Tag: DGU

“Always listen to experts.

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They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it.” – R.A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

So a Bloomberg publication runs a pretty positive story on the increase in gun ownership among women, but – being objective journalists – they have to get a soundbite from the opposition, to wit:

Those Americans who have acquired handguns for protection are living with “serious delusions,” says Caroline Brewer, a spokeswoman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. She contends that few are trained rigorously enough to deploy their weapons in the shock and heat of an attack, that they’ll shoot innocent bystanders, that more times than not their firearms will be turned against them.

“To suggest all these guns make the world safer is pure fantasy,” she says.

Really? Let’s look at some “fantasy” from just the past couple of days, shall we?

First up, we have a blog report of a defensive gun use by a woman:

Short version: Cee shot at a home invader, missed, but successfully convinced him to run like hell.

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Cee’s sleep schedule has been off this week, so she was still awake around 1:3o in the morning, when she heard something at the back door. She thought it might be the furnace making odd noises, so she peeked around that corner, down the hallway with the furnace, laundry room, and back door, and saw the doorknob jiggling.

My brother and I were fast asleep, so she chose to go grab his handgun instead of waking either of us—an excellent decision because, when she got back to the hallway with that firearm, the bad guy’s head was through the door.

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So, the bad guy’s head was at the bottom of the doorway because he was standing on the ground. When he saw Cee, they stared at each other for what she said felt like forever. It wasn’t too hard to see the dude because, even though the back-porch light wasn’t on, there was a kitchen light shining partly into the hallway.

Then he resumed trying to open the door and climb into the trailer. Apparently, he didn’t notice that she had a handgun at her side. That’s when she shot at him. She’d used Matt’s 9mm only a couple of times before, as it’s a rather-new addition to their little collection, but she didn’t have any trouble flipping off the thumb safety or aiming. The hollow point hit the mostly closed door, about six inches to the right of the bad guy’s head.

He vanished.

Anecdote #1.

Anecdote #2:

PHOENIX – Police say a suspect who was shot in the backyard of a south Phoenix home Monday afternoon has died from his injuries.

Phoenix police Officer James Holmes said the 29-year-old man was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries after being shot by a female homeowner.

Holmes said what sounded like a young child called 911 stating that her mother had shot a man at the home near 45th Street and Roeser Road.

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Holmes said the incident started earlier in the day when the woman saw two males in the backyard around noon.

She called her husband who told her to get out a gun, Holmes said.

Around 3 p.m. the woman saw two males in her backyard again and went out to check.

Holmes said one of the males pulled out a weapon and pointed it at the woman.

She reportedly raised her own weapon and fired at the man, striking him at least once.

Holmes said the suspect’s weapon was recovered at the scene and at this point it looks like a case of self defense.

The woman and the girl were not hurt, Holmes said.

Anecdote #3:
http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/static/flash/embeddedPlayer/swf/otvEmLoader.swf?version=&station=kabc&section=&mediaId=8459093&cdnRoot=http://cdn.abclocal.go.com&webRoot=http://abclocal.go.com&configPath=/util/&site=
Note that the woman had just purchased her .38 and had never fired it, yet she was able to defend herself against an attacker who continued to try and enter her home after being fired upon.

In none of these cases were the women apparently “rigorously trained” – especially not in the last one. In none of these cases did they shoot innocent bystanders, and in none of these cases were their weapons taken and turned on them. Granted, the plural of anecdote is not data, but would these three women have been better off disarmed?  Caroline Brewer, Brady Campaign expert, once again proves Heinlein’s Rule:  listen to the “experts,” then do the exact opposite of what they advise.  Brewer is the delusional one living a fantasy.

We’re Winning

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Say Uncle links to a story involving a home invasion thwarted by a resident with an AR-15.  From the comments:

I love this town. A shooting results in an argument over the proper shot size for perps. – “Southrider”

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There are actually many Democrats that support gun rights. The NRA grades each Congressional candidate based on their gun rights voting history. There are many Democrats with a B or better. I am surprised, though, that no one from the anti-gun establishment has commented. – “Sphereo”

I’m not. They’ve mostly taken their ball and gone home.

