The problem with our lack of gun control in this nation is that many of our people are idiots, and we place destructive firepower in their hands.
Allen S. Davis was sentenced last month to 19 years in prison after pleading guilty in a shooting incident on his front lawn. A jury would have had a difficult time believing he could see well enough to pull off a head shot, yet couldn’t see well enough to determine that his “attackers” were two teenaged girls trying to catch a closer look at his “spooky house”.
As the judge said during sentencing, “…in this country, life is valued over property, and if someone is fleeing your property or on your property but not threatening you, you’re not allowed to just shoot them.”
Rachel Berezinsky, now 18, is paying a harsher price for trampling the grass on the sections of his property closest to the street than Davis is for recklessly firing two bullets that nearly ended her life. His sentence is nineteen years in prison. Hers is a lifetime in a wheelchair, as the bullets crippled the entire left side of her body.
When I read about this case, I couldn’t help thinking back to the Yoshihiro Hattori murder (And yes folks, despite what a jury says, this was a murder). On October 17, 1992, Hattori, a Japanese exchange student staying with a host family in Baton Rouge, was cut down by a bullet from yet another panicky homeowner.
Hattori and his friend Webb Haymaker had been invited to a Halloween party and got the address wrong. Neither of the boys were wearing anything that would obscure their identities— To the contrary, Hattori was dressed up in a “Saturday night Fever” disco suit. Yet when the two of them knocked at the door, Bonnie Peairs looked at her husband and said “Rodney, get your gun.”
Hattori and Haymaker went back to their car and were about to get in when Rodney Peairs answered the door. Haymaker saw the gun, but Hattori did not. As Hattori walked back to the door explaining in broken English that they were there for the party, Peairs fired a shot into his chest.
Hattori died in the ambulance a few minutes later from blood loss.
The defense in the criminal trial depended on making stupid sound reasonable. The boys rang the doorbell and never attempted to look inside a window; Yet the defense had to convince a jury that the Peairs family had reason to believe they were intruders. Rodney Peairs was a large man over six feet tall; Yet they had to convince a jury that he was reasonable to be frightened of a small Japanese boy weight only 130 pounds dressed not in a terrifying mask, but a white suit.
“You were safe and secure, weren’t you?” [District Attorney] Moreau asked Peairs during his appearance before the grand jury. “But you didn’t call the police, did you?”
“No sir.” Peairs said.
“Did you hear anyone trying to break in the front door?”
“No sir.”
“Did you hear anyone trying to break in the carport door?”
“No sir.”
“And you were standing right there at the door, weren’t you – with a big gun?”
Peairs nodded.
“I know you’re sorry you killed him. You are sorry, aren’t you?”
“Yes sir.”
“But you did kill him, didn’t you?”
“Yes sir.”
This is yet another weakness in the argument of gun control zealots who try and pretend that limiting the availability of the Street Sweeper is somehow tantamount to telling people they can’t defend their homes— How many times do Americans have to be demonstrated as having been too stupid to make the judgment call?
A jury didn’t have “a difficult time believing” anything, my man. The Allen Davis case was pleaded out before the first witness was put on the stand. The judge – in a quote you did not cite – also indicated the girls did something “stoopid” themselves. Yes, you can’t just shoot people who aren’t threatening you, but that sort of begs the question doesn’t it? Did this guy Allen Davis think he was being threatened? Certainly he did. Why? Well, he had shot at them once already that night, and they came back. They were on his property when he shot at them the first time. Is the guy a whack job? Undoubtedly. Did he deserve 19 years — which is 9-10 years more than other judges of the very same court that sentenced Davis gave to an unrepentant child molester and a cold-blooded murderer, respectively — who knows?
Busted for poor editing. That should have read “would have had”. Correcting it before coming back to look at the rest of your blather.
The judge – in a quote you did not cite – also indicated the girls did something “stoopid” themselves.
Perhaps because it was irrelevant? Those kids could make it up to the front door and still not give anyone but an idiot grounds to shoot them.
