Just a typical 11-year old boy!!!

[Michael]

Ain't it great that our nation has millions upon millions of guns hanging around just in case an 11 year old needs one to pop his dad's girlfriend? And don't you love the part where, when he's done, he gets on the bus and goes to school? Heartwarming!


Pa. boy's bumpy ride from birth to homicide charge

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
This undated photo released by the Houk family shows Kenzie Marie Houk with her daughters Jenessa, left, and Adalynn in Wampum, Pa.. Eleven-year-old Jordan Brown is charged in the shooting death of the 26-year-old pregnant mother of two. (AP Photo/Thhe Houk Family) NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- Good student. Starting quarterback. Aspiring hunter. By most accounts, 11-year-old Jordan Brown was a typical boy in his rural Pennsylvania community, albeit raised mostly by his father after his mother gave him up.
So it baffles Jordan's friends and neighbors that he is accused of taking a 20-gauge youth shotgun he got from his father for Christmas and fatally shooting his father's pregnant fiancee, the woman who tried hardest to be a mother to him.
"There were no red lights, there were no indications that we should have done something differently," said Timothy McNamee, superintendent of the Mohawk Area School District, noting there were no reports Jordan was bullied or was having problems in school or at home.
Authorities say the Feb. 20 killing of 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk in Wampum, a small community about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh where nearly everyone knows everyone, was premeditated. Police say Jordan threw the spent shell casing in the woods, got on the bus and went to school.
Jordan has been charged as an adult with double homicide. If he is convicted as an adult, he faces life in prison. If his case gets moved to a juvenile court, he would probably spend the next 10 years in a secure juvenile facility.
Jordan's mother, Mildred Krause, was just four months pregnant with him when she first entered a courtroom to battle his father, Christopher Brown.
At that time, in March 1997, Krause filed a protection of abuse order against Brown, claiming he drank, did drugs and had threatened to harm her. Apparently unaware Krause was pregnant with his son, Brown was ordered to stay away from her, an order later expunged, according to court records and Brown's attorney, Dennis Elisco.
Immediately after Jordan was born on Aug. 30, 1997, Krause contacted Lawrence County Children and Youth Services requesting that they take custody of the child so her mother could adopt him, according to court documents. Not having the father's consent, the agency declined her request.
Brown, meanwhile, tipped off by Krause's grandmother and brother that she was having his baby in secret, filed an emergency petition with the court, opposing the move to have the child put up for adoption and demanding full custody of his son.
In a back-and-forth battle resolved when Jordan was about 2 months old, a court ruled Krause and Brown would share custody, with the mother getting him four days a week and the father three.
But on Feb. 5, 1999, with the consent of both parents, Christopher Brown was awarded full custody of his 18-month-old son. Court records don't indicate why.
Friends and family say that from February 1999 on, Krause had little contact with her son, entering and exiting his life at will. They say Brown was a good father and spent a lot of quality time with his son.
The instability that characterized Jordan's formative years, including the fact he might have felt rejected by his biological mother, could have influenced his later behavior, said Daniel Shaw, chairman of the psychology department at the University of Pittsburgh.
"You can easily say it's a risk factor, a very important one, in early childhood that has been linked to ... antisocial behaviors," Shaw said. However, "it's not usually going to result in the child killing someone at age 11."
Christopher Brown, Jordan's father, refused to be interviewed for this story but answered a few questions through his attorney. A phone call to a phone number for the boy's mother's family rang unanswered. A person answering a phone at an address listed for the Krause family said she no longer lived there.
Through Elisco, Brown said Jordan was a good student, pulling mostly As and Bs, his favorite subjects being math and science. In the past two years, Jordan was the starting quarterback for his midget football team and also played baseball.
Jordan's school district serves about 1,785 students in the rolling farmland of rural western Pennsylvania. There were about 20 students in his class, and he probably knew many of the other 125 fifth-graders through baseball and football, said McNamee, the superintendent.
In May 2008, Jordan's father began dating Houk. By Christmas, they were engaged and had moved into a farmhouse together, along with Jordan and Houk's two daughters, ages 7 and 4. Houk was already about six months pregnant.
Houk's family said their daughter tried to include Jordan in everything, in part to compensate for the missing mother figure in his life.
Willard Houk, Kenzie's uncle, said he stopped at the farmhouse a short time after Kenzie and Christopher moved in. He took Kenzie's girls for spins on his motorcycle. Then, Kenzie's 7-year-old reminded him that Jordan needed to get a ride too, "because he's a part of our family now," he said.
Jordan got his ride, but Houk said it seemed strange to him that unlike the girls, who were "bubbly and jumpy," Jordan was barely excited. It made Houk think Jordan needed more men in his life, and he was determined to help.
So at Christmas, Willard Houk bought Jordan a present, like he did for the girls. And Jordan got a 20-gauge youth model shotgun from his father, the one police said he used to shoot Houk in the back of the head.
Like many other kids in the area, Jordan began target shooting with his dad in preparation for the 2009 hunting season, when, at age 12, he would be old enough under Pennsylvania law to get a hunting license.
Father and son would shoot targets in the back yard, which police say helped Houk's 7-year-old daughter identify the sound of the gunshot she heard the morning her mother was killed.
By Valentine's Day, Willard Houk and Kenzie's father, Jack, thought the boy was a good enough shot to participate in a turkey shoot, so they took Jordan along. When he had a hard time handling his 20-gauge, Willard Houk let the boy use his 12-gauge.
Jordan beat out the older, more experienced men, hitting closest to the target and winning the prize turkey.
"He was ecstatic about that," Willard Houk said, noting it was the most emotion he had ever seen the boy express.
But Kenzie's family said that despite their efforts - and those made by Kenzie - Jordan had difficulty adjusting to his new life.
Debbie Houk said Jordan just "bucked her (Kenzie) a lot when his dad wasn't around." His father, she said, got involved, warning the boy not to disrespect his future stepmother.
Kenzie's brother-in-law, Jason Kraner, said that Jordan also told his son "he was going to pop Kenzie in the head and pop both kids," but that no one believed he was serious.
"As far as I was concerned, he was a typical 11-year-old boy who wanted to have fun," Willard Houk said.
But Jordan's attorney, Elisco, denied there were tensions between Jordan and his new family.
"He had a very good relationship with Kenzie," Elisco said. "The accusations of him having rage or warning signs of violence are unfounded."

