- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
- cross-posted to:
- usa@midwest.social
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deleted by creator
The only way to stop a bad kid from ringing doorbells is a good guy with a gun.
That kid was no angel.
I’m sure I missed some right-wing thought-stopping platitudes, I may be back later with more wisdom.
Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this right after it happened??!?! Give the dead child’s family some time! Now is not the time for gun control arguments it’s the time to come together and support the victims, especially the man who shot the child, nobody thinks of their suffering!
Not going to lie, had me going for a second.
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But then casually post anonymous racist YouTube comments about how if he was raised better this wouldn’t have happened
Inb4 the cops find weed in their parents house.
“Find”
You forgot: The death penalty will deter others
The running away part adds a bonus felony in Texas in addition to the reckless discharge and I’m guessing murder II maybe negligent homicide.
On NextDoor somebody posted a link to this story and the comments were all “see? Kids shouldn’t be ringing doorbells and running away like this.” Maybe the real lesson is “don’t shoot kids in the fucking back”?
Adults: “Kids never go outside and have fun anymore.”
Also Adults: “If you step on my property I’ll kill you.”Those are different adults saying those things. The gun nuts tend to instill irrational fear in their kids that they should never leave the house unless they are prepared for life-and-death warfare. It’s a sad cycle of paranoid abuse :(
Sometimes it’s different adults… It’s all part of the same incoherent ideology.
Ding dong ditch used to be a staple of kiddie pranks… for fuck’s sake! Do none of these idiots have any real threat assessment? Or are they so desperate to shoot someone that they just wanna blast some kid and say they feared for their lives?
Do none of these idiots have any real threat assessment?
More that they’ve got a house full of guns, an ear full of “crime wave!!!” media, and a not insignificant amount of mental illness.
“If someone rings my doorbell and runs away, they’re targeting my house for a burglary” is a thing lots of people unironically believe.
Or are they so desperate to shoot someone that they just wanna blast some kid and say they feared for their lives?
Definitely elements of that, too. But in the sense of feeling like they want to be the hero of a story they’ve heard on Talk Radio.
A lot of these people are legit delusional.
“If someone rings my doorbell and runs away, they’re targeting my house for a burglary” is a thing lots of people unironically believe.
God help me, I’m going to lose it with the next idiot that I hear this shit from. My parents constantly regurgitate simulacrums of that line. Somehow we’ve moved on foolish grans mass spamming the emails about people putting tags on your car at the gas station to follow you home… but it’s ‘moved on’ to the insidious new middle-aged twats on facebook losing their minds about shit like kids being kidnapped from their school by secret russian/chinese/iranian/democrat black-ops teams.
“If someone rings my doorbell and runs away, they’re targeting my house for a burglary” is a thing lots of people unironically believe.
Is this really a commonly held belief? The fuck? Makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.
It’s less a commonly held belief and more an urban myth that gets circulated via Facebook copypasta and local news elevated crime gossip.
Makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.
The theory is that you ring the doorbell a number of times and if nobody answers the door then the person must not be home. It is therefore safe to do a break-in and steal all the stuff. More elaborate and sinister theories entail a burglar who is exhausting their prey with sleepless anxiety, hoping to break in an assault/rape the homeowner once they’ve been burned out from sleeplessly monitoring their front door night after night.
Slap on some fluff about this being a cartel strategy or the sign of a kidnapping ring in your area or whatever other bells and whistles you want to throw on the tale. If it’s a TikTok meme, they’ve brainwashed kids to gather information on behalf of the Chinese/Russian government. This is a prelude to an MS-13 blockwide invasion. Lizardpeople. The sky is the limit.
Plays on mental illness like a fiddle.
Is this really a commonly held belief? The fuck? Makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.
I call it the Facebook Fear. People share everything remotely fearful on Facebook. The algorithm loves fear as it generates engagement.
The app Nextdoor is filled with fear mongering.
People are obsessed about being fearful over crime.
None whatsoever. They’re bloodthirsty savages. Itching for any excuse to murder someone.
I give it 2 weeks before the shooter is being interviewed on Fox. Whinging about how he’s really the victim of some nebulous “woke mob” that drug him online for murdering a child.