Did he deserve 19 years — which is 9-10 years more than other judges of the very same court that sentenced Davis gave to an unrepentant child molester and a cold-blooded murderer, respectively — who knows?
Got a case cite for that, or by “same court” are you referring to an entire state at once?
Under our legal system, idiots have rights, too, and one of those rights is the right of self-defense.
You already know where I stand on this issue, so I’m not going to repeat myself. But I will say this much: never underestimate the fight / flight response of a total buffoon. You’ll have better luck selling honey to bears.
If I may play devil’s advocate for a moment (or concern troll, take your pick), I think you should take a look at what the Tennessee Constitution has to say about this matter.
Section 26. That the citizens of this state have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defense; but the legislature shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms with a view to prevent crime.
Not bad, eh? It seems like a nice way of reconciling our varying points of view, doesn’t it? And it just happens to be the law of the land.
Let me see if I get this right: So the guy above is telling us that shooting children is an acceptable form of punishment for stupid behavior?
If Davis was feeling “threatened” by these two girls, and this was the second occurrence of said incident in the same night, wouldn’t he have been better off calling the cops instead of shooting them? Just saying!
Seems to me that both parties might have been as idiotic to some degree, but Davis had a gun, and he used it, and he ruined the girls’ lives, unnecessarily.
Davis’ misguided judgment and reckless behavior had deadly consequences, so do not try to sell me the idea that his action was motivated and justified by the menaces of two stupidly curious girls.
Rick and I don’t always see eye to eye on this issue, but I am with him on this one. Some people out there simply should not own guns, for the sake of everyone else around them.
Our lax gun control laws have enabled dealers to flood urban areas with. How can making it easier for, say, malicious crack kingpins to get their hands on guns be a step in the right direction? I argue in my op-ed on the Huffington Posttoday that while the way to get to the root of most social problems is to provide economic opportunity, it’s foolish to repeal gun control laws. Check it out hereand please share your comments.
“Got a case cite for that, or by “same court” are you referring to an entire state at once?”
Yes, I do: actually I have three.
The first is a guy who killed somebody and got 4 friggin’ years. That is one year for the murder, plus 3 yrs for the handgun specificiation (if you use a gun, you get 3 yr. automatcially). So here goes with the first one.
20-YEAR-OLD GETS 4 YEARS IN PRISON FOR DEADLY FIGHT
Published: Tuesday, August 21, 2007
NEWS 03B
By John Futty
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
A 20-year-old North Side man struck a deal with prosecutors yesterday and admitted his involvement in a fight that led to a fatal shooting outside a Franklinton strip club. Tyler Henderson of 1906 E. Hudson St. is already serving a five-year sentence after pleading guilty in September to aggravated assault and tampering with evidence in the beating death of a friend. He pleaded guilty yesterday to two counts of attempted felonious assault in the shooting case, which left one man dead and another injured a year ago outside Downtown Dolls, 1334 W. Broad St. Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Steven L. McIntosh imposed a four-year sentence, but it won’t add to Henderson’s prison time because it will be served concurrent to his previous sentence.
“You have some growing up to do,” McIntosh told Henderson, expressing concern that Henderson declined to make a comment in court before sentencing. Assistant County Prosecutor John Graceffo said Henderson was involved in a shoving match that began in the club but did not fire the shots that killed Andre D. Price II and wounded security guard Chris Carter on Aug. 10, 2006. Henderson and two others were escorted from the club after the scuffle, but told club employees, “This isn’t over,” Graceffo said. The fight eventually reignited on the sidewalk outside the club, where shots were fired. Two juveniles who were with Henderson at the club, including one suspected of pulling the trigger, have not been charged in the case but were still under investigation. Henderson was out on bail in the Feb. 8, 2006, beating death of Daniel Estes, 46, when the shooting occurred. Police said Henderson and Estes met at a vacant house next door to Henderson’s, and a talk turned into a fistfight. The coroner ruled Estes died of severe head trauma.
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So, the guy is OUT ON BAIL, kills somebody, gets 4 years….from a judge in the SAME court as Judge Lynch (interesting somewhat ironic choice of names, here) is regarding the Allen Davis case.
