I saw a post about guns on HuffPo so of course I had to read it, and it’s about some 17-year-old kid in Albuquerque who got shot and died. Which is sad and bad; let’s get that out of the way. But check it out. The HuffPo explains that Ryan Vigil (the kid) was a member of an anti-gun-violence group (making the whole story ever so ironic) and was just a special, awesome, super, perfect, spectacular human being, basically.
It also explains that Vigil was driving around in a car with some friends throwing golfballs at people. One of these golfball targets was a meth user who went back to his house, got a gun, found the kids driving around again later, and shot Vigil in the head.
My first thought? Kinda had it coming. Not death, that’s going maybe a little too far, but what would YOU do if some punk kids drove past you and threw golfballs at you? What the fuck? You’d at least try to catch them and beat their asses. And am I the only one who thinks what the kids were doing – which is technically assault, right? – was at least a little sociopathic? The HuffPo writer definitely doesn’t. Check out how he describes THROWING GOLFBALLS AT PEOPLE FROM YOUR CAR:
Ryan – a third-baseman for his school’s baseball team – participated in an ill-advised schoolboy prank with some of his friends as they drove around town and tossed golf balls at people.
That is just some serious bullshit. What if I drove around town throwing hard objects at people from my car? What’s my excuse? Mid-thirties white chick prank? Haha! Isn’t it cute? No harm meant, y’all! Just letting off some steam, you know, because of my hormones. Why would anyone get pissed off enough to shoot me for such innocent shenanigans?
(Have you ever been hit with an airborn golfball? Even one that is gently tossed? I have. It fucking HURTS.)
Teenage boys get a free pass on violent, assholish behavior and it pisses me off.
And here’s the quote from the principle:
“…he’s an example of the random violence facing our nation.”
I’m too lazy to go to dictionary.com and get the actual definition of ‘random’ but I’d be willing to bet my liver and one of my lungs that getting shot in the head because you threw golfballs at people is not ‘random’.
Oh wait! She must have meant that Vigil was an example of random violence facing our nation because HE’S THE ONE WHO WAS COMMITTING RANDOM VIOLENCE.
I know it’s nitpicky. And I’m sorry for his family that the kid is dead. But still. Sometimes you do something stupid, and you get hurt. Pretty simple rule of thumb to reduce your chances of getting shot in your coconut: don’t throw golfballs at meth-heads.
To quote Larry Niven “Think of it as evolution in action.”
I agree – technically it was assault – not some “ill-advised prank.” and I would chase the little shits down and beat their asses. Or at least get the license plate number and call the cops.
I am sorry for the loss of a child. However, having said that, when are people going to realize that when they do stupid shit someone may have an issue with it? Why is it so hard for people to understand that when you make a conscious decision to do something stupid, you may have to pay a price for your stupid decision? Whatever happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Am I fighting a losing battle against the world at large when I constantly remind my three daughters that their decisions have consequences, good and bad? People need to quit making excuses for bad choices and bad behavior. ‘Nuff said.
I love that quote, Rachel. What do you get back if you win that bet? Steven Webber’s petard?
Some of these people (and I knew the author of the HuffPo piece was a woman before I even saw your confirmation) are Stuck. On. Stupid. Actions have consequences, people! Normally, the price we pay for being a dumbass is far short of our very lives, but you can never be sure.
And does this Broad seriously think that Gun Control would have kept a gun out of this Meth Head’s nicotine-stained hands? What a shit for brains!
This will sound hard to believe, but I’ve been hit on the head with a golf ball and didn’t even notice it. I used to work at a country club during the summers and was whacking out range balls from the woods with a co-worker when a ball softly landed about 20 feet from us. I kept working and noticed the co-worker staring at me with his mouth wide open.
I asked him what was wrong and he yelled, “Dude, that ball just nailed you on the top of your head!” Sure enough, a nice sized bump was already developing, but I never felt a thing. No meth involved either!
