>>>I thought the shot was self inflicted? Never visit Texas. There are five guns per capita and they do not care who they shoot! :)
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>>Actually, we do care ... one stays in the house for burglars and door-to-door salespeople, one stays in the truck for carjackers and New York/California drivers, and we use the other three ONLY on folks who visit and complain about how many guns we have.
>>(evil chuckle)( JUST KIDDING, PEOPLE !!! )
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>>All kidding aside -- there's still a law on the books in Texas that allows open carrying of a loaded HANDGUN in your vehicle if you are "traveling and located more than two counties away from your home county". You can also legally carry loaded rifles on an internal rack inside a pickup truck if you live in a county with less than a certain population and you own property of a certain minimum acreage.
>>
>>There was a celebrated case a few years ago where a repo man was shot in Austin -- and they couldn't prosecute the homeowner because he didn't break any laws. The repo man's family tried everything, even an appeal to then-Governor Bush -- nothing could be done because the homeowner was within his rights to kill the guy. Scary...
>
>I figure the "repo man" is none of "reporter", "repositioning", "repository" or "repot" - so it must be about "reposession". It sure isn't in dictionaries... maybe Texas editions?
>
>Language aside, the family sued from the wrong side. They should have gone after whoever sent him into a situation in which he can be legally killed. Then go after those who made the laws which allow a company to send one into such a situation.

Sorry, Dragan, didn't think about my usage of slang -- yes, repo is short for "reposession". They're now trying to call themselves "asset recovery agents", just like bounty hunters are calling themselves "bail enforcement agents".

They both amount to the same thing -- one takes property, one takes people -- and they don't get paid unless they recover the goods. Both can basically do whatever they want, wherever and whenever they want, with very little (if any) recourse or accountability, to accomplish their end goal of getting the property/person they're after. It's one of the last vestiges of "frontier justice" left in our society.

Most of these folks are either self-employed or partners in a small company (as was the person killed, to my best recollection) so it would be difficult if not impossible to sue someone in that regard.

Going after those who made the laws allowing this -- well, they all died at the Alamo, so that's out of the question (bg). Seriously, these laws have been on the books a VERY long time, and in Texas suing public officials is a useless waste of time and money (we just put our former state Attorney General in prison last month for mail fraud and filing false tax returns).