Or are they so desperate to shoot someone that they just wanna blast some kid and say they feared for their lives?
It is exactly this. These are deeply violent people who are actively seeking any reason to hide behind the excuse of self defense.
As someone raised by conservatives, it’s #2. They fantasize about being in a scenario where they have to defend their home with a gun. It’s a core component of being a conservative.
There is something ingrained in certain people I’m finding. I’m a big dude who can handle himself if need be, but I also have guns cause the state does too. Moved from a more liberal area to this purple pearl in a very red area. Had a girl over one night and heard some rustling outside the door. I put on pants and went to go check it out and she asked me why I wasn’t bringing my gun. Jackie, my sister in Christ, we are outside the downtown area of a fairly safe little tourist trap. At the absolute worst it could be is a small black bear that I just scream at. But I’m not going to jail for firing a gun near downtown(although that doesn’t tend to stop anyone else around here).
Or are they so desperate to shoot someone that they just wanna blast some kid and say they feared for their lives?
Too many people are kept in check by fear of getting caught by the law and will turn into savage beasts at the slightest opportunity.
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At 11PM?
Who cares? They rang the doorbell and ran.
You only know that after the fact, from outside. I assure you the homeowner absolutely did not think of that at 11PM. Get real with your “who cares” nonsense.
You’re right, the correct response is to just start blasting
Someone rang my doorbell at 11pm, better shoot first and ask questions never.
Noone could ever need help at 11pm.
Also, are they just posted up in a chair with a rifle pointed at the door ready to fire when the doorbell goes off? Or did they open the door and identify the person running away before firing.
The whole point of the prank is to run away before they can awnser the door.
And so maybe you fire a shot in the air to scare anyone, if you are that insanely paranoid. Clearly he could see that someone was running AWAY from him if he hit a moving target at 11pm, and there’s a neighbor wittness, so it couldn’t have been pitch black in the middle of nowhere.
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11 PM? So what? Is that when ‘the purge’ starts in that nasty rat hole state or what?
It’s when kids, traditionally, are in bed. But you do you if 35 year olds do the ding-dong ditch in your holler, sounds like you’re a good fit.
Well maybe not for an 11 y/o, but sure, high school boys are rarely any more grown up.
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If you don’t want someone to ring your doorbell then why the fuck do you have one? They are usually only secured with two screws. Fuck that guy, he needs to be shot back.
If you remove the doorbell button, it leaves an unsightly hole that faces visitors. Instead, you can remove or deactivate the actual bell part inside your house.
Then, you can put a sign on the door that says not to knock or it will wake the baby, and you may never have to interact with another human ever again.
But…
👉👈
what if I want a reason to murder a minority child?
It’s safer to do it with a car, probably won’t even get manslaughter.
it leaves an unsightly hole that faces visitors
Perfectly sized for the barrel of your “6” to poke through and welcome your visitors Texass style.
Good news is that this idiot can no longer threaten kids (or anyone). He was kicked out of the National Weather Association after his asinine posts. He then seemingly died shortly after. I haven’t found a cause of death yet.
I haven’t found a cause of death yet.
Rang a doorbell.
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The kid was shot in the back You know, cause he was running away and all.
It is wild to me that someone hears their doorbell and their instinct is to grab their gun. I cannot imagine losing your child this way. I know school and mass shootings are awful and kill many more children. The difference is the intent; on some level Americans are aware existing means we could be the victim of gun violence. We do not expect idiots to shoot at us with no intent to go on a killing spree and especially not at our children outside of schools.
I almost don’t blame parents for not wanting to let their kids play outside anymore
It is wild to me that someone hears their doorbell and their instinct is to grab their gun
Seriously, my first instinct (like any normal person’s) when I hear my doorbell is to pause whatever I’m watching or playing, turn off the speakers, and slowly and silently creep towards the door to peek through the peephole and see if whoever rang without scheduling first has already gone away and I can go back to my normal life.
What am I going to do with a gun, shoot the bastard and cause even more people to come to my door‽
Fox news fucked up this whole generation.
What a shithole country. Total no-go zone.
