To be filed under “Who among us has never…” and cross-referenced with “How is this only the first time this has ever happened?” is the story of one Lucas Hinch and some gun violence we can all get behind. It seems Deputy Wyatt Earp, er – Mr. Hinch – emerged the victor in a shootout with some cattle rustlers, er – his Dell XPS 410 desktop – at the O.K. Corral, er – an alley behind his home. And by “shootout” we mean eight shots from Mr. Hinch’s shiny new, Hi-Point 9 mm pistol straight into the Dell’s steely hide. According to NBC News:
The police report said that Hinch “was fed up with fighting his computer for the last several months” and shot it in a back alley behind his home just before 7 p.m., “effectively disabling it.”
A tweet from the Colorado Springs Police Department sums up the fatal encounter:
The Los Angeles Times indicates that the irreconcilable differences between Mr. Hinch and the Dell desktop centered on “blue screen of death.”
So far sources indicate that no shots were fired by the Dell; it’s unclear at this time whether the Dell was unarmed or just slow on the draw. What is clear is that roughly every human on the planet to ever own or use a Windows-based PC has contemplated exactly such machine murder in their hearts and minds, if not in actual shots fired.