When Mexican President Jose Calderon registered a protest to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding the shooting and killing of a Mexican on the border, what was her response?   A US Border Patrol Agent shot Jose Reyes, a Mexican citizen to protect another agent from injury as Reyes prepared to pelt him with a rock.   CNN reported that Clinton and Calderon met while in Guatemala attending a summit and Calderon is asking that the Border Agent be punished.  CNN Report..

LA Times reporter Richard Marosi suggests this will renew the use of force in the border debate.  He quoted a member of the ACLU as saying, "We simply cannot allow our law enforcement agents to use lethal force when confronted with rock throwers," said Kevin Keenan, executive director of the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties.  This is an attempt to draw a comparison as to the use of force with the person holding the gun as having exponentially more lethal power than a rock thrower.  This is true, from a distance.  But there was no distance between the Border Patrol Agent and his assailant who was preparing to hit the agent a second or third time after already hitting him in the head with rocks or a board with exposed nails.  LA Times Article...  Because of his close proximity to his intended victim, Jose Reyes with his rock had a lethal weapon in his hand.  The fact that he had no firearm did not make his weapon of choice any less lethal from that distance.

Christian Ramirez, national coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, called the shooting “another abuse of authority by Border Patrol agents.”  SignOnSanDiego.. 

Just who is abusing authority in these cases?  By what right do citizens of another country enter this country illegally and expect to do so with impunity?  Jose Reyes knew he was entering this country illegally and when his party was confronted they refused to submit to the authority of American Law Enforcement.  Reyes and others who were attempting to enter with a detained individual began to respond with a volley of rocks.         

Shooting back at people who throw rocks is nothing new.  On May 4, 1970, a student mob at Kent State University pelted National Guard Troops with rocks.  Eventually the Guard responded and after 67 rounds had been fired four Kent State Students lay dead and nine lay wounded.  Read more..  Dubbed the Kent State Massacre, the National Guard Troops eventually testified that they had concern for their own lives, outnumbered as they were by an angry mob throwing rocks.  When people have reason to fear for their lives they will respond with the weapon they have without concern that the mob's choice of lethal weapon is "only a rock".    

Two hundred years earlier, in 1770, John Adams defended a group of British soldiers who shot into a mob that was pelting them with ice, clubs and coal.  History knows this as the Boston Massacre.  Mobs do not have to carry guns to possess lethal force.  Their weapons may come in the form of boards with exposed nails, rocks or in the case of the Boston Massacre, ice, coal and clubs.       

Perhaps the moral to this story should be that one should not throw rocks at people carrying guns.  

I propose a bonus be paid to the Border Agent who protected his colleague.  Jose will not be trying to enter this country illegally again and let Mexico pay for his burial.  That's where he fell, back into Mexico.  I would love to think that this might have been Hillary's response but somehow, I doubt it.