Next up is a guy who got sentenced in a neighboring county (no, this is NOT the example I was referring to…but you will see my point in a bit.) This clown SEXUALLY attacks a completely innocent 8 year old girl in a friggin’ church restroom and gets….ten years!
MAN GETS 10 YEARS FOR ATTACK ON GIRL
Published: Thursday, August 16, 2007
NEWS 03B
By Mary Beth Lane
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
A Columbus man who admitted attacking an 8-year-old girl inside the men’s restroom of New Life Christian Center will serve 10 years in prison.
The girl’s mother said Randall B. Tharp, 24, got what he deserved. Tharp, who pleaded guilty Friday to kidnapping and gross sexual imposition, was sentenced yesterday. Judge Richard E. Berens of Fairfield County Common Pleas Court sentenced Tharp to 10 years for kidnapping, plus an additional five years in prison that were suspended. Behrens also ordered five years of intensive probation, a tighter level that means closer monitoring by a probation officer. Berens declared Tharp a sexual predator and ordered him to receive intensive sexual-offender treatment while he is in prison. The girl, visiting the church Nov. 29 with her grandmother, had gone to use the women’s restroom. Tharp approached her when she emerged and told her he wanted to show her something. He then grabbed her wrist and took her into the men’s restroom, where he tried to remove her underpants and dress. The girl, who weighs 50 or 60 pounds, screamed and kicked. The noise alerted a church usher who came to her aid. She was smart and quick-thinking, said Assistant Prosecutor Gregg Marx as he recounted her ordeal in court. Since then, the girl nearly failed second grade, cannot sleep and is afraid to be in her bedroom even when surrounded by her stuffed animals and the family’s large dog, her mother said yesterday. Attorney J. Tullis Rogers asked the judge for leniency, saying that his client has an IQ of 70.
Tharp said he was sorry: “I’d like to apologize to the family and to their church for what happened.”
mlane@dispatch.com
Not convinced? How about this last one – which is the one I was referring to. Note this was on July 12, within a week of Allen Davis’ sentencing and guilt plea. This will shock you – -
—
Michael J. Kairis, 33, pleaded guilty today to rape and gross sexual imposition. He faces up to 11½ years in prison and is to be sentenced on July 11 in Franklin County Common Pleas Court. In exchange for the plea, the county prosecutor’s office agreed to drop a sentence of life in prison, as the law specifies for the crime, so the girl would not have to testify. Kairis contacted the girl’s mother on-line and set up a date. They met in August and began a brief romance, Assistant Prosecutor Brant Cook said. The woman’s Web page mentioned that she is the proud mother of a girl, he said. One week later, the girl told her mom that Kairis had raped and groped her while in her house. Kairis, of 368½ Campbell Ave., threatened to kill the girl if she told anyone.
“There couldn’t be anyone more of a risk to the community than Mr. Kairis,” Cook told Judge John P. Bessey.
The mother, 33, was in court yesterday to see the plea, She said she did a computer search on Kairis after her daughter told her about the sex and was shocked to find his name on a Web site of sexual predators. “As soon as I saw his name on the list, I dropped MySpace. I don’t search online anymore and I don’t date,” the woman said. “I was in the house when this happened.” In court yesterday, the woman learned that Kairis has since married someone while in jail. Kairis’ attorney, Timothy Pierce, asked Bessey to let Kairis out on house arrest with an electronic monitor until July so he could take care of his terminally ill father and drug-addicted brother and also because he recently was married in jail and hadn’t had a honeymoon. But Bessey said no.
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So there you have it. Rick, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you view, ultimately – just that this guy Allen Davis exercised some amount of restraint for years (background is that he purchased gun in 1994, I believe) before he “snapped.”
“Let me see if I get this right: So the guy above is telling us that shooting children is an acceptable form of punishment for stupid behavior? If Davis was feeling “threatened” by these two girls, and this was the second occurrence of said incident in the same night, wouldn’t he have been better off calling the cops instead of shooting them? Just saying! Seems to me that both parties might have been as idiotic to some degree, but Davis had a gun, and he used it, and he ruined the girls’ lives, unnecessarily.
