From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
Damon Wells ... had a permit to carry his gun, and he had the gun on him when a pair of teenage thieves approached him Saturday night on his front porch.
When one of the youths pulled a gun, Wells whipped out his and shot one of the boys multiple times in the chest, police said.
Arthur Buford, 15, died after stumbling away and collapsing on a sidewalk near East 134th Street and Kinsman Road.
City prosecutors decided Monday that Wells, 25, was justified and would not be charged for what appears to be the first time a concealed-carry permit holder has shot and killed an attacker....
It's unfortunate that the teenager involved in the gun robbery died, but it strikes me that Wells was entirely entitled to do what he did, and that it's good that the law lets people protect themselves, including using deadly force, against gun-wielding assailants. "His cousin, Tameka Foster, 21, questioned why police refused to punish Buford's shooter. 'They let that man run out freely,' Foster said. 'My cousin is dead.'" He wouldn't have been dead if he hadn't been involved in robbing people at gunpoint.
By the way, did Wells need a permit to have the gun while on his porch? Having such a permit increased his chances that he'd have his gun on him there, since it would have made it easier for him to routinely carry the gun, without having to safely store it whenever he wanted to leave the house; but is such a permit legally required to carry on one's own porch?
The answer is not clear. Ohio Rev. Code § 2923.12(D)(3) allowed concealed carry without a license "in the actor's own home"; the question would be whether being on the front porch is being "in the actor's own home." State v. Higgins, 2006 WL 134815 (Ohio. App.), suggests that being on the front porch wouldn't qualify as being in the home, and that a concealed carry license would thus be required there; State v. Hayes, 1992 WL 357257 (Ohio. App.), holds that a concealed carry license is required to carry concealed in one's own back yard. But these are nonprecedential, unpublished decisions; I know of no published Ohio decisions on the subject.
Thanks to Trevor Stiles with the pointer.
That's one less highly dangerous violent criminal that the people of Cleveland have to fear, and one more reason for other criminals to not commit armed robbery or similar dangerous crimes.
Nick
Predictably, the Columbus NPR affiliate led its local news this morning by reporting that a Cleveland man who holds a ccw permit had used a handgun to shoot and kill a man, only gradually adding that the "victim" was on the man's front porch, and then that the victim and a companion had tried to rob the man, and -- only toward the end of the story -- that the robber had pulled a handgun.
It's unfortunate for all the reasons that we don't execute teenagers for committing armed robbery. I won't weep for the kid, he apparently had it coming, but it's a pity he won't have a chance to change his ways.
A more interesting line of investigation would be at considering how many folks have been injured/killed by weapon of CCL holders who were not attackers and how were these costs distributed. (I assume this statement applies only to OH, no?). From a public policy standpoint, such a ratio won't prove anything more than this singular incident, but it seems more helpful starting point than making the friends of a highschool freshman a strawman.
I have to fight very hard against being glad the kid is dead. But I can say unabashedly that I'm glad the homeowner was armed.
First, there is a severe paucity of information. We don't know if the decedent was armed; we don't know if there was a common scheme or plan to rob Mr. Wells. What we do know is that a 15 year old boy (not man, boy) was shot during the course of an attempted robbery.
I understand Mr. Wells' situation, and I sympathize with his predicament, but I guarantee that he is not nearly as exultant as some of the ghouls who posted here today.
I can't help but wonder at some of the assumptions flying around this posting. Let's wait for some more facts. If it turns out that this was an acting in concert robbery, then fire away. Until then, bear in mind that a young life was tragically cut short.
If getting shot isn't a deterrent to crime, nothing is. I only wish he'd lived to be so deterred.
Wait, what? Are you serious? It seems fairly obvious that yes, had his gun been visible, they wouldn't have bothered this man and would have then just gone on to rob someone else who wasn't armed. If anything that's is an argument for ccw because this way potential assailants have no idea who might pop them and can't just victimize the unarmed selectively.
I represented a client in an excessive force case where this issue came up. The facts and California law on the subject were comical.
Basically you can be found guilty of being drunk in public in your own front yard if there is no fence around it, or if there is a fence but the gate is open.
My client was what is known as a Mariposa County "mountain man". His former lady friend lived in Madera County, in the same town where my client's parents lived. He was known to the police department there as habitually being armed, and that he had a Mariposa concealed carry permit.
So, when house-sitting for his parents, he went to her place, where she wasn't, and then to her parents' residence where she was. He then sang to her (she was hiding inside) in a vain attempt to convince her of his continued love and devotion. Loudly. He seemed to be intoxicated. It was a reasonable surmise given that he was, in fact, frequently intoxicated, but on this occasion he was intoxicated on love rather than alcohol.
Her parents called the local police. Who knew the gentlemen. And one of them was the lady's current inamorata.
