I live in a small mid western town (14000 people). It has been very quiet here for years. This all changed a few years ago when a guy was released from prison and came to be closer to his parents. He fell for a teenage girl and ended up killing the teenagers mother, her mothers friend and the teenagers brother. He cut them up and hid the bodies in dead hollowed out trees. They could not find the bodies, so they cut the killer a deal, life in prison.
Moving ahead to last year, A guy I know mother was murdered by a recent parolee from prison. He killed her to take her new tv and was going to sell it for drugs. That did not work out for him.
Again last year, police were called for a woman being stabbed by her grandson. Police responded, shot him with a taser, which did not even slow him down. They ended up putting about 14 bullets in him before he went down. There was a vigil on a local network for him a few days later. I recognized some of the young people who were on the video. Most of them were customers of this guy saying the police should not have shot him. One guy even said that he was just getting his life together and the police did not have to kill him.
And then yesterday, a guy covered with tats who had just been released from jail a few weeks ago killed his mother and his girl friend and is still at large. He also had a record a mile long.
I guess that I am just expressing my dislike for what everything is turning into. The drug problem is really hitting small town America really hard.
It really saddens me.

When all is said and done-- drugs will be the downfall of this country, if the democrats don't beat them to it-- one thing about being old, I don't have to fight it any more. You do what you can when you are able and thats it.

[QUOTE=cobra44;138736258 few years ago when a guy was released from prison and came to be closer to his parents. He fell for a teenage girl and ended up killing the teenagers mother, her mothers friend and the teenagers brother.

Moving ahead to last year, A guy I know mother was murdered by a recent parolee from prison.

And then yesterday, a guy covered with tats who had just been released from jail a few weeks ago killed his mother and his girl friend and is still at large.
It really saddens me.[/QUOTE]

I see another similarity besides drugs. Larry

Drugs are a problem not only in large metropolitan areas but also across small town America and it’s getting worse. Last year law enforcement busted a pot growing operation not far from where I live. The growers carved out an area on the backside of land owned by a local rancher. The landowner was unaware that the thugs were using his land to grow pot.

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A gun has no brain.. use yours

North East MO has a reputation as one of the largest producing meth and pot area's in the Midwest. It's rural, lots of area with low population. And, lots of low income jobs. Enterprising kids can grow pot and cook meth in their back 40 for quite a bit if time without being discovered.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

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There are often a lot of factors behind the behavior described - drug abuse is only of one them. And small towns are not and have not been immune. We just have a 24 hour news cycle now and much better communication technology, so we hear more, and sooner, about such events.

More important, what on earth would ever lead anyone to think that a Taser is appropriate for such an event? That's some really bad training there. BTW, it is not unusual for it take a lot of rounds to put down a determined assailant, even with good hits. Pistols suck. That is an event at which at least officer should have had a rifle, put the red dot on the upper chest, and pressed straight back a few times.

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NHI, 10-8.

It's not just drugs but people on the loose with mental problems. Every one of the mass shooters in recent memory had some sort of mental issues and this was often coupled with drug use and abuse.
Jim

From where I live, 14000 is a city. My small town is 1100. I've watched the sheriff help a guy move because his wife didn't want his collection of kiddy porn in the house. I drive past the site of a trailer house used for meth production-house is now gone. Kids trying to be like gang bangers used to drive by, holding their pants up(If they had ever met a real gang banger, they would have wet the pants).No hookers on street corners, as no motel for miles, but someone did try to open a stripper bar. Didn't take because he couldn't get a liquor license and his market was 15 miles away. First MN winter put him out of business.

Gangs, drugs, crime is everywhere. The difference is in the small town, you know the people who show up on TV or in the paper.

We don't have a town cop, but a deputy lives in town. Very little violence, even though most houses have guns, based on the presence of hunting dogs and duck boats. We have very few substandard houses, some poverty, but we recognize our neighbors and we even talk to strangers when out walking.

When a tornado tore up our town, we were out helping each other move broken trees before the govt could get involved. We are a community, not just a bunch of people who live near each other.

Where I live is so small that you can't find it on the map but we border Chattanooga so that's where I say I live.

It's a very strange feeling to hear folks now refer to Chattanooga like they say Columbine.
I don't like it, not one bit. But it is what it is.

Illicit drug use/sales and violent crime are everywhere and on the rise in lots of places. Not to be pessimistic but I don't look for things to get better anytime soon.
I used to think we need to change tactics in the war on drugs but I worry if it's even winnable anymore.

A sense of history is important. All of today's illicit drugs used to be perfectly legal and were sold over the counter as medicines. Thomas Jefferson himself grew opium poppies and George Washington used laudanum (opium and alcohol) for his toothaches and some evidence suggests he smoked marijuana as his journal contains references to his hemp crops suggesting some was for smoking.

Various small towns of some years ago are still well known for having been rowdy places - Tombstone (Arizona) and Dodge City come to mind. Some years before their notoriety the whole of Kansas and Missouri were known as "bleeding" and were very dangerous places more akin to Somalia today than to the current conception of middle America.

Historically, any part of America being relatively "crime free" or "quiet" is likely either a myth or an anomaly. Where I live now, in the 19th century, the Army forbid anyone from traveling past this point unless they were a group with at least 25 armed men. (Even that was no guaranty as Fetterman and 80 odd men met a violent end near here.)

The length and breadth of America is littered with half forgotten serial killers, river pirates, bandits and cannibals. To say nothing of bears, wolves, mountain lions, feral pigs, wild dogs....

That is what makes it an interesting place to live and the reason why, when venturing out, the national characteristic of going armed developed and persisted.

In rural Michigan where I grew up, there was still plenty of weirdness 30 odd years ago and even the occasional chainsaw slaying.