Monday, March 03, 2008

Batty Old Ladies with Guns

This country is such an embarrassment sometimes:

It all started so innocently as I sat with a group of Danish journalists just down the street from Bush's ranch during a visit by Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The two leaders were having lunch on the ranch, so I was waiting at a nearby historic one-room schoolhouse with White House staff to interview Rasmussen after the meal. Then the prime minister was going to do a brief press conference with the Danish press corps.

Terkel Svensson, a writer for the Danish News Agency, could not get wireless Internet access at the schoolhouse to file a story. But Svensson could get his cell phone working so he called his editor inCopenhagen and started wandering across a quiet country road as he chatted away.

"I was just so occupied dictating my story that I didn't really see where I went," Svensson told me later. "I was just walking and talking."

What Svensson didn't realize was that he hadstopped walking a couple hundred feet away, on the front lawn of an elderly woman. An elderly woman who looked through her window and didn't like that a strange man was standing outside her house. An elderly woman who had, um, a gun.


Next thing you know the woman is outside, no more than a few dozen feet from the journalist, demanding that he leave. "Suddenly she comes out and she says, 'Get off my property. You're trespassing,'" recalled Svensson.

Svensson was too preoccupied to notice the pistol, and was not aware that Texas law gives homeowners leeway on using a weapon when someone is trespassing on your property. All of us journalists across the street were too far away to see the pistol at first, until a Danish photographer with a telephoto lens announced to a bunch of us that there was indeed a weapon in the elderly woman's right hand.

As word spread that the lady had a gun - which she did not use - I can tell you it's a severe understatement to say White House and Secret Service officials were a bit concerned about the fact that they had just dodged an international incident. Ditto for Svensson, who was alarmed when he safely crossed the street and was shown dramatic still photos of the lady holding the gun.

More guns please. After all, Danish journo-fascists can only be deterred though a show of armed force.

I have no more information on the matter, but I bet this woman had nothing done to her for this incident. Even if you believe everyone has the right to own guns, isn’t something like this an abuse of that right? Shouldn’t there be at least some provocation before you can draw a gun on someone? And no, standing on a lawn talking on a cell phone does not constitute provocation. Put a fence up you old bag if you don’t want people on your lawn.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really dont understand why you would be upset with the woman. Was she pointing the gun at the guy? It was her property after all. How big was her lot? Being near Bush's ranch it was probably at least several acres (ie. "in the country".) She didnt fire the gun. I dont know what the private property laws are in the Netherlands but here in the US, at least in Texas, we have the right to protect our property. We dont know if this lady has had problems with trespassers or illegals in the past. I see no fault with what she did, not any laws that she broke.

Dave said...

Danish = Denmark
Dutch = Netherlands

And what exactly was this man doing to the woman�s property that required �protection�? Standing on her lawn talking on a cell phone? That is not at all threatening. If he persists on standing there, and she can�t stand to look at him for whatever reason, call the cops and let them settle the matter. Guns were not needed. Things could have gone terribly and unnecessarily wrong simply because someone absent mindedly wondered the wrong direction. My guess is that this man wouldn't have to worry about such lunacy in Denmark.

Anonymous said...

Well, clearly the Dane reporter was calling in an air strike from the Black Helicopters flying overhead. Of course she was to stupid to realize that now she was standing outside (and not in the shelter of her aluminum foil lined home) and an easy target of the mind control wave from the helicopters.

Only rational people would say the reporter was not a threat.