Why Do I Own An AR-15?

The media adores the term "assault rifle" or "assault weapon". Now, if I assault you, then by default the weapon I used is an assault weapon. Cain killed Abel with a rock, making a large stone the first assault weapon. Last I checked, no one was advocating rock control.

 

Jealousy is a bitch.

 

 

 

 

 Historically the term "assault rifle" is generally traced back to the German Sturmgewehr-44 /Stg44  in the latter part of World War Two. Up until then their standard infantry rifle was a bolt-action rifle with an internal 5-round magazine. This was the Mauser Kar-98, fielded in 1935 and derived from an original design from 1898.  Starting in 1943, some units received a new semi-automatic rifle, the Gewehr-43 (or G-43) with a 10-round detachable box magazine. It was based on an almost identical weapon, the Gewehr 41/G41, field-tested two years earlier. The word Sturmgewehr literally meant "storm rifle"....as in a rifle to storm, or assault, a fortification. According to one account, the name was chosen personally by Adolf Hitler for propaganda reasons. It used a 30-round detachable box magazine and could fire fully automatic, and as a special-purpose weapon it was issued to Waffen-SS and other elite units. It was later the design basis for the Soviet AK-47 family of rifles.

Mauser Kar-98

Walther G-43

Haenel Stg-44

Herein lies the rub. Civilian models of military-style weapons, by law, are semi-automatic. They are incapable of firing the entire magazine off in a continual burst like the original assault rifles. A semi-automatic weapon requires you to squeeze the trigger each time you wish a round to be fired. The only "automatic" part of the operation is that the expended brass cartridge is automatically extracted & ejected as the next round is fed into the chamber from the magazine. It is not a machine gun. The US military's M-4 carbine, the latest permutation of the M-16 family that traces its lineage to the original AR-15, does not fire full auto except for a special variant used by Special Operations forces. Instead, the weapon has the S-1-3 trigger group, which means you have the options of Safe, Semi-Auto, and 3-round burst only. Back when I was a soldier, I carried an M-16A1 that was able to fire full auto, and even they were being phased out in favor of the A2 with a burst feature instead. This was in 1988.

The selector on an M-16A1, with full auto as a choice.

The selector on the M-16A2, which does not allow full auto, but has a 3-round burst selection.

My AR-15, with only two choices, Safe and Fire, with Fire being semi-auto only.

But, the media thinks anything with a detachable box magazine is an assault rifle. Uninformed talking head politicians on the Left who want to outlaw large-capacity magazines fail to realize that it's even easier to conceal three ten-round rifle magazines than to conceal a larger 30-round magazine, and anyone with a bare modicum of experience with a weapon can drop an empty magazine & insert a fresh one in under five seconds. Experienced shooters can do it in about three.

The media also likes to mistakenly refer to something they call an automatic pistol. Again, this is because they are either A) stupid, B) manipulating the masses, or C) both.  A pistol is either a revolver with a cylinder that holds on average 6 cartridges, you know, cowboy style six-shooters....or it is a magazine-fed semi-auto that (say it with me now, kids) fires a round each time the trigger is squeezed and it extracts & ejects the spent casing & a new one is loaded from the magazine. Depending on caliber, they will carry an average of 7 to 18 rounds. My preferred carry piece carries 8 in the magazine and I can have a ninth round in the chamber. I have others that carry a variety of loadouts.

By the by, I have been safely handling, operating, and carrying weapons of various types from pistols to rifles to shotguns to belt-fed machineguns to grenade launchers (though mostly rifles and handguns) for well over 30 years. I also have a 100% success rate at never injuring anyone with any firearm I have had in my possession, either for duty or for pleasure shooting. Not every gun owner is a homicidal maniac, despite what the media would have you believe.

On an almost daily basis I see people on social media bemoaning the fact that here in the good old US of A, one may own an AR-15 rifle. Note that I did not refer to it as an “assault rifle”, the way it is erroneously labeled by both the left-wing media and uneducated douchenozzles who know nothing about firearms yet are dead-set against you owning one, because they’re scary and other people did bad things with them.  This is because the AR-15 IS NOT AN ASSAULT RIFLE. SEE MY DEFINITION ABOVE.  The average everyday American citizen may not possess a fully automatic firearm and thusly, THEY DO NOT OWN ASSAULT RIFLES. Automatic weapons have been illegal since 1934 unless you have a Federal Firearms license for it that is EXCEPTIONALLY hard to obtain, and a Special Occupational Taxpayer certification.  And yet the media gets this shit wrong on the daily. 

