I've seen some pretty dumb shit while I was living in poverty. People spending all their money on cell phones and jewelry while their kids were wearing the same clothes everyday, people banging on their neighbor's door in the morning begging for eggs instead of walking their lazy fat ass to a store, idiots who refused to pay the very small fee of like 25 cents for trash removal, yet they had a brand new car they went into massive debt to buy while they lived like pigs and couldn't afford rent (shortly wrecked it later drunk driving). People have some pretty unrealistic expectations and little to no common sense. No amount of easily exploitable charity or goodwill will fix those levels of stupidity.
Some good Samaritans took in the psychopath shooter, they also knew he was a basketcase who just got expelled from school, lost his parents and had a lengthy police record and thought it was OK that he also be allowed to bring his machine guns over. He was someone who couldn't afford a pot to piss in but still managed to own, license and maintain 10 expensive military grade assault rifles? No red flags there? The good Samaritans must have been just as crazy.
a lot of folk are not well-equipped to thrive in a society awash with easy credit and inflationary fiat currency, both themselves discouraging any amount of saving within a segment of the population enamored with appearing wealthy regardless of their circumstances, income, work, etc. sort of infects every strata of society too, and not just the very poor. excluded are those rare people looking around wondering why everyone's so fucked
and you're totally right, especially in certain religious communities there seems to exist only extremes of trust and mistrust. generally in food-assistance programs put out by religious organizations, you're either gonna need to get all sorts of documentation that you aren't a scamming piece of shit or you're gonna need just a social security card proving you're not coming in multiple times. obviously these people are of the former variety. in the church i belong to, i have no doubt that even the majority of members would take in some street kid given the opportunity...
and they're also NOT gonna let the motherfucker haul his firearms into the house, they ain't gonna leave any family member, especially female, alone with the dude. and most of these people are themselves well-armed, blue-collar southerners not adverse to defensive action.
(apparently the two people took the murderer in at their son's request- know for a fact when one of my homies had to crash at our place for a little bit in HS my parents treated him with great caution just in case.)