[Eric]

Hi Mike,

There are 300 million-plus people in the country and millions of weapons in private hands. Incidents such as this are unfortunate but exceptional.

It's bad logic to argue from the exceptional to the general (e.g., I heard about a Toyota that had problems; all Toyotas must be junk!).

In this case, one of several things is probably true. The kid may be (and based on what happened, clearly appears to be) disturbed. And (or) the parents are negligent - because they didn't teach gun safety, didn't lock up the guns - and (perhaps) didn't take pre-emptive steps to deal with a disturbed kid. A kid who was anything but "typical."

As always, gun-control advocates would deny the right of millions of people who have never, not once, given any cause to be concerned about their ability to responsibly handle a firearm because of someone else's disturbed kid and someone else's irresponsible conduct.

This least common denominator-ism (adjusting everything to accommodate the incompetent and irresponsible, from traffic laws to gun laws - and in the case of the latter, at the risk of their personal safety and at the cost of taking away one of the most basic, bedrock rights of a free people) has got to be stopped.

Want to deal with "gun crime"? So do I. Then let's deal with it - not with people who happen to own guns such as myself and millions of other honest, taxpaying, hard-working people who have never committed a crime in their entire lives.

How?

Here's how:

Severe punishment for anyone who commits a gun crime. Threaten someone with a gun or use a gun in the commission of another crime? 25 years, no parole. Period.

Kill someone? Death or life imprisonment.

Zero tolerance for any gratuitous violence. First offense - you're out.

