Brave Lady's Guns Seized For Shooting Into Crowd, How Is That Even Fair?

he's just trying to help

Pop quiz: You are at your local Home Depot, hating your life because you are at your local Home Depot, when you see some loss prevention officers chasing down someone that stoled a thing from your local Home Depot. Do you:

1. Do nothing, because the loss prevention people are on it?

2. Put your leg out and trip the fleeing person as if you are in a bad sitcom?

3. Shoot them.

If you said (3), you are a proud Second Amendment-lovin' Michigan-American and a goddamn hero, even if the judicial system just doesn't understand. 

Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez, who was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, said she heard a scream and feared the incident was worse than a theft. She acknowledged the shooting in the parking lot was a mistake.

“I made a decision in a split second,” the 46-year-old Clarkston woman told a judge. “Maybe it was not the right one, but I was trying to help.”

Rochester Hills District Court Judge Julie Nicholson said: “I don’t believe any malice was involved in what you were doing, but I believe you have to think about what could have happened.”

We'd like to say it is a truth we hold self-evident that shooting INTO A CROWD OF PEOPLE is not typically how we "help" people, but we live in America so everything about guns is completely broken. Proof positive: this lady got probation. Probation. PROBATION. FOR SHOOTING INTO A CROWD OF PEOPLE AT YOUR LOCAL HOME DEPOT.

You will also be unsurprised to learn that her defense attorney is pretty sure the whole shooting into the crowd thing is a net plus.

Defense attorney Steven Lyle Schwartz called his client a “sharpshooter.”

“We need more people like Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez in our society,” he said.

Now, to be fair, she did take out the tires of the getaway vehicle (though the suspects got away, at least for a few days anyway), but we are still kinda stuck on the fact that shooting into a crowd of people at the local Home Depot falls well outside our "more people like that in society" rubric. But maybe that's just us.

Thank god that although this sharpshooter lady only got probation, it at least comes with grabbin' her guns away until 2023. Does this mean she's learned her lesson and will now be all safe about guns and such? Nope. 

“I tried to help, and I learned my lesson that I will never help anybody again,” she said after her sentencing.

Well, since your definition of "help" includes "shoot into a crowd," we're pretty cool with you removing yourself from the pool of helpers, lady.

[ Detroit News / Raw Story ]