Oops! The author technically is not a woman. But I’m willing to bet he’s not in possession of a pair, so more’s the pity.
Blake, you’ve got bigger problems.
Lemme get this straight-
Point 1. Throwing golf balls from a car isn’t random violence. They couldn’t have been proficient in throwing things anyway. It’s not like they had any special training or experience. Oh wait, they were baseball players. Well we all know athletes can do no wrong. It’s a prank, like slicing up your ex-wife.
Point 2. Gun control laws would have prevented the clear-headed, law-abiding, met addict from killing the punk.
Well I guess he followed this part of his pledge.
His individual choice, multiplied by the individual choices of the other kids in the car, made a difference. There is now one less golf ball wielding violent punk on the streets.
Seriously, my deepest condolences to his family and friends.
The Student Pledge for Golf ball Violence is simple. It reads:
“I will always bring a Golf ball to school.
“I will always use a Golf ball to settle a personal problem or dispute.
“I will use my influence with my friends to make them use Golf balls to settle disputes.
“My individual choices and actions, when multiplied by those of young people throughout the country, will possibly get us killed. Together, by honoring this pledge, we can continue the violence and grow up in the safety of our minds.”
Because nobody would EVER be pissed off after being hit by a Golf ball thrown from a moving vehicle. Granted death was a little extreme, but how many people had been hit already? The Meth head used a simple force multiplier to teach a lesson. I’d be willing to bet THAT carload of adult aged juveniles won’t try their trick again!
BAN GOLF BALLS!
You pretty much just summed up one of the major, fucked-up flaws of our public education system. Kids are taught that there are no consequences for anything we do, it’s always somebody else’s fault, etc. etc. and so forth. While we were sleeping they secretly switched our regular old-fashioned values system with Liberals Crystals and stuff like this is the result.
Oh wow…the whole story drips with irony. Trying to promote so called ‘peaceful’ existing by being against guns but it’s okay to go around assaulting people by throwing golf balls? Lovely. Sounds like a bright kid…or not. Cleary he had no common sense at all.
Besides, the gun didn’t kill him, the meth head killed him.
And what punishment are the other “athletes” in the car going to get? Any suspension from playing in any said sports. Oh no, we can’t do that, we are a shoe in for the state tournament this year.
No kid deserves to die, but you are right Rachel. You do stupid stuff, whether it be throwing golf balls, or tap on your breaks in front of a maniac, and people will pull out their illegal guns and shoot you.
Mainly because they know there is a good chance, you don’t have one.
My sympathy is with Vigil’s family. He probably was a good kid and he certainly didn’t deserve to die for his stupid lack of judgment (and/or empathy).
But teenagers do dumb stuff, and Paul Helmke at HuffPo seems to be trying too hard to make this story illustrate his bias against gun ownership. There’s no mention of whether the meth user was a legally registered gun owner or not. Then there’s the undeniable fact that Vigil was throwing golf balls out the window of a moving automobile. If one of the balls had hit and killed an unarmed homeless man, they’d be whining about Vigil’s callous inhumanity.
Helmke’s trying to make two and two add up to five. This story is a tragedy. It doesn’t need the extra baggage of someone’s partisan agenda.
So will the other punks get charged with murder, since the Ryan punk was killed during the commission of a crime? At the very least they all need to be charged with assault.
I used to mow Mr. Prince’s yard. One day he was attacked by young men in a similar manner. They drove by and threw a few oranges at him. Broke some of his ribs. They’d stuck rocks inside the oranges. I think he was heading out to get his paper. Punk ass bitches never were caught, but they sure did fuck up Mr. Prince. 80+ year old man, nicest guy in the world, and they did that to him. It still pisses me off, and it’s been…gosh, more than 15 years.
Not to mention that with an average third-baseman’s arm, you could kill someone with a golf ball to the right part of the head.
Kids need to know, as we do, that the world is entirely a different place than it was when “schoolboy pranks” and “shenanigans” were laughed off as “boys will be boys” behavior.
