“George and Christina Carroll were enjoying a stroll home along Monitor Street [Brooklyn] late Friday after checking out a new apartment and then hitting a local bar, when one of a pair of men hanging out on the steps of a school muttered something to them as they passed, the stunned widow told The Post. ‘It was basically, ‘What are you looking at?’ said Christina Romero Carroll, 41. ‘And my husband — he’s a Texan — he’s like, ‘I’m looking.’” And then . . .
The next thing she knew, “they got into it. They were chasing him. My husband ran. He threw his phone at them to try to defend himself. It was just so quick . . . There was so much blood,” she said.
The killer then fled.
And remains at large.
Was this lethal confrontation avoidable? Perhaps. Would it have turned out differently if Mr. Carroll had been armed? Perhaps. Shooting a lead bullet at, say, 1000 feet per second is a lot more likely to stop a knife-wielding pursuer than a hand-thrown cell phone. According to his widow, Mr. Carroll was the kind of American who wouldn’t have hesitated to use a firearm in defense of innocent life.
Carroll was a devout Catholic and dedicated family man who was “gentle and friendly, but he was tough,” his wife said. “If you came to his face, he was a man’s man. He was someone you could walk down the street with, and if someone was trying to hurt you, he would defend you.”
With what? His good looks? Sorry, but given New York City’s rigid gun control regime — which doesn’t include reciprocity with the Lone Star (or any other) State — Mr. Carroll was left defenseless against a lethal threat.
Our sympathies go to Mr. Carroll’s friends and family. We have no sympathy for the voters who support gun control in New York City, or the cynical politicians, police and bureaucrats who defend and promote civilian disarmament. They are not directly responsible for the loss of another innocent life to a violent assault, but neither are they blameless.