Hypocrisy

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One of my co-workers dropped an op-ed on my desk this afternoon from the local daily rag, entitled Yes, we’ve had reason to fear, but we’ve chosen not to own a gun. Please do hop over and read it, as I won’t excerpt much from it here.

Done? Good.

I was inspired to leave a comment, which was this:

“Call us naive, but we believe that although there is evil in the world, most people are good; we have a moral obligation to help one another whenever we can because that’s the kind of world we want to inhabit.”

I am reminded of this quote:

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.

So Sharon and Dick, instead of opening their door and inviting the burglar in to take whatever he needed to survive, instead called the Sheriff’s department to send out an deputy – an armed deputy – to prevent their property from being stolen, or their lives from being threatened.

They’re not actually morally superior, they just think they are. They’re more than willing to farm out the threat of lethal force in their defense, they’re just not willing to take that responsibility on themselves.

Just so they can claim the moral high ground.

In other words, they’re hypocrites.

Want a Copy of Dead Zero?

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A bit back I wrote about author Stephen Hunter in my post The Narrative, which took an excerpt from his last novel, I, Sniper. Well, Simon & Schuster, his publisher, saw fit to offer me some free copies of his just-released Dead Zero. They arrived today.

Apparently they did the same for Linoge of Walls of the City, and he has a GREAT idea. (The picture is his, too, but my copies look the same.)

If you donate to Ramon Castillo’s recovery fund (Ramon was the Houston jewelry store owner wounded in a shootout with three robbers (score, Ramon 3, robbers 0) and send me a screenshot of your donation or other acceptable proof (forward me a receipt email, for example), at the end of the month I will do a random drawing from all the donation emails I receive and I’ll send two lucky winners a copy of Dead Zero.

Send your emails to thesmallestminority(at)gmail(dot)com.

The Duty to Protect

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A few days ago I wrote:

I believe that I am not responsible for your safety. The police are not responsible for your safety. That’s your job. You have no “right to feel safe.” Such a right would put an obligation upon others that cannot be fulfilled. You have a duty (should you choose to accept it) to protect yourself and a duty to help protect the society in which you live, but those duties carry with them a certain amount of unavoidable risk. Dealing with risk is one thing adults do.

And:

I believe that as members of a society founded on the concept of defending the rights of individuals, we yield certain rights that are unquestionably ours “in a state of nature,” but the right of self-defense isn’t among them. Self-defense and the tools of that defense are, as Oleg Volk points out, a human right – another corollary of the right to ones own life. I believe that instead of yielding our right to self-defense to the State, we extend to the State the power necessary to assist in our defense, while recognizing the State’s inherent limitations in exercising that power. Again, in belonging to a society that defends our individual rights, the corresponding individual duties that go with those rights expands to include the protection of the society in which we live, best expressed by Sir Robert Peel’s Seventh Principle of Modern Policing:

Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

Incumbent or not, however, I believe that duty must be voluntarily accepted, and cannot be forced on any individual.

Well, one person who accepted that duty voluntarily is Ramon Castillo, who defended himself and his wife from three men who attempted an armed robbery of his Houston jewelry store. Mr. Castillo was hit four times and survived. The robbers didn’t.

SayUncle advises that Mr. Castillo doesn’t have health insurance. I doubt that workman’s comp would cover this, anyway. So his family has set up an account to help the family pay his medical bills. I’m a little short this year with Christmas shopping and all, but I’m going to throw $100 in. Please see if you can help, too.

And I’m sure that the three Hondurans who were preying on Hispanic businesses in the area were only doing it because they lived in poverty.

Tales of Armed Self-Defense

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This one’s in my back yard:

Man arrested, 2 others facing charges in deadly shootout

A 20-year-old man was arrested Wednesday and two others are facing charges in connection with a robbery that led to a deadly shootout Tuesday night at a north-side auto store, police said.

Carlos Peyron is facing charges of first-degree murder, attempted aggravated robbery, attempted armed robbery and kidnapping after he and three other men attempted to rob M&M Customs, which sells and installs car alarms, said Sgt. Fabian Pacheco, a Tucson Police Department spokesman.