Are you trying to be ignorant?
Any country that goes through a Sandy-Hook style shooting and doesn’t amend their gun control regulations, is a shithole country.
QED.
Are you trying to defend a shithole country where kids get shot for ringing doorbells or going to school?
You could’ve just said “yes.”
How is what they said ignorant? I’m asking as an American.
Trump famously referred to other countries as shithole countries. People often darkly mock him and the us by referring to the us as a shithole country. Not really sure how ignorance plays a role in their comment, but it’s possible you’re ignorant to that context so just adding that here.
ahh yes… time to pay the dead kid tax… we all feel safer though so its totalllly worth all the dead children, right?
At least they have guns so they can resist a hypothetical tyrannical gove-… Never mind.
So safe. This time it was a kid, but next time he might not be so lucky. It could be a delivery driver! The mailman! Someone getting the wrong address! Scary scary times we live in.
A dead kid by lax gun laws is just a necessary evil we have to accept! But heaven forbid they see a nipple, cancel that shit straight away!
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wtf from the cops
a homicide detective with the Houston Police Department, told KHOU, noting the boy’s death does not appear to involve self-defense because the shooting “wasn’t close to the house.”
Implying that if they rang the doorbell and waited (you know, the entire purpose of a doorbell), it could have been considered self-defense? I know, that’s a bit of logical fallacy but wtf
Everyone is entitled to their day in court. This is a cop doing a good job of cutting out any possibility of bullshit weaseling by pointing out that the possibility of self defense doesn’t even need to be debated or discussed.
Everyone is entitled to their day in court
Even ICE detainees? Don’t tell trump that. It’ll rile him up no end.
Yeah I was about to say… Not anymore they’re not
It just means they don’t even need to consider if it could have been in self defense because it was ruled out at step 1. Not that if it passed step 1 it would be guaranteed that it was.
They just want to head off that entire line of defense from the get go.
could have been
as the other user said, yes, exactly. depending on other factors it could have been
“Why don’t kids play anymore”
Once saw a mother with kids in her car, drive past another group of kids playing soccer in the street. She’s sped past them yelling, “next time I’ll just run you idiots over!” (not a busy street at all!) maybe one car every 10 min. Those kids don’t play soccer any more.
I live just outside of Houston, and I’ve had kids play ding-dong ditch at my house, and honestly it’s fucking creepy. It wouldn’t bother me during the daytime, when people are around and there are often children playing on my street. But it only happens late at night, when my two little kids are in bed. I check outside and they’re gone. My street is well-lit, but I never see them running away. There’s a green space nearby that they must be running to, but there’s nothing to hide behind there.
Anyway, it’s creepy as fuck. I really hate it. If I caught the kid in the act, I’d probably get real serious at him and try to get him to stop. But I’d never point a gun at him. I hope he trips while he’s running and busts up his teeth, but I don’t want him to die.
The murderer here is completely unhinged.
You could always respond like a normal human being and get a doorbell cam. You can at least see what is going on and maybe go talk to their parents (if you didn’t live in a dystopia where people think it’s ok to just start blasting)
We don’t have a doorbell cam because we live in a dystopia and I don’t want the cops or the government to have visual access to my front door at all times.
Self-hosting is an option if you’re tech-savvy enough
I’m not.
Everyday is a learning opportunity, all you’ve got to do is seize that opportunity.
I’ve got two kids and a full time job. Every day is not a learning opportunity.
Also savvy criminals would have jammers on. There is little question in my mind that tech bro bastards probably shut down all cameras they don’t fully control if they go anywhere. They want all the privacy in the world while they probably want a nice shot of your ass as you take a dump.
jammers
No idea why you need something as sophisticated as a jammer when you can just stick a piece of tape over the lense.
Either way, yeah. These cameras are more useful for a panoptican security state than any individual home owner.
And even then… not that beneficial.
Also kids playing ding dong ditch, aren’t walking around with sophisticatedish tech like that!
We’re talking about children playing a harmless prank… They’re not bringing “jammers” with them. Point was that a doorbell cam would let them see that it’s just kids goofing off. If the bell rang late at night, they looked at the cam, and it was all scrambled, I think it would be pretty safe to assume that wasn’t ding dong ditch.
