Bonnie & Clyde Type Violence Sadly A Modern Day Trend

By Major Van Harl USAF Ret

Remington Model 11 Whippet: Bonnie and Clyde’s Shotgun
Clyde Barrow was believed to have murdered ten people himself. No good guys or bad guys remember Bonnie Parker ever firing a gun at anyone, but was alleged to be an excellent re-loader during the many shoot outs the Barrow Gang was in. The problem was the Barrow Gang had a lot more experience in fire fights then most of the cops they shot it out with.
Major Van Harl USAF Ret
Major Van Harl USAF Ret

USA – -(Ammoland.com)- As a kid, sometimes when I thought I was getting the short end of the stick I would use the complaint or more likely excuse “this is not fair.

Now my father the Navy Master Chief would remind me once again that life is not fair.

I believed the Hollywood scenario that good guys win and the bad guys loose. Society backs the good guys and stands with those who put themselves on the line for right.

Of course I had never seen the Gary Cooper movie High Noon, the 1952 movie where the town Marshal has to face down a gang of dangerous gun-slinging outlaws and no one in the town would back Cooper up. He faces evil alone because the public was too scared for their personal safety.

I knew from movies and TV that if you did a bad thing, you either went to jail forever or died for your crimes. The bad guys did not walk away free. However the good guys always let the evil one attempt to draw his gun first, good being faster and truer would win the day. With nothing more than his own flesh wound that allowed the hero to walk away from the death and destruction he had avoided. Observing in the end the carnage he inflected on to the doers of evil.

Marshal Dillon never shot a murdering side-winder in the back no matter how much the criminal deserved it.

Recently I had been watching the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde. I only turned on the TV as the last thirty minutes of the movie was playing out. A group of Texas and Louisiana lawmen, lead by a Texas Ranger ambushed Bonnie and Clyde.

In the movie Clyde was out of the Ford car he had stolen, talking to someone he knew who was broken down on the side of the road. Bonnie was sitting innocently in the car. In real life as the car approached the stranded vehicle the lawmen opened fire. The person who had agreed to betray the two criminals was in fact handcuffed to a tree by the Texas Ranger. This was done to make sure the betrayer did not go back on his word and warn Clyde. The handcuffing issue was never even revealed until 1979. Good law enforcement guys don’t mistreat the public–that’s a rule, at least I thought it was.

The first round out of one officer’s rifle struck Clyde in the head. The six policemen never told Bonnie and Clyde to throw down their guns and give them selves up like in the movies. It was an ambush pure and simple. Bonnie was not killed out right and was heard screaming inside the Ford. The six lawmen opened up with automatic rifles. When they went empty, then each man took up a shotgun and emptied it into the vehicle. Putting the shotgun down, they each emptied their revolvers into the car.

Years before I remember coming home from the same movie after seeing Bonnie and Clyde and was upset at how unfair the law had been to those two. I think my dad thought I was kidding when I explained how the cops never gave Bonnie & Clyde a chance, they just gunned them down like dogs in a street (Hollywood term), never giving them the “fair” opportunity to surrender.

What the movie failed to tell you was that the Barrow Gang was credited with killing nine police officers and numerous other persons during their crime spree. Clyde Barrow was believed to have murdered ten people himself. No good guys or bad guys remember Bonnie Parker ever firing a gun at anyone, but was alleged to be an excellent re-loader during the many shoot outs the Barrow Gang was in. The problem was the Barrow Gang had a lot more experience in fire fights then most of the cops they shot it out with.

Now-a-days the bad gays carry more firepower then the average police officer on the street does. In 2015 you cannot afford, as a cop to let the bad guy draw first and hope your training and luck wins out.

W.C. Fields once said “never give a sucker an even break.”

With the way our violent world (to include beyond US borders) is today, perhaps the new saying should be “never give a terrorist an even break” whether it is in Iraq or on an American school campus. If they attempt to bring violence on Americans perhaps the best thing we can do is “head them off at the pass with an M-16 rifle.

France Terror Attack
If they attempt to bring violence on Americans perhaps the best thing we can do is “head them off at the pass with an M-16 rifle.”

There will always be a next modern version of Bonnie and Clyde and good people will die. The real issue is how fast they can be stopped and how to mitigate the death and destruction.

Major Van Harl USAF Ret.
[email protected]

About Major Van Harl USAF Ret.:Major Van E. Harl USAF Ret., a career Police Officer in the U.S. Air Force was born in Burlington, Iowa, USA, in 1955. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Infantry School.  A retired Colorado Ranger and currently is an Auxiliary Police Officer with the Cudahy PD in Milwaukee County, WI.  His efforts now are directed at church campus safely and security training.  He believes “evil hates organization.”  [email protected]

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Marvin

That’s not true about Bonnie never firing a gun. She took part in the Joplin shootout. She also fired back at Hinton, Alcorn, and Schmid when they first tried to ambush them in November 1933 near Sowers, Texas. Blanche, in her memoirs, also recalls Bonnie shooting a gun a couple of times, including in Joplin. I’m so sick of people who don’t do their proper research and just repeat the same misinformation they find on fan-made YouTube videos and/or personal blogs.

STW

The other thing missed by “they weren’t given a chance” is that they had lots of chances. They could have given up yesterday, or last week, or last month. It’s a timing issue. This time, right now, they didn’t get a chance because we weren’t taking any chances.