Well, this is Texas, so I think the State might go easy. :shotgun:
That said, I understand where you are coming from. In general, there are a lot of circumstances involved in a situation like these and we don't want people charging off assuming the worst and blowing the brains out of another human being.
That said, consider the fact that nationwide, 65% of murder cases are never solved. In some cities, this number rises to 90%. If we're talking about property crimes, 90% are never solved. So, I really think that challenges the idea that the State can provide any justice to it's citizens. I know we're all taught to rely on the men in blue to get the bad guys and put them in cages, but the actual success rates for this are so abysmally low, even for the most serious crimes like murder, it's safer to assume that there will be no justice.
So, a guy is drunk as hell and essentially murders your family with a vehicle. There's a good chance he's just going to drive off and never be seen again. If he is arrested, there's a good chance it'll be for some plea bargain and he might do some time, only to get out in a decade or so. Your babies are gone forever though and in that quick angry moment the stats calculate into some formation where revenge is the result of insane logic.
I don't know what the solution to any of this is. I do know that it's obvious to me that the State fails at one of it's assumed primary functions. I also know that we are indoctrinated not to look at the facts and worship this poorly functioning system. It's assumed that this is the only way people are going to get justice...well it's not.
I don't see the relevance in most of what you are saying here.
Firstly, having read the news story, there is nothing stating that the father even knew the driver was drunk. For all he knew, it was a pure accident. The story stated that it was "determined" the driver was drunk, and I can only assume that determination was made by the coroner. There's a lot of info missing in that story, but it simply says nothing about whether the father knew he was drunk, and there's no way to know, from the info on the story, if the father had any way of even making that determination. Did the guy step out of the car with an open bottle of Jack in his hand, glug glug glugging away? No mention. For all we know, he may not have been obviously drunk at all, much less "drunk as hell" as you put it. So from the father's point of view, if he was unable to recognize the inebriation of the driver, he just shot a guy who had a tragic car accident. While the inebriation of the driver may well have contributed to the accident, it likely did not contribute to the father's reaction, because without further information we cannot assume the father knew he was drunk.
Secondly, a witness stated that the father "walked" into the house and returned with his gun, and shot the driver. So the driver stuck around long enough for the father to make that walk, and didn't just speed off into the night and eternal obscurity.
Thirdly, as was stated in the story, it was late at night and the father and his sons were pushing their disabled pickup truck home. So they were out in the street after dark, pushing the truck. It doesn't mention if they had lights on so they would be visible to other motorists, it doesn't say if they were on a blind curve, it doesn't say how busy the road was at that time of night. But it's entirely possible that the act of being in the road late at night could have contributed as much to the tragedy as the inebriation of the driver. Perhaps after shooting the driver, the father should have recognized his own at-fault and put a bullet in his own head as well. Obviously I'm being facetious, but seriously, there's so much info missing here that we who are Sunday-morning quarterbacking this issue will never know, that to consider shooting the driver on the spot was a reasonable reaction, is just way out there.
Consider if a similar tragedy had happened on the freeway, in broad daylight. Suppose a traffic accident caused the death of the children, and the father stepped out of his car and shot the other driver. No reasonable person would consider that an acceptable response. That would be viewed as a clear case of road-rage, regardless of how tragic the events were. Because it was an accident, and our society does not condone simply shooting the other party when an accident happens.
