Let’s say you want to stop someone from shooting you. You could A) lobby for more gun control, B) report the potential killer to the police, or C) arm yourself. Choose any two. Common sense suggests that B and C are the correct answer. Even if you think “stricter” gun laws could keep a gun out of the hands of your potential killer, you’d have to be crazy to consider it a short-term solution. When it’s your life on the line, short-term solutions are what you need. And any law that makes it harder for you, the innocent party, to get a gun to defend your life is a bad thing, not a good thing. So, did I miss something? If so, here’s a story from Houston that makes the point in a more emotionally engaging way . . .
A woman was killed on the job Wednesday at a Medical Center-area apartment complex where she worked. Her killer then turned the gun on himself, a man with whom she had a relationship. He survived and at the moment is in critical condition.
The shooting happened at the Greenbriar Apartments near Braeswood at Greenbriar. It’s home to medical residents and researchers.
“In Japan, we cant have a gun. We rarely see such kind of things,” said Akihiro Hayashi, a researcher from Japan who lives at the complex.
Sorry about that. I don’t know why Houston’s abc13.com felt obliged to insert some meaningless pro-gun control comment into this story; perhaps to deflect from the obvious missed opportunity for armed self-defense.
Houston police say several people saw the man come into the complex around 3:40pm. They called police. Not long after that, they heard two gunshots.
“There were some witnesses who ran for their lives,” said Officer Robert Klementich, a Houston Police Department homicide investigator.
EMS workers were directed to the clubhouse, where they found the woman’s body. She had been shot once. The man was unconscious. He was taken to Ben Taub General Hospital but isn’t expected to make it.
As chilling as the crime itself, was the security video that showed the man approaching the woman, firing his gun and turning the weapon on himself. Now we’ve learned the victim filed a harassment police report against the suspect just three hours before her death. Police say he called her about 140 times in one day.
So not only did the police fail to provide the unnamed woman with protection, they failed to come to her rescue when notified that her armed antagonist had hunted her down.
Which is not a failure, per se. Unless you’re a celebrity or politically connected, you can’t expect the police to shoulder the burden [sic] of providing a security detail to a woman involve in a “normal” domestic violence threat. They simply don’t have the resources for the job.
Here’s the funny thing about domestic violence and gun control. Even the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex admits that gun control doesn’t work. Here are the first two bullet points Everytown for Gun Safety’s Guns and Violence Against Women web page.
- Federal law does not keep guns out of the hands of abusive dating partners or convicted stalkers.
- Many state gun laws fail to protect domestic violence victims.
I know: Everytown’s presenting these facts as reasons to enact more gun control. But still, point taken – at least by anyone with even a lick of common sense. Or anyone facing the threat of a homicidal [one hopes former] partner.
A gun is their single best defense for those poor souls. And their children. Shame on those who would deny victims of domestic violence the chance to arm themselves against aggression in the name of protecting their lives. In fact, for all their talk of the NRA having “blood on its hands,” it’s the antis who routinely put innocent life at risk.