 

 

You wanna see some crazy shit? Read on.

Y’know, a Ruger Mini-14 fires the same rounds as an AR-15. You can even use a 30-round magazine in it. But no one ever calls a Mini-14 an Assault Rifle, because it doesn’t look scary.

The Mini-14 Ranch Rifle. Often used to hunt coyotes and varmints on ranches. Fires the same rounds as an AR-15 that Liberals say isn't for hunting.

The media dearly loves their charts, because most American sheeple are so attention-deficient that unless it has pretty graphics no one will pay attention. So they add charts that are almost always PATENTLY WRONG, and the sheeple graze and take it as The Gospel and continue to perpetuate the wrongness by sharing it and quoting it. See this perfect example of ABSOLUTE WRONGNESS below, in a chart that from no less than the BBC that accompanied a recent article full of bullshit in the UK Daily Mail. It has “approximate rates of fire” on selected weapons. HOWEVER, let me make some corrections, or as you Leftists love to say, FACT CHECKING.

Revolver: Ruger LCR—So…which version of Ruger’s Lightweight Compact Revolver was tested? It comes in six calibers and depending on which caliber, it will hold 5, 6, or 8 rounds. If you carry extra rounds in a speedloader and are practiced, yeah, you can probably fire off 20 rounds in one minutes but don’t count on it. By the way, that’s not an LCR in the silhouette; it’s likely a Smith & Wesson Model 36.

Semi-Automatic Pistol: Colt Model 70—50 rounds a minute is a pretty fair rate for a semi-auto pistol with spare mags. But there isn’t a Colt Model 70. They must be thinking Series 70, the new reproduction of Colt’s venerable 1911A1. The silhouette is Sig Sauer P226 however.

Semi-Automatic Assault Rifle: AK-47—Um, there’s no such thing as a semi-automatic assault rifle which, by definition, is a fully automatic weapon. I’ll grant that 120 rounds in a minute is possible, but not likely. That’s 2 rounds a second, and you’ll need to reload.  And just because a weapon CAN, in some situations, fire at extremely fast rates, it is not something a trained and experienced shooter would do to their weapon because it causes a lot of strain and stress on the metal parts. At least the silhouette is right for an AK-series weapon.

NOTE: I’m changing the order of the last two weapons.

 

Fully Automatic Rifle: M-16 –Well, 950 rounds a minute is unsustainable due to reloading constraints. This pig isn’t belt-fed with a 950-round belt. They haven’t made a full-auto M-16 variant since the 80s. 

Modified Semi-Automatic Assault Rifle/ AR-15: 1,200 rounds per minute…

Please, dear people at the BBC, define just what the fuck these modifications are that allow a semi-automatic civilian rifle to fire even faster than a fully automatic military battle rifle? I don’t know of any combination of parts right now that would give an AR a 1200 rounds per minute cyclic rate.

So no, I’m certainly not trusting the veracity of firearms knowledge of a nation that is under severe gun control. How’s that knife crime problem these days, old chap?

The media seldom gets ANYTHING right when it comes to firearms nomenclature.

 

Oh, by the way, Liberal America, let me clear up another idiot misunderstanding of yours. The AR in AR-15 does not mean Assault Rifle. It is Armalite Rifle, Model 15. Originally made by the Armalite Company, designed by Eugene Stoner. 

Another common media misconception is the number of gun violence deaths in America each year. 

The media likes to play loosey goosey with facts and numbers. We don’t exactly have 40,000 deaths each year from gun violence; we have 40,000 deaths by gun. A full 60% of those deaths are suicides, while 36% are homicides. 

Beginning in 2008, the FBI used a narrow definition of mass shootings. They limited mass shootings to incidents where an individual – or in rare circumstances, more than one – “kills four or more people in a single incident (not including the shooter), typically in a single location.”

In 2013, the FBI changed its definition, moving away from “mass shootings” toward identifying an “active shooter” as “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.” This change means the agency now includes incidents in which fewer than four people die, but in which several are injured, like the 2014 Mother’s Day shooting in New Orleans where 20 were wounded.

