September 29, 2015 8:24 AM

Only a "good guy with a gun" can stop a...oh, never mind....

Houston police say that an armed man’s attempt to stop a carjacking went terribly wrong on Saturday night when he shot the vehicle’s owner in the head, then fled the scene. According to KHOU Channel 11 News, the shooting took place around 11:15 p.m. at a Valero gas station in north Houston. Police officials say that two men jumped the owner of a Chevrolet pickup truck and absconded with his vehicle. As the men struggled with the car-owner, a passerby produced a gun and fired multiple shots, missing the thieves but striking the victim in the head. The shooter quickly gathered up his shell casings from the pavement and fled the scene. The injured man was rushed to a nearby hospital where he is currently in stable condition.

Yep, there’s nothing quite like believing with all your heart that all it takes to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. The problem, of course, is that’s seldom what happens. Turns out that even when a Good Guy With A Gun © opens fire, bullets tend not to fly where one intends them to…and when that happens, as it invariably will, nothing good comes from it. Tempting as it may be to use this story to ridicule Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © for their slavish devotion to “gun rights,” this is a tragic story from start to finish. It’s also exactly why the assumption that “the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” is so patently absurd and intellectually dishonest.

A gun is not some sort of magic wand that, in the hands of a Good Guy With A Gun ©, will drop a bad guy with a gun in their tracks. It’s an inanimate and deadly object whose projectiles will strike whatever and whoever happen to be in their path. It’s not like a TV show where Good Guy With A Gun © draws his weapon, points it in the direction of a bad guy with a gun and shoots, thus magically taking out the miscreant and saving the day. Too many who carry a weapon have little idea what to do if or when all Hell breaks loose. They have no training and even less idea of how to react in the heat of the moment. There have been studies showing that something like 20% of trained soldiers fail to fire their weapon in a combat situation. If trained soldiers can freeze in the moment of truth, how can untrained civilians expect to react appropriately in a similar scenario? Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © take an unsound logical leap in asserting that a Good Guy With A Gun © will without question stop a bad guy with a gun. Perhaps that’s how things work in the fantasy world Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © have out of necessity constructed to justify their unholy devotion to guns, but here in the real world innocent people can and do die when people try to play hero.

Thankfully, it sounds as if the victim of the carjacking will survive. Meanwhile, there’s a Good Guy With A Gun © who should be held accountable for their irresponsibility and poor decision-making. The fact that the shooter policed up their shell casings before fleeing the scenes should be indication enough that they’re fully aware of their mistake. Even in a gun-soaked culture in which Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © elevate a Good Guy With A Gun © to almost mythical status, we should and must hold those who react to situations with inappropriately deadly force responsible for the consequences of their actions.

If we can’t see our way clear to demanding accountability even of a Good Guy With A Gun ©, a case could be made that we’ve devolved to living in the Wild, Wild West.

Or Texas.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on September 29, 2015 8:24 AM.

When advertising proves you have no moral compass was the previous entry in this blog.

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