So they came out pretty fast, but not fast enough. My client went back to his parents' house to take a shower. The officers surmised he was there, and knocked on the door. Several times.
It was a quick shower so my client heard them, put on his jeans quickly, and came to the door dripping wet.
The officers asked him to please step outside. They knew that he could be arrested for being drunk in public the instant he stepped out. So he did and they did. And, because they rightly suspected he was armed (coming out of the shower, dripping wet, he put his revolver in his jeans pocket because he always, always, armed himself before leaving any residence, and the local police knew this), and suspected he was drunk, they slammed him up against his RV and unknowingly re-injured a cervical spine injury he had suffered when a horse rolled on him while they were galloping around in scenic Mariposa County.
My client also suffered cuts and bruises on his face from being slammed up against his RV. So the police took him to the local emergency room for treatment of those before booking him for being drunk in public. The ER report said that my client was "alert, conscious and cooperative" five minutes after his arrest for purportedly being drunk in public. ER also took x-rays of his cervical spine at this time as he complained of neck pain, and correctly told them he had suffered cracked vertebrae (broken neck) from the horse rolling on him.
He was charged with violations of Penal Code section 647(f) - drunk in public and section 148 - resisting arrest, and he came to me for representation. I sent a copy of the ER report to the DA with a request for dismissal of the charges, which the DA agreed to.
Then my client came back to me a few months later with a most interesting report from his treating physician, stating that my client had developed a bony spur on his neck at the site of the broken vertebrae, and that it was reasonably medically certain that the bony spur's development had been caused by re-injury to the site from being slammed against the RV by the police officers. Based on before and after x-rays, taken six weeks before the arrest, immediately after the arrest at ER, and six weeks after the arrest.
So I thought I had a pretty good case for false arrest and excessive force. Not.
The defense attorney quickly disabused me of the false arrest issue with a statement from the ex-wife and her parents about my client's musical behavior, and a case citation holding precisely that a man could be criminally liable for public intoxication in his front yard, even if it had a fence, provided the gate was open.
Then it turned out that my client hadn’t filed any income tax returns in ten years due to his conviction that the federal income tax was illegal. Bang! went his wage loss claim. At that point I wanted to settle. But his deposition had been noticed.
So there we are in a McCormick Barstow conference room, and the defense counsel is Larry O’Neil, now a federal judge.
"Were you armed with a hand gun when you were arrested?"
"Yes."
"Did you have a concealed weapons permit at the time?"
"Yes."
"Would you show it to us?"
Client looks in pocket. "It's not here - I must have it in my truck."
"Could you bring it up and show it to us after we break?"
"Yes."
"Why were you carrying a gun when you were arrested?"
"I always carry one with me when I'm not at home."
"Are you carrying one now?"
"Yes."
Pregnant pause similar to the one in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes when the human spy said, "Pass the ketchup"
me - "Mr. 'Smith', would you come outside with me, please? Larry, we'll be back with the permit after I've disarmed my client."
"You do that, Tom!"
My client and I exit the conference room, my client pulls his revolver in front of the terrified receptionist and empties the chamber into my hand. Smith puts the gun back into his pocket, I drop the bullets into my briefcase and give the receptionist a cheery smile as we head for the elevator.
Mr. Smith locks his gun in his truck glove compartment and removes his concealed weapons permit, which I study carefully for the first time and discover that it had expired two weeks earlier.
The receptionist upstairs grabbed her phone when we returned, but stopped calling 911 when I told her that my client was now unarmed.
"Mr. Smith, are you unarmed now?"
"Yes."
"Do you have your concealed weapons permit?"
"Yes."
"Is it valid?"
"Objection! My client invokes his Fifth Amendment privilege to remain silent on the grounds that a response might incriminate him!"
"Tom, do you really think you can get this case to trial?"
"You have a point, Larry, he wouldn't get past the metal detector."
So I settled for less than the case was worth.
I examine the Nieto decision and its predecessors and successors in Ohio law in my book For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms (Praeger Press, 1994).
What's the difference between an unpublished decision and a published one? Doesn't it constitute jurisprudence the day the verdict is returned?
(don't shoot me, I'm not a lawyer)
The death of a a teenage criminal is a tragedy, the deaths of armed robbery victims is a statistical probability.
I'm sure the number and rate would be indistinguishable from zero. There are at least 2.5 million concealed weapon permit holders (and have been about that number for ten years) and I could find NO reports of one of them shooting a non-attacker in a situation where the permit was relevant.
This is not to say permit holders are angels. I know of persons who happened to hold carry permits from Florida (1), Minnesota (1) and Texas (2) who have been convicted of murder but their permit didn't facilitate their criminal acts. I also know of about the same number of police officers who have been convicted of murder but their badges (and guns) didn't impact any of their crimes either.
the intended robbery victim who had someone draw a gun on him was never in danger?