Of course, never rely on HuffPoo for objectivity.
Hmmm….you throw golf balls at people, they will come and kick your ass.
You throw golf balls at meth-heads who own guns and they are in a bad mood, chances are they will shoot you. If they are a good shot, you will die. Kind of a no brainer really. Kind of makes me wonder if he’s sitting in the after life, going ‘Duh! If only i didn’t go for the meth-head, shoulda gone for the old lady.’
Also, I like the way the article refers to the action as ‘tossing’. I’m sorry, but in my world, you would ‘toss’ a marshmellow across the room to someone, but you when you’ve got a golf ball in your hand and the target is a human being, that implies that you would like the golf ball to get to its target at speed. Unless of course they were going around giving away free golf balls to strangers, and if that was the case, I shall get back in my packet.
“My individual choices and actions, when multiplied by those of young people throughout the country, will make a difference.” Yes, but the difference is more kids being dumb asses.
What’s the thought process here? “Let’s see on the one hand blunt force trauma to unsuspecting people going about their lawful business. OR we can laugh it up while hitting people who never knew they were a target of random stupidity! Ok, first we’ll lick windows THEN we’ll inflict pain and suffering on people. Since we’re just rapscallions we’ll get away with it and everyone will have a good laugh and group hug when we’re done.”
I feel bad for his family. But, I’m sorry; a dip shit like this was just looking for trouble. And his jackass friends found out the hard way. “If you look for trouble you’ll find it. And it will beat you down”. He probably only signed the damn pledge to make himself look like a ‘good kid’. And now we all know he was a dumb kid. I won’t lose any sleep over this.
Color me ‘mean’…
In what universe does someone get credit for being against gun violence when they apparently have no qualms against committing golf-ball violence? Oh, this one, that’s right.
But he was against gun violence, ergo-post-hoc-quid-pro-hoc, he was a good kid, really. Sigh.
There was a similar incident in Sacramento, where a carload of teenaged girls threw an egg at someone and the driver started ramming them with his/her car. This caused an accident in which one of the teenaged girls died.
A butt-ugly incident. But, it was death by lethal weapon called a car. Not a gun. For something incredibly dummmmasssed. But, a real kid’s stunt. Throwing golfballs? Well, maybe not so much a kid’s stunt. A possible lethal weapon in and of itself. Not so for an egg. Except maybe for a paint job.
Maybe I’m an asshat, but I don’t feel sorry for the kid at all. Just like the kids that throw bricks off of overpasses. Yeah, they might think it’s a prank, but somebody could get seriously hurt, or killed.
Fuck that little bastard. He got what was coming to him. My guess is that it probably wasn’t his first time doing ‘ill advised schoolboy pranks’. Maybe his death will serve as a warning to his circle of asshat friends and they’ll change their ways.
I remember a fortune cookie I once got that said ‘Sometimes there are painful consequences’.
No shit.
Just like people that fight with police, they deserve the beat-down they inevitably get.
By the way, anyone know if the meth user LEGALLY owned a LEGALLY OWNED gun? Or was it a stolen one? Was the meth user out of jail and not allowed to have gun in possession?
If this is the case, looks like we have a case of gun laws not working with people who are criminals and don’t abide by gun laws.
DonBodell: article says
I don’t know if that legally bars him from having a gun but somehow I’m getting the feeling this guy was NOT a law-abiding gun-owner, in any case.
Thank you Hurricane. I didn’t want to be the first person to say that I would have shot the little fucker myself. And I’m not even sure what meth is. Ok, I wouldn’t have hunted them down, but more like reacted to the situation. A careening carful of screaming kids, things flying out windows at random people … sounds like a drive-by shooting to me.
I followed the link and read the piece. Isn’t it grand that the first commenter calls himself MolonLabe and rips the author a new one? Aren’t gunnies great?
The first rule of Golfball Assault Club is you don’t talk about Golfball Assault Club.
