Here’s your argument why firearms should be stored in homes and not in locations like ranges or police stations, or other centralized storage locations. #gunsense #GunSenseNow https://t.co/vecJDRbjlq
— vlad🩸🇺🇦 (@dovgvlad) October 7, 2023
Category: Self Defense
Woman shoots, kills man in self-defense
A man, 44, was shot and killed by a woman, 45, who said she acted in self-defense early Friday on the Southeast Side [of San Antonio, Texas]
Officers responded to a shooting shortly before 3 a.m. in the 100 block of Denver Boulevard, near Interstate 37. Once on the scene, officers were informed that the woman allegedly shot the man in the chest after being assaulted by him.
According to the preliminary report, the man was pronounced dead at the scene. The woman is cooperating with detectives, police said.
CARJACKED CONGRESSMAN HIGHLIGHTS REASONS FOR INCREASING LAWFUL GUN OWNERSHIP
In a popular up-and-coming area of Washinton, D.C. – just a few blocks from the nation’s Capitol building – a U.S. Congressman was carjacked at gunpoint. U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) was parking his car just outside an apartment building where he and several other Members of Congress reside. The congressman was unharmed during the attack.
“As Congressman Cuellar was parking his car this evening, 3 armed assailants approached the Congressman and stole his vehicle. Luckily, he was not harmed and is working with local law enforcement,” Rep. Cuellar’s Chief of Staff stated in a press release.
Washington, D.C., police are still searching for the suspects. It can be assumed the firearms used in the crime were illegally obtained or stolen. If the criminals are ever caught and prosecuted, more questions will be answered.
However, there are plenty of reasons why other would-be criminals in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area might rethink their plans for committing crimes. More Americans are arming themselves to protect against criminals such as these.
‘Support Law Enforcement’
The Texas congressman may caucus with the political party in Washington, D.C., that pushes an extreme gun control agenda, but his own record shows areas of support for gun rights. Last year, in the 117th Congress that had a Democratic-controlled House, Rep. Cuellar bucked his own party and voted with House Republicans against U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s (D-N.Y.) strict gun control bill. That legislation would have raised the legal age for U.S. adults to lawfully purchase America’s most popular-selling centerfire rifles, Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs). It also would have banned the purchase and possession of standard capacity magazines and required unconstitutional mandatory gun storage in the home.
Also that year, Rep. Cuellar voted against the Assault Weapons Ban of 2022, that barely passed the House. The legislation failed to even receive a vote in the U.S. Senate.
Following the incident, Rep. Cuellar struck a different tone than several of his Democratic congressional colleagues have in the past.
“You got to support law enforcement. And I’ve been doing that for a long time. I have three brothers who are peace officers,” Rep. Cuellar told Fox News. “I do want to thank the Capitol Police and I certainly want to thank the Metro Police. I’m a big law enforcement person. I got three boys in law enforcement. So I certainly appreciate the good work that the police did.”
This isn’t the first attack on a Member of Congress this year in Washington, D.C. Earlier this year, Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) was assaulted in her apartment building and suffered bruises while escaping more serious injuries.
‘They Target Us’
Surging crime in the District of Columbia is a growing concern and has been for several years. Washington, D.C., recently recorded its 200th homicide and it marked the first time in two decades that the federal city has had at least 200 murders for three years in a row. It was the earliest the grim marker has been surpassed. The Metro Police Department recently announced the average murder suspect in the city has eleven prior arrests.
How are would-be victims in Washington, D.C., responding? They aren’t sitting around and waiting to be victimized, especially women in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area – and most specifically African Americans.
“A lot of times men look at women and they think we are defenseless. They target us, first because they think we don’t carry. We can defend ourselves as women, we are not as weak as you think we are.” That’s what Kennette Brown told ABC 7 News in Washington, D.C., about why she obtained her concealed carry permit, purchased her first gun and takes the time to go to training courses.
Calvin Wellington is a firearms instructor for Nova Armory in Arlington, Va., and told media his firearm training courses are now mostly filled with women who are buying and training with firearms.
“The average woman that I get in my class is brand new to this,” Wellington said. “I have had women call me and thank me because when they walk out of their building to their car at night they are no longer scared.”
“With all the things going on in the world, you just want to be able to protect yourself,” added Nicole Washington. She takes classes to be a more confident and accurate gun owner. “I’m a pretty good shot.”
Nothing New
The trend of more women purchasing firearms for the first time isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s a trend that’s been happening for several years – and is welcomed.