One of the suspects, Noah Lopez, 18, was shot to death by an employee during the robbery.

Two other men, Toney Stith, 26, and Anthony Peyron, 19, were wounded in the shootout and will face charges once they are released from the hospital, Pacheco said.

All of the men are gang members, he said.

According to police, four men went into the business, at 3040 N. Stone Ave., and confronted an employee, forcing him into the back office.

The business owner, who was in the office, pulled out a shotgun and fired, wounding Anthony Peyron.

The suspects attempted to flee but encountered a locked door.

Lopez turned to the business owner and shot him in the forearm.

The employee retrieved a handgun from his tool kit and fatally shot Lopez, who turned his gun on the employee.

Lopez was pronounced dead at the scene.

So not only did the boss have a shotgun in his office, one of his employees had a PISTOL in his TOOLBOX. And get this:

Stith was wounded in the lower extremities, while Carlos Peyron was hit in the back of the head with the stock of the shotgun.

The victims held the suspects at gunpoint until police officers arrived two minutes after the shooting was reported.

The newspaper actually properly identified the victims and the perpetrators.

The good guys end up with one wounded (one hopes only superficially), and the bad guys end up with one dead, and the rest wounded and captured.

I used to live very close to where this occurred. It was not unusual to hear multiple gunshots at night, very seldom followed by sirens. I slept with a .357 Magnum on the headboard there.

Armed self-defense works.

A Gun and the Willingness to Use It

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A Gun and the Willingness to Use It

Vanderleun has the sound track of a 911 call from a woman in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. Donna Jackson had a home intruder who would not stop trying to get in. Listen to the whole thing.

She had a gun. She was willing to use it to defend herself – “I have a shotgun, and I will use it.”

“He’s breaking the window, I’m going to kill him.”

“He looks like an older man. I don’t want to kill him.”

She was calm, clear and collected until after she pulled the trigger.

Having a gun doesn’t mean you’re safe. As Col. Cooper put it, owning a guitar doesn’t make you a musician, either. You need to be willing and able. Donna Jackson met all three conditions. She survived the confrontation. Too many don’t.

The perp was Billy Dean Riley, and was apparently high or drunk. He had a fairly long record of drug and alcohol abuse.

Remember this tape the next time someone tells you that people don’t need guns for self defense and can depend on the State to save them.

You Can’t Do That! You’re Not Qualified!

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Armed Suspect Shot By Upper Darby Delivery Decoy

Upper Darby, PA – An armed suspected was shot in Delaware County after attempting to rob an undercover detective posing as a pizza deliveryman Wednesday night.

Verona Pizza on W. Chester Pike in Upper Darby contacted police after receiving a suspicious delivery order at about 11 p.m.

Delivery drivers at the business have been held up at least three times in recent weeks.

An undercover detective stood in as a decoy, making the delivery near Delaware and South Harwood Avenues. Once at the address, a masked suspect armed with a gun jumped out from the bushes and rushed towards the officer.

Despite a warning, the suspect continued to rush forwards, forcing the detective to fire once shot which struck the suspect in the torso.

The wounded suspect was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in serious, but stable condition. The detective was not injured in the incident.

Following the shooting, police began pursuit of an apparent getaway vehicle. One female suspect was apprehended as she attempted to flee the vehicle. A second male suspect is still on the loose.

The incident remains under investigation.

So in Upper Darby they have a cop dress up as a pizza delivery driver, but in other places the drivers manage to defend themselves.

In Greenville, NC.

In Lexington, SC.

In Des Moines, Iowa. (Interesting follow-up here.)

In Augusta, GA.

In Charlotte, NC.

In Lufkin, TX.

In Irmo, SC.

Damn, gun-toting pizza delivery guys seem to be the rule in the Carolinas!

That’s just a short list I found while using the Violence Policy Center’s greatest research tool, Google. Of those seven incidents (Plus the Upper Darby one), only two would be considered “defensive gun uses” by Arthur Kellermann because in only two of those incidents did the assailant die. Apparently frightening off or wounding doesn’t qualify as a “defensive gun use” to most anti-gunners, someone’s got to die.