That’s a still from cell phone video of a Aaron Kreag (with the pistol on the right) stopping Macmichael Nwaiwu (in the red car) from beating a woman who wasn’t named in the story. Kreag told reporters “This large gentleman just pounding on this lady, closed fist you know multiple times and heavy heavy elbows to the face and neck.” So Kreag, who had been out on a date with his wife, pulled out his concealed carry, pointed it at Nwaiwu, and ordered him to stop assaulting the woman in the car with him.
The story is an interesting counterpoint to concerns that civilians with concealed carry permits would turn the United States into the Wild West. As it turns out, the kinds of folks who go through the process of getting a concealed carry permit are not the kind of folks who tend to be trigger-happy, for the most part. It’s just also an interesting case-study in real-life, civilian gun usage. The tensest part of the video, in my mind, is when the cops show up. When you’re the one holding a drawn handgun and the cops roll up, expect to have one pointed at you in return, which is exactly what happened to Kreag. He put down his gun, surrendered, and got cuffed while the cops sorted out what was going on with bystanders.
Within a few minutes, however, he was released and Nwaiwu was in handcuffs. Still, I imagine those initial seconds when the cops drew on Kreag had to be nerve-wracking. It’s what Kreag was expecting, however, and it’s what all concealed carry holders expect to go through if they ever do need to draw their weapon (let alone fire) in the defensive of themselves or others.
Probably the worst part of situations like this is that there is no existing reporting method of defensive gun use to track how often or when, and thus the effects of said defensive gun use. The misleading sentiment that the US would devolve into a ‘wild west’ is just silly considering there are and estimated 80 million legal fire arms in civilian hands in the US. So my question to a statement like that would be, why aren’t we already like that with so many out there?
As a fire arms owner I have spent many hours of physically training with, mentally training for, and learning about various legal situations and responses. This all so that when I have a fire arm with me (which is often) I know what my rights are, where my rights stop, and what situations would not warrant, or if need be would warrant use of said fire arm. Most of my preparation is in finding any and every way to not have to use it.
This mindset goes back to a conversation I had with you once about murder and what the mind does once one pulls the trigger. A person who has a gun and believes it will fire when the trigger is pulled is guilty of murder, even if the gun doesn’t fire when they pull the trigger because the intent to kill was there, and the act required to kill was completed.
A follow up of this mindset of trying not to use lethal force is that it’s a pretty permanent situation. If I shoot, it isn’t for any other reason than to kill. To make it clear, I hope and pray every time I have my weapon that I NEVER have to use it in this capacity. (I have had to draw my weapon once, but thankfully did not have to use it in any other capacity, and I was pissed that I even had to draw it)
There are a multitude of reasons for the ‘only shoot to kill, not to hurt’ attitude, but to keep it short; in a life/death situation one’s fine motor skills are mostly useless, so you don’t ‘aim for an arm/leg’ because you’ll miss, and for legal purposes if you tell a lawyer ‘yeah I just wanted to injure’ (even if the rest of that sentence is ‘not kill’) you’re in a whole heap of trouble since it’s a lawyers job to twist meanings to get the results they want.
The response of the gun owner, and the police upon arrival was appropriate and correct. Kudos to those involved for professional handling of a potentially more tragic situation.
I am truly glad to see someone helped in this way. However, I would be very interested to see a cost-benefit analysis of liberal gun laws. It seems to me that the occasional incidence of a “good guy” (who is not regular law enforcement) with a gun stopping crimes in this way is greatly outweighed by the number of accidental deaths and aggravated crimes committed by people from homes with legal access to firearms.
Of course, I’ve heard the liberal (anti-gun) version of those stats. Is there a pro-gun version to support gun ownership? I’ve only heard platitudes and anecdotes.
Tyler-
As you know, it’s very controversial, but yes there is a pro-gun side of the story, including data and academic scholarship. The term to look up is defensive gun use which goes by the acronym DGU. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the data on DGUs in the United States:
My own take is that the middle-of-the-road estimates are probably pretty sound. The problem with the low-end estimates is that (if I recall correctly) they usually set the bar pretty high. Some common approaches (with numbers even lower than the 55k-88k) only count justifiable homicides, which means that a person has to (1) have the gun (2) draw the gun (3) fire the gun (4) hit the bad guy and finally (5) kill the bad guy.
I think its pretty clear that if you only get to steps 1-2 you’ve probably got a valid DGU, however. And that’s where the million+ numbers come from: they count the number of times that survey respondents claim to have drawn or displayed a weapon in order to defend themselves or others.
Tyler-
Also keep in mind the qualification of your statement “…the number of accidental deaths and aggravated crimes committed by people from homes with legal access to firearms.” are situations in general where good gun safety standards weren’t followed.
What I mean is all guns should be handled and treated as if they are loaded and will fire on their own at all times. Thus ‘accidental deaths’ would only include situations where a malfunction of the safety occurs and though the fire arm was pointed in a safe direction for the immediate vicinity, someone further down range (30.06 rifle rounds can travel around 3 miles) gets hit. Anything else would equate to manslaughter or malicious wounding (technically).
As for crimes committed when the household has legal access, in many cases a crime is committed to obtain the fire arm in the first place. The sadness of Newton occurred after he broke in, killed someone, stole the fire arms, then went to the school. Upon killing the occupant of the home, he became a felon and thus a ‘prohibited person’. Secondly in almost all of the mass shooting situations that liberals like to use as a reason for gun control, the shooter killed themselves as soon as they were confronted by someone else with a gun.
Now, this doesn’t mean there aren’t cases where a house has a gun, and one of the owners or residents obtains that gun and shoots someone else where all safety and securing of fire arms were properly followed. They do occur and it is a sad reality that bad people do bad things. For examples of why it isn’t about guns you can look into countries that only allow law and government to have guns. Gangs of men roam the streets with other deadly weapons causing all kinds of chaos. There is even footage of a handful of gang members in the Chicago subway who attacked a man and his brother with a machete.
The idea that the use of fire arms by bad people outweighs the use of fire arms by good people is a logical fallacy that assumes anyone with a gun is a bad guy waiting to happen. Just the same as the concept of gun control is a logical fallacy because criminals by nature do not follow the law, thus the law only affects law abiding citizens who now cannot defend themselves legally against a criminal (who knows this fact)
My usual question to adamant gun control mindset is ‘how does a law prevent a criminal from obtaining a gun?’ to which the only real and logical answer is that it doesn’t. Now politicians will dance around that question all day long but I’ve not ever heard a straight answer that works.
That being said, Nathaniel (I think?) has already put up a post that one of the only logical arguments about gun control is from the public health standpoint. That’s been discussed on that post so I won’t start it here.