Gun owners are increasingly female and also seeing greater minority gun ownership too, including African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans. Last year, NBC News reported on the growing diversity within the gun-owning community with a report titled, “Why more Black people are looking for safety in gun ownership.” The report highlighted NSSF industry data showing 90 percent of gun retailers reported a “general increase” of Black customers, including an 87 percent increase among Black women.
A headline from The Cut read, “The New Face of American Gun Ownership – Black women are pushing against the (white, rural, and male) stereotype.” “In recent years, story after story has furthered the narrative that Black women are the fastest-growing group of gun owners in the country,” The Cut’s report said, adding Black women now make up a majority of the 40,000 members of the National African American Gun Association (NAAGA).
Fortunately, Congressman Cuellar’s vehicle and possessions were recovered within only a couple of hours.
“A society without law and order is not a society,” Rep. Cuellar told Fox’s Jesse Waters. When criminals are allowed to run rampant with no risk of prosecution for their crimes, innocent people suffer. Thankfully, Congress overturned the Washington, D.C., City Council’s attempts to enact laughably soft-on-crime policies earlier this year.
Even such, criminals thinking about committing crimes against residents have more reason to think again. They’re law-abiding residents like Kennette Brown and Nicole Washington and they have numerous friends taking a stand and exercising their Second Amendment rights for self-defense too.
A Restraining Order Didn’t Stop This Assailant, a Woman’s Gun Did
On September 28, a woman found herself in a domestic violence situation and was forced to take drastic measures to defend her life. The incident, which occurred at her apartment in Wilmington, North Carolina, further illustrates how important it is for women to be armed – especially when it comes to situations involving domestic violence.
Anthony Parker, the woman’s estranged husband, physically assaulted her, but lost his life when she used her gun to stop him.
Wilmington police continue to investigate a suspected domestic violence-related shooting that claimed the life of Anthony Parker on the night of Sept. 28.
Parker was killed after what police say began as a domestic dispute at around 9:26 p.m. at 34 North Apartments.
A WPD representative said on Monday, Oct. 2, that a woman suspected of involvement in the shooting was granted a temporary restraining order against Parker on the day of the shooting.
In the 911 call obtained by WECT, the woman says that she has a restraining order against a man, but that he came to her house. The WPD representative said Monday that Parker took her phone likely the day before the shooting, and that she tracked her phone and met with police at the location she tracked the phone to. They said that he wouldn’t come to the door, so she was advised to take out warrants.
She told the dispatcher that she fired on shot from a weapon registered to her and that he ran.
The woman was attempting to bathe her child when Parker confronted her. When the situation escalated, the woman shot Parker before he fled the scene. “I shot one shot, and he ran,” she told reporters. He was later found dead in a parking lot.
This incident highlights multiple important issues. For domestic violence victims, it is even more important to be armed. In this case, the woman had already placed a restraining order on her assailant. We can see how much protection that piece of paper afforded her. When faced with immediate violence, her only line of defense was her quick thinking and her firearm. There is no telling how this incident would have turned out if she had not been armed.
This is one of the biggest problems with the anti-gunner lobby. They insist that making it harder for law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms makes the nation less dangerous. In reality, it helps people protect themselves from those who hold no regard for the gun control laws the left claims will keep people safe. It is why I’m such a big proponent of women becoming gun owners. Firearms are an effective equalizer, when you’re faced with someone who is physically stronger and faster.
There are several cases in which women have used guns to protect themselves from domestic abusers. Unfortunately, there are too many who become victims because they did not possess the means by which they could defend themselves from their attackers. It’s a heartbreaking tragedy.
While society works to find additional solutions for domestic violence, the firearm, for many, remains a crucial ally, especially when law enforcement is unable to arrive quickly enough to diffuse the situation. The bottom line is that a restraining order cannot protect against an attacker like a firearm can.
Chicago shooting: CCL holder fires back at gunman who shot CTA employee in Archer Heights
CHICAGO (WLS) — A Concealed Carry License holder fired back at a gunman who shot a CTA bus supervisor on the city’s Southwest Side on Tuesday afternoon, officials said.
Chicago police said the drive-by shooting happened around 2 p.m. in the Archer Heights neighborhood. Chopper 7 was over the scene, where police squad cars surrounded a CTA bus under an overpass near West 47th Street and South Archer Avenue.
ABC7 spoke with Lorenzo Hernandez, who was caught in the crossfire while heading to work in his SUV. He is thankful to be alive after a bullet from the shooting, still lodged in his SUV, stopped short of hitting him and a nearby tow truck driver.
