“Gun violence” is supposed to be bad. Right?
Not long after the New Year, a woman in Loganville, Georgia, was working in the upstairs office of her home when she spied someone lurking outside.
The suspicious man, Paul Slater, was about to break into her home with a crowbar. Fortunately, before he could do that, the woman hid herself and her two nine-year-old twins in an attic crawlspace. Unfortunately, Slater found out where they were hiding. Fortunately, the woman had a gun; as soon as the intruder menacingly presented himself, she shot him.
Alas, after shooting six times and hitting Slater five, the woman ran out of bullets. But she had the presence of mind to tell the would-be assailant that she would fire again if he moved. Then she took the kids to a neighbor. The thug tried to escape in his car, but was too seriously injured to get far.
“My wife is a hero,” her husband told WSB-TV. “She protected her kids. She did what she was supposed to do as a responsible, prepared gun owner.”
Responding to the fact that the invader was only partly subdued before the gun owner ran out of bullets, Glenn Reynolds (“InstaPundit”) says: “See, this is where one of those ‘assault weapons’ might have come in handy.”
An InstaPundit reader expands upon the point: “What if there had been multiple attackers? Then that 30-round clip suddenly seems appropriate.”
Indeed. And disarming the just sure seems like a poor way to reduce gun violence.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
11 replies on “Armed Mom Saves Self, Kids”
The limitations of her gun magazine in this particular instance, certainly drives home the point that such limitations placed on citizens, will never be recognized by criminals, and, criminals can & do seek out todo harm even if you try to retreat, plus,in scary situations, you might just miss. Multiple attackers could have done her & the kids in. She was lucky. I sa, we the people should be able to be armed with any weapon the thieves, druggies, anarchists, morons, insane, or other can get. We should be armed with hand held weapons that at least matchwat criminals can have, since they follow none of these feel good liberal laws. If the President’s kids can go to a school that as an armed guard, why can’t all school children? I suggest a study of those elitist schools the wealthy send their kids to, to exose the hypocrisy. Senator Feinstien happens to have a “concealed carry permit’, so she can (using words similar to what she expressed), take out the guy who might try to take her out!
The “gun” debate is NOT about guns, its about control. Remember, more people are killed with knives than are killed with rifles! (An FBI stat!) America’s violence rating per 100k is at 466,while Britain’s is considerably higher & is in fact the highest in all of European nations. Now if the Brits cannot have guns, why is their violence rating so much higher than ours?? What good did it do to ban guns if all you’ve created are unarmed victims???
They should be called anti-assault weapons as they are very useful in protecting oneself FROM assault. Baseball bats and carpenter’s hammers both are used in more violent crimes and kill more people a year in the US than the “assault” weapons. Don’t see any of the lib-progs lining up to register Little Leagers and to require a license to hammer a nail.
Citizens being victimized should have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary.
And by the way, many, many more disarmed persons have been killed by their governments than all other forms of criminal activity combined.
Yes, I know, that could never happen here (or in Germany, Russia, China, Syria).
So even you are on the NRA payroll.
This fantasy defense is laughable. What are
the chances that she would see “someone
lurking outside her home? It is more likely
that the “thief” would have stole a few things
and left. Or she would only have angered him
and would have been injured and killed along
with her children.
For every successful “defense” 1000 children
are shot by playing with the weapons. When
they get assult guns from parents they can
kill more!
In answer to what if there had been multiple
attackers and she had an assault rifle.
She would have been a hero-but a dead hero!
Go back (more then a bit) 1948– The partition of India and Pakistan. Hindu/Muslim violence.
THERE WERE FEW GUNS – BUT MORE THEN 1,000,000 (ONE MILLION) PEOPLE WERE KILLED. ROCKS; STICKS; TREE BTANCHES AND KNIVES, AMONGST OTHER WEAPOSN DID IT.
BUT NARY A GUN.
Australia “banned’ guns, and the crime rate went up.
As to liberal hypocrisy: The new York Times publisher (Sulzberg‑I believe his name is) is pro-gun control/gun bans. But, while driving to work with a chauffeur; working (?) in a secure building; has a gun permit.
Buy Joe Twelve-Pack who rides the subways –he feels should npot have the same rights.
James — You begin by suggesting that my opinion has been bought and paid for. That is flat-out sad. Don’t you realize that I’m going to know that you are intellectually bankrupt when you say something like that? I figure everyone else thinks the same.
But, if you talk to the NRA, by all means please do suggest they send me a check. A BIG one.
You also say that for each such “good” incident like this one, 1,000 kids are killed accidentally by firearms. False. Again, you are just making stuff up. You don’t cite any actual study. In just a little bit of Googling I find that in 2000, there were 174 accidental deaths (ages 0 – 18) via guns. (http://www.childdeathreview.org/causesaf.htm) How many incidents, like this one I wrote about, do you think there are in a year?
Of course, even considering those needless 174 deaths, there is no evidence they were shot by assault weapons. And even if you pass a law banning all guns, and confiscating all guns in private hands, there will still be guns out there and the deaths of children from guns (and from knives and drugs and bicycles and trees and bathtubs and cars and …
But IF you ban all guns, we will then have no effective means to resist the massively armed government. Over time policy makers will take this into account and our freedoms will wither because they can be reduced again and again and again without as effective citizen resistance.
Paul‑I apologize for my flippant remark about your being paid by the NRA. I save that remark for many congressmen.
But do you really think that there will ever be a shooting internal war? The gov is now issuing executive orders to control
every aspect of our lives. We will melt into a 1984 scenario as there is no organized group to oppose them.
James — I hope there will never be a shooting war and I don’t favor the 2nd Amendment BECAUSE I think there will be one, but rather, because I think millions of armed citizens will have a powerful influence on how far those in power seek to go.
BTW, just came across this paper from the Cato Institute showing an estimated 108,000 defensive gun uses per year. » http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/WP-Tough-Targets.pdf
Oh Instapundit, it’s a 30 round MAGAZINE, not clip