This change in definition impacted directly the number of cases included in studies and affected the comparability of studies conducted before and after 2013 and aids the media in getting shit wrong when they even bother to research shootings instead of just parroting the DNC’s anti-gun made-up statistics. Even more troubling, some researchers on mass shooting have incorporated in their studies several types of multiple homicides that cannot be defined as mass shooting: for instance, familicide (a form of domestic violence) and gang murders. In the case of familicide, victims are exclusively family members and not random bystanders. Gang murders are usually crime for profit or a punishment for rival gangs or a member of the gang who is an informer. Such homicides don’t belong in the analysis of mass shootings.

Consider the mass shooting that took place in Platte, S.D., on September 17, 2015 that left six people dead. It was, by death toll, one of the eight deadliest shootings of 2015. Why, then, did few people hear about it? Because the victims were the wife and four children of Scott Westerhuis, who murdered them, then committed suicide. This was a tragedy, indeed, but not a mass shooting in the way the media prefers to sensationalize things.

Likewise, the mass shooting that caused the most injuries that year was the gunfight that took place between two biker gangs in Waco, Texas, in May. That was a heinous crime, with 9 deaths and another 18 wounded. 

So, yeah, I don’t trust mass shooting statistics. 

The question that always, without fail, accompanies this tantrum of boo-hoo  from the Anti Gun Crowd is, “Why does anyone need an AR-15?”

Well….why does anyone need anything? In most cases it’s simply WANT much more so than NEED.

A buddy of mine owns a Dodge Charger SRT with a 470 horsepower V-8 that can go 175 miles per hour. Why does he need that? After all, the speed limit here in South Carolina on the open highway is a mere 70 miles per hour. Who needs a car that can go two and half times the limit? Heaven forbid if he traded up to the SRT Hellcat version; that monster has a 707 horsepower powerplant to propel you at 204 miles per hour, nearly three times faster than one is allowed to go by law. Surely, he is a monster for owning such a weapon of murderous potential? After all, cars kill many thousands more per year than guns do. However, no one is protesting in the streets for the police to go garage to garage to confiscate Dodge Chargers. No one is calling for his car to be taken away for arbitrary red flags.

In the wrong hands, this is pretty damned dangerous.

Cirrhosis is the 9^th leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for 1.2% of all US deaths and kills 3 times more people annually than guns, but alcohol is still legal. Throw in drunk driving related deaths while you’re at it. No one is pushing for booze bans; that failed once before.

Over 480,000 people die each year from smoking-related causes but smoking is still legal.

Over 85,000 people a year die from diabetes, almost six times as many as homicide by gun. While the Left has tried to ban sugar, it still hasn’t happened.

So, do I need an AR-15? Probably not. However, it is my right as an American citizen to own firearms, and I choose to own an AR-15 platform sporting rifle. Specifically, I own a DPMS/Panther Arms MOE Warrior. Defense Procurement Manufacturing Services (DPMS) started in 1985 as a precision machine shop for manufacturing M-203, M-14 and M-16 parts for U.S. military contracts. DPMS later began producing AR-15 style rifles of their own. I chose a reputable manufacturer with a background in the AR platform. I wanted a quality weapon, well-made here in the States.

The MOE stands for Magpul Original Equipment. Magpul Industries Corporation is an American designer and manufacturer of high-tech polymer and composite firearms accessories. They make the grip, handguards, magazines, and 6-position stock for my rifle.

Why does Steve need a six-position stock? He must be trying to conceal it beneath his trench coat to shoot up malls!!!!

Um, no. The adjustable stock allows me to get the optimum comfortable cheek-to-stock weld necessary for accurate target shooting. Think of it like power seats and tilt steering in your car. 

You have a laser scope for precision murder and a front grippy thingie to make killing easier, right?

No, stupid. I do not have a scope, or any sort of electronic sighting aids. I aim and fire the old-fashioned way, on iron sights similar to what I learned on.  I rely solely on my own skills with target shooting on iron sights. I do, however, have a pop-up rear sight that folds down to avoid damage. My old M-16 had the rear sight built into the carrying handle on the upper receiver.  And as I never carried a weapon with a foregrip, I didn’t feel the need to have one on my own personal weapon.