Hernandez, who spoke to ABC7 in Spanish through a translator, said he was sitting at the 47th and Archer when he saw a crash involving a CTA bus and at least four other vehicles.
“I saw the bus crash happen as I was stopped at the light,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said after the crash, more than a dozen people got out of the bus and impacted vehicles when someone inside a white Dodge Durango shot at them.
Police said one of the bullets hit the CTA bus supervisor, a 55-year-old man, who was responding to the crash.
Hernandez was sitting in the driver’s seat when one bullet hit his SUV, stopping short of hitting him. The engine blocked the bullet from continuing through.
“The bullet looked like it was headed in my direction, but got stopped by the car,” Hernandez said.
At the same time, a tow truck driver, who was helping to move the vehicles, was standing by Hernandez’s SUV when he dropped down.
Hernandez initially thought the tow truck driver was hit, but then saw him jump back up and run around the front of his SUV, where he fired two shots at the gunman. That tow truck driver, who didn’t want to go on camera, told ABC7 he saw the shooter take aim at him before he fired his own gun.
Hernandez said you never know what can happen at any moment, and he is grateful to have his life.
“The shooting happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to react,” Hernandez said. “In Chicago, you go to work not knowing if you will come back home. This happens everywhere. I thank God that I didn’t get hit.”
At the end of the chaotic ordeal, Hernandez said the tow truck driver came over to him to thank him.
“The tow truck driver thanked me. He said if my SUV wasn’t there, he would have gotten killed,” Hernandez said.
Police were speaking with the tow truck driver at the scene, and he was asked to stay behind as part of the investigation. CPD also confirmed a witness with a Concealed Carry License fired back at the shooters.
Police said the CTA worker, struck in his thigh, was transported to Mount Sinai Hospital, where his condition was stabilized. A CTA spokesperson said their bus supervisor was not the shooter’s intended target.
The investigation has forced a shutdown of many roadways in the area.
Do Criminals Target a Specific Age Group?
The bad guys know that as our age increases, our ability to defend ourselves decreases.
I have been curious about what age group is most vulnerable to crime, so I did some research and it looks like the elderly population “wins” the proverbial jackpot in several different styles of victimization. There are tons of articles and information out there that support my research, so much so, that I have had to narrow down my article’s subject matter to just theft/burglary.
Who is considered “elderly”?
USCourts.gov reports that there is no agreement among researchers on the specific age that should be used to categorize the “elderly.” Some of the research on older offenders and victims of crime categorizes the older person as age 50 and above; other researchers use 60 years and above as the cut-off point, where some have used 65 and above as the age to define the elderly and still some say ages 75 and older. In the research presented in my article, elderly is defined as age 70 or more.
Office of Justice Program researchers have identified the elderly population as being more vulnerable to crime than other age groups. Below are bullet points as to why a more mature person is targeted.
Armed homeowner steps in after girlfriend’s estranged husband allegedly breaks in
An Oklahoma man reportedly stepped in when his girlfriend’s estranged husband allegedly broke into their home, leading to one neighbor praising the state’s gun laws.
“People just be breaking into other people’s houses over here and… I guess that’s what’s going on. And I’m just glad that it’s open carry in this state because people need to be able to protect [themselves],” Midwest City, Oklahoma, resident only identified as Gabrielle told OKC Fox.
Oklahoma is a permitless carry state, meaning law-abiding residents 21 years old or older are permitted to open or concealed carry firearms without a license.
Gabrielle is the neighbor of a home on Flannery Drive that was broken into Wednesday morning. The affidavit for the shooting states the male and female resident were home when they heard their dog’s barking, prompting the male resident to go inspect, OKC Fox reported.
The male homeowner then encountered Mauricio Alexander Delarosa, 34, inside the home, OKC Fox reported. Delarosa was identified by police as the female homeowner’s estranged husband. The male resident of the home is the boyfriend of Delarosa’s estranged wife.
The estranged husband and new boyfriend had never met, according to police records.
The suspect reportedly charged at the boyfriend before the male resident grabbed his firearm. The boyfriend fired a single shot at Delarosa, hitting him in the chest.
Police records showed that Delarosa had called his estranged wife more than 170 times from Tuesday afternoon until the shooting Wednesday morning.
Delarosa reportedly fled the home after being shot and was found collapsed in a neighbor’s yard. He was transported to a hospital for treatment and will later be taken to the local jail, according to the police department.
Gabrielle warned criminals that many men and women are armed in the state, and will open fire if they come under attack, according to her comments to OKC Fox.
