Hell in a Handbasket

I respectfully disagree.

That footage should have indeed been broadcast.

Without that, no one of us would have known how heartless and condescending Ms. Aguillar was.

That video told the rest of us, at the time we saw it, what you just put into text above.

Should she have been fired? Perhaps not.

But airing this video was important to all of us.

Just as much as you're teaching of defense tactics to those who desperately need it.

The reporter was very confrontational...you could hear it in her voice, and see it in her posture. Firing was appropriate...I would'nt want to be associated with that woman either.

Thanks for that perspective. I have a good friend who was mugged and her purse snatched as she walked to her car from the supermarket. She is going to be released from the hospital now, but few people stop to think that her life will NEVER be the same. Her husband is a US Marine veteran of WWII. He hit the beaches at Tarawa. He is still tough on the inside but, as you noted, your average 12 year old could have beaten him to a pulp. I haven't had a chance to talk to him yet but he must be really hurting because even if he was there, there wasn't much he could have done.
I was amazed when I saw that video of that reporter and the way she treated that old man. I am glad she has been fired. "Hispanic Reporter of the Year" my foot.

She got what she deserved. I only hope it serves as a warning to other aggressive reporters who put their fame first, the job second, and the public not at all.

"Is the loss of a job appropriate for something like this?"

Yes.

Hmmmm.

Ultimately a reporter is supposed to report the story and not make value judgments. She violated the rule so she's gone.

And let's face it. Browbeating a 69 year old man who is still very shaken up is wrong in any context.

Unless you're running a tabloid, nearly accusing an individual of committing murder before the court cases are even seriously begun is worthy of a quick pink slip.

That's the issue. She was rude, crude, and pressed further than is polite, but that's not a killer offense. That's admirable if she were dealing with a corporate scumbag or something similar. The harassment gets our attention, but I doubt very much that alone would have justified her firing.

Presenting that inaccurate a story -- nowhere did she mention that the man lived at his workplace, a rather important factoid -- while asking if the man 'wanted to... shoot to kill' ... that's not acceptable.

Universalizing the discussion from memomachine's post,

"...a journalist is supposed to report the story...," not *be* the story.

and

"Browbeating [any interviewee] who is still very shaken up is wrong in any context."

These are things more journalists ought to think about.

Back in 1966, when I was 9 years old, an intruder broke into our house while my dad was at work. He was a big, burly drunk. Mom was in the basement washing clothes and didn't hear a thing. My older brother, who was 11, hustled us upstairs into my parents bedroom and put the 4 youngest in the closet. He and I got my dad's bear bow off it's rack and he notched a 3-blade broadhead in the bow and told the guy not to come up the stairs. The bum made it to the landing and was turned to come up the stairs when my brother loosed the arrow. It caught him in the shoulder, went through and pinned him to the lathe and plaster wall.
He was screaming so loud my brother thought he killed him and then handed me the bow.

I notched another broadhead just as the guy broke free of the wall and hit him right in the upper leg, just above the kneecap. He stayed where he dropped until the highway patrol got there.

The Kansas City Star sent a reporter 130 miles to write up the story and the reporter thought we should be prosecuted. My dad went after him with a ball peen hammer.

Some things never change...

I would have thought twice before going hand-to-hand with those guys

So would I.
I would only be slightly older than them, and know how to fight, but I would have no weapons that I could use without fear of legal repercussions. Unarmed against multiple opponents is certainly possible (I have done it in training sessions) but it is not to be recommended for real.
It is strange that many people I speak to imagine that "martial arts" give some sort of enormous advantage to the user, but there are other factors in play and physical ability is one of them. Though I notice my great improvement in skill over the past 20 years I can feel the loss of physical ability and do not look forward to the effects of the next 20.

The story on Aguilar reeks of a liberal agenda. The gentleman was protecting himself within his own property. Obviously Aguilar wanted to do a story that would denigrate those rights. Her problem was that she was in Texas. I was one of thousands that wrote in to complain.

I would have told her, "I just shot two fellows for coming on to my property, and you want to climb into my car?" He should have run over her.

Aguilar is a typical example of journalists. They are arrogant people who think they are smarted than everybody else. The funny thing is where I went to school, people who majored in journalism or education were typically dumber than everybody else.

That does it! I'm getting a gun.

*looks up Colorado gun laws*

Don't you think this was the inevitable consequence of journalists moving from reporting the facts to advocating a point of view, from being somewhat professional in interviews to being confrontational interrogators. Little did we know the unhealthy changes it heralded when Dan Rather savaged Nixon in a news conference during Watergate. Now we're all Nixon to reporters.

As Fred Allen said, "To a reporter, a human being is just an item with the skin on."

But you're not supposed to make that attitude as obvious as Rebecca Aguilar did.

