Today is September 12, the 255th day of the year; 110 days remain until the end of the year. The anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko was beaten to death by South African police on this date in 1977. Anthony Perkins, Raymond Burr, Johnny Cash, and David Foster Wallace all also died on this date in 1992, 1993, 2003, and 2008, respectively. Impermanence is swift.
Today is Leonard Peltier's birthday The American Indian activist and militant member of the American Indian Movement is 77. Peltier will be celebrating his birthday from a jail cell as he is currently serving two consecutive life sentences for the alleged murder of two FBI agents in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. Today, his birthday, will be his 16,665th day in jail following his February 6, 1976 arrest in Alberta, Canada, less three days in 1979 during which he had briefly escaped.
The sun rose at 7:19 a.m. this morning and will set at 7:47 p.m. tonight for 12 hours and 28 minutes of daylight. The waxing crescent moon is 38.8% full and rose at 1:23 p.m. this afternoon. It will set at 11:40 p.m. this evening.
Tropical Storm Nicholas has developed in the western Gulf of Mexico and is heading north toward the Texas coast. On its forecast track, the center of Nicholas will pass near or just off the coasts of northeastern Mexico and south Texas late Monday, and then move inland from the coast near Houston on Monday night or early Tuesday. The storm is expected to strengthen as it moves north, although it is not currently expected to develop into a hurricane.
The latest violence in the on-going Great Buckhead Crimewave resulted in the wounding of one man and the death of another in the parking lot of the Peachtree Battle Shopping Center, about a mile and a half northeast of my home. In addition to several restaurants and shops, the shopping center contains a Publix supermarket. That Publix was my regular, go-to supermarket for several years until they opened an even closer Publix market about a half-mile west of me.
Social media, especially Nextdoor, r/Atlanta, and a neighborhood TM network I'm in, all exploded with the news. "Oh my god," they cried, "Nowhere is safe anymore." The outcry got even worse with the subsequent news that there was another shooting that same afternoon at the Treehouse Restaurant, a cozy eatery in a residential neighborhood near the Peachtree Battle Shopping Center. Advocates for a separate Buckhead City were not at all reluctant to immediately claim that the shootings were just more evidence for secession.
The actual facts may not support their a priori conclusion. It turns out that two teenagers were caught by the owner breaking into a car parked at the Publix supermarket. The owner confronted them and the confrontation quickly escalated, and the owner reportedly started shooting to defend himself. One of the teens ran from the scene, shooting off rounds as he fled. One of his shots apparently hit and killed the other teen. The gunman ran to the nearby Treehouse Restaurant, where he was apprehended by the police and taken to the hospital for a gunshot wound to the wrist.
So, in fact, there weren't two separate shootings as initially reported. There was a shoot-out at one location, and arrest of the perpetrator at the other location. Same crime, two scenes.
The wounded gunman has been charged with felony murder, breaking and entering an automobile, and possession of a firearm by a person under 18, among other related charges. No charges will be filed against the owner of the car.
The facts of the crime are only slightly more reassuring than the initial assumption that some innocent shopper had been randomly killed by armed criminals. It bothers me that the owner of the car was apparently armed while grocery shopping in Publix. It bothers me that other shoppers around me at my "new" Publix may also be packing. Georgia's concealed weapons laws aren't as full-on Looney Tunes as Texas' new laws, but they're still pretty lenient.
If you're packing a pistol to go food shopping at Publix, you must feel that you're already in danger. When you're packing a pistol and see two teenagers breaking and entering into your car, you're going to use that gun to justify your decision to be strapped in the first place (if you spend enough time in a barber shop, sooner or later you're going to get a haircut).
The shootout didn't need to happen. The owner should have yelled at them, backed away, and notified security. Let the insurance company worry about replacing the car or whatever you had in it. It's not worth dying for and its certainly not worth killing for. There's no merit to letting a situation escalate to the point where bullets are flying and one criminal accidentally kills the other. That errant bullet could just as easily have struck a passer-by or a child. Given a slightly different set of circumstances, it could just as easily have hit me (I had gone shopping at the other Publix earlier that afternoon).
I'm not denying the increase in crime in Buckhead, or saying that the two teens brazenly breaking into a car in broad daylight in a crowded parking lot aren't a part of the Crimewave. But I'm also saying that the criminals are only part of the problem. The other part is too many guns in too many people's hands.
If the car owner hadn't been armed, what would otherwise have been a simple theft (it's still not clear if they were going to steal the car or just the contents in the car) escalated into a traumatic homicide. One teen is now dead and the other one is facing incarceration, institutionalization, and marginalization from society. His life is ruined. To be sure, that's due to his bad decisions, but we can't dismiss the decision of the owner to bring his gun while grocery shopping so he could "stand his ground" between the produce section and the shopping-cart return as a factor.
Too many guns. The gun in their pocket probably made the two teens feel emboldened to break into a car in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of a busy parking lot. The owner probably felt emboldened to confront them and be his own policeman by the gun that he was carrying. None of this needed to happen.
Tellingly, the Buckhead City Committee is not looking at this incident and advocating for popular and common-sense gun-control legislation. No, they're saying that we need still more police and a separate city to provide those additional cops.
The solution, apparently, to all problems is more guns and more cops.
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