Retirees with guns: Kings Point dog walker shot by golf-cart vigilante in condo caper | Frank Cerabino

Years ago, some cars in suburban Delray Beach used to display the bumper sticker, “Pray for me, I drive by Kings Point.”

The barb addressed the perception that many of the senior-citizen drivers who went in and out of that sprawling condo complex south of Atlantic Avenue and west of Jog Road were dangerous drivers.

The old bumper sticker may have to be revised.

“Pray for me. I walk a dog at Kings Point," would be a suitable new warning message.

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The proliferation of guns in Florida, where about 2.5 million people are licensed to carry concealed handguns, put lethal firepower in the hands of an apparent dog-poop vigilante at Kings Point.

Dog walk turns to running from bullets

Kings Pointer Robert Levine, 74, fired five shots at an unfamiliar fellow condo resident, Herbert Merritt, 64, while he was walking his dog near the 15th hole of the golf course at Kings Point early one evening last month, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

Levine, driving a golf cart, pulled up to Merritt, and confronted him about walking his dog too close to the golf course, according to the arrest report.

The verbal confrontation took a potentially life-and-death turn when Levine pointed a handgun at Merritt, who then ran, as Levine pursued him around a tree in the cart while shooting at the fleeing dog owner, the arrest report said.

One of the shots hit Merritt in the left ankle, wounding him and dropping him to the ground. Levine wasn’t done, according to the report. An eyewitness told deputies that the golfer kicked Merritt in the head, then went to golf cart, pulled out a club and began hitting the fallen dog owner with a club, while still holding the handgun in his other hand.

A judge who deemed Levine a threat to himself and others issued a risk-protection order this week, prohibiting him from possessing firearms and ammunition for a year.

Shooter's lawyer says gunfire was lawful

Levine, who has been charged with attempted murder, has hired a lawyer who says that the official version of events is wrong. And that Levine, who has no criminal record, acted in “a lawful manner.”

I smell a stand-your-grass dog-poop case on the horizon.

If nothing else, the shooting of the dog walker ought to serve as a fresh reminder to just how needlessly dangerous Florida has become through the proliferation of guns and the encouragement of Floridians to arm themselves against theoretical troublemakers — who in many cases turn out to be the gun owners themselves.

Kings Point ought to be a safe place. It has guarded entrances, a roving private police force and a Palm Beach County sheriff’s substation directly across the street on Atlantic Avenue.

If you read a story about “shots” at Kings Point, it’s way more likely to be about vaccinations than gun-wielding intruders from the outside world.

Traveling around Kings Point with a loaded gun strikes me as as going way out of your way to look for trouble. Carrying a loaded gun is especially dangerous in retirement communities, where the general level of crankiness among residents is high, and contentious arguments abound — and have been known to blossom over next to nothing.

If a dog-walking gripe rates a handgun, does that mean feeding the Muscovy ducks warrants an AR-15 response?

It wasn’t like this in the past.

I remember covering a potentially violent altercation at a Royal Palm Beach condo clubhouse about 20 years ago. It was a fight over the use of a communal coffee maker.

When a board member made himself a cup of Maxwell House decaffeinated instant coffee in the clubhouse, he was confronted by another board member for not making the coffee in his own unit.

“There has to be a certain order,” the rules enforcer told me. “We don’t want anybody making coffee and leaving the electricity on.”

The verbal dustup over the instant coffee escalated instantly when the coffee drinker brandished his cane and slammed it on the table.

And he was drinking decaf!

Police were called because the rules enforcer said she felt threatened by the man’s aggressive cane choreography. Ah, the good old days. When condo disputes were, at worst, escalated by canes.

And things are bound to be getting worse in the near future.

Open carry in Florida glorifies guns

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a man who rarely fails to embrace a bad idea, recently said he will push Florida to be an open-carry state, meaning that legal gun owners will be able to openly display their firearms, without training, registration or government licensing.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not looking forward to the sight of retirees going around as if they’re characters in some "High Noon" remake when they can barely back their cars out of the Publix parking space in less than five tries.

Just the thought of holster-strapped codgers at a sharp-elbows, all-you-can-eat buffet line ought to make you consider body armor for dining out.

Or to put it another way: This could turn the Golden Corral into the O.K. Corral.

“I know what you’re thinking. Did you take five or six pieces of the brisket? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I kind of lost track of who ate what.

“But being that this is the most powerful handgun at the pickleball luncheon, you’ve got to ask yourself as you look at that full plate in your hands, ‘Am I really that hungry? Well, are you, punk?'”

fcerabino@gannett.com

@FranklyFlorida

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Delray Beach condo shooting of dog walker by golfer exposes gun culture