Utah Family Man Shoots Innocent Person
Bernard Campos and David Serbeck are both ordinary, reasonable middle-aged family men living in Utah. Both parents of multiple children, one a CPA, the other a former army sniper. Neither have any mental illness or are known to have committed any crimes. However, due to bad timing and a couple of guns, one is paralyzed and the other on trial.
Serbek's neighborhood had been targeted by a spate of minor crimes -- mailbox thefts. There was a description of the vehicle, so he and a friend, the president of the homeowners association, decided to cruise around looking for the car. While looking, they stopped quickly to avoid hitting two girls and claim that they said to them "Be safe going home." A few minutes later they saw a car they thought matched the description and followed it, giving up when the car sped onto a main street. It was almost midnight.
A bit earlier, Campos had received a call from his daughter, who told him that a man had almost accidentally hit him in a car and that she was disturbed by the exchange. She had gone to get her car and retrieve a couple of friends from a party, and also claimed that Serbecks car had been following her for a while.
Fast forward to Campos finding Serbeck still looking for the mailbox thieves. What transpired isn't completely clear, but the two exchanged a few sentences. Both carried guns and Serbek wound up on the wrong side of the exchange. More details on this story can be found here.
At it's face, this case appears to be a textbook example for gun control rights. Two reasonably normal people, motivated by all the right reasons in a confusing and emotionally charged situation. In the heat of the moment they reached for the convenience of their nearby weapon and one innocent man will never walk and the other may go to prison (and regardless will spend the rest of his life knowing he shot an innocent man).
No lives were in danger, no one had called the police for help.
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Cmon, we all guilty of something. Bulletin!!!! beep beep beep Never - I say never - bring a knife to a gunfight.
First and last, let's cut through the smoke and mirrors:
The anecdotal is NEVER an "example" of anything, except to demonstrate the statistical possiblity of the exceedingly rare.
Neither man is " innocent ". If you point a gun at another person, you can expect to draw fire. If you don't intend to shoot someone, and don't want to get shot, don't point your gun at people.
If brains were dynamite, neither one of these morons would have enough to blow their noses. The extreme rarity of such events is a testament to the fact the vast majority of gun owners are possessed of far better sense than these two half wits.
Up until this event, neither man had committed a crime . Thus, until the firearms were produced, both were " innocent ."
Secondly, I do think anecdotes serve the purpose of examples, especially when they aren't isolated cases. Many homicides in which firearms were used are the result of misunderstanding or misuse of a firearm... this is but one example. If this kind of thing virtually never happens, I would agree that the anecdote was not a reasonable example.
Lastly, neither of these men, it would appear, were stupid. Both thought they were protecting the community and/or their loved ones. Both were within their legal rights to carry a firearm. CPAs and former snipers aren't typically low IQ people (again my assumption/opinion). What part of their behavior, other than being unable to make good decisions when under pressure qualifies them as stupid?
A lawyer once stated a general principal of law I've found quite useful ever since, "If a thing seems wrong , there's a rule or law that says it's wrong. All you have to do is find it."
I'll offer a couple examples under Washington law, mainly because I know where to find it and am too lazy to look up similar statutes for other states.
"Aims any firearm, whether loaded or not, at or towards any human being" is a gross misdemeanor good for up to a year in jail.
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9 .41.230
"A person is guilty of drive-by shooting when he or she recklessly discharges a firearm as defined in RCW 9.41.010 in a manner which creates a substantial risk of death or serious physical injury to another person and the discharge is either from a motor vehicle or from the immediate area of a motor vehicle that was used to transport the shooter or the firearm, or both, to the scene of the discharge." is a Class B felony good for up to ten years in prison .
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A .36.045
Unless the law in Utah is dramatically different than in Washington, or the accounts in the media seriously misrepresented the acts of these two, I think any argument about being innocent has to fail. First offense might be accurate, however.
RE: "Up until this event, neither man had committed a crime . Thus, until the firearms were produced, both were " innocent .""
So is a robber before hitting his first bank. I don't know of any place in the country where intimidation with a weapon is not a criminal offense. From the moment both men began brandishing firearms, they both became criminals. The are decidedly NOT innocents.
RE: "Secondly, I do think anecdotes serve the purpose of examples, especially when they aren't isolated cases."
Beg pardon? If it's not isolated, it's not anecdotal.
RE: "Many homicides in which firearms were used are the result of misunderstanding or misuse of a firearm"
Your source of information, please? The vast majority of homicides are committed by persons who know the victim well. Most of what's left is associated with criminal acts. Accidents don't count, as this wasn't an accident. If you can show me statistically meaningful data to support the idea vigilantees shooting each other is a common occurance, I'll withdraw the comment and appologize. I don't think that's going to happen, but I'll make the offer anyway.
RE: "Lastly, neither of these men, it would appear, were stupid."
Driving around looking for strangers to point guns at is stupid, anyway you slice it. Inate intelligence doesn't have anything to do with it.