I was referring to actual criminals and not kids playing pranks.
Ring cameras absolutely have been hacked and jammed. The people who did that weren’t kids being annoying. They were car theft rings who used the time that cameras were downed to steal cars.
Yes, I understand. The point is, if your shit is being jammed, then you likely have genuine reason to be concerned. So the doorbell cam helps you realize they’re not kids playing a prank doesn’t it
Lawl nobody bothering people at home for tiktok clout is carrying a fucking jammer
Chances are astronomically low you know who the parents are. Maybe this is a legit use of that nextdoor app.
Given that kids sometimes play outside, or take some time to get loaded into or out of cars in a driveway, and I am also sometimes outside or driving to or from my house, I feel like I have a decent handle of what kids live where in a one block radius of my house. I may not know the parents, but I would know which door to knock on to meet them.
I hope he trips while he’s running and busts up his teeth, but I don’t want him to die.
You hope a child is seriously disfigured and has to endure painful reconstruction and likely very expensive dental bills for… checks notes… annoying you? I mean, at least you don’t wish death up on him for playing the prank that nearly every child ever has played. Just serious injury, which is totally OK.
That’s obviously hyperbole for “I want them to face some consequences for their actions after alarming me in my home in the middle of the night for their own enjoyment.”
Is someone ringing your doorbell alarming to you? Especially in a city like Houston. I get that in the country it is rare for people to be out and about. I also get that you might be scared if they ring the doorbell late at night, but that’s what peepholes are for. Or Ring cameras. Or keeping the door closed and yelling, “Who is it?”
Yes, someone ringing my doorbell late at night and then running away before I can get to the door is alarming. I don’t like it. Maybe you’d like it, but it disrupts my peace, wakes up my kids, and I don’t like the feeling that someone is targeting me for their one-sided enjoyment. It’s fucking creepy.
And that is the same rationale used by the guy who just shot and killed a kid. Maybe they are targeting you because they can see how mad you get over a simple and common prank.
It’s not creepy. It’s the most common prank done around the world by nearly every generation of kids. Or it was until people started killing kids for it.
Being an adult involves tolerating a lot of things without externally reacting in the moment. There’s always an incompetent boss we can’t call out, or an insufferable family member that we still have to be nice to, or a neighbor that we have to somehow share a wall/fence with. We still get annoyed about things, we just save it for appropriate times and places. For example, frustration about ding dong ditching, could be shared on a post about ding dong ditching.
It’s sad it needs to be said, but calmly expressing an opinion online ≠ going overboard IRL.
You could always have a switch for your door bell so that when the switch is off the bell doesn’t ring. Just turn the doorbell off each night and enjoy some uninterrupted sleep.
Plus when the ding-dong-ditchers realize that the bell no longer rings they’re likely to stop hitting your bell.
Imagine you hear someone trying to kick down your door in the middle of the night. Is this…annoying? Or terrifying?
Except, Moakley didn’t say they are trying to kick down the door. You brought up kicking. Moakley just said they are ringing the bell and running away. No kicking involved, so disfigurement seems extreme.
However, it’s also a wish, which means it has no effect on anything. Feel free to wish anything on anyone, it won’t happen.
Although, my high school bully did get brain cancer and die, so who knows? Maybe wishes work sometimes.
This article left that out. Other articles say they were doing the door kicking challenge.
Either way the dumb kid shouldn’t be dead.
Please read articles before posting comments about them. Otherwise it’s just baseless flame wars.
I did. The article that was posted didn’t mention kicking.
Edit:
Also, this particular comment thread was about a person experiencing ding-dong ditch personally, not necessarily what happened in the event described in the article.
Are you seriously equating ringing a doorbell with kicking a door down?
No, but that’s the latest middle of the night fad
We can’t all lead a blameless thought life like yourself but I’m sure we’re all hoping you can teach us a few things.
Especially creepy if they’re kicking your door in the middle of the night.
“creepy”? Annoying, stupid, sure, but “creepy”?
I think the point is that you don’t really know it’s kids playing a game. Your doorbell rings at night and there’s no one there.
