Positive Gun News of the Day

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1741

Yes, I know.

As with nearly all news stories about crime this side of Presidential assassinations or crimes involving O.J. Simpson, there is very little detail about that story, and it’s unlikely there ever will be (short of someone traveling to Eureka, California, to read the primary documents and interview everyone concerned and write a True Crime book about it. And maybe not then, either. Better have several different authors write competing True Crime stories about the incident). Did the resident of the house politely ask the noisemakers to please keep it down and perhaps go someplace where people aren’t trying to sleep, if it that wouldn’t be too much of a bother, old chaps? Or was it more like “IT’S TWO O’ CLOCK IN THE MORNING, ASSHOLES! SHUT UP AND GO AWAY!”?

Was the resident white, and the noisemakers black? Or was it the other way around? Or was everyone involved of the same “race” and ethnicity?

Without getting into wild fantasies, all we know is that the people who were making noise, in a residential neighborhood, at 2:30 in the morning, APPARENTLY did not say “Oh, we’re sorry!” and then leave. Nor did they say “Hey, fuck you, asshole!”…and then leave. Given that at least one of them wound up inside the guy’s house, it does not seem likely that they merely put one foot on the guy’s lawn, and then he pepper sprayed them out of sheer meanness, and then [something?] and then he shot and killed one of them who was inside his home.

The man in the house could have called the police, but perhaps he considered that might be a serious escalation. If he had called the police, maybe the loud people at 2:30 in the morning would have peacefully dispersed when The Man arrived. Or maybe the cops would have been the ones pepper spraying people and then killing someone.

It’s a tragedy that someone was killed, instead of him and his friends saying “Oh, we’re sorry” or even “Hey, fuck you, man!” and then leaving–I suspect “alcohol was involved” but of course I don’t know because See Above; maybe the only chemical involved was testosterone–but it’s a “Positive Gun News” story in that an American owned a gun, and used that gun not to rob or murder anyone (or to commit suicide) but to defend himself against a violent attack. Which is actually something that happens tens of thousands, or even a few millions of times a year–not every single one of those Defensive Gun Uses involves anyone getting killed, or even shot, but of course news stories are inherently biased towards stories that are more sensational and have more action to them. (And also to stories that generate some kind of readily available public documentation, especially in the Era of the Internet, when most news organizations have been hollowed out and few can afford to do any real news gathering.)

If someone yells “Hey, come on, folks, it’s Two O’Clock in the morning, some of us are trying to get some sleep around here! Keep it down or go the fuck away!”; and the people being yelled at respond by coming onto the guy’s lawn and then onto his porch, while loudly declaring that they’re going to kick his ass; and the home owner responds by saying “I HAVE A GUN, ASSHOLES!”; and they say “Oh, shit, man, he’s got a gun!” and run away–well, that might not even get reported to the police by anyone involved, depending on the neighborhood and the socio-economic status of everyone involved. And if it were reported, it still might not make the news.

1742

Eureka is pretty damn white.

1743

Yeah, all these are questions worth asking. It absolutely could be that the guy in the house is a nut who has just been waiting for a chance to pepper spray or kill someone. It could be that he yelled a tirade of abuse at the crowd for making noise. There could absolutely be a racial component, both in the incident itself, and in the police response to it.

If the people in the other thread had just raised these possibilities, it’s a conversation I would have been happy to have. But to jump in and describe this as “our local gun lovers laud people being being killed over noise complaints” struck me as fundamentally dishonest, both as a description of the incident itself, and as a commentary on what “positive” means in the context of this thread.

As I said over there, I’m more anti-gun than pro-gun, in a whole variety of ways. But I’ve also known a few gun owners since I moved to the United States, and every single one of them has been a decent person who looks after their weapons and takes gun safety seriously. And I don’t think anyone benefits in these debates from disingenuous or dishonest representations.

1744

One would hope we could ALL agree with that, on every issue under the Sun.

1745

A story from earlier this month in Kwethluk, Alaska; I’m drawing details from two different news stories for this one, one from the Alaska PBS/NPR website, and one from a Juneau NPR station.