Too bad Mr. Buford won't have another chance to turn his life around, but it should impress upon his associates that actions have consequences, and life is not a video game.
I'd start with the number of self-inflicted wounds by people carrying a concealed weapon and then move onto those wounded by neglegent and accidental discharges. Even if the numbers is much lower than the accident rate for law enforcement officials or soliders, to suggest the number is zero is a statistical impossibility.
My colleague, the late Eugene A. Mash, was found liable for malpractice for correctly stating the law. 38 Cal.3d 413 (1985). Even Chief Justice Rose Bird dissented.
I wondered about the "multiple" shots to the chest, however. At what point do multiple shots become excessive? Say that Mr. Buford was indeed the one with the gun, but he dropped it after the first bullet hit, and then Mr. Wells continued to shoot?
Or was Mr. Wells allowed to squeeze the trigger, say, four times without pausing to see whether any bullets had hit?
I would want to have some more facts before joining the ghouls in their feasting.
The decision would be binding for that particular case and parties, but if it is an "unpublished" decision, it generally doesn't have any authority to bind anyone else in the future.
In fact, where I practice (in California) it is unethical for attorneys to even cite to or mention unpublished decisions in subsequent arguments to the court in different cases.
Nothing ghoulish about not being sad about this punk's death. I save my sadness for victims, not criminals.
The main reason I wouldn’t support the death penalty for correctly convicted armed robbers is that then there's little marginal cost to up the ante to murder. Otherwise, I'd say kill 'em all.
As for the multiple shots, remember that people are very hardy creatures over the short-term. Even if a bullet penetrates and completely destroys the heart, it's quite possible for an individual in average shape to continue moving and presenting a risk for ten to thirty seconds afterward. Less perfect aim or ammunition can require several times that amount of time. Thankfully, most people give up long before that, but until the attacker clearly loses the ability to present significant harm, or
And, for all points and purposes, Mr. Wells needed a concealed carry permit to carry on his own porch without harassment. Even if the law did not view the front porch as an 'open meadow', any police officer willing to give him trouble could have put him in a legal mess regardless of how correct or incorrect the police officer's interpretation of a law is.
When faced with an armed opponent it's not reasonable to expect that someone take one shot, look to see what happened, and only then shoot again if the threat persists. The 2 seconds you take to see what happened could cost you your life. Even someone shot in the chest can still be a threat if he's got a weapon. Life isn't a video game - people don't die or become incapacitated instantly upon being shot.
Am I happy that the kid died? Not at all. It's a shame. However, I am very happy that Mr. Wells did not lose his life.
Interesting. Is it considered unethical only because citing an unpublished decision could hardly lead to proper verification or is there another rationale I do not see?
Thanks for the answer btw.
That wouldn't really make me think twice, except nearby John Carroll University is marked. Travesty!
Accidental firearms injuries would be less likely to receive attention, especially if they were self-inflicted, but look carefully at firearms accidents in the U.S. About half typically are hunting related--and I get the impression that many of these are because a hunter misinterprets a person as a deer.
My impression from reading news coverage of accidental firearms deaths and from reading CDC's data suggests that many of the non-hunting accidents involve teenaged boys showing off--and teenagers are (with a few very odd exceptions) not eligible for carry permits.
If there are carry permit holders who have accidental discharges that cause injury, they must be pretty scarce. I've carried a handgun for more than 20 years, and I've never had an accidental discharge. Many of my friends have carried handguns, and none of them has ever had an accidental discharge.
And you brought this to my attention for what reason? Do you expect someone to file suit against me for malpractice? Since I'm not a lawyer, nor am I practicing law, I believe that I'm safe.
Don't know why but that statement made be laugh.
I would be very suspicious of that claim. It is true that a gun in the home is substantially more likely to be used to kill someone in the home, than to kill an intruder. But that's not a very meaningful number. The majority of the time that a gun is used in self-defense, it is used as a threat, which causes the intruder to remember an urgent appointment elsewhere.
The Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog records those events that received news coverage--which are likely to be the most dramatic and probably disproportionately incidents in which the criminal is injured or killed. Yet the incidents that we have been recording for the last several years (now approaching 3000 articles) are still more commonly criminal injured, scared off, or held for police, than criminal killed.
You should adjust that statistic to exclude weapons stolen from homes by criminals, and thereafter used by persons other than residents of the home they were stolen from.
My recollection is that, even with this adjustment, there is still a truly alarming number of accidental shootings and fatalities within homes by residents of those homes using guns kept in the homes. Very, very few of the owners of those guns, however, had ever taken firearms safety classes, let alone property stored the weapons.
There is no question that possession of firearms in homes is dangerous, but it is also established that this is true only of irresponsible owners. The problem is that there are so many of those.
