Plus ça Change, Plus C’est la Même Chose

I guess not much has changed in the past week. Though, I'm sure our pet dead horse here at mAss Backwards, whom we've all grown to know and love so well over the last couple of years, appreciated the time off from the near-constant flagellating.

Teens Charged With Attacking Attleboro Clerk Twice

Two teenagers are under arrest, charged with attacking and robbing the same 7-11 clerk in Attleboro twice in less than a month.

Thank goodness the store clerk was, apparently, completely defenseless against these disenfranchised youth/cherubic choirboys/budding young hip-hop artists. Otherwise, someone might have gotten hurt.

Oh, wait...someone did get hurt. Never mind.

Attleboro police say they were called to an armed robbery at the 7-11 convenience store on North Main Street at 5 a.m. Saturday, moments after two masked men had beaten the clerk there with a copper pipe and wooden stick before running off.

I blame...um...

While the clerk was taken to Sturdy Memorial Hospital for treatment, officers say they tracked down the two suspects outside a home on Winter Street. There, police say the two teenagers, 19-year-old Rhyan Vaughan and 17-year-old Fred Baskin, confessed and led officers to the weapons.

A short time later, police say they figured out the pair had also attacked and robbed the same clerk at the same store back on July 15. During that robbery, the clerk was sprayed with wasp & hornet spray by two masked men.

Rumor has it that that you can just walk into any hardware store in the Commonwealth and actually purchase bug spray, with the sole intention of using it as an offensive weapon, without any criminal background check and no special Exterminator's License required.

At least, for the time being, anyway.

Someone get me Senator Barrios on the phone. We must act now to reform our lax wooden stick/metal pipe/insect repellant control laws before more innocents are harmed by these deadly implements.

And, once successful on the home front, we must turn our attention to our border states and get them to do the same. I mean, what good would it do us to require individuals to be licensed to possess these weapons if Bay State residents could just saunter on up to Salem, New Hampshire and purchase as many wooden sticks as they'd like?

Vaughan and Baskin are being held on $50,000 cash bail. They’ll be arraigned at Attleboro District Court Monday.

As always, that breathing sound you're hearing is me not holding my breath, waiting for the judge hearing this case to display a little common sense, and put these scumbags behind bars where they belong - for a good, long time.

"Come on, Bruce, show some compassion here. It's not like they robbed the guy and sent him to the hospital THREE times!"