Albaquirky Tribune says “Vigil was an advocate for nonviolence.” Riiiight. This was an idiot who tossed hard objects at people from a moving vehicle.
I file this under thinning the herd. You don’t jump into panda’s cages and hug them, you don’t swim with dangerous stingrays and you don’t chuck shit at meth-heads.
I hereby nominate Ryan Vigil for a !
He has provided a service for humanity by removing himself from the gene pool before reproducing.
I know this will sound hard to believe, but one time I was working in this kitchen and I saw this frying pan fall on the floor in front of me. Then this dude who was washing dishes was like, “holy shit…that frying pan just smacked you in the face!”. Well, sure enough, I reached up and felt this totally flat part on my face. Seriously…I didn’t feel a thing. I don’t really remember if I was smoking Meth or not…
Rachel:
Do you know why I love your blog? Because you say what a lot of people THINK but are unwilling to speak out loud.
I admire that about you and am working really hard to start speaking my full mind as well. You are quite the inspiration, young lady.
It always amuses me that once a person is dead they were a saint.
I’m with Hurrican Mikey and Drew458. No pity for little shit-head here.
Puts me in mind of a case here in Iowa, around 2000 or so. Seems there was this girl “from the minority community,” who was batting around with her friends in an SUV, all of them drunk as hooty owls. The stupid bint was throwing lit fireworks out of the car window to scare people, and dropped some sort of lit something-or-other into the big paper bag of fireworks on her lap. *BOOOM* Car burnt out completely, all aboard dead.
Of course, our local fish-wrapper, the Des Moines Register, (or Des Moines Red Star, as I like to call it) used this as Exhibit A in their never-ending crusade to keep our draconian fireworks-prohibition laws in place. Never mind that the vast majority of Iowans who use fireworks (law or no law, Missouri, where they’re all legal, is a few hours’ drive from anywhere in Iowa) suffer nothing worse than minor flash burns. A similar incident of asshattedness in the 1930s (a large display table full of fireworks in the town of Spencer was ignited by some dimwit throwing a lit firecracker into it; the resulting fire leveled a good chunk of the town, if memory serves) was the catalyst to getting the law passed in the first place.
And somehow, it’s never the fault of the idiots who actually do stupid things.
It is just when stupidity is punished.
Ben
The meth head should be sent straight to boot camp and over to Iraq. He’s a good shot, has killed before, put him to work against the enemy. They didn’t say if he shot him while the car was moving, if he did, that’s a great shot. As for the golf ball throwing kid, he didn’t deserve to die, but since he was on the side of gun control, he would have to admit, the meth head controlled his gun pretty damn well.
Heh – our Albuquerque news makes it out to Dallas, I see… :) They kept teasing that story last night to make it sound really bad – but after my wife and I saw that story on the news last night, and they had gone on to something else, I said “Wow – sounds like he shouldn’t have been throwing golf balls, huh?” My wife just started laughing.
It’s sad, it’s tragic – but maybe it can be instructive as well. This is the same principle under which a lot of other crimes fall. “I was just doing [x].” “Well, yeah, but sometimes when people see [x], they [y].”
Lottsa good comments.
Mark me with the group that would happily have shot the little puke. Got hit by a beer can from a speeding car once when I was young. No doubt in my mind I would have shot into the car if I had a gun.
Throwing stuff from a car is just a prank until somebody loses an eye.
You fuck with the bull you get the horn. Stay out of our gene pool, Einstein.
Oh Jesus H. Christ Rachel, grow some fucking balls, will ya?
The god damned kid got what was coming to him. He got what he deserved. If some azzhat idiot kid is that fucking god damned stupid to throw a fucking golf ball at someone from a moving vehicle. He deserves getting shot in the damned coconut, too damned bad it didn’t happen sooner.
Harrumph!
It never ceases to amaze me that people don’t understand that there are Laws and then there are The Rules.