“I guess they see targets, but I’m telling you, you think them single moms aren’t armed, or, you know, them single dads or people are not going to protect their home. You come in them doors you know and you’re not invited you might get filled up with holes. And that’s just the honest truth,” added Gabrielle.
Gabrielle said crime has increased in the Midwest City neighborhood since an elementary school closed last year and is calling for more lighting and safety measures on the street.
Delarosa was charged with first-degree burglary and stalking.
Man killed in apparent self-defense shooting in Stead
RENO, Nev. (News 4 & Fox 11) — An investigation is underway after an apparent self-defense shooting left one man dead in Stead Thursday night.
Officers with the Reno Police Department responded to a home off Lagoon Drive near Mayors park just after 7 p.m. on Sept. 28 on the report of a shooting.
Police found a man suffering from a gunshot wound. He was rushed to the hospital where he later died.
Investigators said everyone involved in the shooting stayed on scene and is cooperating with the investigation.
Authorities believe the shooting was an act of self-defense and no arrests have been made at this time.
Teachers With Guns: District by District, a Push to Arm Educators Is Growing
Seconds matter during a school shooting. A rural superintendent wondered, what if staff members could intervene before police arrived?
An act of mass violence hasn’t yet touched the Benjamin Logan Local School District.
Superintendent John Scheu is thankful for that.
But for years, every time news broke about yet another school shooting, Scheu faced a handful of “what if?” questions.
What if a school in this small, rural district about an hour northwest of Columbus, Ohio—where the closest police outpost is 10 miles away—was the next target of a shooting? What if Benjamin Logan students were the next to have to huddle in closets sending “I love you” texts to friends and family? What if Scheu’s community was the next to have to mourn the loss of beloved students and staff members?
“If it can happen in all of these other places, it could happen here,” he said.
So, Scheu and his district invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in security. They hired school resource officers who are stationed at each of the district’s three schools. Security cameras send live feeds to the local sheriff’s office. Staff are reminded often that exterior doors are not to be propped open or left unlocked for any reason.
There’s a new mental health clinic at one of the schools, staffed with counselors trained to help the district’s roughly 1,600 students and 225 staff members.
District leaders felt confident they’d done all they could to keep outside threats from entering their buildings.
But what if the threat came from someone already inside?
Students and teachers have lockdown drills, and, as has become commonplace in American schools, they know to pull down the shades and lock the classroom doors before hiding quietly from a threat. But, beyond that, there isn’t much they would be able to do but “wait and hope that help would come,” Scheu said.
Except, Scheu asked himself, what if there were staff members trained to intervene? What if a handful of teachers, aides, and others could quickly reach for a firearm if an active shooter were targeting students?
“When you’re talking about putting out an active shooter threat, it’s a matter of seconds, not a matter of minutes,” said Scheu, who has served as superintendent in the district since July 2020. “And it’s a matter of life and death.”
After a year of planning, the district’s first “Armed Response Team” was in place to start the 2023-24 school year, part of a growing trend in Ohio and elsewhere in which schools tap teachers and other employees to act as the first line of armed defense against an active shooter.
Police investigate stabbing in South Tulsa as self-defense
TULSA, Okla. — Police say they’re investigating a stabbing that took place Wednesday night in south Tulsa as self-defense.
According to the Tulsa Police Department, a man was hitting a home near 63rd and Peoria with a stick and looking into the window.
Police said the teen then went out to investigate and the suspect hit him with a stick.
According to police, the teen defended himself with a kitchen knife and stabbed the suspect multiple times, including in the chest.
Police said the suspect was later taken to the hospital and is now in critical but stable condition.
Woman reportedly shoots, kills potential attacker in Colorado Springs
A man was fatally shot when he reportedly tried to assault a woman in Colorado Springs early Monday, according to police.
Around 1:15 a.m., police responded to a shooting at an apartment complex in the 6900 block of Alpine Currant View, located directly southwest of Woodmen Road and Union Boulevard.
The woman who reported the shooting said she had been “about to be attacked by a male she just met,” so she shot him and then left the area, police said.
Officers located the woman in her car at a nearby hospital and found a deceased male in the apartment complex parking lot, officials said.
The woman was interviewed and released , police said.
Can There be Good News About Public Violence?
Some of us are afraid of bad news. Most of us know someone who is afraid of going to the doctor because they don’t want to make hard decisions about their health. The great news is that most medical conditions can be treated. That emotional reaction is also common when we consider public violence. It is particularly accurate about how we feel about mass-murder. Many of us feel both compelled to watch the news about public violence, while at the same time we want to turn away and pretend it doesn’t happen. Let me bring you good news. We learned how to stop mass-murder in several ways. We’ve done it, so we are talking about actual practice rather than mere theory. The first thing we have to do is get past the fantasy of Hollywood violence and talk about what really happens.
