pax
March 15, 2001, 03:49 PM
Anyone remember this thread (http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=58305)? It is the story of a clueless yellow-dog journalist in Detroit who claimed she was "still waiting to hear the story about a gun that has a happy ending."
Well, here's her column this week, found at http://detnews.com/2001/metro/0103/15/c01-199707.htm
Readers supply plenty of ammo on how guns made a difference
By Laura Berman / The Detroit News
In retrospect, it was a lousy idea. What began as an exercise in curiosity (Why am I unaware of a single story where an acquaintance was saved by a gun?) turned into an Internet-driven anecdote-mailing campaign by gun-lovers, many of them cut-and-pasted from Web sites.
Correspondents offered documented accounts of crimes stopped or lives saved culled from the pages of newspapers or from gun magazines that cull such stories.
I now possess enough pages of hard-boiled, thug-beating stories from The Armed Citizen to wallpaper the living room.
Out of hundreds of responses, fewer than 30 people detailed personal experiences involving themselves or a family member, friend or acquaintance.
Most of these letters and e-mails came from Lafayette, La., Vancouver or Kalama, Wash. They were from California, Arizona, Ohio, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and from the gun-loving state of Texas.
Of the Michigan stories, I most appreciated one from Michael C. Brzezinski of Detroit, who described a situation involving a neighbor: A woman plagued by a drug-addicted ex-husband, who repeatedly broke into her house and stole her few good things.
After he threw a brick through the window, Brzezinski's neighbor called the police. When that failed, she bought a hand gun. The next time her husband broke in, "I saw my friend chasing her very distraught ex-husband down the street gun in hand."
She shot three rounds into the air -- the man never returned. And Brezezinski's neighbor sold the gun back to the shop where she'd bought it.
The most compelling story I received was an e-mail from Matthew J. Bracken of San Diego, Calif. As promised, I am printing it.
"In 1983, I had just moved to Fort Lauderdale. After dinner, my wife and I heard a woman screaming, 'Help. Help. He's killing me!' "
"I grabbed my legally owned .45-caliber pistol and ran out the door," Bracken writes. "Across the street ... there was a naked woman tied up, being dragged into the house. From 15 feet away, I leveled the cocked pistol at him and ordered him to let her go. He did."
Police, Bracken says, didn't arrive for 10 minutes. The woman had escaped from her assailant when he'd left the room to use drugs. "There was a full SWAT team response, and my actions made the newspaper. So chalk up one 'save' due to the timely use of a firearm, without a shot being fired."
Also notable: J. David Phillips, a Crystal River, Fla., pawnbroker, who was stabbed last September five times before he could reach his "small, portable, easily hidden Beretta 950 .25 caliber semiautomatic."
Phillips spent three days in the hospital. "The perpetrator of the crime died the next day ... if not for the handgun I had with me at the time, I'd be stone, cold, graveyard dead," he writes.
My correspondents believe their stories are proof that shall-issue laws benefit society. While I disagree with their point, I'll defend to the death their right to get their letters printed. After all, I asked for them.
But I'm also announcing the end of gun story hour. This is my column and I'm resuming business as usual, until they have to pry my cold, lifeless hands from the keyboard.
Bottom line: this woman couldn't get a clue if she smeared herself with clue musk and did the clue mating dance in the middle of a field full of horny clues at the height of the clue mating season.
Still, y'all done good. :)
pax
Well, here's her column this week, found at http://detnews.com/2001/metro/0103/15/c01-199707.htm
Readers supply plenty of ammo on how guns made a difference
By Laura Berman / The Detroit News
In retrospect, it was a lousy idea. What began as an exercise in curiosity (Why am I unaware of a single story where an acquaintance was saved by a gun?) turned into an Internet-driven anecdote-mailing campaign by gun-lovers, many of them cut-and-pasted from Web sites.
Correspondents offered documented accounts of crimes stopped or lives saved culled from the pages of newspapers or from gun magazines that cull such stories.
I now possess enough pages of hard-boiled, thug-beating stories from The Armed Citizen to wallpaper the living room.
Out of hundreds of responses, fewer than 30 people detailed personal experiences involving themselves or a family member, friend or acquaintance.
Most of these letters and e-mails came from Lafayette, La., Vancouver or Kalama, Wash. They were from California, Arizona, Ohio, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and from the gun-loving state of Texas.
Of the Michigan stories, I most appreciated one from Michael C. Brzezinski of Detroit, who described a situation involving a neighbor: A woman plagued by a drug-addicted ex-husband, who repeatedly broke into her house and stole her few good things.
After he threw a brick through the window, Brzezinski's neighbor called the police. When that failed, she bought a hand gun. The next time her husband broke in, "I saw my friend chasing her very distraught ex-husband down the street gun in hand."
She shot three rounds into the air -- the man never returned. And Brezezinski's neighbor sold the gun back to the shop where she'd bought it.
The most compelling story I received was an e-mail from Matthew J. Bracken of San Diego, Calif. As promised, I am printing it.
"In 1983, I had just moved to Fort Lauderdale. After dinner, my wife and I heard a woman screaming, 'Help. Help. He's killing me!' "
"I grabbed my legally owned .45-caliber pistol and ran out the door," Bracken writes. "Across the street ... there was a naked woman tied up, being dragged into the house. From 15 feet away, I leveled the cocked pistol at him and ordered him to let her go. He did."
Police, Bracken says, didn't arrive for 10 minutes. The woman had escaped from her assailant when he'd left the room to use drugs. "There was a full SWAT team response, and my actions made the newspaper. So chalk up one 'save' due to the timely use of a firearm, without a shot being fired."
Also notable: J. David Phillips, a Crystal River, Fla., pawnbroker, who was stabbed last September five times before he could reach his "small, portable, easily hidden Beretta 950 .25 caliber semiautomatic."
Phillips spent three days in the hospital. "The perpetrator of the crime died the next day ... if not for the handgun I had with me at the time, I'd be stone, cold, graveyard dead," he writes.
My correspondents believe their stories are proof that shall-issue laws benefit society. While I disagree with their point, I'll defend to the death their right to get their letters printed. After all, I asked for them.
But I'm also announcing the end of gun story hour. This is my column and I'm resuming business as usual, until they have to pry my cold, lifeless hands from the keyboard.
Bottom line: this woman couldn't get a clue if she smeared herself with clue musk and did the clue mating dance in the middle of a field full of horny clues at the height of the clue mating season.
Still, y'all done good. :)
pax