WWMOD?

This morning I woke up to a comment on the Speed Camera post below, reminding me of a darker aspect of the story that I'd honestly forgotten though I did read about it at the time.

Destories, a Jeep tour operator, is charged with first-degree murder, drive-by shooting and firing a gun at a structure in the death of Doug Georgianni, 51.

Georgianni was doing paperwork on the night of April 19 last year inside a speed-camera van in north Phoenix when police say Destories pulled up behind the van and then slowly alongside it before firing.

Coincidentally, yesterday afternoon I learned that there was a fatality in that Austin suicide plane crash last week. A 68-year-old man named Vernon Hunter, an IRS supervisor in the building, is dead.

I confess that when I heard about both these deaths, my initial thought was a cold, "Oh, well. You took the king's shilling, now deal with the consequences." I have no love for speed cameras, whose only purpose is to squeeze money from people who are just trying to get where they need to go. My attitude toward the IRS goes a bit deeper than "no love." Both of these dead men were directly involved in what I consider armed robbery, though probably neither even owned a pair of jackboots. So, goes my first thoughts, screw'em.

My second thoughts are more ambivalent. If there has to be a shooting war, are these the kind of victims I'd prefer? Neither of these targets were chosen with any particular discrimination. In fact, if the Phoenix shooter is to believed, neither were really chosen at all. They just got in the way. I don't consider them entirely innocent victims, but I also have a hard time seeing them as legitimate targets. I hate it when I don't know what to think.

I wrote a book once whose anti-hero, Michael Owens, was a viciously sadistic but extremely discriminating killer. Once he chose a target there were no rules, but he chose his targets carefully and refused to prey on people he considered "non-combatants." Even so, he wasn't innocent of what the government blandly calls "collateral damage." Were Doug Georgianni and Vernon Hunter non-combatants? Certainly either of them would have said yes. Of course, either of them would probably have been shocked and angered at an accusation that they were hurting people. So ... What would Michael Owens do in their case? Personally, I think he'd have passed them by. Not because they were innocent - they weren't - but because they were unimportant.

The news sites are full right now of paeans to what a great guy Vernon Hunter was. Doug Georgianni had a wife and a family who've apparently dedicated their lives to the conviction of Destories. That's pretty much irrelevant, because everybody's got a family. Hell, even I can think of two or three people who'd be a little sorry to hear I'd died. Lon Horiuchi even has a friend or two, god knows why. Nice to snakes, maybe. That doesn't affect the question of whether they were righteous targets.

Thomas Patrick Destories and Andrew Joseph Stack (We know they're vile assassins, because they each have three names!) were no lantern-jawed folk heroes. They both come across as pathetic losers, and certainly aren't what anyone would choose as freedom-movement poster boys. Destories claims he just wanted to shoot up a camera van, and didn't know anyone was inside. Stack was mad at the IRS, and crashed his plane into a building that contained an IRS office. These guys were just kooks, lashing out blindly. Their actions never rise to the description of "tactics." Were their victims "innocent?" No, I don't think so. But they weren't very well chosen, either.