Davis’ misguided judgment and reckless behavior had deadly consequences, so do not try to sell me the idea that his action was motivated and justified by the menaces of two stupidly curious girls. Rick and I don’t always see eye to eye on this issue, but I am with him on this one. Some people out there simply should not own guns, for the sake of everyone else around them.”
Pam – This guy had a poor history of getting police cooperation. He lived like a recluse, by a cemetary, and did not know he was shooting at girls, teens, or anybody in particular. I’m not justifying that it is OK to shoot blindly through or out a window at a target you cannot perceive based on the speculative idea that some harm might befall you. In this regard, I’d encourage you (and anybody) to watch the TV interview of Davis after his arrest, link below – I will tell you it is quite long (more than 10 minutes of streaming video), but begins to round out the picture here.
http://wwwphp.dispatch.com/vplayer.php?clip=http://www.wbns10tv.com/sites/shared/vplayer/dynamicasx.php?clip=2006_08_23_An_Interview_with_Allen_Davis.wmv
Now, I pose this question: we have all sorts of idiots driving on our roads, so how do you enforce the ability of law enforcment to make somebody prove their competency to drive (or to own a gun, vote, or even, hell, marry and/or breed!)? Is our country better off with strict gun control/ownership laws, and if so, is there a slippery slope argument that would then prohibit people from essentially being idiots in all other facets of their lives that might lead to serious harm?
Food for thought. Thanks for your consideration.
Think,
Notice something the three cases you cited all have in common? They were plea bargains struck with the prosecution. There can be any number of reasons for a plea deal, including weakness of the case. I don’t know what the prosecutir actually had that would stand up in court, and because of the deals, we’ll never know. But as a general rule, if the cases were ironclad, I don’t think the defense would have been able to interest prosecutors in the deal. Bird in the hand and all.
The judges signed off on those sentences— But they did not hand them down. The prosecutor rejected a plea deal in this one because Davis, while he freely admits to the shooting, refuses to acknowledge that he did anything wrong and has said he would do it again. Thanks to the rejection of that deal, curious kids in Ohio are protected for nine years longer than they would have been had prosecutors settled for the ten years he offered up.
Davis plead guilty, but did not have a deal in place. Prosecutors, police, and Judge Lynch all walked the crime scene, and where the shooting took place did not even meet the legal standard of trespass. They were on his property no further than a girl scout selling cookies would be, or a door to door salesman.
As far as him not having a record of police cooperation, this is from the Columbus Dispatch: “And they say that if Davis was scared, he should have called police, which he hadn’t done in more than 10 years.”
Yes, he had the gun for 13 years before shooting anyone with it. On the other hand, Orenthal James Simpson had cutlery in the silverware drawer for nearly half a century. Doesn’t mean he should be walking around free. Oh wait…
Now, I pose this question: we have all sorts of idiots driving on our roads, so how do you enforce the ability of law enforcment to make somebody prove their competency to drive (or to own a gun, vote, or even, hell, marry and/or breed!)?
Guns have but one use when you boil everything down to its most basic principle. The gun is designed to propel a small projectile that is supposed to tear through flesh.
That actually puts it in a different category than a car, without which it’s near impossible to live in most cities. However, to drive, vote, or marry, the legal standard is set higher than it is in most states. While handguns are a little more strict, any of us can walk into a sporting goods store and walk out with a rifle. If I want to marry, I better get a license.
The video doen’t show for me. Tried it in two browsers. If it plays for anyone else, drop me a note and give me a heads up on what I’m doing wrong.
Thanks.
PS: Regarding your comments initially not appearing— Due to a dearth of spam on the blogs, we’ve got it set up here so that anything with a link in it needs to be approved before it goes up. We’ll not use it as a censorship tool— Just bear with us.
I know Allen Davis. I grew up around him in Worthington , Ohio. My brother actually lives down the street from his house. I am not by any means friends with him, but I do know him and his history, because we went to school together. If anyone has any questions, let me know.