Earlier this month in a small village in southwestern Alaska, a man broke into the offices of the village police force and stole several rifles that had been impounded into evidence. The man had some kind of body armor (I can’t tell if he brought that with him or got that from the evidence room, too) and was apparently planning a mass shooting. Village police responded, but reportedly don’t normally carry firearms themselves. Fortunately a resident of the village was able to get to his own gun, and was then able to talk the man down without anyone getting hurt. (The attacker actually pointed a gun at one of the village’s police officers and pulled the trigger, but fortunately didn’t realize the gun wasn’t loaded. The attacker apparently did subsequently manage to fire at least some shots at the officer.)

Kwethluk police are reportedly now considering whether they, too, should start carrying firearms (although, as the village deputy police chief points out, it’s not like this sort of thing is routine there).

I would argue that even if the village resident had used his own firearm to injure or kill the attacker, it would still be a better outcome than a mass shooting. It is of course an even better outcome that no one at all was killed or hurt.

Also, apropos of nothing in particular, but the attacker is named Brian Nicolai, the village police is named Nicolai Joseph (or maybe it’s Nicholai Joseph, depending on which story you read), and one of the other police officers is named Wassillie Nick. Weird.

1746

Maybe they could start with a stronger evidence room…

1747

VPSO’s, or village ‘cops’ in the hinterlands of Alaska aren’t POST-certified peace officers.
The vast majority of them aren’t armed. Doubt that many of them could pass the background check to do so. Still better than nothing. Then there’s the added insurance costs, training costs, yadda yadda. See, this Anchorage Daily News article for more info: As Alaska struggles to fill VPSO ranks, the officers remain unarmed for now - Anchorage Daily News The town in question, Kwethluk, has 721 inhabitants:
//en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwethluk,_Alaska

I think everyone knows everyone else, if they aren’t actually all related to each other.

1748

Fox13 security guard disarms two who stole rifles from burned out police cars.

1749

Just to flesh out the one above: The security guard in Seattle who disarmed the two people who had stolen rifles from police cars did have a handgun of his own; he didn’t just use harsh language (or conciliatory language) or some sweet jiu-jitsu moves to disarm them. (He was also reportedly a former Special Forces member.)

1750

From about a week ago in Panama City, Florida, a man in his thirties was described by multiple witnesses as acting very erratically and aggressively while walking down the street in a residential neighborhood. He confronted another man, in his seventies; the older man retreated into the garage of his house, then into the house itself. The younger man began beating on the door to the house, then broke into the house by breaking the glass front door. Once inside the house, he attacked a woman who lived at the house, throwing her to the ground and beating her about the head. (Stories seem to disagree about whether this woman was the wife of the seventy-something resident of the house or not; that particular story I linked to says she was not, but that they owned the house together.) At this point, the older man retrieved a handgun and shot and killed the younger man.

It is not, of course, “positive” that the younger man was killed, even though he as acting in an aggressive and abusive way, but private gun ownership was positive in this case in that it allowed an elderly man to successfully defend himself and his family (friend, housemate, or whatever the case may be) from a violent and irrational attack. The male resident of the house was in his seventies; I don’t think that any article I’ve seen gives an age for the woman, so she may be younger, but in any case throwing someone to the ground and beating on their head can most definitely cause them very serious injury, up to and including killing them. And this appears to have been a totally unprovoked attack, including a home invasion, where the armed citizen initially retreated into his own home and did everything he could to avoid confrontation before resorting to deadly force.

1751

A sad story in that it sounds like the attacker’s behavior was due to mental illness but I see that the resident of the house was left with little choice.

1752

From yesterday in Shreveport, Louisiana, a man reportedly broke into the home of a woman in the early morning hours (before 1:30 AM). The man (described as the woman’s estranged boyfriend) attacked the woman and threatened to kill her. She then shot him with a handgun and killed him.

It’s unfortunate that as a result of the actions he took the man is dead, but it’s fortunate that this woman was able to defend herself in her own home. In this case, a privately owned gun was used to stop a violent home invasion and an act of violence against a former intimate partner.

1753

From a week ago in Scalp Level, Pennsylvania, a man was shot and killed after he broke into a house around midnight Sunday. He reportedly advanced towards the owner of the house and refused her orders to stop before she shot him. According to police, the intruder did not apparently know the homeowner.

