Last week one of the gun fail diaries took issue with an incident that occurred during an armed robbery of a convenience store. When the robber presented a gun, the clerk of the store attempted to defend himself with his gun, and ended up wounding an innocent bystander at a bus stop across the street. We got the typical response: That only police should own guns, the police are well trained and innocent bystanders don’t get shot when it’s the police responding and doing the shooting.
It’s a nice story if only it were true. Yesterday, on Saturday Dec 26th, the Chicago police responded to a domestic disturbance 911 call. A father called police because his son, 19 year old college student Quintonio LeGrier, reportedly suffering from mental illness, was threatening the father with an aluminum baseball bat. After calling 911, the father asked his downstairs neighbor, 55 year old Bettie Jones, to open the door when the police arrived.
Bettie Jones did as she was asked, and opened the door for the police. Unfortunately at that moment LeGrier chose to charge down the stairs towards the police, baseball bat in hand. The police drew their weapons and fired, kiling both LeGrier and Jones. LeGrier was shot 7 times. It has not been reported how many times Jones was struck, only that she died at the scene.
So once again our well trained police force takes no action to retreat, to de-escalate, to attempt a peaceful solution. Instead they immediately open fire with absolutely no regard for who else may be in their line of fire. They see a threat, and don’t stop shooting until they run out of bullets.
We are told over and over that it is the people who are the greater threat. The people who must be disarmed, with guns restricted only to the “well regulated”, to keep us safe. But the people aren’t being trained as soliders, to shoot first and empty their magazines into anything that moves. Is “well regulated” really what you want?