Close, But No Cigar

Reader Mike L. asks me whether this incident is worthy of being classified as a Righteous Shooting.

It nearly is, Mike, except for this part:

The break-in attempt did not go as planned. The owner, Gordon Richard Sr., 75, used a muzzleloader rifle to shoot one of the three men, causing the other two to flee. He then secured himself inside the home and called the police.

State police say the man who was shot was 39-year-old Paul E. Brown of Milton and St. Albans, he was seriously injured.

When police arrived, the other two intruders had fled. The police report states, “Responding troopers located Brown in a neighbor’s yard. No other individuals were found at the scene. Brown was transported by ambulance to Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans and later transferred to the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, where he was listed in critical condition Wednesday afternoon.”

You all know the rules:  no dead goblin, no Righteous Shooting.

But Our Hero deserves a huge “Attaboy” from all of us for using a muzzleloader to send the “Leave Me Alone” message to the would-be property redistrubutionist.

Oh, and Mike?  Let me know if the goblin snuffs it, so I can upgrade the award from Armed Good Guy to Righteous Shooter.

Inspiring

I have often scoffed at people who build or live in houses located in a flood plain (or at least a place prone to occasional floods — not the same thing).  But here’s a story of a guy who did:

Nick Lupton, 60, and his wife Anne, 50, live in a converted 17th century house on the banks of the River Severn.  Since they moved into the four-bedroom detached property in Pixham, Worcestershire in 2016, the house and one-acre of land has been flooded 11 times.

But instead of weeping and wailing when his house was repeatedly underwater, he said, “Fuck this!”  and did something about it.

The couple became so fed up with the costly clear-ups, they decided to surround the entire property with a 7ft-high flood defence.  They spent four months constructing the brick barrier before finally finishing it last October – just weeks before Storm Henk swept Britain.

Here’s before:

And after:

The house itself?  Dry as a bone.  Read the whole story;  it’s excellent.  With more people like this, the Brits would still have an empire.

Of course, this being Britishland, when the flood waters go down the local council will doubtless tell him to tear the wall down because it ruins the character of the 17th-century house, or something.

But let me not be so cynical.

Fighting Back

I see this becoming a trend, and not just in Britishland:

This is the moment have-a-go-heroes swooped on thieves allegedly loading up their cars with stolen groceries.

Video shows three men throwing shopping into their cars in a Tesco’s car park in Waltham Abbey, Essex, yesterday. The trio are seen hastily shoving groceries into a black Volkswagen polo from a shopping trolley before jumping into the car.

But before they drive away a group of men storm the vehicle and start demanding the alleged thieves get out of the car. They open the doors and begin to pull the alleged shoplifters out of the car as they attempt to fight back.

Shocked witnesses are heard saying “call the police” as a Tesco security worker arrives and attempts to open the boot.

The men manage to get the alleged thieves out of the car — and a struggle to restrain the men ensues. One of then alleged thieves attempts to headbutt one of the men and ends up falling to the ground.

Eventually the rozzers put in an appearance, and in a shocking move, arrest the thieves and not the men who intervened (this is the UK, after all).

And as I never tire of saying:  We do not “take the law into our own hands” when we do stuff like this, for the simple reason that the law never left our hands;  we simply deputize its enforcement to agents of the State.

But when those agents are not on the scene or unwilling to do their duty, it is our civic duty to intervene.

Frankly, if I’d been involved and some punk tried to head-butt me, he’d end up in fucking hospital.  Believe it.

Highly Recommended

I just finished reading Lynne Olson’s Citizens Of London, and all I can say is I wish I’d read it before Tony Judt’s Postwar (which I recommended earlier).

Of course, as a keen student of 20th-century European history, I’m very familiar with the WWII period — or at least, I thought I was.  In fact, I’ve always been more interested in the military history thereof rather than the diplomatic side… and Citizens Of London  took care of that for me, in spades.

Oh, good grief:  how could I have been so ignorant?  Of course I knew about Edward R. Murrow (“the voice of the Blitz”), and Averill Harriman (more so for his post-war career).  But Gilbert Winant?  All I knew about him was that he was successor to the horrible-in-every-way-imaginable Joe Kennedy as U.S. Ambassador to Britain, and I vaguely remember him as one-time governor of New Hampshire.

Olson’s book has set me straight on that, and if you are similarly ignorant about this period and these characters, it will do the same for you.  Run, don’t walk, to your favorite bookstore or to Amazon, and buy this book because it will change your perspective on WWII completely.

I should point out in passing that in this history, Franklin D. Roosevelt does not come out well (not that this is a Bad Thing, of course), and nor does his successor Harry S Truman.  And I have never read so personal and compelling a story about not just Winston Churchill, but also the entire Churchill family during this period.

It is clear that but for Murrow, Harriman and Winant — with an excellent assist from Dwight D. Eisenhower — there may well have been a completely different outcome to the events of 1939-45.

And if that doesn’t get you to read Citizens Of London, we can’t be friends.