It doesn’t even have to be a mistake: You might find yourself needing to stop and ask someone you don’t know for directions or help, perhaps in the middle of nowhere.
Illustration / Rod Emmerson
Ringing a stranger’s doorbell had major consequences for Ralph Yarl, 16, of Kansas City, Missouri, who was shot in the head and arm.
He accidentally chose the wrong house while trying to pick up his younger brothers and was shot twice through a glass door. He had gone to Northeast 115 Street instead of nearby Northeast 115 Terrace.
It took four days for the 84-year-old shooter to be charged with assault. Ralph has been released from hospital and is recovering at home.
Similar misfortune has played out elsewhere in the US. A six-year-old girl came under fire while trying to retrieve a basketball in North Carolina.
And Kaylin Gillis, 20, was with friends when she was killed after the car they were in turned into the wrong driveway in New York state, while looking for another house. As their car was turning around, a 65-year-old man fired at the vehicle with a shotgun. He has been charged with murder.
Two cheerleaders in Elgin, Texas, were shot after one tried to get into the wrong car outside a supermarket.
Heather Roth opened the door of what she thought was her own car, saw a man inside, and then returned to her friend Payton Washington’s vehicle. The man allegedly followed and started shooting. A suspect has been arrested. Roth suffered a minor wound but Washington was taken to hospital in critical condition.
Murphy said in the Senate: “We are becoming a heavily armed nation, so fearful and angry and hair-trigger anxious that gun murders are now just the way in which we work out our frustrations”.
The American context is, of course, highly relevant with the huge number of weapons, right to bear arms, lax gun laws, and mass shootings. Washington is set to become the 10th state to ban assault weapon sales.
Notably, the US has “stand your ground” laws, covering the situation of a would-be shooter defending life or property from an intruder they consider threatening. Professor Jonathan Metzl of Vanderbilt University told AP such laws have encouraged some people to believe they can use guns defensively “anytime they perceive a threat”.
Murphy’s reference to the emotional state of people capable of flipping in an instant from home or car owners into vigilante shooters is also relevant.
Knowing that, with weapons so commonplace, a chance encounter could be literally life-threatening would raise the stakes for such people - on top of other anxieties such as fear of potential crime and becoming a victim.
Kaylin Gillis’ killing, for instance, happened in a fairly isolated area where a homeowner might be particularly wary. Prosecutors say her friends drove 8km on a rural road trying to get a cellphone signal to call for help.
Some people in New Zealand would relate to feeling vulnerable in an uncertain situation, in a particular area, or when directly targeted by criminals in a shop. There’s been concern about ram raids for months. During Cyclone Gabrielle, communities dealing with upheaval were worried about looters.
But in none of the US cases did anyone appear to do anything a reasonable person would find threatening, certainly not to the extent of firing at them.
Ralph Yarl rang a doorbell and didn’t get inside the house. A person inside could have simply kept the door shut. Heather Roth backed away from the wrong car. No one got out of the car Kaylin Gillis was in, which was also moving away when shot at.
What happened in the US is the dangerous end game of being tough on crime and insisting people have a “stand your ground” right to defend themselves and their property.
Vigilantism always holds the potential to harm the innocent.
