Minnesota Man Threatens To Kill Father Teaching His Daughter To Ride A Bike
A Minnesota man was arrested after threatening to kill a father who was teaching his daughter to ride a bike on a street in front of their homes:
A Minnesota man was arrested last week after pulling a shotgun on a neighbor who was teaching his 7-year-old daughter to ride a bike.
According to the arrest complaint, 61-year-old Gary Drake began making comments about the father’s tactics May 25 as he taught the girl to ride on the cul-de-sac they shared.
The father told his neighbor, “I’ve got it,” which apparently angered the older man.
“If you don’t like my advice, get off my street,” Drake told the man, who reminded his neighbor he didn’t own the street.
This apparently angered Drake even more, and police said he went inside to retrieve a Remington 870 shotgun.
He came back with the weapon and threatened to kill the father, but Drake’s wife came outside, pulled the gun away from him, and physically dragged her husband back inside.
But police said Drake came back outside once again and told the father he would kill him.
Officers were called to Drake’s home, and his wife said he had gone inside to watch television.
Drake admitted to police that he had a confrontation with the father, saying he didn’t like how the man treated the girl during the bike-riding lesson.
He admitted to drinking during the day but denied the alcohol had influenced his behavior.
“Maybe next time I should have shot him,” Drake said, according to the arrest complaint.
Alcohol and guns don’t mix, my friends.
Here’s the Criminal Complaint:
Another responsible gun owner, just protecting his family from tyranny.
Good luck trying to sell a house on that street!
““If you don’t like my advice, get off my street,” Drake told the man, who reminded his neighbor he didn’t own the street.”
I wonder how the conversation really went.
Humans and guns don’t mix. Humans are emotional, unstable, drunk, stupid, careless and accident-prone at various times, and they have no business possessing firearms.
But despite the SCREAMING OBVIOUSNESS of that fact, let’s talk about something else.
Lots of states have passed or are trying to pass laws allowing people to carry guns into bars. Apparently they don’t understand that simple truth.
Maybe it was the Gunsmoke TV version of the old west (which I suspect had nothing to do with reality) but weren’t you supposed to check your guns at the door before you went into Miss Kitty’s?
@Pinky:
It probably went a little bit like this:
Average (non-criminal) people with guns, what could possibly go wrong?
A classic teachable moment: Hopefully that young girl learned something – that if she’d been carrying a weapon Mr. Drake wouldn’t have dared to threaten her and her father.
@Pinky:
I’ve obtained the transcript, it went like this:
Drake: “My what a beautiful day, could I show the two of you my new gun?”
Father: “Not now, I’m teaching my daughter how to ride her bike”
Drake: “No need to be rude.”
Daughter: “Dad, can you teach me how to use a gun?”
Father: “Sure, after I buy this street from the city and evict Mr. Drake.”
Drake: “I own this street, mister.”
Apparently the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is his wife and the lure of afternoon television.
By the way, this is the law-abiding citizen that all the gun nuts claim should be armed to the teeth.
Given a stand your ground law (and assuming the father was white and armed), when he saw Mr. Drake emerge from the house with a shotgun he should have shot him then and there. Do the gun rights crowd here have any problem with that?
Round of applause for Drake’s wife, everybody! That dude married himself to a good woman. Any wife who keeps her husband from shooting a dude over parenting strategy with such aplomb is the best person in the world.
@al-Ameda: In fairness, Doc Holliday noted “an armed society is a polite society.” I don’t know that it is really all that true and am unwilling to test the theory in the manners suggested by the clown car crash folk.
@MarkedMan: I do have to admit that I am less troubled by that than I should be.
Minnesota Nice.
the headline is like something off of yahoo, at first glance it looks like someone was going to kill their own father.
it’s a new trend i’ve noticed, the “protagonist/antagonist” in a story is described as a “mother/father//son/daughter/grandmother/etc. rather than a “man/woman”.
Fargo in real life?
The way this is written, it appears that Drake angered himself by yelling at the man. I think it is missing some sort of response by the man in between those two “paragraphs”. Which leads to the other problem, why is every sentence its own paragraph?
@Franklin: i’m sure the “father” may have said something “off cuff” to prompt the shotgun- not that he deserved it but who knows what was said?
I really would like to hear from the 2nd amendment crowd here. Given the gun lobby’s incessant pressure to put stand-your-ground in every state, what about the following scenario: the father is armed. Mr. Drake, visibly angry, rushes into his houser and comes storming with a shotgun. Should the father have drawn and fired? What if he missed and the bullet hit, say, Mrs. Drake who was emerging from the house behind her husband? What if the father had missed and Mr. Drake, seeing that he was fired on and therefore having real fear for his life, shot the father? And given that it was a shotgun, that he killed the little kid too? Do we just chalk this up as the price we pay for our shiny new Supreme Court interpretation of the 2nd amendment?