TTAG reader Christoff writes:
The home defense story out of Atlanta on Friday undermines two myths that, since the Newtown school massacre, have been much bandied about by pundits, most of whom have as much authority to talk about gun use as they do the mechanics of cancer research. In this case, a burglar armed with a crowbar ransacked a house until he found a woman and her two children cowering in the attic. Instead of being defenseless and at his mercy, the woman was armed with a 6-shot .38-caliber revolver. She opened fire, striking him five times. He escaped, collapsed later and is now in the hospital. One data point doesn’t prove anything, but casts a couple articles of anti-gun orthodoxy deep in doubt . . .
1. The average citizen shouldn’t carry weapons because he or she can’t shoot as well as the police.
In this case, the mother hiding with her children in the attack hit the home invader 5 times out of six shots fired. That kind of accuracy is better than just about anything displayed in an average police shooting. Consider that a study by the Police Policy Studies Council showed that a local PD the author considered one of the better trained in the nation, the Baltimore County Police Department, had a hit percentage of only 64 percent over the 13 year period that was studied.
2. High capacity magazines are unnecessary for regular people and should be possessed only by the police and military.
First, the police and military weren’t in the house ready to defend this woman and her children. She had to defend herself, and even her accurate shooting left the home invader able to flee. A more determined, or perhaps more drugged, offender might have been able to continue his attack when she ran out of ammo. If a second or third intruder had accompanied him, it could have turned out very badly for the family. The much-demonized Glock handgun, with 15 or more bullets, would have been a better defense. An AR-15 with a 30-shot magazine, better still.
There are plenty of well-meaning but naive anti-gun people who, if they had their way, would have left this woman and her children defenseless in the face of an armed intruder. If they succeed in passing magazine limits and restrictions on semi-automatic rifles, they will not prevent a single crime, but will clearly reduce the ability of citizens to defend themselves when faced with multiple intruders.
[DGUOTD = Defensive Gun Use of the Day]