The Law may say that nobody had a right to shoot the little twerp. And the Law is certainly right, in the sense that that is the template for Society that I would want to live with.
Nevertheless, The Rules still exist, and you forget them at your immediate peril.
The Rules are that if you assault enough people, sooner or later you run into an angry man with a gun.
The Law may protect your right to protest a war in the most scurrilous term possible.
The Rules are that if you choose to do so at the funeral of a fallen soldier, the odds are good that some of his grieving comrades will clean your clock. Pity THAT doesn’t seem to have happened…..yet.
The Rules have no pity. The Rules admit of no mitigating circumstances. The Rules are that if you shoot of your mouth about Harley Davidsons in a biker bar you are cruising for a bruising.
The Rules say that if you call somebody’s mama a whore, you had better be ready for a fight. Regardless of WHAT the Law might say.
Want to grow up in one piece? Learn what The Rules are, and break them only deliberately, understanding the risks you are running.
I have only limited sympathy for the boy’s parents; they raised a young thug who was killed because he started a fight with an even bigger thug.
The Rule in this case is dead simple; Don’t bring a golf ball to a gun fight.
It’s illogical to say (not that anyone DID say) that the kid got more than he deserved.
If you cross a busy street with your eyes closed, you get killed.
“But he ONLY had his eyes closed! Does he deserve to die for THAT?”
Deserve has nothing to do with it.
It’s natural laws—as solid as physics (the part of physics that IS solid).
Bounce a ball off the noggin of a meth head, and you may die.
The kid was merely ignorant of natural law.
By the way, what happened to the golf ball?
Now, if he’d only thrown his damn golf balls at Fred Phelps and his “God Hates Fags!” protesters…*gets lost in a beautiful dream of what could have been*
Doesn’t Gun Control mean hitting what you are aiming at? If so doesn’t that mean that the meth head was a gun control advocate too?
You’ve got it all wrong. Its not people who are evil, its guns that are evil. We should take that bad gun and dump it into the ocean. Oh yah…. and let that poor innocent meth user go about his business.
Frankly, do any of you know another way to change a wacked out liberals mind?
If one of the golf balls had hit and injured an illegal immigrant, the HuffPo piece would have been about “hate crimes” perpetrated by privleged athletes. So there’s always that.
Please…all of you. Commit to buying a thousand rounds of your favorite every month.
This punk totally had it coming. I feel bad for his family, but really. Actions have consequences — bad actions = bad consequences and vice versa.
God Bless his family. Losing a brother or a son is always a terrible thing.
Still, dying in such a manner qualifies him for a Darwin Award.
I was running along a country road once when a couple of drunk rednecks in a shitty old El Camino drove up from behind me. White-trash piece-of-shit #2, the passenger, tossed a 1/2 full can of beer out and hit me square in the back, dropping me to my knees, unable to breathe for minute. Six ounces of frosty-cold goodness in the specially lined can to seal in the bottled-beer taste may seem pretty harmless, but at 40-50 mph, it becomes a lethal weapon.
Anyhoo…I spent the next six months watching out for that piece of shit El Camino with an earnest intent to beat the living shit out of anyone I found in, on or near the car…assuming that they might be the asshole-of-interest. I have to side with the meth-head on this one.
put me in the “stupid kills” camp …. glad to see the herd is still getting thinned. Sorry for the parents? Ha! The product of their raising was driving around trying to see how much damage they could do … knowing full well their privileged status as “sports stars” would keep them from consequences. Too bad the parents are still around as well .. with time still to pollute the gene pool.
And that must be some good meth or some very bad meth … good if he hit what he was aiming at, or bad if he was just shooting in the general direction …. also just too bad he couldn’t emulate the tailor in the Grimm fairy tale … 7 with one shot.
You were in shock, dude!
I remember when I was in driver’s ed and the instructor basically said, ‘Don’t give people the finger or anything, because some people are crazy and they will follow you and crush you.’ And there is some truth here. When infringing on others’ rights not to have golf balls thrown at them, we [read:they] assume that that person is generally like themselves in personality. Now this man is dead.