The primary danger from firearms possession in residences is, statisically, that those will be stolen and used elsewhere by criminals.
They aren't. I believe those numbers came from Mr. Arthur Kellermann's oft-cited and even more oft-rebuted 'study'. Not only is the data internally flawed (Mr. Kellermann chose to avoid revealing it to other researchers for decades because of this), but your citation for it is also problematic. Mr. Kellermann's study did not state the owned gun is used in the unintentional shooting or homicide, only that a gun will be -- for obvious reasons, those who are at risk for assault or attempted murder are more likely to want to defend themselves.
Also, remember that nearly 80% of those shot in self-defense survive, and many if not most acts of self-defense with a firearm do not require the owner to actually shoot the attacker (either drawing the gun and showing the attacker that he or she is not a valid target, or firing the gun and missing but frightening away the attacker, or merely using the threat of the gun to detain an individual).
Ray Nagin is not involved so he might get it back eventually. The only person I know who had a gun confiscated as part of a police investigation only got it back by being really annoying and by calling the same detective over and over again after the investigation was over. It still took him a couple of months to get it back with him calling multiple times a week.
These shootings are only sensationalized when the intended victim has a concealed carry license. One of my neighbors killed an armed intruder in his garage a few weeks ago. He has a huge fence and gate now.
And, no, he would not have given up had he just seen Mr. Wells' gun; he just would've gone on to find the next person. Those crying for this young man would likely not be as sympathetic had such a crime happened to their mother, and Mr. Buford had managed to do more than just attempt to rob her.
Mr. Wells exhibited perfect gun control - he hit what he aimed at.
Accidental firearms deaths are about 800 a year, and as I have pointed out, they tend to be hunting-related and teenaged males showing off. Relatively few are preteens, and adults who suffer firearms accidents, in at least study done in Vermont some years ago, also have disproportionate traffic accidents and drunk driving arrests. No amount of firearms safety classes can correct a problem like this.
Really! If you mean based on the firearms accidental deaths, then there really aren't very many. In a nation of 300,000,000, 800 deaths a year--of which perhaps half are hunting--isn't all that severe.
Yup. I strongly encourage people who buy a gun to find a method of securing it for three reasons (roughly in order of personal trauma, but not in order of social hazard):
1. You don't want a curious child or a suicidal teenager to get access to it.
2. You don't want to walk in on a burglar who was unarmed when he broke into your house.
3. You don't want to arm a criminal who may use your gun when he breaks into the next house.
Significantly, gun control advocates are more interested in punishing the gun owner than the burglar.
That is almost certainly a somewhat garbled restatement of the 1986 Kellerman study of gun related homicides in a single Washington county (King County) for one year.
It would be worth also reading some of the criticisms of the study, as Kellerman counted homicides (including a couple using knives) that didn't involve the gun owned by anyone residing in the home, and most of the homicides were suicides. (Why is this of any interest? Mostly because suicides have been shown repeatedly, over several decades and several different countries, to be means independent; taking guns out of the homes would almost certainly had no effect on the number of suicides.)
Kellerman also used as the sole criterion for successful with-gun self defense a dead body of an assailant. No matter whether and attack was deterred or not; if there wasn't a dead assailant, it doesn't count.
One is led to wonder how he judges the effectiveness of armed law enforcement officers.
Obviously a Jesuitical plot.
The law is often an ass. Since you are not an attorney, and particularly not an attorney who practices within the jurisdiction of the United States 9th Circuit of Appeal, and most especially not a California attorney, you might not be aware of this.
there is no bright line as to what is reasonable or unreasonable. (disclaimer: i am a firearms instructor for police, and that includes the teaching of deadly force and deadly force law/policy).
you are justified in shooting to "stop", and one is supposed to shoot until the threat is stopped.
people have survived , for example, 19 rounds in the torso (that was an odd case, obviously), and one is under no obligation to stop shooting and ask the guy "are you incapicitated yet?" etc.
also, if you have ever interviewed people involved in a shooting (or been there yourself), it's amazing how many times the person really thinks he didn't pull the trigger, or only fired once or twice, when in fact he fired numerous times. fight or flight kicks in, as does training.
the problem with HCI and their ilk (among many problems) is that they only count defensive uses of guns when the gun is actually fired. just as police use their guns defensively literally HUNDREDS of times for every instance of firing them, this is also true of civilians. the vast majority of civilian defensive gun use never involves a fired shot, yet that is consistently ignored by anti-gunners.
the idea that there are an "alarming" # of unintentional (preferred term vs. "accidental") discharges (let alone discharges that result in injury) by CCW holders is laughable. check the stats.
there are many many more common ways of dying/being injured in one's own home than a firearm lawfully owned, such as tripping and falling, kitchen injuries, and drowning in your own bathtub (usually after slipping and hitting one's head).
accidental firearms discharges resulting in injury are VERY rare, and as far back as the stats go - getting rarer
Those who limit only to fatalities are playing fast and loose with statistics. Mr. Dowling correctly identifies the danger as being unintentional shootings, and intentional criminal use whether or not those result in shootings.