I find target shooting very relaxing. It’s kind of a Zen thing, really. You clear your mind of  distractions. You block out everything extraneous around you, while still being aware of your surroundings for safety purposes, and concentrate your focus on the target, be it a paper target, a metal plate target, or a rubber Hot Box target.

What’s a Hot Box?

Google it, chummy. I can’t do all your homework for you.

Why do you need 30-round magazines like a mass murderer, Steve?

Honestly, because I’m lazy. I hate having to stop and reload once I’m sighted in and “in the groove” so to speak. I only load 27 rounds in a 30-round mag, because a trained shooter doesn’t load any magazine to full capacity. Why? Because constant full compression of the magazine spring can cause it to prematurely weaken and that can cause a feed jam. No Bueno, amigo. You also don’t store loaded magazines for extended periods, to keep the spring tension proper. So, I load 27 and that gives me 27 tries to hit my target before I need to break my firing position, drop the empty, reload, and re-engage. I have MAGPUL PMAG polymer magazines as well as standard military-issue steel magazines.

For the record, I’m not a fan of those big 100-round drum magazines. Those springs are under so much tension that they are prone to jam. In fact that fuckstick who shot up the theater in Aurora, Colorado had a drum mag that jammed, a jam that likely saved some lives. I might trust the MAGPUL PMAG D-60, which is a 60-round drum, only because they are an extremely reliable company with a stellar reputation for quality. I’m not ready to drop $129.00 on a magazine however, not just yet.

Extra weight, unwieldy and prone to jam. Nope, I'll skip thanks.

But Steve, why an AR-15?

Look…I carried an M-16A1 for 4 years active duty as a Military Policeman. I trained extensively with that weapon, as well as the M-1911A1 and M-9 pistols, the M-203 grenade launcher, and the M-60 machine gun. I am a graduate of the US Army’s Unit Armorer’s Course, which gave me a higher level of training on the inner workings, maintenance, and repair of not only the aforementioned weapons but also two types of .50 caliber machineguns (the M-2 and M-85), the M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, and the M-240 series of machineguns. Hell, I’ve even fired AK-47-series weapons a bit too. I have about 34 years’ experience with firearms. I have a background in law enforcement and have passed multiple background checks; EACH TIME I have purchased a firearm in fact, and I have owned several.

As I am intimately familiar with the AR platform, wouldn’t it make sense to own a firearm that I am exceedingly comfortable with, can disassemble and reassemble with my eyes closed, can maintain and repair, and know the capabilities fully thereof? 

A weapon by itself is just a tool, a piece of machinery, a collection of parts…it is the user that kills.

For reals, people. Over 900 people were killed after drinking tainted Kool Aid in Jonestown in 1978. No one's ever tried to ban Kool Aid, because Kool Aid didn't kill those people; a man killed them; a guy who led their socialist cult who had them drink it after lacing it with cyanide. It was actually grape Flavor-Aid to be precise, and it was merely the delivery system. Guns were the delivery system that were central to the killings in places like Newtown, Vegas, Orlando, Dayton, or El Paso but it was a deranged human who killed those people.

Owning an AR-15 doesn’t make one deranged, or an instant candidate for being a mass-killer. No more so than owning a fast car makes one a street racing menace to the roadways, or having a drink makes one an alcoholic prone to drunk driving, or eating a Krispy Kreme glazed donut makes you an instant Type 2 diabetic. Personal responsibility goes a long way.

You’re just a stooge for the NRA!

Nope. I’m not a member. I do just fine without them asking me for money all the time to fund their political lobbying. No offense to those who are members; I’m just not much of a joiner these days.

 

I know my experiences don’t speak for every AR owner. I can really only speak for myself and my own reasons for why I own what I own. Thankfully I live in a nation with a Constitution that I swore an oath at age 18 to defend and uphold against all enemies, foreign AND domestic, a Constitution that states quite clearly that my right to bear arms shall not be infringed upon, and that I live in a state with a love of firearms and shooters’ rights. I know some of you are less fortunate in that regard.

So, I guess that leaves us with the biggest and best reason that I own an AR-15…

BECAUSE I CAN, AND IT WAS WHAT I WANTED.

Now get off my lawn.