This would eliminate gun crime virtually overnight. But we don't do it because we've grown soft on crime and gratuitous violence - while at the same time, increasingly harassing people who present no threat to anyone with more rules, regulation and rigmarole. People who simply want to be able to defend themselves, should the need arise, from the thugs that the authorities will not deal with.

The problem we have, Mike, is not with guns. It is with a system that does not adequately deal with violent thugs by refusing to tolerate them and by removing them from civilized society for a long, long time. If necessary, forever.

There is a small minority of the population responsible for the overwhelming majority of violent crime - including repeat violent crime. Yet our system routinely hands out relatively minor punishments for these scumbags. They are endlessly recycled through the revolving doors. It often takes the third or fourth brutal crime before something is finally done.

That is the problem. Not guns in the hands of law-abiding people.

Denying my right - and the right of millions of others like me - to have the means of defense against these animals available to us is both an affront and will do absolutely nothing to address the issue of gun crime.

What it will do is increase the pool of potential victims.

PS: As an aside - How many shootings and how much "mayhem" has there been on the Blue Ridge Parkway and in National Parks since the law was changed to allow concealed carry? In the same time period, how much violence has there been at gun-free Va tech? Gun-free DC?

I await your reply....

[Disco Man]

Growing up I knew many people who were killed or seriously injured by cars. Should we ban all cars?

I have never known personally one person who died because of a gun.

Taking a rare tragic case and punishing the rest of the law abiding citizens is like me taking away your house from you because other people can't pay their mortgage. It's bad logic.

[Eric]

Growing up I knew many people who were killed or seriously injured by cars. Should we ban all cars?

I have never known personally one person who died because of a gun.

Taking a rare tragic case and punishing the rest of the law abiding citizens is like me taking away your house from you because other people can't pay their mortgage. It's bad logic.

Exactly - only it's worse because we're literally talking life and death here. If Mike wishes to depend upon the police for his security and that of his family, that is his choice. But for him to deny others the right to have the means of defending themselves and their families against violent thugs is something else entirely.

A gun may be the only thing standing between you and victimhood. An armed thug could break into Mike's house and rape his wife and daughter right in front of him - and there is nothing he could do about it. The police would show up, of course... eventually. After the event is over.

Same scenario - but Mike is armed - and now has at least a chance of saving his family. I would never deny him that option. I can't believe he would deny me the same.

I always ask people who favor gun control to the following questions: Can you cite any factual evidence (specific data, not "opinions" and "theories") that gun bans have reduced crime anywhere they have been tried in this country? Can you give me even a handful of examples of people with CCW permits who have committed a violent crime with a gun?

Of course, they cannot.

And yet, they still want to take guns out of the hands of people like you and me (who have every right to possess them) on the basis of their emotional dislike for guns.

[Disco Man]

As a side note, the "Million Mom" group which is a pro-gun control women's group, printed up "gun free" yard signs a few years back. Some members put them in their yards, and then their homes were robbed shortly thereafter.

It probably never occurred to them that annoucing their "gun free" status to everyone in their neighborhood and area was the same as saying "criminals welcome - easy target for criminals".



The following is a parody of these type of signs:





..

[Eric]

As a side note, the "Million Mom" group which is a pro-gun control women's group, printed up "gun free" yard signs a few years back. Some members put them in their yards, and then their homes were robbed shortly thereafter.

It probably never occurred to them that annoucing their "gun free" status to everyone in their neighborhood and area was the same as saying "criminals welcome - easy target for criminals".



The following is a parody of these type of signs:





..

Pete,

Exactly!

Gun control advocates are naive, even soft-headed. Why? Because they take it as a given that all you have to do is pass a law. They seem incapable of grasping that, by definition, criminals do not obey laws. The only people who obey gun control laws are the people who never commit gun crimes in the first place. All gun control does, as you have noted, is render helpless the law abiding and embolden the criminals. It's an ironclad relationship: Where the people (non-criminals) are armed, violent crime is low. Where the people (non-criminals) are disarmed by law, violent crime is ubiquitous.

This is, to me, an obvious piece of common sense - but it escapes liberal gun control advocates.