Mom w/ baby in OK kills man breaking in to her house

[Ed L]

I was struck at how very judgmental many of the rest of the students/mock grand jurors were. Some seemed to expect absolute perfection in the self-defensive actions of the person facing mock indictment. I don’t think they were coached to be that way, but am not certain. It really made me afraid of what non-gun people might expect. And these weren’t just gun people, but highly educated gun people, in the big scheme of things. But maybe it was just a case of them being very attached to the tactical/legal/human dynamics under stress concepts and ideas we were all excited about knowing and learning.

I suspect that there is a wierd roleplaying dynamic taking place where people were overplaying their roles based on the horror stories that they read from Ayoob about court. They were in a sense trying to become that horror story as part of their roleplaying--especially considering it was an AYoob course and the attendees were likely familiar with his writing.

[SLG]

This is not something we should be arguing about, since I know we all firmly support her actions. I didn't mean to come across as too critical, I was just pointing out that her decision making ability should not be held to our standard, given several mitigating circumstances.

[mnealtx]

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so is this "macho posturing" ?

I'm thinking.... this sums up the young lady's grit and determination pretty well.

[fixer]

Perhaps I'm a bit out of the mainstream, but I can't help myself:

It's not "macho posturing". Would I pose for the pic? Probably not...but I'm probably a little better prepared for such an event than the 18 year old young woman who was just set upon by a couple of violent scumbags.

We live in a world populated by some truly violent scumsuckers who will take innocent life literally because they think it's good sport. When one of these violent scumbags catches a face full of buckshot and is sent to cold oblivion before he can rape or kill a vulnerable young woman, it's a net win for society.

The idea that good, decent, law-abiding people should be sitting in the fetal position blowing snot bubbles over the fate of some knife-wielding thug who got blown away after spending a bunch of time trying to bust through the door of that woman's home is infuriating and morally repugnant. That young lady is probably very calm because she did the right thing. Those guys insisted on threatening her and her child. They had abundant opportunities to knock off their obnoxious behavior and go be productive citizens, but instead they decided to press an attack on what they thought was easy prey. Turns out she wasn't easy prey and when they had backed her into a corner she fought back and one of the bad guys got to experience bleeding out on her carpet instead of her. Occupational hazard of being a ******* scumbag.

Screw him.

We're not talking about someone who was out looking for trouble and trying to fulfill some retarded Charles Bronson fantasy here, folks...we're talking about a young woman who was in her own house taking care of her child when a couple of dope heads showed up to rob her because they read an obituary and figured she'd have drugs. Think about the level of moral depravity it takes to look at the story of a man who died of cancer, notice that he's survived by only his young widow and small child, and then to figure it's a great score. That's genuine sociopath territory.

She has every right to be calm and confident because by every moral and legal tradition that's worth anything she did the right thing. She used lethal force only after those jackasses took every other alternative off the table with their actions. They insisted on somebody getting hurt that night.

It's possible for a good, decent, moral human being left with no choice in the matter to shoot somebody and afterwards have no more negative emotional impact about it than they would have for stepping on a cockroach. The last thing they need is for people to run around hand-wringing about why they aren't at least attempting to look like they're barely holding it together in the aftermath, especially if they've never been anywhere near that situation for themselves. She didn't pull that trigger for fun. She pulled the trigger because in that instant she was certain that she was out of options and it was either shoot or die screaming at the end of that knife.

Should she have posed for the picture? It's not what I would have advised her to do, but I'm not there. It sounds to me like she's largely on her own and is trying to deal with a media frenzy that she didn't ask for. It's absurd for gun rights advocates to try and put her on a pedestal she never asked to be on and then get all pissed off if she doesn't do every tiny thing exactly according to the script that is supposedly good for "gun rights" in their mind. If they weren't willing to fly out to her place and run interference with news producers who are looking for visuals to go with the story so they can get ratings, then they should hush.

There's nothing "disquieting" about the image of a woman who is willing to kill somebody if they insist on threatening her or her child. It's deeply disquieting to see people who claim to be 2nd amendment advocates getting weak in the knees when a law abiding gun owner does precisely what she was supposed to do and doesn't look to be worse for the wear because of it.

