In a message dated 07/12/2000 1:08:06 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
jboatri@emory.edu writes:
<< OK, Dan, surprise us. How about some real data on either subject:
(1) How many successful uses of a firearm for personal defense occur
in your city/county/state/country (any one will do) in the past
year/decade/century (any one will do)?
(2) How many times did these go unreported in the press?
Educate us. >>
Let me try, let me try (put me in coach!)...
Just a week or so ago (do I get points off for not knowing the exact date?) a
less than ideal citizen type jumps the fence at a local (El Paso, TX)
doctor's home. He approaches a contractor working in the guys yard with his
hand in his shirt, announces that he has a gun and forces the guy into the
house. He gathers up the good Dr., the contractor, and the Dr.'s family
including teen age children, and has them kneel on the kitchen floor. Not a
pretty scenario.
Then, being an obvious Rhodes scholar type the "gunman" asks the Dr. to go
and get him some clean clothes to change into. The Dr. returned with the
clothes, and a handgun, and ended the hostage situation with two shots to the
fellows chest.
It turned out he actually had no gun, and I am sure the mental anguish the
Dr. is going through right now is tremendous and only secondary to that he
was suffering with his family on their knees in the kitchen. HE DID THE
RIGHT THING. There were only two ways the situation could have turned out
otherwise. The bad guy could have changed clothes, said thank you, and left
peacably, or he could have killed them all. Would you bet your childrens
life on an unbalanced stanger making the right decision?
This was in the paper, locally, because it was good news. Did anyone outside
this area read about it? I'd be surprised. I get a monthly magazine that
lists a page full of such successful defenses in each issue, but none ever
make national news. BUT, let anyone be killed in an accident, or a child be
killed by any type of gun in under any circumstance in the US and it will
make page one in a great deal of newspapers. I'm not minimizing the
importance or tragedy of a child's death, but noting that stories that lend
themselves to the anti-gun movement get much more play than those that would
support a pro-armed citizen movement.
Like I said, did anyone read about the Dr. saving his family's lives? Bet
you all read about the child in Deming, NM that took a gun to school and shot
another child.
Again, accidental, or intentional, or criminal deaths of innocents by gunshot
are despicable and we should do everything in our power to stop them. But
trying to get rid of an inanimate object to solve people problems is like
banning cars to stop drunk drivers.
RH...can you tell how I really feel?
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