I pointed out that the latter - intentional criminal use of firearms stolen from residences - significantly outnumbers unintentional shootings with firearms kept in the home.
They carefully exclude instances where the victim merely showed that he/she was armed, or criminals were deterred from acting due to fear that the victim was armed (which is why there are so few burglaries of inhabited residences in areas with high proportions of gun ownership).
The same people tend to contend that nothing happens unless it is reported on TV.
I believe those statistics are misleading, because the cases in which someone is injured or killed in self-defense is a small portion of cases in which a handgun is actually used in self-defense. In the large majority of cases, at least as I've heard it, the criminal flees when the intended victim brandishes, but does not fire, the gun. That still counts as a successful use of a handgun in self-defense, though.
There are criminals who are disarmed by gun control laws. There is no question in my mind about that. I would think that these are the least motivated criminals, or the least intelligent criminals. The question that you need to ask is whether criminals are disarmed more than their victims. There is strong reason to think that this is not the case.
A person who plans to commit murder, or is prepared to do so as part of another felony is unlikely to be deterred from acquiring a gun by the mere threat of punishment for obtaining a gun. What gun control law is more severely punished than murder? If he is caught before he commits the more serious crime, the best that we can hope for is that prison for a few years will take him off the streets. The criminal was already prepared to risk a much longer sentence than that for murder; big deal.
The majority of law-abiding adults, on the other hand, are reluctant to break gun control laws because to a person who has never been arrested, and never been convicted of a misdemeanor, any violation of the law is potentially destructive of his self-esteem and his middle class status. The costs of defending himself in court, legal fees, losing his job when sent to prison for several years--these are powerful deterrents to decent people. Thus, in societies where gun control laws either prevent lawful gun ownership for self-defense (Britain, Jamaica), or make it very difficult or risky even if lawful (New York City, New Jersey, Washington DC), gun control disproportionately disarms the victims, not the criminals.
And this is not an accident. Many of the activists in the gun control movement believe that self-defense is morally indistinguishable from criminal attack. I have had too many of these activists tell this to me directly--that a person who shoots a robber is morally no different from the robber. Hence the need to treat victims and criminals alike.
Someone call Dan Brown!
This is not to say permit holders are angels.
Statistically, they're pretty close. A study in Florida found that permit holders were 100 times less likely to be involved in a crime than the general population.
I bring this up only because the facts of the case saddened me. Namely, it probably would have been a robbery and nothing more, if one of the victims had not started shooting at the robbers. I won't go into the details, but the husband was being threatened, and the wife came out with the gun. Both were killed.
No doubt it is possible that they would have been killed anyway, but perhaps they would have survived the robbery.
Personally I am all in favor of the right to defend oneself, and I agree that the Cleveland man in this story was justified in shooting the armed teenager. But I don't think anyone should be so quick to assume that defending yourself with a gun is always a good (or wise) thing.
Anyway as to this specific case even those of us who think that handgun bans might be a good idea can't disagree with anything here. Even if in general handgun ownership causes more harm than it solves that doesn't mean that it should be specifically illegal to defend yourself if you own the fun, just that it might be better if it was illegal to own the gun. And besides given it isn't illegal it makes no sense to attack someone for possessing it. Perhaps the very worst situation we could have is the one we have now where gun ownership is legal so easy for criminals and nutballs to access but it's ownership by more upstanding members of the community is discouraged in many places.
I guess the Duke case taught us nothing about rushing to judgment. Pity.
To state the obvious, many 15 year olds who commit terrible crimes reform and lead productive, helpful lives. And as an above poster stated, it's sad that this teenager didn't. Nonetheless, the permit holder was perfectly within his rights to use deadly force.
The instincts you display in this case are the reason why many of us, despite having fiscally conservative, minimal government, pro-gun, pro-capitalist views, shudder with horror at the thought of being called "conservative". We sure as hell aren't like you.
Who is drunk on their own self-righteousness again?
Ahem.
I don't see anyone throwing a "Ding-dong, the witch is dead" party. I see a group of people acknowledging the culpability of the dead man. He did indeed suffer the ultimate penalty, but the circumstances under which it happened were entirely of his own making.
With regard to his family, I'm reminded of what Ted Bundy's mother told him, right before his execution:
"You'll always be my precious son."
I second TheNewGuys' comment WRT self-righteousness... pot, kettle, and all that.
Logicnazi, that was a good point about needed to account for robberies that escalate into murders after a gun in introduced by the victim. I hadn't thought of it, and I wonder how often it happens.
