29 Apr 02

>From an LEO friend in a local town in an adjacent state:

"Last week, at 4:30am, an armed robbery suspect held up one of our local Mimi Marts. His weapon was a small, carpenter's hammer. This suspect is local trash and well known to us. Halfway through the robbery, a store customer tackled the suspect from the rear, and the suspect, quickly losing interest, dropped his hammer and ran out of the building empty handed.

That should have been the end of the story. We would surely have picked this crook up before the end of the shift. However, a local citizen, who had (past tense) a valid CCW permit, was carrying a pistol at the time, and had just pulled into the parking lot, witnessed the suspect running from the building. The store customer who had just tackled the suspect saw our armed citizen and yelled at him to ‘stop' the suspect.

Apparently not one to decline a challenge, the armed citizen, although he himself had not witnessed any crime, was not personally endangered, and knew nothing about the suspect, then chased the suspect on foot firing his pistol at him multiple times! Fortunately, all his shots missed the suspect and didn't hit anyone else. All that is, except the last one.

The terrified suspect jumped into a car with his getaway driver, and the two drove off. Our citizen continued to fire, striking the fleeing vehicle five times. None of the rounds penetrated into the interior.

As he ran after the car, our armed citizen fired one last round. It finally found its mark. The suspect was struck in the back (9mm. No word on the brand).

Anyway, less than an hour later the suspect shows up at our local hospital. He was treated, kept overnight, and released the next day. His wound was not serious. We promptly arrested him and his driver, and the two are now sitting in jail, charged with armed robbery.

Sitting in an adjacent cell is our armed citizen. He is charged with aggravated battery. His real crime is, of course, ‘felony stupid.'

John, this is exactly the kind of thing you talk about in your lectures, and exactly the kind of thing I hope your students know better than to get involved in. Even if he does no jail time (which is likely), this armed citizen will probably be donating most of his future life's earnings to the armed robbery suspect and his lawyer(s). Just goes to show, even in this state, where most people own and carry guns, this kind of idiocy won't be tolerated."

Lesson: This is the kind of incident that gives CCW laws a bad name. Good people don't do evil things, but sometimes good people do stupid things, because they lack training, experience, and, in this case, common sense. Ownership of defensive firearms carries with it significant responsibilities. If one is unwilling to get the training reasonably required, he needs to pass on gun ownership altogether and go back to eating grass.

/John

26 June 02

Murder in the Midwest:

A friend in the Midwest who does homicide investigations just related this:

"Three local gang members murdered three local drug dealers all on the same day here last week. All three suspects have been subsequently arrested and charged. It was a drug territorial dispute, but you might find in interesting that all three murders were committed with handguns fired from moving vehicles. All three victims were also in moving vehicles. Ranges were close.

In order to kill three people, these gang members fired a total of 135 rounds! Of that, only five bullets actually struck the intended targets. That is a four-percent hit ratio!

I'm convinced that the hit ratio is so low, because the targets were in constant motion. Of course, the three suspects are hamburgers and hardly expert marksmen, but still; moving targets are difficult! The suspects had to fire all those rounds just to get one or two to finally connect."

Lesson: When under attack, don't stop moving. Constant, aggressive, and unpredictable motion makes you an extremely difficult target. Movement should be incorporated into all defensive firearms training.

/John