Other Times I have written about gun control issues:

https://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2014/07/leftist-rolling-stone-gets-completely.html

https://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2013/03/even-more-gun-control-idiocy-and.html

http://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-hands-are-neither-cold-nor-dead-so.html

http://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2012/08/gun-control-means-using-both-hands.html

You brought a paintball gun to a gunfight?

I suppose it should come as no surprise that a month ago, over the Halloween weekend, a man was shot and killed in the Third World streets of Chicago. After all, on any given weekend in Chicago, the number of people killed or wounded by gunfire in the allegedly safe, gun-controlled Democratic Socialist Workers Paradise rival or surpass those of Kabul or Baghdad or Damascus. This past Halloween weekend was actually tame by most standards for the Windy City. Instead of the usual 10 or 12 dead and 30+/- wounded by gunfire, it was two dead and 28 wounded. You think I exaggerate? 

Memorial Day weekend this year saw 12 killed and 43 wounded. The weekend before this year’s Halloween festivities, it was six killed and 28 wounded. In comparison, last year’s Halloween weekend saw four killed and 14 wounded. In all, 2014 was another dangerous year in the peaceful Democrat Utopia of The Windy City. The total number of people shot & killed was 390. The total who were shot and merely wounded was a staggering 2,229, for a total of 2,619 people shot in 2014.

In 2014, a person was shot in Chicago every 3 hours and 19 minutes. 

The weekend after Halloween this year? Four killed, another 15 wounded. One of the four dead was one J-Quantae Riles, (yes, the letter J, a hyphen, and the made-up word Quantae) a 14-year old boy who had only recently moved to Chicago from Virginia. The Monday after the Halloween weekend saw the murder of 9-year old Tyshawn Lee, lured into an alley and shot multiple times in what police are saying is a gang-related retaliation murder. The boy’s father has known gang ties and refused to cooperate with police. Six weeks later an arrest has been made in the boy’s death. The arrested suspect grew up with the boy’s mother, no less, but is in a rival gang than the boy’s father and was allegedly part of a roving hit squad that had been combing the streets for a while looking for worthy victim for retaliation.

Hope. Change. Death.

The man who killed a 9 year old, and the 9-year old killed for no good reason

 But I digress. Back to the one man who was killed over Halloween. 

The fatal shooting happened Saturday night during an attempted armed robbery in the Gage Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side, according to Chicago Police. Hmmm, same neighborhood where young J-Quantae was murdered a week later. Move along; nothing to see here.

A man walked into a neighborhood bodega that included a currency exchange in the 7200 block of West 51st Street about 7 p.m. and pulled out a gun, threatened the employee behind the counter and announced a robbery. Right after that, things went sideways.

A customer in the store withdrew his own weapon and fired at the suspect, hitting him multiple times. The would-be robber, 55-year old Reginald Gildersleeve was pronounced dead at the scene at 7:10 p.m., according to police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Reginald Gildersleeve and the bodega he tried to rob.

  Gildersleeve had been arrested at least half a dozen times dating back to the 1980s. Several arrests had to do with narcotics, but most of the incidents involved theft or robbery. He was in and out of prison, with burglary convictions as recent as 2005. At 45 years of age, Mr. Gildersleeve was in his lifetime previously sentenced to a total of 35 years in prison for no less than 10 felonies. Wanna see his rap sheet? Go here. Coincidentally, he was also a former employee of the bodega and knew the owners well. This guy intended to rob people he knew, and knew well, who had employed him and trusted him. A pillar of the community, without a doubt.

Of note is the fact that Gildersleeve wasn’t shot by some random street thug packing heat. He was shot by a legal, licensed concealed-carry permit holder. In Illinois, and most particularly Chicago, that’s as rare as a leprechaun, unicorn, or honest politician. However, the Supreme Court finally forced Illinois, and more notably, Chicago, to accept the fact that the Second Amendment applies to its citizens.

What is even more extraordinary about this incident is that the gun Gildersleeve was brandishing in his robbery wasn’t even real. It was a paintball gun. Yes, a mother-effing paintball gun. However, it was authentic-looking enough for people to fear for their lives, and an armed citizen took decisive action to eliminate the threat. No charges will be filed against the armed citizen.

This is what most of us think a paintball gun looks like, which is NOTHING like a real gun.