Outstanding post...thanks!

[TCinVA]

In response to TGS:

I guess pictures of people pointing guns at the camera seem to annoy me. Kinda like emulating Dirty Harry or something.

There's quite a big separation between this young woman doing something that likely some news moron instructed her to do and trying to look like Dirty Harry.

The one thing they have in common is lots of people were sick and tired of watching bad guys get away with stuff only to be released to do yet more while innocent people just kept being victims. That type of person is likely to love a movie about a police officer who shoots Scorpio and is likely to find it great when a vulnerable young victim prevails over those who would have done her harm.

don't think anyone is defending him.

One need not outright "defend" him to act or speak as if everyone is a precious snowflake and then act or speak as if it's somehow tragic that an individual like this one caught a load of buckshot. It's tragic in the grand sense of the overall condition of man. It's thoroughly unfortunate that there are some people who decide to prey on others, but that's life. Because it's life we should expect that the individuals who make those choices are likely to get themselves killed by somebody they intended to harm and not get ourselves too worked up about it when it happens.

Yes, I realize there are some people who think everything we say and do should be governed by the light of how the special snowflake theorists see the world, but I argue that doing so is ridiculous. You cannot be reasonable and win over someone who insists on believing a fantasy. Thus hand-wringing among people who claim to be advocates for the 2nd amendment in an instance where it performed exactly as intended is silly. Doing so won't make the anti-gun people see us as reasonable or make them rethink their position on leaving everyone helpless in the face of dopeheads like the two losers in this story. It won't make the message that occasionally good guys need to kill bad guys any more palatable to the type of individual that insists on putting a tribute to Cho on a makeshift tribute to the victims of Virginia Tech. They are a lost cause because they have decided to be.

I'd like for you to point out who is getting "weak in the knees" about this, or comparing her to a Charles Bronson fantasy. I can't find it.

The yahoo who finds a picture of a woman with a shotgun so "disqueiting" that he/she/whoever has to spill a bunch of electrons fretting about how bad it looks. Newsflash: The only people who could possibly believe the image of a woman holding a shotgun while on hold with 911 for twenty minutes in an attempt to defend her life looks somehow menacing or barbaric are the snowflake simpletons.

...and they're too stupid to care about.

I suspect that there is a wierd roleplaying dynamic taking place where people were overplaying their roles based on the horror stories that they read from Ayoob about court. They were in a sense trying to become that horror story as part of their roleplaying--especially considering it was an AYoob course and the attendees were likely familiar with his writing.

There's also such a thing as people with enough knowledge to be dangerous becoming hyper-critical of a situation they don't fully understand. "What he should have done was..." I've seen it time after time when various news reports or video get posted online there's invariably a group of people who are armed with just enough knowledge to be dangerous who go to ridiculous lengths in being critical just as a means of showing how smart and sophisticated they are.

I can't comment on Ayoob's roleplayers because I have no idea how that setup works, not having ever participated in it. I've seen it happen often enough in blogs and on forums, however, to have some suspicions that at least some of it may be at work in that blog post.

Looking over the sights at a situation is very different than looking at it on a computer screen. If we forget that, we drift into absurdity.

[G60]

Anybody wanna get really pissed off?

Requisite liberal "Celebrating this is awful" drivel.
http://www.politicususa.com/en/media...tough-decision

You'll love this gem: "The federal courts, in accordance with Supreme Court precedents, have consistently held that there is no individual right to own a gun. In Morton Grove, Illinois, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, “possession of handguns by individuals is not part of the right to keep and bear arms.”"


Complete with everything-I-know-about-guns-I-learned-from-hollywood "she should have just shot him in the hand or knee" comment.

[fuse]

Pretty sure jack bauer couldn't shoot someone in the hand and only in the hand with buckshot

[TCinVA]

Pretty sure jack bauer couldn't shoot someone in the hand and only in the hand with buckshot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G1ApUEXcbo

[TGS]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G1ApUEXcbo

Fantastic video, TC. Thanks.