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Shannon Watts, please call your office. An incident took place on St. Louis’s south side late Monday evening that (once again) puts the lie to your laughable ‘defensive gun uses don’t happen’ claim. A teenage girl was retrieving something from a car in front of her home when she was accosted by two doods. They were in the process of forcing her back inside her home when her father saw what was happening and grabbed an instrument of of wanton death and destruction . . .

As fox2now.com reports,

The girl’s father saw the suspects walking his daughter toward the home. That`s when police say the teen`s father, a 34 year old man, got his gun and fired several shots at the suspects, hitting both of them. The girl`s mother, also 34, got another gun and fired a round as well, not hitting either suspect.

That’s right, both dad and mom unleashed vollies in defense of their cub. And dad had apparently been putting in some range time, as one of the two attackers assumed ambient temperature right there on the front lawn. His accomplice is currently resting uncomfortably in critical condition with wounds to his chest and legs.

Never mind all that, though. Pay no attention to those armed citizens behind the curtain. None of this really happened because Shannon and Everytown for Gun Safety said it didn’t.

Gun-grabbers like Watts and her pint-size paymaster, Michael Bloomberg, would have preferred that the teen’s parents had been denied their right to armed self defense. If the girl had been raped, possibly even murdered, that’s just the price we need to pay for a “safer,” disarmed society in which only the police are granted permission to wield firearms.

Fortunately, for now, the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex hasn’t been able to win that argument. And people like that family in south St. Louis have the ability to defend the life of their daughter when it’s threatened. For now.

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65 COMMENTS

  1. You have to admire the father’s coolness under fire, to drop the thugs even though one of ’em apparently had a gun to his daughter’s head.

    Like Mr. Ayoob is fond of saying: A catastrophic failure of the victim selection process.

  2. The Fox story also reported rounds going into a neighbor’s house. It’s great that the daughter was defended, but someone was also firing wildly and irresponsibly.

    • Inaccurately, certainly.

      Wildly and irresponsibly, I’d say, is open to debate, as they imply something about the attitude and motivations of the shooter, rather than how good of a shot he or she is.

      Knowing what’s behind your target aside, sometimes you don’t have a choice of backstop.

      • Nice try. As I’m sure you’re aware, you’re responsible for every round you fire, and need to be sure of what’s behind your target, troll.

        • So, I shouldn’t fire in case I miss? Or I should dance around the bad guy until a nondescript brick wall is directly behind him? Troll, indeed.

        • Firing at an intruder or assailant standing in my front doorway is not firing into my neighbors house like a moron.

        • Wow, automatically went to name calling. Apparently you have no supporting evidence for blatantly blaming the victims of wrong doing.

        • Okay, reality check here, It you shoot at a neighbors house several times randomly at night, the chance of you actually killing or seriously wounding someone inside is pretty damn low. Think about it. When someone is kidnapping your daughter or whatever, Its definitely an acceptable risk.

        • That is not exactly true. The law of competing harms does come into effect and you must show utter gross negligence.

        • I’ve seen this bit of absurdity bandied about and it applies only to range/target shooting. In a gun fight you’re ‘responsible’ for stopping the threat. Sometimes that means there is a good chance of collateral damage from misses or over penetration. Those risks have to be weighed quickly against the danger presented by the threat. An attacker with a whiffle ball bat who has a baby strapped to his chest isn’t worth shooting, threat level is low, risk of collateral damage high. On the other hand, an attacker in a crowd of school children firing randomly at them is a high level threat and even though the risk of collateral damage is very high, shooting him is the right thing to do in that situation. In the latter scenario the risk to the children from your rounds is less than the attackers dedicated attempts to kill them.

          Using the above case, the two attackers, one of whom has a hostage at gun point is a greater threat than stray rounds striking a house across the street. Threat level is high, risk of collateral damage relatively low.

          Gunfights are inherently dangerous, messy affairs with little in the way of rules short of ‘win’. Morally and legally these realities are mostly recognized, and the person ‘responsible’ for the effects of stray rounds is the attacker, who initiated the violence.

          There is a lot of square range advice floating around that is unworkable in a gunfight, beginning with know your backstop and including never muzzle anything you don’t wish to destroy. Gunfights are risky by nature, don’t engage in them if you can’t accept risks.

