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P1050095

There are few moments in a child’s life more memorable than learning to ride a bike with his father. It’s supposed to be a time of bonding and the first taste of freedom as he pedals down the street all by himself for the first time. Instead, for one Minnesota family it ended with charges of making terroristic threats being filed against one of their neighbors. How fun is that? . . .

From the criminal complaint . . .

While a father was teaching his daughter how to ride a bike on the street outside of Drake’s Daytona Way home, Drake began making comments about the father’s tactics. The father told him, “I’ve got it.” But Drake said, “If you don’t like my advice, get off my street.”

The father said Drake didn’t own the street. Drake appeared to get angrier, and then went inside his home. As the father and daughter were making their way away from Drake’s house, he came back outside with a shotgun and threatened to kill the father.

Drake’s wife came outside and pulled the gun away and physically dragged Drake inside. Drake went outside again and told the father he was going to kill him.

When arresting officers told Drake his charges, he said, “Maybe next time I should have shot him.” Drake admitted drinking all day, but he said that didn’t influence his actions.

Drake’s wife told police he pointed a gun at the man and she tried to stop him. She voluntarily gave Drake’s shotgun to police, along with his rifle.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

While this may be an isolated incident, stories like this one reinforce the stereotype that gun owners are drunken idiots who will whip their gun out and threaten people at the slightest provocation. This quote from the Reddit thread pretty much sums it up:

There’s links in that article to three other stories of people pulling guns on others for little or no reason, all in the same area of Minnesota. That’s the issue with people and guns, a lot of people are irrational or can easily become so, thus why having a population of armed people ends up with incidents like this.

Guns and alcohol don’t mix. Stories like this one hurt the cause. Don’t be that guy.

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49 COMMENTS

  1. “Drake admitted drinking all day, but he said that didn’t influence his actions.”

    A lot of people are irrational or can easily become so, which is why having a population of drunks ends up with incidents like this.

    • RIGHT!? Now if only we could pass some kind of law or constitutional amendment to get rid of all the alcohol. That would fix everything in our nation! Then everything would be happiness and wonderment. That certainly wouldn’t cause the country to dissolve into violence and crime…..

      History repeats itself, because people don’t listen.

      • ROFL, yeah go out to South Eastern Kentucky and take a look around the “Dry” counties. They still get alcohol they just have to go to another county or state to do it. And did I mention that the bootleggers will deliver. . . was at a place where I knew some people and overheard a conversation to the effect of ordering takeout for a case of budweiser, two ounces of pot and an 8 ball.

        The same people made sure to “repent” on sunday.

  2. “Guns and alcohol don’t mix.”

    Wrong, Nick. Guns and ASSHOLES don’t mix. There is many a man in the country of ours (others also) who sip a bit and shoot. And follow the rules just fine.

  3. Well, the truth is that some gun owners are drunken idiots who will whip their gun out and threaten people at the slightest provocation. Personally, I don’t know any of them, and want to keep it that way. Fortunately, I think that they are few in number and easily avoidable.

  4. It isn’t guns and alcohol that don’t mix, it’s guns and unstable people, whether they’ve been drinking or not. Guns, alcohol and stable people are not an issue, but the problem is that there is no objective way for authorities to accurately quantify stability, so that important part is totally left out of the assessment. They just keep the stress turned up and wait for the society’s miners’ canaries like Drake here to begin showing symptoms.

    I wonder how bad this erratic behavior problem was 150 years ago before the food supply was corrupted by the legislature and corporations.

    • Right? I find it strange that we point the finger at substances that get used occasionally (I’m not defending them), but we don’t even give a thought to the thing we put in our bodies multiple times each day. Especially considering how different or diets are now compared to how we ate for tens of thousands of years.

  5. The story doesn’t seem to say whether or not the kid wound up being able to ride the bike. I’m interested in hearing more about the man’s technique for teaching a young person to ride a bike. I’d like to know what it was about his method of instruction that provoked such a hostile resonse from Mr. Drake.

    • The day my Dad let me take off the training wheels, he said, “Whichever way you feel yourself tipping, turn the wheel towards that side. So, wobble, wobble, wobble, wobble, and by the end of the block I was riding the bike!

      • When we got my oldest son his first bike, the FIRST thing he did was take a wrench and remove the training wheels. Since he was only three, it didn’t work out so well, the back wheel fell off. He then proceeded to beat up a neighbor id who was taunting him about it, that kid was four years older, and took his bike. Thank GOD the local police didn’t come SWATted up.
        When son #2 turned three, son #1 decided it was high time he learned to ride a bike also. Since the younger one was having a bit of a problem, son 1 decided the problem was that he needed a bit of altitude to get going. He proceeded to push him down the front steps.