Lastly, to those arguing against gun control, the CCW rules virtually guarantee permit-holder's crime statistics will score points for you. You have to comply with a fair amount of red-tape (abide by laws) and are generally excluded/excludable if you have a criminal record. It seems there's a fair amount of selection bias. If there were no laws requiring a CCW permit to carry, I'd venture that the average person that carried would commit crimes at a rate closer to the average. It just seems like you can't rely solely on the behavior of current CCW permit-holders to argue that arming an increasing number of people would show similar results.
Indeed, if you look at the Plain Dealer's story, it's not even clear why the reporter concluded that Buford was a thief. There don't appear to have been any witnesses, other than the unnamed fellow who was with Buford. Maybe he confessed to attempted robbery, but the story certainly does say that. Presumably Wells shot Buford and then claimed that he was acting in self-defense, but a healthy skepticism should prompt one to wonder about that claim.
A lot of people here seem happy that Buford got shot and/or killed because a reporter called him a thief. I suspect that some of these people would not be so quick to accept a reporter's characterizations of the facts under alternative circumstances.
Except in Vermont and Alaska, where the only legal requirement is that you are legally able to purchase the firearm. Oddly enough, even there, legal concealed-carriers are still many times less likely to break the law than those who don't carry concealed, and are vastly less likely to commit a violent crime.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone but the statistically illiterate. A vast majority of violent crimes are committed by a very small percentage of the population, and most of that small percent already have a felony record (thus prohibiting them from legally owning guns) by the time they go into truly aggressive acts.
Moreover, there are still strict requirements as to what you can legally do while carrying a firearm concealed or open, regardless of a slip of paper or not. Understanding these legal requirements tends to put a certain amount of selection 'bias' into the mix anyway, and that wouldn't change even if we went over to permit-less concealed carry.
As an aside, I have been shot at and hit professionally--How many of you have ever had someone try to kill you? It makes a nice, intellectual and very sanitary argument until you are looking into the muzzle of a firearm. Were I Mr. Wells, I would continue pulling the trigger until out of ammo.
I find Tom's analogy to car ownership an interesting one. We do require drivers to pass periodic driving tests and safety inspections. Perhaps mandatory safety instruction and performance evaluation, with periodic updates, should be made a pre-condition to gun ownership.
This, of course, means absolutely nothing - but thanks for the tidbit.
fwiw, WA state does not require a permit as long as the firearm is carried openly (not concealed). only need a permit to carry concealed.
rarango... i heartily agree. being in shootouts (vs. talking about it intellectually in a blog) and seeing your friends take rounds puts this in an entirely different perspective.
Why should we call the cops after a robbery then? What if the robbers were gang members, and reporting them to the police causes one of them to get picked up. In the trial, the witness has to take the stand, the fellow gang members have someone sitting in the gallery taking notes. That night, 5 gangbangers come back to the house and throw several Molotov Cocktails through the windows, burning down the house and killing all inside.
It is a possibility, but that doesn't discourage us from encouraging witnesses/victems from testifying in court.
There is a makeshift memorial at the site where Buford was gunned down, teddy bears and the usual stuff reserved for "victims."
The real victim is the guy who had to defend himself, and who is now a target for retaliation.
Perhaps the people in the neighborhood know more about the circumstances surrounding the shooting, and have reasons to view Wells' account differently.
Well, in all logic, if you are soft on the mob rule as a victim and do not call the cops in fear of retaliation, wouldn't that make you even more likely to be victimized in the future? By not taking any action after being aggressed, you're tagging yourself as an easy target, making it easier for bullies to come back at you. Chances are, they'll keep threatening you of retaliation until you call the cops. You can't be sure they wont eliminate you if you remain silent anyways, because they can never be fully confident you will never talk. My advice in such situation would be to get authorities involved if possible. But it's not an easy choice, I reckon...
In another case, the husband did what liberals want: he went into another room to find something of value to make the bad guys go away. Then he heard his wife starting to scream because one of the thugs was starting to remove her clothes. He tried to fight and was stabbed seven times.
Assuming anything positive about robbers--people who, by definition, are prepared to use force or the threat of it to take something that doesn't belong to them--is a very questionable assumption.
See here. The police found a handgun stashed in a nearby mailbox--and they are suspecting that the accomplice who got away may have dumped it.
It isn't just "people" but the police who are labeling him as a criminal.
Why do you assume that we are not affected by this? Yes, it is a tragedy. It would have been a tragedy for the victim of this crime to be murdered. If I have to choose who to feel sorry for, it is primarily for the guy who had to choose between being murdered, or killing a robber.
I'm sure that there are 15 year olds who turn from a life of robbery, rape, and murder, and become upstanding citizens. But I wouldn't bet too much money on this being a large fraction of 15 year old felons.