I got hit with a golf ball last week in the elbow, and surprise! It hurt!
Now, this was while playing golf, and I was hit unintentionally (but stupidly) by the group behind us that failed to wait until we left the green.
So what did I do? Yelled at them for not warning us by yelling ‘Fore!’ (like the ‘Rules’ say) and then another member in my group threw their ball in the lake.
We were angry because they didn’t warn us of the incoming ball – not because I had been unintentionally hit by it. One guy in my group was ready to go at them with a golf club.
Contrast this with what these boys were doing: speeding around in a car throwing golf balls at people. We wanted to beat the group behind us for hitting us unintentionally without warning. This was over the top, but the emotion was there.
So these boys were intending to hit people with golf balls, without warning, and speed away anonymously. I can understand the escalation in response. It wasn’t right, but since when does something “not being right” prevent you from being killed?
Anytime someone aged 17 or under around Dallas kicks the bucket, the MSM bleats on and ON about the deceased.
No matter who it was, they are instantly transformed by the reporters into a: Community Leader, Straight “A” Student, Promising, Bright Futured Innocent.
Then you can do a little digging, and find out they were actually: Intoxicated, Suspended Multiple Times from School, On Probation, and Seeking Crack at 2 AM in the Worst Part Of Town.
Remember the videos that came out years ago where the guys were riding around in a car doing “drive-bys” with paintball guns on unsuspecting folks? I was SO hoping that one of their victims was armed like the meth head was.
Then watch them scramble to cover everything up and draw straws on who gets “brain detail” in the back seat.
Rachel,
If the crankster was on probation as you say, then 100% for sure his possession of a gun was illegal. He will have consequences big time.
As to the young man, while he certainly didn’t do anything to warrant an immediate carrying out of a “death sentence”, his stupidity, total lack of empathy for random people unknown to him who were subject to attack by him and his friends, and lack of understanding that you shouldn’t provoke someone unknown to you because they just might be CRAZY set him up for what happened.
I’m not familiar with New Mexico state law, but in Oklahoma, if the golf balls thrown from a moving vehicle could be construed as deadly weapons (thus making each assault a felony assault with a deadly weapon), his buddies in the car could be charged under the felony murder rule with his death (ANY death resulting from your commission of a felony results in YOU being charged for it, in addition to any other persons charged).
The Alba-Quirky paper has “updated” their online story to delete any reference to what the asshat was doing before he had his mind changed for him.
I noted that there are no Comments following the story, as well. Did the paper remove those as well?
If the car is moving when they throw a golf ball, you can add the speed of the car to the speed of the thrown golf ball. Say a baseball player is capable of hurling a golf ball at 70 mph (a conservative estimate on my part), then you add that the car is traveling at 30 or 40 mph, you’re talking about a hard object hitting its target at over 100 mph. That, people, will more than just bruise you. It has the potential to be lethal. Just ask Mike Coolbaugh’s family.
The kid was a 3rd baseman on the school team, as well.
So he most certainly had a good arm to begin with.
Hah, the article says they are going to name the ballfield after him.
How about some names to help them along?
Dip-Shit Field
Consequences Field
Lessons Learned Field…..
others?
I ride a bicycle fairly often in a vain attempt to keep my girth from exceeding that of a circus animal, and I also legally carry a concealed 9mm semi-automatic. If someone threw a golf ball at me while I was struggling up a hill on the bike, or at an intersection, and I had reason to think individuals in that car might do so a second time, I’d be entirely within my moral and legal rights to put a bullet through the assailant’s head. Word to the wise: just because someone looks defenseless doesn’t mean they are. That’s the whole point of concealed carry.
That said, going back to my apartment to find and load a weapon, and then deliberately seeking out the assailant in order to put a bullet through his head is homicide, pure and simple. Whether it’s prosecuted as murder or manslaughter depends on state laws and precedent, and the discretion of the D.A.. But if this is the most useful example that opponents of the 2nd Amendment can find then they’re standing in the same ditch we always figured they were.