Maybe I’m alone here, but if my doorbell rings and I look out and nobody’s there, I see that as a win lol
Unless you think ghosts are real, there really aren’t many possibilities. Late in the evening it’s more threatening than creepy.
I guess I’m not at all into supernatural stuff, so I wouldn’t think “creepy” as in ghosts, but I’d for sure be wondering if there was someone waiting away from the door to cause me problems if I stepped out to look without locking the door behind me. And I don’t live in a place where that kind of thing is common.
I had this happen to us as well, but we put a sign on the door with a please don’t ring the door bell, baby is sleeping and it never happened again.
For some reason this also stop solicitors.
Why is this article not framed as if this was a crime? They never mentioned the shooter or his consequences. It’s not illegal to ring a door bell.
The Houston police department have not released the identity of the boy or the occupant of the home, but said a middle-aged man has been arrested and several weapons were later recovered from the home.
It happened on Sunday; that’s all the consequences that have happened thusfar. There will likely be a trial, but the justice system moves a lot more slowly than it would have to for there to be anything more than that yet.
Fair enough.
This just in: https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/02/us/houston-ding-dong-ditch-shooting-arrest
He’s been charged with murder
You sure showed that 11 year old boy! What a real man’s man. Super tough guy. No one is going to knock on his door now!
No one is going to knock on his door now!
Because his new door has bars and is locked from the outside.
i mean i’ve seen signs in austin, on the same lawn, that say “we don’t call the police” with a picture of a gun and “ring my door and i’ll shoot”
lovely, warm neighborhood…
So doesn’t that person have any deliveries or visitors or anything? Imagine ordering a pizza and then being shocked when some anxious guy (anxious because they got tons of deliveries to make on a deadline or be fired) shows up?
i honestly don’t know. i was visiting three houses down and asked, they just shrugged and said welcome to texas
I have one of those shootin’ people signs on my lawn. One time, I ordered a pizza. When the pizza delivery person showed up, they were acting mighty shady. So I shot them. That bastard may have been trying to case my place. When the beautiful boys in blue showed up. I showed them my badge and all was good.
- Some person I made up for this post
Keep Austin
WeirdPsychotic
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Three teenagers rang his door as a prank, and his response is to get in his car, follow them, and then mow them down? Totally reasonable. He was clearly just defending himself. 🙄
There are people that seriously argue that it should be legal to chase down someone who has wronged you in some way and take out any form of revenge you wish against them.
Can we just make an exception for billionaires? It should be open season on them, at least.
Thats not how corruption works my dude
No no, you have to fight the hundred thousandaires and millionaires, while the billionaires laugh with the raucous amusement of dark and hungry gods.
As long as these people are not put in charge of all our institutions, the rule of Law, and police forces…
Boy do I have some bad news for you…
Not that this is an excuse but I’m going to make the assumption that he was addicted to being kept in a perpetual state of fear by fox news etc.
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Some teenagers mistakenly banged on the back door of the wrong house near me and the home owner chased them down and fired on their car when they were trying to get away. The kids ran into the woods and the car went missing for a few hours. The home owner was a cop, so anyone paying attention was suspicious where the car went. The whole incident was sweep under the rug, so I assume that either the chief didn’t let them plant evidence or there was nothing in the evidence locker to plant.
As far as internet pranks go, it doesn’t get much more benign than ding dong ditch
I can’t imagine this happening in the Netherlands… Wtf…
It absolutely does happen here. Like this one for example: guy chases young girl with an axe after messing with his doorbell.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2438126-man-wordt-boos-om-belletje-trekken-en-verwondt-man-met-bijl
Don’t mess with the wrong people. You never know what’s going to push them over the edge.
Ja, Limburg. Vandaar. ;)
Edit: the axeguy was stopped by visitors of a local bar while pursuing the little girl. Noone got seriously injured and the unhinged moron was left in police custody.
Now, in the US these kind of stories have a different ending. In the US this guy would’ve shot the girl and rampaged through that bar.
That girl would have 100% been shot and killed if this happened in America.
Well, shit…
…or really anywhere in the civilised world