    • Do you suppose there could be a technique for teaching bike riding that is so unsound that armed threats are an appropriate reaction?

    • Maybe that was this Drake character’s plan all along. Some drunk idiot starts waving a shotgun around, I’ll bet you learn to ride a bike real quick. See, he was only trying to help!

  6. I think it should have been a DGU by the father instead. Go a long way to cleaning up the streets around here…

    • Either he would have shot someone in front of his daughter, or left and come back alone to initiate a confrontation. All in all, given the details this was the best possible outcome.

  7. Alcohol and assholes don’t mix well.

    Don’t add a gun to an already bad situation.

    But, if you do, be sure to blame the gun.

  8. This guy is an asshole through and through and the antis will jump all over this. The sad reality is, if this Drake bastard had grabbed a baseball bat and actually killed the poor guy he was threatening you wouldn’t ever hear about it. It’s a bit absurd to separate “gun violence” from violence in general, as if “gun violence” has some sort of mystical, black magic associated with it. Irrational, random, alcohol or narcotic induced, violent behavior is what is to blame, not the tool it was used through, until the media and public at large gets this, no amount of us reassuring ourselves to not be “that guy” will change opinions.

    • So true. I think the anti’s are all hopped on movie kung fu magic and think you can just play the hero card and a few judo chops later, the situation is resolved, and they can get back on their hybrid unicorn and go get a latte. They are too dense to fear properly fear an aggressor with a blunt weapon.

  9. OR ANOTHER OUTCOME. Said father is CCW and when confronted by drunk shotgun stud muffin, he’s no longer in the gene pool. Everybody wins…except silly man.

  10. Don’t blame alcohol or the gun; blame the asshole. Guns and assholes don’t mix. But neither do cars, sporting events, parties, movies, etc. I keep thinking of the old quote “an armed society is a polite society.” If the A-hole thought the dad was armed he may have just left well enough alone. This guy is a prime example of always carrying.

    • If this guy Drake didn’t have a shotgun, he would have been out there with a baseball bat, or a crowbar or a hammer, or a piece of pipe. His major problem wasn’t the weapon in his hand, it was what fills the space between his ears. I have some neighbors like him, and so I keep a low profile at home, but have and will continue to happily call the police whenever they decide to go on the “warpath” with themselves or other neighbors. It’s a slow process, but we are thinning the herd as they either move away or move into a cell.

  11. I think this crosses over from irresponsible to a different zone. And this guy is a great example of someone should be prohibited from owning a gun, even if he is not spending life in prison.

  12. Would it kill one of these gun grabbers to crack a book sometime and read Bastiat’s Selected Essays on Political Economy? I recommend the first one: “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.”

    Yes, yes, we all know that there are occasional high profile failures on the part of some gunowners. That’s what is seen. What is not seen, or so rarely seen as to be assumed away as nearly nonexist, are the innumerable DGU’s that save lives or prevent their ruination. What is impossible to see, but which is there, are the generations of (relative) peace and liberty under which Americans have lived, for their firearms standing as silent sentries guarding against government excess.

    Neither can these people see the myriad responsible decisions which millions of Americans make on a daily basis; people whose seriousness of mind was influenced by early familiarity with firearms. There are far more data points out there upon which to form an opinion than just the occassional drunk with a gun.

  13. Drake admitted drinking all day, but he said that didn’t influence his actions.

    The funny thing is that I actually think he’s right about that. The man is a psychopath; the alcohol was incidental.

  14. “Drake admitted drinking all day, but he said that didn’t influence his actions.”

    And there you have it.

    Lesson?

    Never make terrorist threats after you have been drinking all day.

  15. inebriated idiots causing trouble for the rest of us.

    a couple questions for you responsible gun owners who do choose to drink: where do your firearms go (if anywhere) when you’re consuming alcohol? does the amount you’ll be drinking have an affect on whether you choose to put your firearms away?

    due to my religious beliefs, i don’t drink so this has never been an issue for me.

  16. “… all in the same area of Minnesota.”

    Somethin’ in the water?

    “Get off my street!”

    They don’t like on Drake Street, do they…?

  17. “Drake’s wife came outside and pulled the gun away and physically dragged Drake inside”

    Kudos to the wife.

  18. Thank goodness alcohol was not to blame. I sure want to keep my adult beverages. I think he was just a bitter soul for having to endure Minnesota winters while being constantly reminded of the warm Florida weather by living on Daytona Way.

  19. Ok, so again, he was dumb. But mentioning the Redditors comment with acknowledging that STILL NO ONE WAS HURT, and he didn’t care that it was ALREADY illegal to point the thing at someone, much less that it may have been a “assault shotgun,” misses the entire point of the pro-rights movement’s self-defense. The bad guys don’t care. They never have, and never will.

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