RE: "Both thought they were protecting the community and/or their loved ones."
The community was in no apparent danger, and neither was the other man's daughter. She was safe and snug at home, while daddy decided he was going to go driving around with his gun, looking for trouble. The only possible motivation under the circumstances was to get revenge for the perceived slight on his daughter, by showing some stranger a thing or two by waving his gun around. The same goes for the goof hunting mailbox vandals.
RE: "What part of their behavior, other than being unable to make good decisions when under pressure qualifies them as stupid?"
Neither man reasonably expected to confront another armed person. They both set out with the goal of being able to intimidate an unarmed person with their weapons "to get even". Neither was "under pressure" when they set out looking for trouble.
I don't know if you are a gun owner or not. I am and have a license to carry. I rarely carry for all of the reasons stated above. If I draw a weapon against an unarmed person, because I think it will help win an argument, that automatically makes me the bad guy under existing law and I go to jail. If I draw a weapon against an armed person, I stand a good chance of getting shot. Neither of those outcomes would "make my day". I'm not Rambo or Dirty Harry, and owning or carrying a gun doesn't make me feel ten feet tall. I don't drive around looking for trouble. If at some future time I perceive there is a clear and present danger, I will most likely arm myself to the extent I deem necessary to deal with trouble I didn't start. I don't consider mailbox vandals a clear and present danger. I don't consider someone telling a family member to watch for traffic before crossing the street a clear and present danger.
In sum, this incident IS anecdotal, and it IS exceedingly rare for the simple reason most gun owners really aren't as stupid as these two clowns. Both of them reasonably should have known intimidation with a firearm is an illegal act, which puts them outside any argument related to law abiding gun owners anyhow. If they'd been doing it the way they should have been doing it, it wouldn't have happened.
As a suggestion, go to your local video store and rent "The Darwin Awards". If you haven't seen it, it's reasonably amusing and is more or less based on real world accounts of really stupid things people have done. Once you've had a chance to watch it, I'd ask you to entertain the following mental exercise : Stretch your imagination as far as possible and try to come up with a practical legislative act that will prevent stupid people from doing stupid things, in order to keep them safe from their own stupidity. Maybe you can come up with an idea I haven't, but so far I haven't been able to think of anything I believe would have any effect whatsoever.
Guns, bows, knives, blunt objects, or bare hands, the outcome would have been the same because the brains behind what happened were wired wrong .
"Bernard Campos and David Serbeck are both ordinary, reasonable middle-aged family men living in Utah . Both parents of multiple children , one a CPA, the other a former army sniper."
As a US Veteran, I can honestly say I have met many, many CPA's, but I only know one Sniper. There is nothing ordinary about an Army sniper. I also know that a sniper is never going to rack his semi automatic, it is not how they are trained. Who in this set of two has more gun training? The CPA, or the Sniper? The fact that they found the gun lying with the safety on and a bullet in the chamber tells me who was lying. The CPA, with no skills and a bad temper in need to protect his daughter, shoots an an armed man who just ID'd himself as a Townwatch member.
CPA? You are going to jail.
You may be right, but you can't dismiss the fact that the sniper used poor judgement chasing a young girl at night with an SUV and a loaded weapon. Being trained at firearms usage doesn't automatically mean he made the right decisions.
He didn't know it was a young girl , and he ID'd himself to the father as a member of the townwatch.
I also know that people with LTCF's have a less than .01% chance of being shot. With possibly over a million having a license, this will occasionally pop up. I would never embellish a tragedy like this, as Russel Fine has done to attempt to prove we need more gun laws /restrictions.
Would he have written this if the father had beaten the other man with a baseball bat ? Let's outlaw baseball bats?
Again, in this story you have a writer attempting to equalize the gun knowledge of an Army Sniper and that of a CPA? It tends to lose credibility immediately, and that was the first paragraph!
So I lose interest in the story because the writer knows very little of what he is speaking of.
No amount of gun control would have prevented this.
Both men were acting with good intentions and both were well within their legal rights to be carrying. Bad decisions may have been made by one or both men, but since I was not there, I can only go by what is reported here and in other news stories.
The OP, Mr. Fine, also used a term I am unfamiliar with: "Gun Control Rights". Do either of you understand this? Did the OP mean 'gun control' or ' gun rights '? The terms are incompatible, imo.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
And thanks for reading my post and responding. I do agree that our current gun control laws , and even those that are being considered, would not have stopped this incident form occurring.
People who believe that we have the right to carry arms commonly use the argument that armed citizens are in a position to confront and defuse would-be criminals. However, I rarely hear of a story in which that actually occurred.
On the other side, people who want more gun control, claim that if people weren't carrying guns , there would be fewer deaths due to heated situations getting out of control. In this case, I do read, fairly often, about incidents such as this one wherein if the two people hadn't had guns, a homicide would not have been a likely outcome.