Bystander Shoots Robber In Mall Parking Lot

Robb: I wonder if maybe, just maybe felons don’t normally buy their guns from a retail store?

Early in November I linked to a news item about a serial rapist who returned to the home of a previous victim only to be righteously gunned down: Try to strike twice, get hit by lightning

Here’s the news video from the event:

Via the Arsenal.

Via Uncle: Investigation Leads To Gun Permit Suspensions

Tennessee:

More than 150 people, most in conflict with women, have had their handgun carry permits suspended as a result of a Channel 4 I-Team investigation.

The investigation not only exposed people served with orders of protection allowed to have handgun carry permits despite a state law but also a major hole in a system to protect domestic violence victims.

First, this is the law so it’s the legal thing to do. If someone doesn’t like it, the law needs to be changed.

Second, this represents about 0.08% of the concealed carry permit holders in the state. Not 8%. Not 0.8%. 0.08%. One out of every 1,250.

The article ends with

Not everyone served with an order of protection has a propensity for violence.

But everyone served with an order of protection has their carry permit revoked.

Why not get someone to rule on whether they should have their permit pulled on a case by case basis, with the burden of proof on the court to revoke it?

Are they saying that someone who is going to break a protection order to commit murder will change their mind because they cannot legally carry a concealed weapon?

I wrote about protection orders and other feel goodness last week.

UPDATE: A couple of additional thoughts. It might be that getting a protection order requires a threat of some sort, in which case that would satisfy my “rule on whether they should have their permit pulled” suggestion.

Also, in Michigan it appears that firearms possession restrictions are optional when personal protection orders are issued. If someone knows better please let me know.

The killer in the story I linked to on Friday had a PPO issued against him.

Editorial: Better tools to enforce personal protection orders are necessary

Grand Rapids Press:

Esmeralda Aguilera had a protection order to keep her ex-boyfriend away from her. It didn’t work. Police say Reyes Renteria shot the Holland Township woman to death and beat her 15-year-old daughter with a baseball bat before killing himself. The teenager remains hospitalized in Grand Rapids…

In court papers seeking a PPO [Personal Protection Order], Ms. Aguilera said she found Renteria in her home on two occasions after she ended the relationship: once hiding in a closet and another time in her bedroom. He showed up while she was on a date with someone else and also at her job.

The editorial board then goes on to suggest that electronic tethers of various types may have helped prevent this crime. I’m not opposed to these sorts of devices, but people need to be careful that they don’t (accidentally, I’m sure) give the impression that GPS tethers and home alarms actually do anything to protect anyone.

I’m good friends with a sister of the victim. Details about exactly what happened are sketchy, at least to the public. I have no idea what sort of “better tools” would have been needed to affect the outcome.

Someone who knows I’m a gun owner told me that if the guy hadn’t had a gun the woman would still be alive. Since emotions were obviously running high and everyone was in shock, I refrained from asking if banning baseball bats would have kept the daughter out of the hospital.

I don’t know what the right answer to this might have been. I don’t know if guns or GPS tethers or home security systems would have made a difference. I do know that a piece of paper didn’t help and that it’s a tragedy that I cannot fathom.

Last week I had a couple of posts about SWAT teams and the way they’re being used these days. One of them was about a Lima, Ohio, SWAT team, but here’s another story where an Ohio tactical unit seems to have done the job:

A man carrying a high-powered assault rifle was shot and killed during a standoff with police yesterday morning [December 7] after he threatened to kill them and himself.

At about 5 a.m., Bexley police responded to a 911 call from 2778 Bellwood Ave. A resident told them that Christopher Marcum, 43, was upset with his girlfriend and had several weapons.

Police found Marcum locked inside a bedroom with his girlfriend. He told officers he would shoot them and kill himself, and police could hear him loading a gun.

Though Murdoc bristles at the “high-powered assault rifle” description, it seems (from this story, at least) that things went down right. The girlfriend was apparently beaten but was okay.

Stephen Herrington:

The era in which firearms were a practical necessity is substantially and thankfully over as of the end of the 19th century. They are possessed now for what most honestly amounts to a hybrid of sport, nostalgia and primordial anxiety.

I guess “honestly” is in the eye of the beholder.

After pointing out that guns won’t stop crime, drugs, homelessness, or pornography, he adds

Use of guns, weapons of any kind, are the definition of chaos. The road to chaos is swift. The road back is nigh impossible.

Just last night I linked to a news story about a pizza guy who used a pepperoni pizza as a weapon against armed robbers. What chaos. The pizza guy swiftly went down that road and his return is apparently “nigh impossible.”

Herrington says that “general prosperity prevents crime.”