Wrong place, wrong guy.
A Palm Beach County jewelry store. You’re going to rob it because that’s where the money is. And the guy behind the counter is a frail-looking codger. Looks like a piece of cake.
But your intel is faulty. Store owner Arthur Lewis may be 89-years-old, but the World War II vet is also, as the headline goes, “Armed & dangerous.”
He demonstrated it four years ago, when Brandon Johnson entered the store shooting. Johnson fired one shot, Lewis answered with five. Somehow neither got hurt.
What happened several days ago was scarier than the 2010 confrontation, Lewis says. He was working behind the counter when Lennard Jervis thrust a gun at him; Lewis grabbed it and brought out his .38; the two grappled with and shot at each other. Lewis did okay. Jervis ended up taking four bullets to the chest and two more to the arm and leg before finally lurching to the exit and not getting very far. He is expected to survive his wounds.
Lewis’s girlfriend says: “People think because he’s 89, he’s frail. That irritates me because he’s anything but.”
“It’s a hazardous business,” says Lewis. “I thought he was going to kill me as soon as I saw the gun. I thought, ‘This time, I’m dead.’”
The right to bear arms isn’t just for geese hunting and target practice. Sometimes it really comes in handy.
Sometimes it’s life or death.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.