    • Not trying to take away from their defense of their daughter or your comment but is it possible that the rounds hittin the neighbors’ house were over penetration, fired from the two “doods” weapon, or the result of said “doods” moving while being engaged?

      • It could be any of those things; it would be interesting to know if they used actual defensive ammo.

        Also, going by the available details, the mother who grabbed a gun, fired “one shot”, and missed could definitely be the culprit. The father’s rounds were on-target, and from the sounds of things, the mother’s lucky she didn’t hit her daughter.

        • How many rounds did they both fire, how far was the neighbors house, etc, etc. etc. Nothing like jumping to conclusions and passing judgement – the chronic disease of the networld.

    • The thugs were trying to force the daughter back to the house. This means arms length. The parents were practically shooting at their child. I would have pulled a shot or two myself to avoid hitting the kid.

    • At least two hits out of an unknown number of shots from a single magazine is still better than the NYPD’s hit rate.

      ETA: actually, that’s a minimum of four hits (the survivor was reported as having been hit with one shot in the chest and two in the thighs). Let’s say the Dad had a 17 round magazine. That’s makes it 4 out of 17 – plus one for the Mom makes it 4/18. That’s still way better than the NYPD, and I doubt anything close to 18 shots were fired.

        • Yeah I am with Charles here. If you’re not serious I don’t get the joke.

          I am going to ahead and assume that you meant you are stupid, so I will try to explain everyone’s umbrage.

          My child is my first responsibility. Everything else is secondary.

        • Ralph, Terry, TTACer, and Charles

          You are all not very bright. I said that the father’s rounds were on-target and it is good that he saved his daughter. At the same time, I said that it is unacceptable to send rounds into someone else’s house. You people have problems.

        • Fler….have you ever been in a firefight? Had to actually shoot at/shoot someone?
          Been shot at? Had a family member threatened with bodily harm by an assailant?
          With all respect until you have don’t judge! I have been! I can tell you All you focus on by nature is the most immediate threat!! I’ve been involved in firefights and had my family threatened by a jacked up coke head at 2 in the morning in my home! You out yourself between the threat and whomever you are protecting!! Stopping the threat is your Only concern!! Everything else is secondary!! Until it is over!! It takes a veritable assload of training to overcome tunnel vision and even then you don’t always over come it!! No disrespect but think before you tell people they have serious problems because they put family/personal safety first and foremost!!

    • Fler,
      You’re way off base. This is not happening at a shooting range. From the look of the picture this happened in a densely populated area and there is no safe direction to shoot. You take the shots you NEED to take and hope for the best to some degree. A perfect shot right into the head is going to keep going and likely go into the neighbor’s house. It happens and you deal with the consequences. Luckily, no one else was hurt.

    • If your choice is between allowing two thugs to take your daughter away or fire with the possibility of endangering others, it shouldn’t be a hard choice. But I guess you don’t care about your children very much.

      • Hmm, cops usually charge the perp with any collateral damage. In a clear self-defense shooting, why should it be different for anyone else? Not saying people have no responsibility. If the perps have no money, I’d offer to pay for the damages to the house if I were the couple in question.

  3. I’m sure everything would have been just hunky-dory if they had waited for the police instead. Maybe they could have tried peeing themselves in the mean time!

  4. Wait, are you saying that Mothers Demand Illegal Mayors for Everytown is pro-rape?
    It all makes sense now.

  5. I am willing to bet $1,000 that if shannon’s two daughters (ages 17 and 18) were in the same situation,she would pull out her concealed sidearm and respond accordingly. Only difference is shannon thinks she is better and her daughters’ lives are worth more than anyone else’s child. the hypocrisy is thick with this one.

    • No, she’d tell her bodyguard to do it.

      That way, she and her family could benefit from the protective use of those icky guns, without her having to actually stain her reputation by touching one.

      That’s the way the 1% rolls (or the people who are well-funded by the 1%).

    • Doesnt really look like Shannon’s neighborhood, does it? Nor do Mom and Dad have her access to bodyguards.

      Nice shooting, Dad. Well done.

