are you talking about Bernie Goetz ? I remember that incident. He was carrying illegally exactly because he was afraid of riding on the trains. He was accosted by 4 scumbags who threatened him with a screwdriver and who knows what else...and he shot all of them. It was most excellent....and initial reports were 100% enthusiastically positive by all folks concerned who were interviewed by the media's 'man on the street'. Blacks, whites, 'others', all were happy that subway thugs got what they deserved.
Then it was divulged the shooter was white, the muggers were black.
At that point, it became a racial bias incident...the subway thugs became'poor black kids who were shot for no reason" and Mr.Goetz became the "Subway Vigilante" instead of the victim of an attempted crime.
The D.A. could not convict him of an unjustified shooting...it WAS justified....instead, they jailed him for some months (I don't remember the amount of time...it was 1 year for an illegal gun but he did not do a year) for illegal posession.
ya Bernie Goetz.... i've watched the show a few times now... pretty interesting.
I think if that happened nowadays though he'd be in prison for at least 2nd degree murder or something...
Shatner asked him if he felt bad for paralyzing the 1 guy, and he responded with "that bad guy paralyzed himself" and something like I have no remorse for him...
I think 1 guy died, 1 was paralyzed, the other 2 went on to commit armed robbery and one guy went to prison for rape, I think he was released in 2010 though, good timing right?
1: a citizen who had armed himself without benefit of license (Illegal posession)
because of his fear of being accosted in his daily routine.
2: a citizen who was accosted by a number of armed thugs on a city subway car...it's
really a deadman's trap because you can't run, you can't hide in a subway car.
3: Mr.Goetz drew his weapon and shot all of them, ostensibly for self-defense.
4: in my estimation, his ONLY transgression was in turning to one of the muggers
who was already shot and lying the floor of the car and saying "You Don't look so
Bad" and shot him again.
5: The story broke on, I believe ABC network news, and it was reported simply that
a passenger on a NYC subway train successfully defended himself against four
armed assailants.
6: Public sentiment went completely and entirely with 'the shooter' because in a city
like NY, EVERYONE has been in a subway car and can certainly understand how you
are trapped and at the mercy of a gang of mutants, should they decide to cause
some mayhem.
7: once it was reported the shooter was white, and the mutants were black, Mr.Goetz's
rump was in the pot, so to speak.
8: he never was charged in the shootings....they locked him up for illegal posession
of a firearm (which the city would never have issued in the first place, regardless of
need).
True... his aim was a little sour. The Dick Cheney of subway hunting!
I beg to differ.....Cheney's mishap was serious but inadvertent.
Goetz' 'event' was not planned, but once initiated, the acts committed therein were purposeful. The ONLY similarity between the two is that in both, there were no deaths. Of course, Cheney's
'victim' did not deserve it, unlike the mutants who accosted Goetz in that subway car who, had Bernie 'double-tapped' 'em like he should have, would not have been able to cry unjustifiable shooting in court.
Still, all in all, justice was carried out, such as it was.
I remember the case from when it happned( sorta/mostly) & caught part of this program with him in it the other night.
Yrs later in the same city a admited racist - a black man shoots a train full of ppl ( killing 6-8? & wounding 19?. But No hate crime laws are used against him , no big outcry by the media etc to do so etc. They seem to concentrate more on the guns involed in the crimes- like the guns where to blame for the crimes.
This one some think suffered enough- by siting on death row for yrs & yrs- partying hardy with the boys- all kinds of drugs .booze , hormones, while being served 3 meals a day, free heath care & anything else he could buy or trade for.
I dont forget some ppl like these things very much- inside or outside of prison or dont even mind much being in prison.
If it was my daughter- one of those 8 nurses he butchered like sheep-and tortured - id like to see him dead- id like to do it slowly with my own hands- but id let the state do it quick to- if need be. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgrvk...eature=related
I as either a tax payer or one of the parents to these girls- would not like the goverment forcing me to pay for his upkeep & keeping him alive. Or the train shooter & many others out there.
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Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.-- Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18)
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was. ~Will Rogers
Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday.
"Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's 'bold new imaginative program' with its proper age?" "Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago.
There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. R.Reagan-1960
Aftermath - The subway shooter with William Shatner
