In the Barbershop, the Mall, the Corner Store

Originally published by AmmoLand.com.

Louisiana – Ordinary citizens stopped mass murder.  Mass murder is defined as four or more victims killed in the same event.

Many people were at risk in the stories this month.  Armed citizens like you saved lives until the police could come and make an arrest.  You did it, and the media never gave you credit.

Let me say, “Thank you!”  Here are a few of the news stories since I reported in mid-January.

You saved lives in a shopping mall.

22-year-old Matthew Willhite was carrying his handgun concealed as he does every day.  This day he was with his girlfriend in a sopping mall in Anchorage, Alaska.  It was an ordinary day.. until a mall security guard approached another man and told him to stop.  The man was being detained for shoplifting.  The shoplifter was armed, and the shoplifter drew his gun and pointed it at the security guard.  The guard pushed the gun away and the two men struggled.

Matthew Willhite heard the security guard yell “Gun, gun, gun!” and then yell for help.  Willhite pulled his own firearm and pointed it at the armed thief.  Willhite said “that I had a gun and he should drop it, and he eventually saw (the 45).  Once he dropped (his) gun, the security officer handed it to me, so I kicked it behind me and kept (my gun) on him until the security officers put handcuffs on him.”  Willhite said he had his gun at “an angle where he could see me, but nobody else (behind him) was going to get hurt.”

Some critics would say this example shouldn’t count as armed defense because Matthew didn’t fire his gun.  Honest armed civilians use their legally owned firearms thousands of times a day in self-defense.  Fortunately, few of them are forced to press the trigger.

You saved lives in a convenience store.

This incident started with a loud bang.  The robber stepped past the customers standing in line and started shooting.  The store owner and another employee grabbed guns that were hidden behind the counter at Snappy’s Convenience Store in Deerfield Beach, Florida.   The owner and employee fired back .. several times.  The store owner’s gun jammed.  By the time the store owner secured a third gun that he had hidden behind the counter, the thief was down and out of the fight.

This was the third time the store owner faced an attempted armed robbery.  This was the third time they fought back and prevailed.

You saved lives in a barbershop.

Two masked and armed criminals pushed their way into a crowded Columbia, South Carolina barbershop.  One of the robbers carried a long gun and the other had a handgun.  The robbers told the men, women and children in the shop that they were going to die if they didn’t do as they were told.   The two thugs told the customers to put their hands up, and one by one, to empty their pockets.  Fortunately, two of the victims had concealed carry permits.. and they were armed.  The barber told the robber that his money was on a shelf behind the barber chair.  When the robber turned, the barber and another store customer started shooting.  Their shots struck one of the robbers several times.

The two criminals ran from the barbershop. None of the customers or employees in the barbershop were injured.

Those are three examples where armed civilians stopped mass murder.  In contrast, socialists politicians propose more and more regulations to disarm honest citizens.  Those politicians say we would be safer if the entire United States was declared as a gun-free zone.  These politicians ignore that the vast majority of mass murders in the United States are committed in gun free zones.

Reprinted with permission from AmmoLand.com.

The post In the Barbershop, the Mall, the Corner Store appeared first on LewRockwell.