I’m going to go back to the medical model for a moment. I’ve had friends who oscillated between denial and helplessness. They feel that there can’t be a problem, or that the problem is intractable so why bother. They become hopeless and vulnerable to people who sell quack cures. I won’t do that to you. I’ve studied public violence for a decade, and there is real hope to stop mass-murderers. For a moment, let’s set aside both fantasy and our fears.
Part of us knows that what we see from Hollywood isn’t real. Yes, we might be caught up in the story. At the same time, part of our mind knows that hundreds of people don’t suddenly explode in a flash of flame and get thrown backwards when someone waves a gun around. The truth is that mass-murder is hard, and ordinary citizens stop mass-murderers most of the time. That is fairly obvious if we’re willing to look at it for a minute. Again, I promise it will only be a minute. It turns out that you have lived through the critical experiment many times.
Remember one of the times you walked into a group of your friends and shouted hello. Your friends look at you. One of them points their finger at you and you point back at them and wave. You do that a number of times as more of your friends recognize you.
Then you see a friend of to the side that you missed. You wave and smile to see someone you didn’t notice at first. There is a feeling of an unexpected, pleasant surprise. We didn’t see them at first because we were concentrating on someone else in the group. We thought we saw everyone, but we really didn’t. A friend we didn’t see slaps us on the shoulder and asks how we’ve been. We were looking at the group so we never noticed our friend come up behind us.
Hold that experience in mind for a minute. I could ask you all kinds of questions about your friends and we’d find out that you didn’t really see them at all. How were they sitting? Who was talking to whom? How were they dressed, and what were they doing with their hands when you said hello? We are not a camera, and we imagine that we see more than we really do.
We don’t see everything. As soon as we look at one thing,
we become blind to the rest of the world around us.
(The hard part starts now, but it won’t be long.)
That common experience explains why we kill mass murderers time after time. To put it in simple terms, they don’t see us and we shoot them. Maybe they die right there, and maybe they are only wounded. Being shot at makes the attacker feel deeply vulnerable. Usually, they run away. This wasn’t the violence they had imagined and they usually take their own life.
(The gruesome part is over so you can breathe again.)
There are other perceptual and tactical factors at work, but I’m not trying to make better murderers. The fact is that mass-murderers are vulnerable.
Where ordinary citizens were allowed to be armed, we stopped attempted mass-murderers almost two-thirds of the time. That also had a drastic effect on the number of people who were injured or killed. Ordinary citizens like you saved over a thousand lives. Again, the reasons might not be obvious to everyone.
It is clear that stopping the murderer means that more innocent people aren’t getting shot. It also means we can move the people who were injured to safety and we can quickly start life-saving treatment by stopping the bleeding. EMTs get to the injured victims faster because the scene is safe. There are fewer victims to treat, so each victim gets more attention, and the victims are in better condition when EMTs first reach them.
That is what happens time after time. On average, we’ve done that about every 18 days for the last 8 years. None of that happens while we wait another 15 minutes for the police to arrive.
It turns out that the murderer wasn’t so deadly because he had some Hollywood super weapon. Mass-murderers hunt us in “gun-free” zones. The murderer was deadly because he could kill at will without someone to stop him.
Millions of us go armed every day, but we obeyed the rules and left our guns outside.
The mass-murderer didn’t.
I’m sure that some of you can see the answers already.
- The personal solution is easy. Make sure that someone can shoot back.
- The public solution is time tested. We’ve done it for the last decade, and we’ve never had a school attacked where they had a public program of armed school staff.
- The legal solution is simple. Make property owners responsible when they disarm the people who obey the law. If you stop me from protecting my family, then you become responsible for their safety.
- The media solution is easy as well. Most mass-murderers kill innocent people so the mass-media will show us their face, their name, and their manifesto. Stop giving mass-murderers a multi-million-dollar publicity campaign.
- All that might sound simple, but the political solution is harder. We have to ignore quack cures that have failed in the past.
I told you there was good news.
Too bad they have such onerous gun control laws.
Police urge gun owners to carry at synagogue as terror alerts spike at High Holidays
Police on Monday encouraged licensed gun owners to carry their weapons to synagogues over the High Holiday period, as the security establishment registered a rise in terror alerts in the lead-up to the Yom Kippur fast day.