      • Actually, it’s not a bad looking neighborhood for St Louis. It looks like single family dwellings. The neighborhood I lived in, until I left St Louis, in 1969, was all brick but for 4 houses. The same area, North St. Louis, has no structures on 30 to 40 blocks. A lot of very nice homes, were demolished after being set on fire for the Bricks.

  6. Now Dirk you know Shannon COMMENT MODERATED abhors guns!! She would have had her armed bodyguards defend her kids for her!! She couldn’t possibly touch an Evil Gun!!
    Sarc off!!

  7. According to Everyclown for Gun Safety, this was a school shooting — making a total of two million, three hundred and fifteen thousand since Sandy Hook.

    • @ Ralf, you are probably not too far off, see this snippet and story

      “…..because it includes colleges. (Of the 74 incidents listed by Everytown, 35 occured on or near a college campus.**) The map also includes nonfatal shootings, including accidental discharges and at least four events in which no one was injured at all. And some of its items qualify as “school shootings” only under a rather broad understanding of the phrase. While this killing, for example, did take place in an elementary school parking lot, it happened at night, long after the students and teachers had gone home. The victim was 19.”

      “The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) keeps a running count of such homicides, with “at school” defined to include deaths not just on school property but “while the victim was on the way to or from regular sessions at school or while the victim was attending or traveling to or from an official school-sponsored event.” You might quibble about whether those off-campus killings belong in this category”

      http://reason.com/blog/2014/06/11/are-school-homicides-becoming-the-norm

  8. And dad had apparently been putting in some range time, as one of the two attackers assumed ambient temperature right there on the front lawn

    Hm.

    I forget, what’s the legal doctrine that says that if you commit a crime, and someone dies as a result, you’re responsible, even if you’re not the one who committed the killing?

    Does anyone know if that applies in St. Louis? It would be kinda sweet for crook #1 was charged with the murder of crook #2.

  9. I can’t say if St. Louis has that sort of law, but here in Rockford, IL, a guy was convicted not too long ago under a similar law. He & a buddy decided to rob a pizza joint, and an off-duty cop (iirc) who happened to be there decided to object to their plan. Gunshots were exchanged, BG #1 acquired worm-food status, BG #2 was charged with bringing this about. I’m fairly certain he was convicted.

    Funny thing, armed robbery of pizza joints around here has declined significantly since then. I’m sure that’s just some sort of anomaly, right?

  10. This is the story I was looking for, at first I thought this was a different one. But good on dad. And mom, but more so dad

  11. I hope we can all be as effective when faced with protecting our own families. Another righteous case of self defense, made possible by exercising the 2nd Amendment. Carry on, sir.

    • Best comment on this post. Every circumstance is different, but we should all hope that we can and will be as effective should we be placed in this situation. To take a shot in that situation takes a lot of confidence in your marksmanship.

  12. From the fox2now.com website.

    “Asked how he had the confidence to pull the trigger when the man was holding his daughter that way, he said, “It wasn’t like that. It just happened. I didn’t have no choice. He had my daughter so I did what I had to do.”

    A father reacted to an immanent threat to his 17 year old daughter’s life without agonizing over the decision to fire. His daughter is alive and whole, the bad guys not so much. No one else was injured. As outcomes go, this was as good as it gets.

    Also from the fox2now.com website.

    “The father asked that we not use his name. ”

    He was interviewed on camera, after shooting two violent criminals, and the news station concealed his identity. Now that is something you do not see everyday.

  13. What’s sad is that this lawful self-defense incident will probable be counted in the “homicide by firearm” figure that the gun-control Statist will later use to justify absolute gun control.

  14. I heard, from a friend, that if that same situation happened and it was reported that the father used an ar15 with a 30 round mag-Sharon Watts head would explode from extreme confusion. Maybe that’s just urban legend though.

    Imagine being that girl’s boyfriend now!!!
    Dad: “Don’t hurt my daughter and do not bring her home late, ask the chalk outline in my yard how that worked out for him”

    • I’ll bet that when dad had to take that shot at the perp holding his daughter he’d have been a little more comfortable with a rifle of some sort, but that’s ridiculous, no one needs an AR for home defense.

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