Shoplifter shooting adds fuel to U.S. gun debate
Firearms instructors slam bystander who shot at thieves fleeing Home Depot in SUV
America is as always in the midst of a bitter debate over guns.
In the wake of last week’s mass shooting in Oregon, gun control advocates called for new restrictions on weapons as a way of preventing such tragedies.
But gun rights advocates said this approach was all wrong. The answer to mass shootings wasn’t less guns; it was more. They argued that more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens could possibly stop active shooters before they start slaughtering innocents.
Now, an interesting example has been tossed into the middle of this ideological tussle.
On Tuesday, a shoplifter suddenly came tearing across the parking lot at a Home Depot near Detroit. The man was pushing a cart full of stolen power tools and welding equipment worth more than $1,000.
As a Home Depot loss-prevention officer came running after him, the shoplifter shoved the stolen goods into a waiting black SUV and jumped in.
That’s when a female bystander pulled out a concealed pistol and fired several shots at the fleeing vehicle, possibly striking one of its rear tires.
The shoplifters nonetheless escaped. The female shooter stayed at the scene and is co-operating fully with the investigation, police said. They have not identified her but have said she is 46 years old and holds a valid concealed pistol licence.
A handful of local firearms instructors criticized the woman’s decision to pull her pistol and fire it in a busy public place when nothing but property was at stake.
“It’s my worst nightmare as a (concealed pistol licence) instructor,” Doreen Hankins told the Detroit Free Press.
“You are not a police officer,” she added, referring to concealed gun licence holders. “You are not a person out there protecting the public at large.”
Yet, that is how Americans increasingly see things.
Since the 2012 Newtown, Conn., massacre of 26 people, including 20 schoolchildren, the percentage of Americans who think gun ownership could “protect people from becoming victims of crime” has gone up by nine points, according to a 2014 Pew Research Poll.
The shift was most significant among Republicans, whose support for gun ownership between 2012 and 2014 rose to 80 per cent from 63 per cent.
The poll also marked the first time in two decades of Pew surveys that more Americans supported gun rights rather than gun control.
Last week’s mass shooting in Roseburg, Ore., only seems to have reinforced this idea.
On Saturday, law professor and Post contributor Eugene Volokh published a list of incidents in which holders of concealed-carry permits arguably stopped mass shootings. And on Sunday, Donald Trump took to the airwaves to echo NRA president Wayne LaPierre’s famous dictum: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
According to Detroit media, authorities are still considering charging the woman who fired the gun in the Home Depot parking lot. Even some Second Amendment enthusiasts conceded that the woman had made concealed-carry permit holders look bad, although they argued she was an exception that should be dealt with as such.
“Idiots like this one give the liberals that want to take our Second Amendment right away ammunition,” one man wrote on the police Facebook page.
“She took the CPL class, she was taught under what circumstances she can justifiably draw her weapon. She deserves to be charged with discharging a weapon in public and possibly worse.”