James,

I have made the point in letters to my representatives that the gun is an equalizer. By imposing gun control, they are institutionalizing the strong over the weak, the large male over the smaller female, the young over the old. By their deeds they are saying to society that might does in fact make right. I have never received a response.

But, I sympathize with your clients, and more and more I can empathize too.

Regards,

PolyKahr

Poor, poor Ms. Aguillar. Out of a job, and in this tough, tough Media-created bad economy to boot. Hoist on her own petard? Well, no. Consider what will happen next:

- lucrative appearances on talk shows to plead her case to sympathetic hosts and audience
- book deal worth high six-figures
- new job at the national level (MSNBC would be my guess) paying five times what she was making.

Yes, let's all cry a river for poor, poor Ms. Aguillar.

> It is strange that many people I speak to imagine that "martial arts" give some sort of enormous advantage to the user

The strangest thing is that they think that bad guys don't train for combat.

No one seems to mention the insane number of times that his business/home has been burglarised. he has had over 20 burglaries in the past. He moved onto the business property to try to stem the burglaries since the police have been unable to stop the burglaries. That is why he erected the 9 foot fence. He has made every effort to stop the burglaries that a home/business owner can.
Even shooting the first burglar early last year didn't deter the next one later in the year.
He did what he had to, and was legally justified in doing so.
She went after him , and could possibly even be charged/sued for the time on her own video, where she had him trapped in the car, would not let him shut the door, and he could not drive away. A long shot case could be made for unlawful imprisonment right there.
Rob

RC straight - thanks for sharing a great story!
Ball peen hammers are a great comfort in negotiating with dullards.

One of my favorite stories about my own family is that when I worked in St Paul, MN but lived in Minneapolis, about 18 miles away, I got a panic call from one of my daughters. They were hiding in an upstairs closet while some jerk was tampering with the (highly secured) back door. I told them to call 911, but jumped in the car and headed home without much concern about highway courtesy. After covering 18 miles through mid-day traffic, I arrived just as Minneapolis' finest finally arrived. They seemed genuinely pissed-off at having an adult observe them finally showing up, and made a lame excuse about "having other calls", especially after I pointed out the scattered crumbs on the officer's uniform. But that just confirms that "when seconds count, the police are just minutes away" (about 15 minutes in this case, in the center of a major urban area....). What was charming was that my daughter later asked me that if I hadn't answered the phone and if the guy got in the house, should she have used the 12 gauge and then called the cops, or tried to call them first? I think you can guess my answer.

I'm 62, and I used to jump out of perfectly good airplanes for fun, climb up 120 foot pine trees to get them whipping back and forth and then letting fly into a snowbank....that sort of thing (hey, you gotta try it, it's a real hoot!). About seven years ago I developed painful swelling in my left foot; for some time it came and went, but has turned into a major spondylarthropy & arthritic scenario (hmmm... should I mention the heart attacks...). Right now, I mean right now, I can not pick up a paperback with my right hand, the discs in L4,5,6-S1 are gone, and the new thrill is that three of my cervical discs are completely gone (home-brewed fusion). Other joints are real hell-raisers, too, but if you can't take a joke, what kind of guy are you...you sissies). The fun thing in all this is that I am a former immunologist and rheumatology researcher.

I am absurdly weak and well before my time(since most of my people have been pushing 100 before they turned their toes up). I'm in pain most of the time, and it's clear that I pulled the genetic short straw. I can't use narcotics much because I use my head to make a living and certainly can't drive to work stoned. I'm not looking for sympathy here, you bastards, but watching that arrogant bitch beat up that old guy was sickening. She's no better than a mugger, a foul "chain snatcher", and blog commenter "milo" is absolutely right - there is a larger issue here - journalism students are generally the shallowest, dumbest, biggest asses on any campus, emerging more illiterate than when they began. I'm sorry as a scientist and academic I had to share the campus with these mediocre, parasitic, self-absorbed scum. They like to pretend that they are the wellsprings of freedom but wouldn't know which end of a musket political power really comes out of.

Anyway, that big-bore wheelgun at the head of my bed is a great comfort in my dotage, especially as a "crippled" and "senior" citizen. But I have no illusions about how vulnerable I am on the street. It sucks, but at least I get cheap tickets to the movies(-:

In closing, I'm not much on vengeance, but watching that arrogant bitch browbeat that old guy up for her own purposes was the very definition of "elder abuse" and about as much as I could take. I sure as hell wish it was me she came after...a little taste of the cane can be highly educational.

The strangest thing is that they think that bad guys don't train for combat.

