudist who
stole a pitchfork in Merced, California
and used it to murder
unarmed children in their home in August, 2OOO.
" The Merced Pitchfork Murders
by Richard Poe
Fear stalks Merced, California – fear of the government.
Because of that fear, two innocent children died needlessly,
victims of California’s "safe storage" gun laws.
The mass media never told Americans what really happened in Merced,
but the tale of the Merced Pitchfork Murders will not die.
Through talk radio; through the Internet; by word of mouth,
the story gathers momentum with each passing year. Like the
tale of the Boston Massacre in 1770, passed from patriot to
patriot over tankards of ale, the Merced Pitchfork Murders live
and burn in the hearts of millions of Americans.
On that terrible morning of August 23, 2000, fourteen-year-old
Jessica Carpenter had been left in charge to look after her four
siblings, Anna, 13; Vanessa, 11; Ashley, 9; and John, 7. Their
father had left for work. Their mother had taken the car to get
the brakes checked.
Jessica heard noises from the livingroom. Still half asleep, she
rose from bed and walked to the kitchen. Then she froze.
There was a man in the livingroom. A strange man. He was stark naked.
Jessica fled back to her bedroom and locked the door. Someone knocked.
Then he knocked again, and again. Jessica picked up the phone, but heard
no dial tone.
The intruder had taken the receiver off the hook.
[bloodthirsty nudist was insane, but clever]
That’s when Jessica thought of her father’s gun.
Mr. Carpenter had taught Jessica and the other children to shoot.
Jessica had passed her hunter safety course and received her certificate at age 12.
She knew that her Dad always kept a .357 Magnum in his bedroom.
In deference to California’s safe storage laws, however,
Mr. Carpenter kept the pistol high up on a closet shelf, unloaded
and out of reach of the children. Even if she could somehow get
to the other end of the house to retrieve it, Jessica knew she
would have to climb up on something to reach the gun, scramble
around for the bullets and then load them. The man would be on
her before she had a chance.
So Jessica climbed out the window to get help.
Too Late
No one knows why 27-year-old Jonathon David Bruce, a part-time
telemarketer with a history of violence, drug abuse and mental illness,
picked on the Carpenters. We only know that, on the morning
of August 23, Bruce armed himself with a pitchfork and entered
their home, barricading himself inside with the five Carpenter children.
Jessica escaped through her bedroom window, but her little brother
and three younger sisters were left behind to face the homicidal maniac.
He attacked thirteen-year-old Anna first. Bruce entered her bedroom
and jabbed her with his pitchfork, yelling profanities while Anna
screamed and fought. "Stop it!" yelled Ashley, age 9. "Don’t hurt
my sister!" Bruce turned to Ashley, and killed her with his pitchfork.
Somehow Anna and Vanessa managed to escape out a window.
Outside, the two girls met Jessica. They ran to a neighbor’s
house – a man named Juan Fuentes – and pounded on his door.
Covered with blood and growing weaker by the moment,
the wounded Anna pleaded with Fuentes to get his gun and
"take care of this guy" but
Fuentes declined.
[ unaffected by the selfless spirit of Zimmy ]
Instead, he allowed them to use his phone to call 911.
The sheriff’s deputies came quickly, but
they arrived too late.
[When seconds COUNT, the police . . . ]
John and Ashley were dead.
Seven-year-old John had been killed while he slept.
When the deputies entered the house, the intruder charged them
with his pitchfork. They shot him 13 times, killing him on the spot.
[For SOME reason,
the police's guns were not locked away
and thay WERE actually loaded. The police also SURVIVED the event.]
Guns and Children
Most people reading these words will never have heard of the Carpenter family
or their ordeal. For Big Media, the only good gun story is an anti-gun story.
The Carpenters believed that California’s "safe storage" laws
had robbed their children of the only chance they had to fight back.
This was not the sort of message Big Media wanted to send about guns.
National news organizations swept the Pitchfork Murders under the rug.
Only one local news story in the Fresno Bee discussed the safe storage issue at all.
National news reports of the incident
omitted all mention of guns or gun laws.
"John Carpenter’s children are probably dead because John
obeyed the laws of the state of California," says Reverend John Hilton,
the great-
uncle of the Carpenter children.
In Hilton’s view, the tragedy could have been prevented had the
children been provided with easy access to a loaded gun.
Many of Hilton’s friends and neighbors quietly agree.
Hilton – who is pastor of a Pentecostal church in Merced – recalls that,
when he was growing up, his father always kept a loaded Colt .45
in a holster fastened to the pantry wall.
"He was away a lot of the time, working on construction jobs," says Hilton
"but
he made sure that gun was available to us, if we needed it.
Without even looking, you could reach over and get hold of the handle."
[Note that this radically differs from the apostate
NRA's position against children's self defense.]
In those days, it was common to let children use firearms.
They learned to use them early, safely, responsibly and
there were no school shootings. Ever.
No More Heroes
Hilton, who was 66 years old when I interviewed him in December 2000,
says that
he shot his first deer at age 7.
By the time he was 10,
he was proficient with the Colt .45 and capable of defending his family with it.
Nowadays, Hilton’s father would be putting himself at risk of imprisonment
by giving children access to a loaded gun. California law imposes
criminal penalties on gun owners if children are injured or injure
others while using their guns.
[So, if the children had killed the rampaging nudist
BEFORE he murdered THEM, then prison is in their future. That is LIBERAL filosofy ].
Technically,
if Jessica or any of the other Carpenter children
had managed to get hold of their father’s .357 Magnum
and gun down the killer, their father could have faced criminal charges.
It was for fear of the law that John Carpenter kept his gun unloaded
and hidden on a high closet shelf.
"He's more afraid of the law than of somebody coming in for his family,"
Hilton told the Fresno Bee.
Likewise, the neighbor who refused to intervene may well have
hesitated out of fear or uncertainty about the law. In today’s legal
environment, heroism is not encouraged. The way to stay out of
trouble is to sit back and wait for the police – even if innocent
children are being slaughtered right next door.
According to their mother, Tephanie Carpenter – whom I also
interviewed – every one of the surviving Carpenter children vowed
that they would have shot the killer if only they had had a gun handy.
[The supporters of gun control SAVED the lethal nudist from his victims.]
In fact,
the wounded girl Anna told her father that, when she saw
the man go after her sister Ashley, "I could have shot him right in
the back of the head."
The children’s bravery and fighting spirit were not considered newsworthy.
These elements were left out of the story by the wire services.
Instead, the Carpenters’ ordeal was reduced to a depressing yarn
of five helpless children attacked by a maniac, a tale without meaning,
moral or purpose.
Media Bias
The Carpenter case is but one example of a larger problem – the
problem of media bias. In the Carpenters’ case, their tale ended
tragically, but many similar stories have a happier resolution.
According to a 1995 study by criminologist Gary Kleck, Americans
use firearms to defend themselves up to 2.5 million times each
year – or nearly 7,000 times per day. In 11 out of 12 cases, the
attacker flees as soon as his intended victim brandishes the gun
[That happened in MY case.]
or fires a warning shot. Such incidents form part of everyday life
in America, yet they rarely make the news.
A study by the Media Research Center released in January 2000
showed that television news stories calling for more severe gun laws
outnumbered those opposing such laws by a ratio of 10 to 1. When it
comes to guns and gun rights, we are hearing only one side of the story.
Small wonder that few Americans are equipped to debate the issue intelligently.
"
ALL emfasis and
ALL use of
colored font has been added by David.
