For years now, cities have failed to combat rising violent crime. Citizens are fed up and, as a result, are taking action. Such was the case in Houston this weekend when a customer at a taqueria shot and killed an armed robber.
Video footage of the late-night stick-up shows an armed man, clothed in a black ski mask, demanding wallets from diners. As the robber makes his rounds, a male customer in one of the booths can be seen reaching for his concealed handgun before firing nine times into the criminal’s back. Once he ensured the robber was disarmed of what was later reported to be an airsoft gun, the customer returned the other patrons’ stolen goods.
The mysterious vigilante disappeared from the taco shop before law enforcement could question him.
Texas law allows for the use of deadly force against a person committing or trying to commit robbery, aggravated robbery, and attempted murder, among other things. Whether the unnamed customer will be charged with a crime for stopping one, however — something Twitter users hotly debated over the weekend — remains to be seen.
This shooting, regardless of legality, is what happens when cities don’t crack down on crime.
Like many other urban, Democrat-controlled hubs, Houston is governed by soft-on-crime politicians and policies that let criminals back onto the streets instead of keeping them behind bars.
Following the death of George Floyd in 2020, Houston was one of many U.S. cities that sought to make fundamental changes to its policing and criminal justice system in the name of so-called racial equity. As a result, Texas’ biggest city is in the middle of a rapid uptick in “brazen break-ins,” stabbings, shootings, road rage fights-turned-fatal, kidnappings, thefts, and other violent crimes.
In 2022 alone, the Houston Police Department reported at least 73,410 thefts, 14,256 burglaries (a weekly average of 325), and 420 homicides (averaging roughly eight per week). Last year’s homicides may have been slightly down from 2021, when law enforcement clocked 433 murders, but are still much higher than in previous years.
The Houston homicide rate is so high right now that the local Crime Stoppers chapter had to cease reading the names of murder victims at its annual “Day of Remembrance.”
Families of Houston murder victims blame the city’s Democrat judges for the “revolving courthouse doors.” Local law enforcement personnel and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott say those same judges played roles in reducing critical funding.
Houstonians’ tax dollars are supposed to go to programs and people who give them security. Instead of punishing criminals to the fullest extent of the law, those tax dollars are diverted to so-called “outreach workers and violence interrupters.”
When city leaders won’t act and law enforcement is understaffed, citizens like the armed customer at El Ranchito #4 taqueria take matters into their own hands to protect themselves, their families, and others.
For those exercising their Second Amendment rights, that may seem like good news. But an uptick in self-defense shootings, no matter how justified, will likely not bode well with Democrats hungry for gun control.
Already, crime-negligent Houston leaders including Mayor Sylvester Turner and Police Chief Troy Finner are working to disarm citizens like the taco shop guy with a $1 million gun buyback program and the demonization of firearms.
Not only is that hypocritical and unjust, but it also proves that in cities run by politicians who neglect crime, the law-abiding citizens always lose.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
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