[I should also point out that obtaining a conviction in this case is not a foregone conclusion, and would depend to a significant extent on the charge. My guess is that juries would probably convict if they had the manslaughter option, but if a D.A. went exclusively with murder a New Mexico jury might well be effectively nullified. Moreover, any credible defense argument that the defendant had been previously attacked by golf ball wielding teens might well give the jury enough latitude and discretion to acquit.
Finally, we don’t know that the article’s assumption that he deliberately sought out the assailants after retrieving his weapon is accurate. A defense attorney might well argue that retrieving the weapon was a natural defensive act, under the circumstances, and that when he happened to see the same car again he was acting on the assumption that they were about to re-attack. Everything depends on the actual facts in evidence. How the news media characterizes the situation has little to do with that.]
Re: getting clonked on the head and not noticing it – I can vouch for that too. Got knocked flat when a 15 foot long by 5 inch spinnaker pole (think “metal pipe”) dropped on top of my head. Never felt a thing, and not even a bump. The cockpit crew thought I’d been killed dead. (They were concerned, see, because they were the ones who dropped the pole. Also, the rules say you have to finish the race with the same crew you start with, so my death might have hurt the boat’s standing. This kind of thing, by the way, is a pre-requisite for being foredeck crew. Utter obliviousness to repeated blunt force trauma.)
When I was in high school, I participated in a very small number of Halloween-type “pranks”, limited to things like buddies bicycling around the ‘burb after dark tossing firecrackers into peoples’ front yards. Almost harmless, one might think, and certainly less risky than braining meth-heads with golf balls. My Marine Major father, however, “explained” to me that not every resident was as tolerant as he was, and that I should stop. Immediately. Experience led me to believe it would be a good idea to stop :-) As a direct result, I have not so far been shot by any upset meth-heads. Go me.
Kids have been pulling stupid pranks since we first developed enough brainpower to be able to define “stupid”. However, this prank was potentially lethal. I can think of just two of the kids I grew up with who’d have been uncaring enough to do it, and when the one who would have suggested the idea died in an incident involving his brand new driver’s license, his daddy the Mayor’s car, and some booze, we all breathed a sigh of relief. You’ve got to be a real asshole (at a minimum) to think it was funny. And this car load of assholes offended another asshole. That’s the main danger of being simply an asshole – you’ll get yourself crossways of other assholes, who also have no idea of what an appropriate response is…
So, perhaps there’s a tragedy here in that some 17 year old assholes have a chance of learning and growing up to be good people, and this kid lost his chance. Or maybe not, because there’s some that always were no good, and are bound to wind up in prison or Congress if they don’t get killed. What I know for sure is that there are two less assholes running free in NM, and I can’t feel too sorry about that.
Retrocop: Felony murder would be a bit of a stretch, not that I’d mind the DA using to try to get the other brats to cop to something like reckless endangerment, in an adult court rather than juvie. Certainly if I wound up on a jury trying them, I’d go for every possible charge short of murder.
OTOH, if a golf ball had hit someone wrong and killed him, the kids should have all been tried as adults for manslaughter and spent their “college years” in the State Pen.
“And I’m not even sure what meth is.” Drew, if you’re serious about that, it’s methampetamine. It’s a homemade (or Mexican drug-gang made) version of a family of common pharmaceuticals, the “uppers”, “bennies”, or “speed” that college kids often used to cram for exams when I was a kid. It’s also similar to Ritalin and Dexedrine, that are often prescribed for children by court order so they’ll pay attention in school. It seems like the drug warriors finally made a dent in the diversion of legally-made pills of this sort to the black market – so now homemade stuff with dangerous impurities is replacing the safer FDA-regulated pills.
