I’m not a fan of Texas’ governors Rick Perry or former governor George Bush. Their shoot from the hip attitude probably contributed a lot to Raul Rodriguez’s belief that he could confront someone on their property, and then shoot and kill them while claiming he had no obligation to retreat from his victim’s property because he was in fear for his life.
What senor Rodriguez wanted to do was a police action of sorts that would end up with a result that he wanted but instigating a fight, recording it and killing someone is not the way to win friends and influence people, and especially the jury of his trial. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison. He will have to serve 20 years of that sentence before he is eligible for parole. That’s a good thing. No one should be able to pick a fight with you because of a personal dislike they have for you or for what you are doing that is not a violation of the law, then kill you when you try to defend yourself or your property from their intrusion. (Perhaps Rodriguez went too far in considering himself a member of the police department of his town, since it appears police are usually the ones who carry that attitude of unlimited trespass upon personal property and unaccountable murder of the owners of that property when they respond.)
But if you don’t know where I’m going with this, the point is this case has implications in the Martin/Zimmerman case in Florida where George Zimmerman is using basically the same right to ‘stand his ground’ after he followed, pursued, encountered a completely innocent up to that point Trayvon Martin and then shot and killed him when Martin did, what to most accounts will probably show, a pretty good job of defending himself against Zimmerman. It’s people who are legally armed and make such arguments as Zimmerman and Rodriguez who scare me and give other law abiding gun owners a bad name. I cringe at examples like those two, knowing that the chorus for gun control will do doubt ring out calling for ever more strict laws against gun ownership. The Zimmermans and Rodriguezs of the world are just as criminal as they people they arm themselves to defend against. Thankfully, the jury in Texas got it right!
*Don’t mess with Texas*
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