This is a paintball gun that looks like a Sig P226

This actually is a Sig P226 used by Navy SEALs

A paintball gun that looks like a Glock 17

An actual Glock 17

A paintball rifle made to look like a tricked out M-4 carbine.

A tricked out M-4 carbine.

Paintball rifle made to look like an AK-47

An actual AK-47. See how easy it is to be confused by a paintball gun?

Nothing like a paintball version of a Russian RPK drum-fed machine gun.

Of course, the family of our deceased habitual felon thinks he was an innocent saint who didn’t deserve to die and that the aforementioned citizen should be crucified upside down from a tree. Igbinosa Oronsaye, Gildersleeve’s stepson, told The Chicago Tribune the shooter overreacted in shooting multiple times.

 “Some people don’t actually know how to use guns,” Oronsaye said. “They go to firing ranges, but it’s not the same as a bullet going into someone’s body, it’s not the same as a bullet going into flesh. They should be able to wound first, kill next. He didn’t deserve to get shot multiple times.”

I can’t speak for Illinois, but here in South By God Carolina in order to obtain your concealed carry permit you must attend a training class that covers laws and legalities as well as practical shooting exercises. In other words, you do have to prove that you know how to use your weapon. I’d say that the guy who shot Gildersleeve knew how to use his weapon, since he hit his target and eliminated the threat. Wait….what? Oh, the state of Illinois also mandates a class for concealed carry applicants that includes a handgun safety course and range time that proves to the state-certified and licensed instructor that you do, in fact, know how to use your weapon? 

Iggy is right, though, when he says range shooting to gain and maintain firearms proficiency isn’t the same as shooting a human target. It’s not quite the same as shooting at a target carrying what, for all intents and purposes and appearances, is a weapon and is threatening surrounding citizens with harm in the commission of a felony and you’re in fear for your life. Paper doesn’t shoot back. Paper stays still. Does Iggy suggest we should practice instead on cadavers to get a better feel for what it’s like to shoot at actual flesh? Not exactly a practical way to gain firearms proficiency. Not everyone is a member of the Black Chicago Hunting Club and gains proficiency shooting other members of the community every weekend.

You could always try to get a ballistic gel torso model to shoot at. A real eye-opener

In every firearms training scenario I have ever undertaken, the instructors drilled into us to aim center mass and you shoot to eliminate the threat, and if that takes more than one round so be it. You don’t aim to wound, you aim center mass, ie: the largest area of the target, to improve your odds of hitting it. Your adrenaline is going to flood your entire system. Your breathing is going to speed up and you might shake a bit. You’ll probably feel like you have to pee. Welcome to a life or death combat shooting situation. You try to get fancy and aim for the arm and you’ll likely miss, as the arm is a lot narrower. And only on TV or in a movie is some cool, calm, collected gunslinger going to shoot the gun out of a culprit’s hand. That, dear reader, is farcical and utter crap. The real world simply does not happen that way. Hate to ruin the illusion. As the marksmanship record of the New York Police Department shows, when you are shooting at an actual human and under duress you miss a lot. And besides, in addition to the difficulty in hitting the target, there are damned few places you can shoot a human being deliberately and be sure of just merely wounding them Hollywood-style. Anywhere in the head, neck and pretty much the entire major-organ-encasing torso would be off limits. Both arms and legs have major blood vessels that, if ruptured, more likely than not will result in death. A lot of people have exsanguinated from a simple wound to the thigh. The femoral artery, once severed, will bleed you out in about five minutes. 

But back to the oh-so-sage Iggy.

Oronsaye also said the shooter needed to be punished for killing a member of the community.

“You just took a brother, you just took a father from a lot of people. Somebody’s got to answer for that,” he said.

Um, someone did. Reginald Gildersleeve answered for it. He’s the one who took it upon himself to make the decision to rob that bodega. He was the one who took a paintball gun and brandished it to make his victims think it was an actual weapon. Member of the Community is a pretty simple title. Everyone who lives there is a member of the community. The people he chose to rob are members of the community. He answered for it and paid for his folly with his life. 

This is not an isolated incident, actually. People are stopped from committing crimes against peaceful law-abiding citizens all the time by armed citizens with concealed carry permits. The liberal leftist news media simply chooses not to make mention of it unless forced to.

