Almost only counts with hand grenades
William Saletan says the armed guy who helped subdue the Tucson shooter is a danger. Because he almost shot the guy who took the gun from the shooter. And almost, of course, means not at all:
But before we embrace Zamudio’s brave intervention as proof of the value of being armed, let’s hear the whole story. “I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready,” he explained on Fox and Friends. “I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this.” Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. “And that’s who I at first thought was the shooter,” Zamudio recalled. “I told him to ‘Drop it, drop it!'”
But the man with the gun wasn’t the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. “Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess,” the interviewer pointed out.
Zamudio kept his head and made the right call. Which is what you’re supposed to do. Still not good enough for anti-rights buffoons like Saletan.
January 12th, 2011 at 11:32 am
Gee, its almost as is everything the Bradys say about carry permit holders is false!
January 12th, 2011 at 11:36 am
And Brady Campaign board members who know nothing about firearm laws.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
A police officer showing up on the scene could just as easily have assumed the same thing. In my opinion the police would probably be more likely to have shot the guy holding the weapon thinking he was the shooter. Although I doubt anyone would try to use that as a case to disarm the police.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:07 pm
He should almost be arrested and almost go to jail.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
“anti-rights buffoons”
anti-rights bigots
There, fixed it for ya.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Kcoz is partially correct – just recently a plainclothes officer was killed by one of his own in Baltimore, Maryland when he intervened to stop a fight – doesn’t mean we should disarm all cops.
January 12th, 2011 at 1:03 pm
This is probably how cops shoot a lot of the wrong people. Arriving late to the party, they don’t always figure out what’s going on. Yet these Dansers Macabre aren’t screaming for disarming the cops.
January 12th, 2011 at 2:16 pm
And uh…. Saletan did what?
Oh, right he was not even there and has no idea what all happened.
Heck, Saletan would have just crapped in his pants anyway (pardon my French.)
January 12th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Translated-
“If that were me, I would have shat myself and opened fire, so he shouldn’t be able to have a gun either”
January 12th, 2011 at 4:02 pm
“Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess,” the interviewer pointed out.
Being an honored national hero for stopping a mass murdering psycho by shooting him isn’t really all that much of a “mess”, despite the interviewer’s discouraging spin.
However, personal considerations are secondary to the moral imperative to do what one can to save people from a psycho killer who is murdering them. Under such circumstances, one must act, because to do nothing would be evil.
January 12th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Chas: Reread the article.
January 12th, 2011 at 9:59 pm
Perhaps Obama will give him one of those medals for “courageous restraint”…
http://www.nationalreview.com/the-feed/38783/new-medal-considered-military-courageous-restraint-award
January 13th, 2011 at 7:45 am
I’ve talked to a couple of my friends who are fairly media savvy, but not gun nuts, and neither had even heard about this aspect of the story. The first armed responder was a private citizen. It wouldn’t have taken much of a change in events for him to have been in the position to engage the guy. A little better aim on the part of the shooter would have left him free to clear his jam/reload. I think that’s sort of a big deal. When seconds counted, the nearest armed helpful citizen was only seconds away. And that’s as a direct result of Arizona’s gun laws, or lack thereof.