A human being was killed; but his death resulted directly from his decisions to break into another person’s home at a time–midnight on a weekend–when the strong presumption is that the residents of the home would be present, and to keep on threatening a person who lived in the house when he was confronted by an armed resident. The woman’s possession of a gun allowed her to defend herself against an invader in her own home, who very likely intended more than just property crimes.

1754

From a couple of weeks ago in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, a woman feared her ex-boyfriend was stalking her after he sent her a number of threatening text messages, so she armed herself with a handgun as she went about her daily activities. The ex-boyfriend did in fact approach the woman when she was at a gas station; he hit her with his fists and also with a rock, then poured diesel fuel on her and threatened to light her on fire. She attempted to escape to the truck she was re-fueling at the time of the attack, but the man grabbed her, and at that point she drew her handgun and shot him. Although the attacker was shot in the head, he survived, and according to the article is expected to survive to face multiple charges in the attack.

1755

A partly positive gun news story from today’s Washington Post. (The actual events took place a couple of weeks ago.) An African-American man, an Air Force veteran (and also a pastor, although as an atheist–whose paternal grandfather was an Episcopal minister–I don’t think that automatically makes him either a “good guy” OR a “bad guy”) found a (white) couple trying to dispose of a refrigerator in the dumpster at a rental property he owns. He asked them to leave (people who own dumpsters tend to become understandably upset when other people try to leave large bulky trash items in them) but they returned with a group of three other men (also white), and the enlarged group of trespassers threatened the property owner, including using racist language (saying they “don’t give a darn about [his] black life and the Black Lives Matter stuff”). The intruders backed off when the property owner drew his handgun (which he was legally carrying), and the property owner then called 911. So, a law-abiding gun owner was able to use a firearm to defend himself against a group of assailants, in a situation where the sheer disparity of numbers could have easily resulted in him being seriously injured or even killed. No one was killed or even shot and wounded.

Unfortunately the follow-up belongs in the “Controversial encounters between law-enforcement and civilians” mega-thread down in the Pit; when the local sheriff’s department responded to the 911 call, they disarmed and arrested the law-abiding citizen who was merely defending himself. Nor was it a question of “We’d better take ALL these people down to the station house and get their statements and sort this out”; the deputies DIDN’T initially arrest the actual aggressors.

The sheriff did subsequently apologize to the man, and weapons charges against him will apparently be dropped, while the aggressors were later arrested and face assorted criminal charges themselves. Nonetheless, it’s dismaying to see law enforcement reflexively taking the side of the aggressors against a law-abiding citizen who was simply exercising his basic right to defend himself against a violent attack.

1756

Actually I posted it in Stupid Gun News three hours before your post here, with similar sentiments. I do not object to the man using a firearm to protect himself, but the assumption that a black man with a gun is always a criminal is a huge problem in a country with second amendment rights.

1757

From three days ago in Coloma, Michigan, a man broke into a house before 2:30 a.m., awakening the homeowner. The homeowner confronted the intruder and ordered him to lie down on the floor; instead, the intruder charged at the homeowner, who then shot and killed him.

1758

This one is from a month back; in Lake Elsinore, California, a man started punching and kicking a woman in a store. The attacker left when the store owner intervened, but soon returned and resumed his attack, pushing both the original victim and the store owner (who again attempted to intervene) to the ground. In addition to striking and kicking his original victim, he also began hitting her with some kind of metal object. At that point the store owner pulled a gun on the attacker. When the attacker, instead of leaving, tried to attack the store owner, the store owner shot and wounded him, at which point the assailant fled. The attacker was subsequently arrested on a variety of charges (“suspicion of domestic violence, assault with a deadly weapon, making criminal threats and felony probation violation”).

1759

From four days ago in Nederland, Colorado, a camper shot and killed a black bear. The bear had been chasing his dog (and it’s not legally permitted to kill bears only to protect a pet) but according to authorities the man heard his dog barking outside his camper; when he called the dog back to him, the bear charged towards the person as well, and he then shot and killed it, so authorities have ruled the shooting justifiable as self-defense.

1760

From last week in Nashville, a man repeatedly rammed his car into another car in which a man and woman were riding. Their car was disabled; the woman (who had been driving) fled while the male passenger shot and fatally wounded the attacker. At press time police were still reported to be investigating, but no charges had been filed against the shooter.