Police said in a statement that there has been a 15 percent increase in terror warnings compared to the two months before the holidays and that security forces were at a heightened alert level due to the threats.
Licensed gun owners were urged “to carry their gun in these times.”
The police statement said the number of alerts will likely rise further in the lead-up to Yom Kippur, which begins on Sunday evening.
“Therefore, we call on worshipers who have licensed gun to bring them to prayers. In addition, we call on the public in general to be aware and report any unusual incident in real-time to the police 100 hotline,” the statement read.
Police also said they were monitoring a concerning rise in Palestinian online incitement to carry out attacks.
Monday saw an attempted stabbing near Jerusalem and three separate shooting attacks against Israeli forces in the West Bank, the military said.
On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, an explosive device went off in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park in the early hours of the morning. There were no injuries. Two suspects were later arrested on suspicion of involvement.
In the lead-up to Rosh Hashanah, police made the unprecedented move of ensuring there was someone armed in every synagogue in Jerusalem due to the heightened terror threat.
Gun control in Israel has traditionally been relatively strict, with licenses generally only granted to those who can show a need for extra security in their line of work or daily life. Citizens in nearly all cases can own a single gun and only 50 bullets at a given time.
But far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, an advocate of relaxing the laws, has moved forward with easing ownership regulations, claiming having more licensed gun carriers could help combat waves of terror attacks and criminal gun violence that police and security forces have struggled to contain.
Critics have warned that increasing the number of firearms comes with significant risks, including suicides, violence against women, road rage incidents, and murders. According to data from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, of the 32 women murdered with firearms between 2019 and 2021, nine were killed by people with licensed guns.
The High Holidays run through the first week of October, until the end of the Sukkot holiday.
One dead, one arrested following attempted home invasion in Spring Valley
LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A man is dead, and another is in custody following an attempted home invasion in Spring Valley on Wednesday morning.
According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, reports of a shooting at a single-family residence in the 3300 block of Iberia Street around 9:02 a.m.
The caller claimed that two individuals dressed in dark clothing and masks attempted to enter their residence, and their son shot them.
Officers arriving on the scene made contact with the caller, who was identified as a 70-year-old man, and his son, who was identified as a 50-year-old man and the shooter. According to LVMPD Homicide Lieutenant Jason Johansson, both subjects with not be facing charges, as the shooting was determined to be in self-defense.
The father told officers that one of the suspects appeared to be dead in the backyard, where officers would discover the body of a 20-year-old man. Medical personnel arriving on the scene would declare him deceased.
The second suspect involved in the attempted invasion was seen leaping over the wall in the backyard and fleeing the scene in a gray sedan.
About 10 minutes after the initial 911 call, LVMPD also received reports of a reckless driver who drove through a parking lot on Tropicana and Jones at a “high rate of speed.” The vehicle was then seen leaving the lot headed eastbound on Tropicana.
Lt. Johansson says the vehicle was later involved in a collision on Tropicana and Decatur, where the sedan struck two other vehicles. After crashing, the suspect exited the vehicle, and police observed a “non-life-threatening gunshot wound to his lower leg.”
The suspect was transported to a nearby hospital and is currently in custody.
LVMPD will be looking into recent burglaries in the area to see if there are any possible connections. Lt. Johansson says that police have identified at least one incident of interest.
It’s currently unclear if the suspects were armed at the time of the incident.
Officers will be in the area for the next few hours to conduct an investigation into the incident. Drivers are advised to use caution when traveling in the neighborhood and surrounding areas.
“Right now, it’s just gonna come down to interviewing, getting the rest of the surveillance footage, and serving a search warrant on the house and the vehicle,” Lt. Johansson said.
Can There be Good News About Public Violence?
Some of us are afraid of bad news. Most of us know someone who is afraid of going to the doctor because they don’t want to make hard decisions about their health. The great news is that most medical conditions can be treated. That emotional reaction is also common when we consider public violence. It is particularly accurate about how we feel about mass-murder.
Many of us feel both compelled to watch the news about public violence, while at the same time we want to turn away and pretend it doesn’t happen. Let me bring you good news. We learned how to stop mass-murder in several ways. We’ve done it, so we are talking about actual practice rather than mere theory. The first thing we have to do is get past the fantasy of Hollywood violence and talk about what really happens.
I’m going to go back to the medical model for a moment. I’ve had friends who oscillated between denial and helplessness. They feel that there can’t be a problem, or that the problem is intractable so why bother. They become hopeless and vulnerable to people who sell quack cures. I won’t do that to you. I’ve studied public violence for a decade, and there is real hope to stop mass-murderers. For a moment, let’s set aside both fantasy and our fears.