One of the startling statistics is how disproportionately adult felons are elementary school dropouts. It isn't that free public education isn't available everywhere; it is more likely that the psychological problems that make someone drop out of elementary school make them more prone to become felons.
Now, there are a number of factors that probably play a part in this, and it is one of the reasons that I think a greater emphasis on identifying child abuse early and correcting it is very important. I would be quite surprised if sexual and physical abuse doesn't play a big part in this. But don't pretend that everyone who approves of self-defense is unconcerned about the tragedy of a kid deciding that robbery is an okay way to get what he wants.
More likely, people are simply unprepared to admit that someone that they know was a criminal. Over at Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog, we record every news story that we can find of a civilian in the U.S. using a gun in self-defense. Occasionally, I will hear from the next of kin of someone who was killed in self-defense--usually along the lines of, "He was a victim! Everyone--the person who shot him, the police, the district attorney--they all conspired to make him look like a bad guy!"
We have had a couple of cases where they were able to provide evidence of improprieties by police or prosecutors that caused us to update the account. But far more typically, when I ask for more data--something other than their emotional reaction, there is usually dead silence. There are a lot of people out there who don't really want to admit that precious little Johnny was a violent thug who got off on hurting people.
Shooting sparks neighborhood anger
That's the "printer friendly" version, mainly to get everything on one page and avoid the Plain Dealer's registration.
Key quote:
What would a "conservative" do in the same circumstances? Rip his shirt off, go berserk with a magnum and likely get everyone killed in the process? Bringing two sensational exceptional anecdotes doesn't make the case against anonnn's point, which lied in his last paragraph:
There is no doubt carrying a weapon can deter crimes, but, on the other hand, gun happy people tend to obliterate the opposite effect: carrying a weapon may increase the chances an event will turn out deadly.
It isn't just "people" but the police who are labeling him as a criminal.
Surely you wouldn't assume that Wells had done something wrong, simply because he had a gun. So the fact that the other fellow had a gun -- and even that he hid it -- doesn't not necessarily mean he was trying to rob someone. Perhaps he was violating terms of parole -- not licit behavior, but not a reason for him to get shot, either.
Perhaps the people in the neighborhood are part of the culture that encourages 15 year olds to think of robbery as an acceptable strategy for getting what you want.
Perhaps. But if that's the conclusion you draw, it's not based on anything in the Plain Dealer article.
If you want to read the article literally, you might note that the teen who got shot was described as a "thief," not a "robber." Yet you now have made both the leap to supposing that he was not only prepared to take things but to do so by force, and the further leap that "people in the neighborhood" support this.
More likely, people are simply unprepared to admit that someone that they know was a criminal.
Again, perhaps. But people on this board seem to be unprepared to admit that Wells' story of self-defense does not appear to be corroborated and may be self-serving. Those aspects do not fit with the nobility of gun-ownership and self-defense.
The article to which cjc links above has some additional details which seem germane, if not dispositive, to what I've been saying:
Another common meme among the gun confiscation crowd, also mentioned here, is the correlation of vehicle ownership and firearm ownership. In my state, and several others, the only requirement to purchase a vehicle is money, there are no requirements that it be registered nor licensed to allow purchase. Now, should you desire to legally operate said vehicle on the road, registration, insurance, and licensing are required. The key word there is "legally". Recently, despite the requirement of statewide auto insurance, a nearby metropolitan area was estimated to have a near 50% uninsured and unregistered vehicle population, again the term "legally" comes to the fore. The correlation of automobile registration and firearm registration is a strawman argument and nothing more.
Here's the second paragraph of the dissent (by J. O'Connor). This will clarify that the incident was probably just going to be a robbery before the victim fired her weapon. Again, my point is that in some instances (not the Cleveland one) it's better for the victim to cooperate and be robbed rather than to fire a weapon. (And Clayton, please read the case next time before responding with personal anecdotes. And please don't comment so many times on the same thread.)
The evidence at trial showed that, at approximately 7:30 a.m. on April 1, 1975, Sampson and Jeanette Armstrong approached the back door of Thomas and Eunice Kersey's farmhouse on the pretext of obtaining water for their overheated car. When Thomas Kersey retrieved a water jug to help the Armstrongs, Sampson Armstrong grabbed him, held a gun to him, and told Jeanette Armstrong to take his wallet. Hearing her husband's cries for help, Eunice Kersey came around the side of the house with a gun and shot Jeanette Armstrong. Sampson Armstrong, and perhaps Jeanette Armstrong, returned the fire, killing both of the Kerseys. The Armstrongs dragged the bodies into the kitchen, took Thomas Kersey's money, and fled to a nearby car, where the petitioner, Earl Enmund, was waiting to help the Armstrongs escape.
