Bounty hunter - the very phrase conjures up images of the old wild west, of Wyatt Earp and Jesse James, of episodes of Bonanza where the tumbleweed moves faster than a gunslinger's hand.
Arizona, home of Monument Valley and other desert landscapes where westerns are regularly filmed, has more wild west in it than mere scenery. In fact, one incident last week proved you can take Arizona out of the wild west, but you can't take the wild west out of Arizona.
The libertarian, antiquated aspects of some of America's laws came into focus when a group of five armour-wearing, gun-toting men burst into a family home looking for a man who had skipped bail. Their mission was to return the fugitive and claim a reward from the bail bond company that had underwritten his bail so he could go free.
There was, however, a minor problem. They raided the wrong house, where no one knew or had anything to do with the intended target: not the woman and her three terrified young children whom they tied up, nor the man and his girlfriend whom the men found in an upstairs bedroom and shot to death.
The dead man, 23-year-old Chris Foote, had defended himself in the best of American traditions: when he heard the intruders at the bedroom door, he opened fire with a handgun, wounding two before they overpowered and killed him and the girl.
But the fact that three of the bounty hunters have been caught and charged with murder is not enough to quell demands that something be done to put an end to a 19th-century practice hopelessly out of touch - and, it would seem, out of control.