In Cleveland, Texas, about 40 miles from Houston, five family members were killed. Their neighbor liked to fire his gun outside, and he was shooting at 11 p.m. A family member asked if he could stop shooting because the baby was sleeping.
The neighbor went into the home next door and killed five people, including an 8-year-old.
The suspect was the victims’ neighbor and went to their home Friday night after they asked him to stop shooting an AR-15-style weapon in his front yard because of the noise, Capers [the sheriff] said.
Oropeza frequently shot the gun in his yard, Capers said, and allegedly became angry when the neighbors said their baby was trying to sleep around or after 11 p.m. Authorities saw video footage of Oropeza walking up to the victims’ front door before going inside…
Vianey Balderas, who lives across the street from the family, said she first heard some gunshots when a few people were outside. About 20 minutes later, Balderas heard about five more gunshots, then another 10, she told The Washington Post.
“When I heard those gunshots, I didn’t think anything of it because in this neighborhood everyone has guns. Every weekend you hear gunshots,” she said in an interview in Spanish. “People shoot in their backyards, after they drink alcohol, men take out guns at house parties and shoot the ground.”
All five victims were shot in the head, he said. Two of the women who were killed were found lying on top of the surviving young children in a bedroom, “trying to protect them,” Capers told The Post by phone from the scene.
Just another day in a land where everyone has the right to own a gun, in a state where no one is required to get a permit.
Thanks to Ron Ron DeStalin, we in Flor-uh-duh, in the midst of this gun deaths/mass shootings epidemic, are now also among those permitless concealed carry states.
INSANE. And IDIOTIC.
I was visiting my mother in Bloomington, Indiana. A young man was standing in his backyard, at the house next to hers, firing a rifle randomly into the woods behind their houses. I happened to know that a .22 long round will carry for A MILE and that there were houses beyond those trees in the back. So, I called the police to report this. I spoke to an officer who said to me, “Is he standing on his own property?”
“Yes,” I said. “But he’s firing onto property that isn’t his.”
“If he’s standing on his own property, there’s nothing I can do about it,” the guy said.
Right. Sure. Nothing he could do.
Another story
My son was sitting at his computer when a bullet came through one of our windows (we lived in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood in Flor-uh-duh). It left a hole in the window and a hole in the wall at the opposite end of the room. Connecting the two with a tape measure later (my son helped me with this), we saw that the path of the bullet had gone precisely through where he was usually sitting. He had just happened to be leaning forward at the time, and so the bullet passed behind him. We were extremely fortunate.
The police came and checked the house next door out. It seems that a teenaged boy there had been showing off a family rifle to a group of his friends and thought it would be funny to shoot through his open window. What did the police do? Arrest the kid? The parents for allowing him access to a gun?
Nothing. They did nothing. Because these things happen.
Another story. I was visiting friends in Marysville, Ohio. They dragged me, reluctantly, to the town 4th of July fireworks celebration. I wandered off to the concessions, and just past the place selling fried dough (I think it was), there was a tent featuring Trump flags and ceramic plates with PICTURES OF JESUS HOLDING AN AR-15 on them.
I really wish I were making this up.
Hi Bob,
These stories are terrible. You should have said to the cop, “Well, if I was shooting from my living room out into the road and killed someone, it would be ok because I was on my property. What if I’m in my car (MY PROPERTY) and I go around the neighborhood randomly shooting. I can do that too, right, because I’m in “my property.” We have a case of this here now in upstate NY. A man killed a young woman who was in his driveway – not threatening him or anything – just trying to turn around.
There was no reasoning with someone who would express so INSANE a point of view–that there was “nothing he could do.” What this meant was “there is nothing I want to do, because I, too, am a gun nut.” Translation from good ole boy into English.
TodaysAcronym ☞ HITIYRM
Happiness Is Texas In Your Rearview Mirror
How to get from the East Coast to Texas. Go west until you smell it. Then go south until you step in it.
In a state with Stand Your Ground laws, the most common defense is, “I feared for my life and was only defending myself.” We’ll l have to wait and see if this murderer gets convicted and ends up in prison for life. From what I’ve been reading, Stand Your Ground laws in those states have turned into a license to murder anyone the killer says he feared.
Lloyd, people needs they’s military-style weapons to defend against dangerous children carrying Skittles and picking up their brothers after school and young women turning their cars around in their driveways. Obviously. Flame-throwers? Javelin anti-tank weapons? Stinger missiles? Ofc. The Constitution wrote by Jesus says so.
If you have eny other questions, Lloyd, jist ask. Me n Darlene will be happy to hep.
You nailed it, Lloyd. These “Stand Your Ground” laws should carry the title “License to Murder Act.”
This is terrible and there’s no end in sight, especially if we elect Republicans.
Paranoid people should not be walking around with loaded guns. My husband works part-time for the US Census. From time to time he does get threatened by people, but luckily no one has ever done anything hostile. To be honest, we can do without this little gig. He does it mostly to keep busy. This year he is finding that more people are resisting and warning him to leave their property. He is finally considering giving up this gig for the first time. I am trying to convince him. Florida’s nutty lack of gun laws is helping me make my case.
I was riding my bike home last year, and some moron thought I was “sneaking up on him” because I was riding past him on my bike, and he turned around and pulled a gun on me.
Flor-uh-duh
He turned and leveled a pistol at me, which he was holding in front of him with both hands, and screamed, “Sneak up on me like that?”
Aie yie yie
I was several yards away from him. He was on the sidewalk. I was on the street.
I got home and thought, my Lord, wouldn’t that be a way to go out of this world? to be shot by some random moron for no reason whatsoever.
Door-knocking in Flor-uh-duh is NOT a good idea. Too many gun-wielding idiots suckled on Fox “News.”
I was reading the comments above outside when a neighbor started up shooting. I am used to it. Luckily, my neighbors are not crazy.
I don’t think people who shoot live ammunition in neighborhoods where people live are sane.
It’s not really a neighborhood like you might envision. A few houses stretched out along a country road. My attitude toward guns was always shaped by growing up in and living in rural areas. Everybody but us had guns and hunted. My parents were avowed pacifist and had made a decision to raise their boy’s with Methodism and without guns. My friends let me shoot theirs, and I was unimpressed. Now I think of the cost of Ammo when I hear my neighbors shooting. They pay dearly for their hobby.
Evolution is so slow.