I think it is fairly obvious that in this case, the robbery would have been over without anyone being killed if the wife hadn't fired her weapon. I submit that in this instance, it was a mistake (although an understandable one).
It's entirely possible that Wells acted in self-defense. I don't think I'm going way out into left -- or right -- field on anything. The original newspaper article had nothing in it at all to suggest that Buford provoked Wells, except that the report referred to Buford as a "thief." On the basis of this single word, commenters here suggested they were happy to see him shot or dead. When I read the story, I was suspicious of that word, since the reporter didn't seem to have any basis to know what happened, except Wells' say-so. Since he did the shooting, he's not an unbiased source.
The police apparently have decided not to charge him, which speaks in his favor. Why? We don't know, and neither -- apparently -- does the Plain Dealer. After I posted all of this, I saw the second article with the reference to the videotape, which tends -- to some degree, but not dispositively so -- to exculpate Wells. Has the reporter seen the video? Has s/he talked to anyone who has? If so, I see no sign of it.
What's obvious about it? If someone comes into your house with a gun, you have to assume they plan to execute you after they rob you.
Actually, it does: it's a felony for anyone under the age of 21 to own a handgun in Ohio (as well as a felony to provide a handgun to anyone under the age of 21 in the United States). It is a felony to conceal a handgun in public without a CCW, and as CCWs aren't licensed to parolees or those under the age of 21, that's another one. In addition, Cleveland still holds open carry to be illegal in spite of state law to the opposite, and as such, showing Mr. Wells a handgun or the print of a handgun is another felony. Approaching someone with a drawn gun (possibly going onto their property!) and what any reasonable person would believe to be unpleasant intent is yet another hefty crime.
If Mr. Well's version of the story is even remotely true — and with security camera data matching it well enough that police officers feel the information agrees, his story seems fairly well-verified — Mr. Buford was far from an angel.
I think it is fairly obvious that in this case, the robbery would have been over without anyone being killed if the wife hadn't fired her weapon. I submit that in this instance, it was a mistake (although an understandable one).
So, exactly how is it obvious they wouldn't have killed their hostage anyway? People like that tend to escalate on their own.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote:
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774_1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764
To those who point to the lack of corroborating witnesses, common experience suggests that armed robbers will try to avoid the presence of witnesses. This of course does not prove his story, but it makes the lack of witnesses unsurprising.
For those who suggest that the wrath of the dead youth's friends and family is evidence that the shooting was wrongful -- you are kidding, aren't you? We're supposed to gauge this by the reaction of individuals (or mobs) who do not scruple at vandalism, arson and terroristic threats (that's what the Ohio Revised Code calls it, by the way, and it's a crime -- it has nothing to do with political terrorism, so please do not drag that red herring into the discussion).
If anything, the character of his supporters makes it more likely in my eyes that the deceased, with his past record of robberies, was indeed a violent and dangerous punk. Am I glad he's dead? Not especially. Am I glad the homeowner was not shot? You bet.
As Mr. Justice Holmes observed, the law does not demand detached reflection in the presence of an upraised knife. When someone points a gun at you and demands your money, why whould law or morality insist that you stake your life on the good will, peaceful intent and law abiding nature of the assaillant?
I do not know the race of the shooter or the youth. I wonder if the attitudes displayed by some of those who are so quick to assume the innocence of the dead and the guilt of the living -- especially the commenter who accused conservatives of a Duke-like rush to judgment -- would differ were it reported that the
punkalleged juvenile offender and his supporters in the neighborhood were all white and the homeowner black.Let alone after they have followed you home from the convenience store and confronted you as you attempted to enter your home.
Me: Read the goddamn case. It's 458 U.S. 782. I thought it was sufficient to post that one paragraph, but apparently not. If you read the case, you'll see that the robbers had planned this crime, had described what they were planning with someone, and were not intending to kill their victims. It was going to be a robbery and nothing more. They only shot the victims when one started firing.
According to the piece in the Plain Dealer, I think both the robber and the victim were black.
Thank you. The Dispatch did not report on the race of those involved. Again, if it were a white mob reacting to the shooting of a white neighbor by a black neighbor, no one (I hope) would point to the mob's fury as proof that the shooting was wrongful. I am appalled that apparently intelligent people of good will would point to mob action as proof of righteous indignation in this case where the shooter and the dead assailant are, apparently, of the same race.
A good number of robbers plan to avoid killing anyone, til they realize that their victims have their names and/or fingerprints, or just during the adrenaline rush.
Criminals are neither known for their ability to plan ahead, or for their ability to tell the truth after a crime.
What's the moral of the story? Life is complicated.
What I decried was the hideous joy some commenters took in Buford's death, especially given the dearth of facts upon which to conclude his guilt. I firmly believe in the right to vigorous self-defen