By Bryan Kingsley
David Liberman’s recent post, “It Should’ve Been A DGU: Luck Runs Out Edition,” raised some interesting questions. As David pointed out, there is indeed a lot of wiggle room, conjecture, and supposition in situations like this. An unhealthy amount of would-a and could-a, not to mention should-a. We can make ourselves crazy over-analyzing these things after the fact. But the fact remains: once again, an act of senseless violence has taken the life of an innocent person. Someone who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone who, when confronted with awful circumstances, in the face of pure evil, did everything “right” . . .
To say that Barbara Preidt could have survived the encounter with an armed robber had she or her husband been armed isn’t necessarily wrong. In fact that’s my opinion and it’s likely shared by most TTAG readers.
But are we any more right to hold this example up than a gun grabber would be in saying that Mrs. Preidt would have walked away unharmed if the criminal hadn’t had a gun in the first place? Think about it — when we make an example of these situations, what differentiates us from the the anti-2A crowd? Maybe we have more in common than we realize.
Look at the big picture. We’re all looking for the same outcome – the good guys win, the bad guys lose and the really bad guys die — or at least rot in jail. We can throw facts, supporting evidence, numbers and statistics back and forth at each other all day long and never make any headway. In the end, we want to see innocent, law-abiding citizens able to go about our lives in peace. And criminals get every bit of what they deserve when they try to stand in the way.
I appreciate Mr. Liberman’s article and I admire him for taking on such a tough subject. As I said before, I know how important it is to report these kinds of stories and to have these discussions. But after reading about Mrs. Preidt and similar stories on TTAG, the thought that always runs through my mind is this: is it right for anyone to make an example of a tragedy? Aren’t we waving the bloody shirt, too?