Everyone is frequently annoyed by a door-to-door salesman. Whether it's children's books or steaks, magazine subscriptions or Kirby vacuums, the salesman come around and annoy you, trying to get you to buy whatever they are peddling. Floridian Kenneth Roop has found a way out of the sale: he just kills the salesman.
Nicolas Rainey, 30, is the victim in this situation. According to one of his co-workers, he had walked up to Roop's door and knocked, receiving no answer. Rainey worked for a door-to-door company, selling steak and seafood. On his way back down the driveway, Roop pulled up and asked what Rainey was doing. As Rainey explained, Roop raised a black handgun and shot the attractive, young salesman. And once wasn't enough. As Nicolas Rainey lay on the ground, Roop felt the need to fire another bullet into his head, "for effect."
Referred to as the neighborhood crazy, Roop told police he had no trespassing signs posted and would kill anyone who came onto his property. "I'm not going to give him the chance to do something to me. I was in fear," he told police.
Is this a reasonable situation? Technically, Rainey did trespass, against posted signs. Does that give Roop the right to kill? Everyone is annoyed by a door-to-door salesman, probably weekly, but most people have also worked in some form of door-to-door sales and are glad to have survived it. Roop does make a good point. More and more frequently, the salesman are the dangerous parties, coming into homes and robbing the unsuspecting homeowners.
Maybe society isn't currently safe enough for door-to-door sales. They could be a threat, or their potential customers could be dangerous predators. You know, the economy is bad. Maybe they should just stop. Kirby's are too expensive; magazines are a stupid waste of money (have they heard of the internet?); and the rest you can buy at the store. You really don't need someone to come to your home to sell it to you at 3 times the price.
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Comments: 52
In the state of Florida, you have the right to use deadly force to defend yourself if you are in a place where you have a legal right to be doing something you have a legal right to do and you are accosted by a person with sufficient force to put you in fear of your life or grevious bodily harm...
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT...
This guy is going to go to jail for a long time because he exceeded those boundries...This is just shoddy reporting on the part of the author of this post and....of course...Juan falls for it...
GET THE FACTS...
SEE COMMENT ABOVE...
You need to go back to journalism school (back to 1969 when they taught journalism properly).
This was obvious in the Travon Martin story...The early misreporting of facts is detrimental to a proper outcome...
Truth is, we didn't get here because everything is just fine and dandy. Recent history shows us that Florida suffered over a decade of lawlessness and drug related violence that, in turn, spawned those laws we today enjoy taking potshots at. The records speak for themselves... even Hollywood glamorized this time with TV shows like Miami Vice.
The outcome is, again, those laws that give the citizen the right to defend their homes and themselves. These were meant to put the leverage into the hands of the people over the outlaws... which they do and often in great proportion.
Does this make the laws wrong? No... because in any society, there are those who will abuse and take advantage of situation in which they get by with... well, murder.
Does any of this justify this particular death? No... but in order to understand why things happen, we have to do more than scrap the top layer off the paint.
If we change the laws, then we may find that the innocent will once again be victims... only this time, because they were not allowed to defend themselves. So, you see, it's not as simple as it looks from the outside. What is needed is more responsibility on the individual level. No law of any kind can change the human condition. But we can help by spending less time judging and more time looking at the deeper roots of cause.
I came to this conclusion when I was in the service where learning the proper way to handle and apply a weapon was top of the training list. If each citizen were to undergo even a total of 24 hours of gun training, I think we would see a lot better results in society.
This could be done by states recreating the concept of the militia. Of course, this would cause quite a political uproar, lol.
HE IS IN JAIL ON MURDER CHARGES...WHAT DO YOU WANT...
But if this were ever to happen, it could be a test case that could possibly change the law.
They started skipping my place.
hm. checking the mental status of gun purchasers is most definitely NOT going to work. Ever since Columbine, this has been the elephant in the room. But imposing some sanity test, or checking to see who is getting counselling, at the point of a gun sale? It has not been seriously pursued, because the NRA feels that everyone should be considered fully sane until judged insane in a court. Of course, in most cases the court finding of insanity is not going to happen until AFTER the massacre.
My suggestion violates my own standards about matters, related to many other privacy issues--but firearms, for me, stands out as a possible significant exception.
The majority of gun-related deaths in the United States are suicides,[5] with 17,352 (55.6%) of the total 31,224 firearm-related deaths in 2007 due to suicide, while 12,632 (40.5%) were homicide deaths.[
That is a LOT of suicides with handguns. When one acts on a suicidal impulse with a gun in hand, it is usually a very final outcome. With pills or cutting, there is time to reconsider, and most people actually discover that they would rather live.