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.