On the NRA’s blog under the heading “A Good Guy With A Gun” you find this little gem:
“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun. You’ve heard NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre say these words, and with each passing day, they prove to be truer and truer.”
Try telling that to the family of “good guy” Johnny Hurley, who was shot and killed by a cop, right after Hurley shot and killed another man - who had just shot and killed another cop.
That’s a lot to process, so I’ll break it down.
As reported by Keith Coffman at Reuters, Arvada, Colorado police officer Gordon Beesley, a 19-year veteran, responded to a report of a suspicious man in Arvada's Olde Town Square.
When he arrived, the gunman, whose name I will not mention, got out of a pickup truck with a 12-gauge semiautomatic shotgun and approached Beesley from behind. Police said the gunman called out to Beesley, who is seen on video turning toward toward him. Beesley was shot twice with no time to take "defensive action."
The gunman then shot out windows in nearby patrol cars before running back to his truck and retrieving an AR-15 rifle, according to the police report. He headed back to the plaza, presumably to end more lives, where he was shot and killed by Hurley – the “good guy with a gun” in this story.
When another officer arrived at the scene he saw Hurley holding the AR-15 and shot him dead. Looks like the NRA, in its “good guy” myth, left out the part where the cops mistake the good guy for a bad guy and kill him on the spot, no questions asked.
The Arvada police department confirmed this series of events, according to Reuters, but only after earlier asserting that the gunman who killed Officer Beesley had also shot and killed Hurley. Their story apparently changed when it was learned that there was video of the event.
Situations like this will only become more commonplace as states loosen gun laws, allowing any and everyone to carry guns with no training, no permit and no license.
That’s not to say that Johnny Hurley fit any of those descriptions, but rather to ask the question: how are cops supposed to tell the good guys from the bad guys if everyone has a gun?
Sure, many of you will say that had Hurley not been there to take the bad guy out many more lives may have been lost. I’ll give you that.
So what’s the answer?
How are cops supposed to react when they arrive on scene and find someone holding an assault rifle and standing over a dead body?
I don’t have the answer, and apparently neither did the cop who killed this Good Samaritan.
