Wednesday, November 10, 2010

when self defense isn't

The anti-gun crowd, and especially those against citizen carry, have often used the argument that no one besides the police should be allowed to have a gun because tempers will flare and quiet little suburbs will revert back to days of the "wild west" (which, really, was never as wild as they like to claim), there will be blood in the streets, and people will be shooting each other over parking spaces.

We gunnies scoff at that, saying that those things'll never happen.

Oh, but they do.

Two young men, both concealed carry permit holders, lost their lives over $10 in downtown Cleveland. One of them is lost forever, two shots to the abdomen and one to the head. The other has nothing now but time, watching the best years of his life slip away in prison.

It's unimaginable - the loss of so much over something so trivial and that a single moment of anger could prove so costly - but in reality, we all know the that this is how most tragedies happen. We can only clean up the aftermath and glean what truths remain...

...if you walk away from a fight, keep going.

7 comments:

Mike W. said...

Wow! That wasn't even a "heat of the moment" thing.

The article says there was a physical altercation (seriously, what kind of people argue & throw punches over a parking spot) and then Warmus returned to his car, retrieved his gun from the trunk and then shot Williams.

Carrying carries with it certain responsibilities. If you don't have the temperment, if you can't just walk away, then you need to think twice before making the decision to carry.

Bubblehead Les. said...

Remember watching this case over the last several months on our local TV news. The only winner is this tragedy will be the Anti-Gunners. Betcha they'll use it to fight Open Carry when it starts to hit the new Ohio State Government this Spring. The idiot is lucky he only got some decades down in Lucasville instead of the Needle.

Rustmeister said...

One of the drawbacks of carry becoming more mainstream is it will become a more representative cross section of society.

Some parts of that society don't have the maturity to carry. =/

Old NFO said...

Concur with Les... sigh...

Ed Skinner said...

Armed or disarmed, there's just no fixing stupid.

living1nbf3 said...

When I got my CC license, things changed very dramatically for me. I realized very quickly that flipping someone the finger because they cut you off in traffic was a no-no. You don't have a few drinks and drive. You think about what you are doing at every minute of the day.

Make sure your jacket is closed, make sure your shirt does not rise up, make sure you do not do anything to anger someone. Make sure that if someone is angry at you, that you just smile, apologize, irregardless of who is at fault, and turn and walk away. But do not let down your gaurd.

CC is a huge responsibility, and it has made me a better person because of the responsibility I have been granted. Should not have been granted, it should have been as I acted from day one. Amazing the shit you learn as you grow up.

ZZMike said...

... no one besides the police should be allowed to have a gun because tempers will flare ..."

Once again, the flawed argument: because one person in a million may do something bad with X (not necessarily "axe"), we must outlaw X for everyone. This is roughly equivalent to tyranny of the minority. One could post more than a few news items wherein citizens thwarted the Bad Guys because the citizens were armed.

Andrew: That is a remarkable post. It is worth repeating, and is better-than-good advice.