I know that Allen has been tormented his whole life for being different and being raised that way. He has never spoken to me. He was conditioned to be different from everyone else, and that caused him problems in school growing up. He wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone in school. EVER! Even when people would try to say hi or be nice; he never replied. This in a sense made him an outcast. I really do believe that he lived in a fantasy world of his own, because he had no one to talk with.
He may have even shot at someone before and missed. He may have shot someone later if she hadn’t been there. He obviously had no perception of the consequences.
I will always instill in my child to never under any circumstanced to tease kids or to harass them at home. Not only because it’s bad Karma, but because you may find yourself in a life threatening situation for any little thing you do.
This girl did not deserve to get shot, but she put herself there.Where were her parents? You never know who’s out there trying to hurt your kids.
I was actually leaving my brothers house from picking up my daughter when this all happened. It was a shocker. I thought some kids had been caught messing around in the cemetery by his house, so I drove on.
When I found out what had happend, I cried inside for her and then I remembered him as a child when we were in school and then I cried inside for him. He really needed to be put in a full security mental institution. He’s been so brainwashed that he really needs help.He has probably been a dangerous mind all these years. Who knew?
In memory of Yoshihiro Hattori. I was shocked at your senseless murder in 1992, and my heart goes out to your parents. Although I never met you, I will never forget you.
[...] Here’s another perfectly legal gun owner using his perfectly legal "tool"… Allen S. Davis was sentenced last month to 19 years in prison after pleading guilty in a (2007) shooting incident [...]
You know you really should get your shit strait. Your facts are completely not true and this all happened about how many years ago with my father, Rodney Peairs. The ignorance of this days youth has made my family crippled. Because some dumbass kid that was acting like a retaurd got killed. For example: If this kid would have been walking up to my dad and stopped for my father to see his face then none of this would have happened. If the country were more strick on the acohol distribution then none of this would have happened. If no one can proove that yoshi wasnt drunk then i really think he was. If he was a scholar then he should have known our English well enough to speak clearly. So get your facts strait MY FATHER WAS PROTECTING ME AND MY BROTHER AND SISTER FROM THIS JAPANESE`angel` so you say.`DEVIL` what i say, from killing me and my family. So Mr. Rick Maynard. SUCK MY DICK AND BURN IN HAIL!
yes i have a place in my heart for the parents of yoshi. What happened was a very terrible accident but bringing up old stuff that happened more than 16 years ago isnt going to make things any more better. If you dont have your facts strait about what actually happened, then you will have more than just pissed off people on your back but lawsuits. I think that i am not just the only one that has these feelings. There is more than just me that has a loved one doing time or living under this shadow of everyone elses lies. If you would like to share your opinion on your case or have any feelings that you would like to talk about then please just email me at 1984mustang@live.com.
Hey Ryan Peairs,
I’m not sure what point you were trying to prove with your unreadable, rambling and elementary-level comments. You’re saying that boy (who is dead, by the way, because of your father) couldn’t speak English well enough, so it’s his fault entirely? Have you seen the way that you write? You are born and raised in an English speaking country and you don’t even know the basics of grammar and spelling. It’s absolutely shameful. To make matters worse, you’re justifying the death of someone. There are no excuses. It’s absolutely disgusting that you have no remorse. People like you make me feel sick about the United States. You talk about ignorance -how about getting an education in your NATIVE language and having an educated, comprehensible discussion rather than depicting what a low-life thing you are (you’re not even worthy of being called a human-being)? Furthermore, why are you bringing race into this? Did he deserve to die because he was Japanese? How could you feel if YOUR child died because he was in a foreign country and someone attributed it to him being Caucasian?
And just so you know, although it was sixteen years ago, it will not go unremembered or unmentioned. The only reason I found out about this incident was because it was mentioned in my recently published psychology textbook regarding errors in social judgment. There’s also a picture of your beloved father, so let him know that he’s infamous.
Today is is the 17th anniversary of Yoshihiro Hattori’s death.
http://tokyo5.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/october-17/