Two weeks before Halloween, just down the road from my mom’s house in North Charleston, 19-year old Joshua Jermaine Davis decided it was in his best interest to cinch up his hoodie to conceal his face, pull out a gun, and rob a Waffle House at 4:30 in the morning. He was confronted by a licensed concealed carry holder as he exited the building and told to drop his weapon, and instead of doing so raised his weapon at the citizen. The restaurant’s cash drawer was laying on the ground next to his body when the police arrived moments later. He was said to be breathing, but unresponsive at the time. He was transported to the Medical University of South Carolina, where he later died. Of course, there were those close to him who got their faces in the news saying he didn’t deserve to die and was a great kid, yadda yadda. A great kid whose Facebook page was full of pictures of guns and drugs. Spare me.

Joshua Davis

The Chicago Police, to my knowledge, never released the name of the citizen who shot Gildersleeve. Most likely because of the fear of retaliation. Payback is king in peaceful Chicago. And, God forbid, if the shooter was white, then that gives the agitators of BLM to protest (ie: riot, loot, and destroy). In North Charleston, the names of everyone involved were available within 24 hours. And, since the armed citizen was also black, that gives BLM nothing to riot about. 

A couple weeks later, also here in South Carolina and 10 miles from the above-mentioned Waffle House, two guys decided to break into a home in Ladson to rob it. What they didn’t know was that a 13-year old boy was home inside the residence and he became suspicious when the two men parked behind his house. As they tried to break in, fearing for his life, the boy took his mother’s gun and opened fire through the door. One of the would-be thieves returned fire as they fled. Responding officers found a .45 caliber handgun behind the house that did not belong to the family. One of the men was hit three times, and their car was also hit several times. Upon arrival to the hospital the driver, Ira Bennett, told officials that someone had randomly shot at their car on the Interstate. His partner, Lamar Brown, died from his wounds. Both Bennett and Brown have extensive criminal histories, according to the State Law Enforcement Division. Bennett has been convicted of assault with intent to kill, pointing a firearm at a person and third-degree burglary. He has also been convicted of possession of a controlled substance, manufacturing and distributing a controlled substance and possession of marijuana. He has now has been charged with first-degree burglary and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. Brown's convictions included six felony drug charges. He had also been convicted of unlawful carrying of a weapon, disorderly conduct and trespassing. Stellar citizens, indeed. 

Lamar Brown

Ira Bennett

Now, while I am a strong advocate for an armed citizenry and for concealed carry for personal protection, it does, indeed, come with a hefty responsibility. You can’t just go playing vigilante. You have to be in genuine fear for your life or the lives of those in close proximity before resorting to deadly force. The customer in that Chicago bodega saw a weapon that looked real and feared for the lives of the employees and himself. The man outside the Waffle House saw a weapon and told the thief to drop it, and fired when the thief raised his weapon to fire. That kid inside that house was terrified and justified.

Not every situation demands action.

A woman in Michigan, a licensed conceal-carry holder, was just brought up on criminal charges after she saw a shoplifter fleeing a security guard at a Home Depot store and get into a car, and she opened fire on the car in the parking lot in an attempt to shoot out the tires. Seriously. It was a shoplifter, not a serial killer. There was no evidence that the dude was armed. She wasn’t in immediate danger.  This was a no-go, a complete failure on the part of the citizen. 

In September, two men in the Houston area were in the process of carjacking an unarmed man’s truck at a gas station when a would-be hero rushed in to ostensibly save the day. He drew his weapon and began firing, and did NOT hit his intended target. Instead of hitting the carjackers, the citizen hit the victim in the head. Yes, he shot him in the head. 

After he realized what he did, the wannabe hero wasn’t so brave anymore. He quickly policed up the shell casings from his gun, and left the scene before the authorities could come and identify him and worse, without making sure the man he shot was okay. The bad guys got away, and the victim is recovering. The truck was found abandoned two blocks over, and a shattered driver’s side window and blood inside the vehicle suggests that the shooter may have hit one of the thieves after all, but so far neither they nor the shooter have been found. Another no-go failure.

Look, while it may indeed be our right as citizens to own and carry a firearm, it is also a tremendous responsibility. Know your laws. Know when you can and can’t shoot, and when you should and shouldn’t. And know your weapon. Know it by feel. Know your ability with it, and to draw and engage accurately. Know how to quickly reload if you have to. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, so tread carefully.