Good Samaritans
Good Samaritans are supposed to assist the injured, right? Rescue people from wrecked, burning automobiles, or out of flaming houses?
Well, of course. Remember the original Good Samaritan bathed and bandaged a man of another ethnicity who had been beaten and robbed along the road.
But I saw a couple of real-life incidents on Tru-TV the other night (not reality — actuality!) that made me think we’ve lost the essence of the Good Samaritan in this country — which can be not just aiding the afflicted after the fact, but stepping in with some muscle to end intolerable situations before they’re all over with and those who caused them have gone on their merry way.
First case in point: Surveillance video from a city bus in Columbus, Ohio, where a young hoodlum wearing a hoodie (what an appropriate name considering how many young malefactors wear them these days!) gets onto the bus, asking the driver how soon the next stop is. After the driver tells him, the punk bides his time, eyeing a portable CD player in the hand of another young man on the bus. The tape isn’t clear enough to show the race of the hood in the hoodie for sure, but as it’s a big-city bus it’s not hard to guess.
Anyway, as the bus nears its next stop, the hood suddenly lunges for the young man’s CD player, apparently intending to seize it and race off the bus. But the victim isn’t going to just let his possession go; he grabs the perp and struggles with him, finally managing to jerk off his hoodie and shirt. This enrages the hood, who begins beating the victim unmercifully. Meanwhile, the tape shows the other passengers on the bus cowering in fear and offering no help to the courageous victim. The driver, having stopped the bus by this time, tiptoes back to get a closer look, then tiptoes away again, apparently anxious not to further enrage the perp.
Finally, the victim manages to grab the hoodlum in a man’s most vulnerable spot. The perp screams and jerks away, his pants falling down in the process. Then he simply gathers up his scattered clothes and swaggers — yes, not runs, but SWAGGERS — out the side door of the bus that the driver has been considerate enough to leave open for him. The coveted CD player has fallen and been kicked up the aisle of the bus in the struggle, so the victim doesn’t lose his property after all.
The thing that crossed my mind immediately when I was watching this disgusting video was, “Too bad there wasn’t an NRA member with a Concealed Carry on him on the bus. Better yet, two of them. That hood wouldn’t be able to snatch and run anymore.”
The failure of even one passenger, let alone the driver, to offer any help to the victim was absolutely appalling. Since the narrator said, “By the time police arrive, the perp is long gone,” apparently no one even tried to call 911 on a cell phone.
The other incident occurred at a convenient store in Florida, if memory serves me correctly. A tall, skinny dude, with “arrogance” written all over him, walks right up to the counter, displays a pistol to the stocky woman at the cash register, and demands all the till. Having no alternative, she opens it for him, and he cleans out the register, stuffing all the folding money into his pockets before walking out as if he owned the store.
Fast forward to about two weeks later. The same thug, having gotten away clean with his earlier heist, walks in again, waving his pistol and making the same demand. The same clerk is at the register. But she’s about to show him that this is one white woman who’s not going to just give in to him a second time. Ducking out of sight of the surveillance camera for a couple of seconds, she re-emerges armed with a baseball bat and advances on him menacingly.
The perp, seeing that his clever little plan is going badly awry, threatens her with the pistol while backing up to avoid getting socked. He grabs the cash register with one hand, apparently thinking he will just carry the whole thing away — but, surprise, Jake, it’s attached to the counter.
The clerk advances on the hood, bat raised, and every time he tries to level the pistol at her she smacks at his hand and the gun. Two or three men who are in the store back off, not offering to help the clerk in any way. Way to go, guys; just let a woman do your fighting for you!
Finally it dawns on the thug that he’s not going to get the money, but that he may get a goose egg from that bat. He flees out the door by the cash register, closely pursued by the clerk who’s trying to knock a home run with his head. The men in the store, the danger having receded sufficiently, finally get brave enough to follow her out the door. The narrator doesn’t say, but hopefully this time the arrogant thief didn’t get away.
What’s the point of my telling you all the above? Just this: There are violent criminals among us, no matter where we might live. There are times that the public has to step up and take action to foil such criminal acts, because the police can’t be everywhere at once. It’s for a good reason that many states, including Indiana, have passed the “Concealed Carry” laws. If most of these thugs knew that a lot of us were carrying concealed weapons, they wouldn’t display nearly the bravado that many do — as shown in the two Tru-TV episodes.
Muscular Good Samaritans
Old Corporal <corporalko@yahoo.com>
Saturday, December 06, 2008 at 21:47:07 (EST)