And yes, people can get wound too tight when they use too many amphetamines for too long, even with pills by prescription if the doctor isn’t paying enough attention. I rather think that anyone who’d want to do that wasn’t right to begin with, but it could have turned someone who’d chase the brats down the street yelling curses and waving a baseball bat into someone who’d fire a gun. Isn’t it a great probation system that lets a criminal get himself into such a state while he’s supposedly under supervision?
markm,
Not so much of a stretch when you look at it as you did (and as I have to every day). Big charges are often a tool to at least get something in the bargaining process. Oh, and someone did get killed… Ryan Vigil.
To paraphrase Mitch Hedelberg, they were probably too busy mumbling “There ain’t no way that’s gonna hit him” to warn you. : )
FYI, I submitted this to the Darwin Awards as suggested and it was accepted for consideration.
You know mightysamurai, you’re probably exactly right.
“Ryan — a third-baseman for his school’s baseball team — participated in an ill-advised schoolboy prank with some of his friends as they drove around town and tossed golf balls at people”
The spin density in that quote is breathtaking. Let’s break it down, shall we?
“Ryan.” First name, not last name. Already makes him seem more affable.
“A third-baseman for his school’s baseball team.” Ryan plays the quintessential all-American sport, a factoid that has absolutely no relevance to the story.
“Participated in.” You know what that phrase means on a resume. Ryan didn’t really do anything. He was just sort of in the vicinity when it happened.
“Ill-advised.” It wasn’t a good idea, and more importantly, it wasn’t his idea — some unnamed entity advised him. Illy.
“Schoolboy.” The very picture of innocence.
“Prank.” Nothing serious. Harmless fun. If you’re upset about it, you’re just uptight.
“With some of his friends.” See, he’s a nice kid — he has friends. Not accomplices, friends.
“Tossed.” Implies low velocity and lack of violent intent. Like when a Dad and his schoolboy son play catch, tossing the ball to each other. It was an act of love.
God I hate spin journalism. Let’s try another angle, just for fun:
“Vigil — a player of violent video games — committed malicious, premeditated attacks as his gang of thugs cruised the streets and pelted little schoolgirls with hard objects.”
If I were to walk down the street and occasionally accost random strangers, demanding a refund because their mother wasn’t worth the $5 she charged me last night, would I deserve the painful death that would bring me? No. But I would have brought it on myself. I would have been deemed by Mother Nature as too stupid to live.
Sorry, Ryan. Mother Nature is a vindictive bitch.
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that one!
That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time.
C. S. P. Schofield,
Where can I get a copy of The Rules?
My 13 year old son, needs them bad. Inspired by that “Yo mother” game on MTV2, he started practicing on his friend. When I warned him that he might get his teeth and his wire braces jammed down his throat, he inhaled and continued the verbal assault – I nearly kicked him in the nads myself!
I think some of this delusion that there will be no retaliation stems from the school’s “Zero tolerance doctrine”. When it comes to assault, it favors the initiator as there is almost zero risk of retaliation – unless the retaliator is willing to be punished with the initiator.
Rachel, I dig your blog.
Bye bye, you stupid douche. His friends should be charged with felony aggravated assault; as many counts as people willing to testify that they were also targeted.
I hadn’t noticed until Jeff’s post that this guy played baseball. Even a high school pitcher ought to be able to toss a hardball at 80 mph and should be able to get more than that from a golf ball. Third basemen, probably not quite so fast, but they can still throw hard enough to kill if it hits the wrong spot in someone’s head – and they should know it.
I just returned from a Cub Scout meeting where the Albuquerque Police Department was our special guest. I asked them if they were going to classify golf balls as lethal ammunition, and the Lieutenant mentioned that there is a law here in the ABQ categorized as “assault with a projectile” – it covers rocks, golf balls, pretty much anything you can throw. (He didn’t say this, but I think that charges may be forthcoming towards the surviving members of the roving band of maurauders…)
There’s nothing else that needs to be said. Also: DAMN FUNNY. This one needs a beverage warning prior to reading.