Indeed.
Even if ruffians never attend a structured class they may still be out brawling many nights of the week. This constitutes training and could be more effective that that of someone who attends (for example) a recreational karate or ju-jitsu class once a week. Their aggressive attitude and ability to take some hits will count for a lot.
Such a person turned up at a martial arts conference I attended last week. At about 2am the attendees were in the hotel lobby having a few drinks, when a rather drunk young chap walked in, took off his shirt, and demanded a fight with anyone who thought themselves hard enough. He was eventually persuaded to leave, but showed considerable willingness to fight even when faced by several potential opponents, some considerably larger than him.
I don't think he was aware of what sort of event he had wandered into, but I doubt it would have dissuaded him if he had known.

Old saying -- "You're only as good as the last thing you did. What you did in the past is exactly that." Which for Aguilar was a heinous act.

With due respect to Wade's observation the only job I think Aguilar will get now is on Telemundo. Nor do I think she will be successful on the talk circuit. Its a vast female audience and most would realize that could have been 'their mother' as well as 'their father' that was verbally assaulted. That does not sell.

What would be real poetic justice would be if someone stuck a microphone is Ms. Aquilar's face and asked her "how do you feel"?

When I was a print journalist, I always thought that was the stupidest, most insensitive thing for a broadcast journalist to ask the victim of some tragedy.

The really sad thing for Ms. Aguilar is that if she had handled her interview subject with a little bit of care and sensitivity, she might have actually gotten a pretty good story out of it, instead of a boneheaded one that ended her career.

The way I heard the Rebecca Aguilar story was this:

She met the man at the parking lot of the sporting goods store, she didn't ambush him there. He has told her where he would be.

She was attempting to tell his story and let him tell the viewers he wasn't trigger happy and that he was sad about the deaths. The poor guy wasn't up to the task hence she asked these questions trying to lead him into expressing his feelings on the matter, I beleve the intent was sympathetic to the guy.

I'm amazed by the hate and scorn being heaped on this woman. I'm also amazed she has been unable to articulate this version. She should be fired for being such a weenie and taking all this so stoically. Even if it's not true it's plausable and would have salvaged her reputation.

1metroplexual,

Her account deviates *wildly* from the video shot at the time.

If she was showing any sympathy at all, it was for the criminals that he had defended himself against.

Her actions toward him were clearly abusive.

1metro, since you describe the way you heard the story rather than the story itself, how about hustling your ignorant self to youtube or elsewhere to actually see what you are so pompously shooting your stupid mouth off about?

In other other words, go to hell and don't bother coming back until you're a lot less moronic. You're entitled to your opinion, however misinformed, but not to your own facts.

Back in 1964, before he advanced his career in modern chemistry, Hunter S. Thompson wrote a book called "Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga", about the motorcycle gangs.

"There are lots of martial artists in California. Every bar I go into has at least one story about how the bartender with the scarred knuckles put out some 20 year old punk who 'tried that karate stuff.' Always bet on the 40 year old brawler against some punk who's never seen his teeth on the floor. Not many karate schools teach their students the move that pops your opponent's eyeball out of the socket to dangle by the optic nerve."

Most people, even with training, don't have the mindset of a predator.

I'm also a Martial Arts instructor, and participant. In my youth I never really worried about attacks, besides standard precautions.

But now that I'm older and have lost a step I'm faced with the very real possibility that I may need to get a handgun to just even the playing field.

Why worried? I have never owned a gun, though I can shoot, and I'm not sure, despite a life time of training that I could shoot someone. Only in the direst extreme and I know I'd have trouble living with myself. (Many MA become very low key peaceful people, training and fighting all those years).

If I do, I'll get a CCW and do what I need to to protect my family. I can't conceive of a need for that much force, but without it, I really am somewhat defenseless due to age and injury.

But basically the people that scare me are not going to be dissuaded by a stick or a spray.
Thanks for letting me share an opinion.

FWIIW, I have a CCW and carry at all times. The only time I am not carrying is when I am in bed or in the shower. I have a collection of handguns to choose from, including Smith's, Colts, Rugers, Glocks, Sigs, Desert Eagels...well you get the picture. However, my favorite carry piece of all time is the Kel Tec P3AT. It goes with me regardless of how I am dressed, I even play volley ball carrying it. A .380 is not a 45 acp but I like it because it goes with my wallet, car keys and watch. It really is a very small and light weight piece. Over two years and 800 + rounds of WWB (get them at Walmart $15 per 100) and no problems so far. Food for thought.

JIB, I was looking at a Bursa Thunder 380 for CCW.

Isn't the Kel-Tech p3at going to have a pretty good kick at 7.2oz?

The Bursa is pretty small, but it's 23 oz.

Can't imagine how small the Kel-Tech must be in comparison.

This happens over in Britain too. Google for "Tony Martin". The similarities are quite striking. Only over here, the police did come after the person defending his property.