Part of us knows that what we see from Hollywood isn’t real. Yes, we might be caught up in the story. At the same time, part of our mind knows that hundreds of people don’t suddenly explode in a flash of flame and get thrown backwards when someone waves a gun around. The truth is that mass-murder is hard, and ordinary citizens stop mass-murderers most of the time. That is fairly obvious if we’re willing to look at it for a minute. Again, I promise it will only be a minute. It turns out that you have lived through the critical experiment many times.
Remember one of the times you walked into a group of your friends and shouted hello. Your friends look at you. One of them points their finger at you and you point back at them and wave. You do that a number of times as more of your friends recognize you.
Then you see a friend of to the side that you missed. You wave and smile to see someone you didn’t notice at first. There is a feeling of an unexpected, pleasant surprise. We didn’t see them at first because we were concentrating on someone else in the group. We thought we saw everyone, but we really didn’t. A friend we didn’t see slaps us on the shoulder and asks how we’ve been. We were looking at the group so we never noticed our friend come up behind us.
Hold that experience in mind for a minute. I could ask you all kinds of questions about your friends and we’d find out that you didn’t really see them at all. How were they sitting? Who was talking to whom? How were they dressed, and what were they doing with their hands when you said hello? We are not a camera, and we imagine that we see more than we really do.
We don’t see everything. As soon as we look at one thing,
we become blind to the rest of the world around us.
(The hard part starts now, but it won’t be long.)
That common experience explains why we kill mass murderers time after time. To put it in simple terms, they don’t see us and we shoot them. Maybe they die right there, and maybe they are only wounded. Being shot at makes the attacker feel deeply vulnerable. Usually, they run away. This wasn’t the violence they had imagined and they usually take their own life.
(The gruesome part is over so you can breathe again.)
There are other perceptual and tactical factors at work, but I’m not trying to make better murderers. The fact is that mass-murderers are vulnerable.
Where ordinary citizens were allowed to be armed, we stopped attempted mass-murderers almost two-thirds of the time. That also had a drastic effect on the number of people who were injured or killed. Ordinary citizens like you saved over a thousand lives. Again, the reasons might not be obvious to everyone.
It is clear that stopping the murderer means that more innocent people aren’t getting shot. It also means we can move the people who were injured to safety and we can quickly start life-saving treatment by stopping the bleeding. EMTs get to the injured victims faster because the scene is safe. There are fewer victims to treat, so each victim gets more attention, and the victims are in better condition when EMTs first reach them.
That is what happens time after time. On average, we’ve done that about every 18 days for the last 8 years. None of that happens while we wait another 15 minutes for the police to arrive.
It turns out that the murderer wasn’t so deadly because he had some Hollywood super weapon. Mass-murderers hunt us in “gun-free” zones. The murderer was deadly because he could kill at will without someone to stop him.
Millions of us go armed every day, but we obeyed the rules and left our guns outside.
The mass-murderer didn’t.
- The personal solution is easy. Make sure that someone can shoot back.
- The public solution is time tested. We’ve done it for the last decade, and we’ve never had a school attacked where they had a public program of armed school staff.
- The legal solution is simple. Make property owners responsible when they disarm the people who obey the law. If you stop me from protecting my family, then you become responsible for their safety.
- The media solution is easy as well. Most mass-murderers kill innocent people so the mass-media will show us their face, their name, and their manifesto. Stop giving mass-murderers a multi-million-dollar publicity campaign.
- All that might sound simple, but the political solution is harder. We have to ignore quack cures that have failed in the past.
I told you there was good news.
Resident shoots, kills attempted burglar at West Melbourne apartment
Police in West Melbourne are investigating after an attempted burglary turned into a deadly shooting inside an apartment complex early Sunday morning.
According to the West Melbourne Police Department, officers responded to an apartment at the Reserves of Melbourne off Doherty Drive for reports of a shooting inside an apartment.
Officers learned that multiple, possibly armed, subjects had forcefully entered an apartment. According to police, one suspect had a gun.
The apartment’s resident, armed with their own firearm, shot multiple times and struck two of the subjects.
One was transported to Holmes Regional Medical Center, where they were pronounced dead. The second person who was shot also went to the hospital, where they are currently being treated.
Many in the neighborhood were caught off guard. “Oh my God. Sick, wow,” said Sarah Goodman, who has a relative in the apartment complex.
“I noticed six police cars and the yellow tape way out there,” Miles Svikhart, a resident, said. “Yes, it’s very scary,” a resident said.
After getting over the initial shock, people we talked to felt like the people in the apartment really had no choice.
“I mean, I’m a proud Second Amendment person myself. So if you invade my home, I’m going to protect my space,” Goodman said.
“The homeowner had to do something,” Svikhart said. “It’s self-defense. That’s why you have a gun. If he didn’t have that gun, I’m sure he’d be in a lot more trouble.”
At this point, no charges have been filed against the person who shot the home invaders. The State Attorney’s Office will handle that decision.
In the meantime, police are working to find out the motive and if they knew each other.
West Melbourne police say at least three people were in the apartment at the time of the home invasion. No one involved in the incident has been identified.
All sorts of crazy drugs out on the street.
‘He was like a lion in a cage’: Naked man shot dead inside restaurant
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WREG) — One of the owners of a North Memphis restaurant says she was forced to shoot a naked intruder who threatened her and her family members inside the North Hollywood business late Monday night.
The woman, who did not want to be identified by name, said the man dressed only in sneakers showed up to Mr. Potato Head asking for water and managed to push his way inside, shutting the self-locking doors behind him.
She said the man became enraged when he couldn’t leave the restaurant, began damaging property, and jammed the doors trying to get out. She said he also punched her in the chest and continued to come toward her even though she was holding a gun.
“I was just afraid of his strength,” she said. “I’m pointing at him, asking him to calm down and stay away or get out of the store which the door was jammed, and he had no way out, so therefore I was between a rock and a hard place, and I just did what I had to do,” she said.
The woman said she fired one shot at the man when he charged her and shot him again when he picked up a chair to throw at her sister.
“It’s just a scary sight, and I know that people are saying what they could’ve done, what they would’ve done, but until you’re in a situation, you never know what you will do, especially when the fear hits you. You never know what you’re going to do. He was a big guy, big enough to hurt me,” she said.
The woman’s sister, who began live streaming after the shooting, said the man was like a lion locked in a cage. She said when they called the police, the naked man was on the ground, and she and her sister and brother were still locked inside the restaurant.
She said she went on Facebook to let loved ones know what was happening.
“If the police came in and arrested us or anything, my family needed to know. Somebody needed to know where we were or what was going on with us.”
Memphis Police said a man was transported to the hospital in critical condition and later died. They said a woman was detained but haven’t released any details about the shooting.
The woman who fired the shots said she was taken into custody but is not facing any charges.
She said she never wanted to take another life.
“I’m not a monster. I would never hurt anybody purposely. I just feared for my life and just did what I thought I was supposed to do,” she said. “I didn’t want him to die or anything like that. I just didn’t wanna be the one my mom had to claim to identify.”
The sisters said they recognized the man from the neighborhood. Police have not identified him.
Attempted armed robbery in Alpharetta thwarted by armed bystander
ALPHARETTA, Ga. – A quick draw at a fast-food restaurant as police say a bystander stepped in and shot a robber. Now, the police are waiting to book the suspect on some serious charges once they get out of the hospital.
Police say a 57-year-old man tried to rob the manager at gunpoint, but a man who had just pulled in to order some food also had a gun.
“I’m glad somebody was there to help the people who could have been a victim,” said Shameerah Bates, one of the customers of the Zaxby’s restaurant located on Old Milton Parkway in Alpharetta where the attempted armed robbery took place.
It was closing time on Sunday night. Police say as the manager was leaving, an armed man approached him in the parking lot and tried to rob him.
“An independent witness observed the robbery in process, and intervened in the robbery, and shot the suspect after the suspect pointed his firearm at the witness and the victim,” said Alpharetta Police Lt. Andrew Splawn.
Alpharetta Police raced to the restaurant and set up a perimeter.
Investigators say the man had run into the woods to try to get away.
Officers were eventually able to track him to his location. They found he had two bullet wounds to his leg.
He was rushed to the hospital, but when he gets out, the 57-year-old man will face a number of charges including armed robbery, aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
Police say the bystander with the gun ill not be charged.
“Georgia law allows a person to use reasonable force to protect themselves or a third party when they believe an individual or themselves is going to suffer serious bodily harm or death,” said Lt. Splawn. “We do believe this is going to be a defensive third-party incident, so at this time we don’t anticipate any charges for the witness.”
“I’m glad he was here and was able to stop him. People do stupid stuff, and there’s consequences,” said Angie Trapino, another Zaxby’s customer.
Police say the manager was shaken up and went to the hospital for some superficial injuries to be checked out, but is expected to be OK.
Homeowner needs target lessons.