Sorry for the recent departure of your well-coiffed scribe, but he’s been a little busy on all fronts…
Between record breaking box sales, buying a new home, dealing with pool contractors and concrete people, I’ve been tied up. But something crossed my desk this morning I couldn’t pass up and I had to bless my devoted fans, readers and disciples with a bit of wisdom on the topic.
Over on the South side of our sister city of St Louis, one suspect is dead and another is in critical condition after allegedly holding a gun to a teen’s head.
At about 11pm Monday, a 17 year old girl leaves her home, headed out to get something from her car. Two unknown men grabed her, pointed a gun to her head and demanded that she take them inside her home.
Her dad was inside the house, saw what was taking place, got his own gun and waited for them to get closer.
“He was holding her hostage. She was a human shield. So I did what I had to do,” he said.
Asked how he had the confidence to pull the trigger when the man was holding his daughter that way, he said, “It wasn’t like that. It just happened. I didn’t have no choice. He had my daughter so I did what I had to do.”
The end result? He shot and killed Terrell Johnson, 31, and did he best to take down the second suspect, Cortez McClinton, who the father says was wearing a mask.
In an act of class and grace, the father said he was sorry for what the families of the two suspects are going through, but he had no choice.
“My condolences goes out to all the families involved. I don’t know him. I wish it hadn’t happened. So like I said, to the moms, fathers, all the other people involved, I apologize,” he said.
Both are shooting victims are former residents of the Missouri prison system, go figure.
Terrell Johnson, the dead man, served a sixteen year sentence for first degree robbery.
Cortez McClinton was charged with first degree murder in the 2010 but the charges were dropped when the witnesses wouldn’t cooperate. You know, snitches get stiches, it’s more important to dirt balls to not testify than it is to protect their own neighborhood.
I made the comment earlier today, I don’t mean to go all Rambo on anyone, but this is EXACTLY how these problems should be solved. It doesn’t take nearly as much police effort, the court system isn’t jacked up with 47 pretrial hearings, there are no endless appeals for these animals, it’s all taken care of nice and neat.
Kudos to the dad!
If more of these dirt balls thought someone in the house already had a gun trained on their little punkin heads and was ready to pull the trigger, a lot less of this sort of thing would take place.
Gun control isn’t the answer, peeps, bad guy control is!
I made that comment on Facebook this morning and one of my friends replied that it’s not likely a deterrent to the pathological criminal, and he’s right. But while he is correct on that point, I can assure you of one thing; Terrell Johnson’s crime spree came to an end last night. He will not reoffend.
And when you stop to think about it, isn’t that the goal?
We’re never going to control guns. It shouldn’t even be our goal, that’s not where the problem lies; bad guys will always get them.
Given the choice, I’ll hang onto my gun and try and control the bad guy.
http://gawker.com/its-really-hard-to-be-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-1588660306
While I am a gun proponent and own a few I don’t C&C and after reading the above article would be less inclined to. It is a good read that talks about what happened in the Vegas shootings.
Bingo, Dude. I was going to share the same thing. Had the guy in Vegas NOT had his gun and NOT tried to take down the shooters, he might still be alive. It’s obviously a hypothetical– as this kind of thing tends to be– but to simply say “good guy with gun is always a good thing,” well, that’s not really painting the full picture. Sometimes the bad guy wins, regardless of who has or doesn’t have a gun.
Amen, Mr. Leftridge
Welcome back, Wilson, wise and wonderful… I can always count on you to shoot straight from the hip…. 😉
Welcome back yourself, Veronica. I seem to remember you asking me for a cup of coffee; that offer was never redeemed…….
Hopefully the thugs of STL are paying attention and realize this could be their future.
It’s great to have you back, professor. You picked a great topic and this conversation should go into a high number of comments. As you might guess, I’m going to take a somewhat opposing view.
Gun control is not an all or nothing issue. I have no problems with Americans owning guns. I do not want to change the picture you described above. I’m glad the father had a gun and was able to save his daughter. I agree we should address bad guys. More specifically we should address people with mental issues and how about, as a start, we take steps to try to prevent people with mental issues from getting guns. The NRA has us believing that “gun control” means the government is looking to take your guns away. Bullshit. I really think a majority of Americans have no great problem with the average citizen possessing firearms, but those same people also don’t have a problem with running a background check in certain types of gun transactions. Can’t there be somewhere we can start? Just saw a Fox News Poll that showed 85% favor universal checks on all gun sales. Dems-90%, Reps-83%, Indep-82%, Gun owner household – 81%. And that’s Fox. Unfortunately everyone in Washington is afraid of the gun lobby.
Just sayin’
While chuck’s gun’s day had me enthralled, the point of the vast majority of gun owners being responsible and supporting reasonable background checks is without question.
Gun manufacturers push their weapons of destruction, the assault-styled semis are profitable. The government’s-taking-away-our-guns argument is the manufacturers to sell more guns. More ammo. More paranoia.
Funny how the NRA, Senators, Congressmen and such exclude CC when they meet. Or play. But playing the weak on crime, taking our guns card is easily as profitable as the race card.
The scariest thing to me is still a white man in a golf shirt with a cell phone stuck to his ear.
Thanks, Stomper. All good points and, frankly, I don’t know anyone who opposes background checks on any level or checks of the most strict kind. I’m all for it.
Problem is, thugs and animals like these two aren’t buying guns at Bass Pro, they’re getting them in back alleys.
BTW, don’t mean to get off track but I was reminded of you when the Champions Tour played an event recently down at Big Cedar Lodge. Didn’t you promise us a piece on that very unique property?
Stomper, I did. I even spent an hour or two with the GM down there. Interesting place indeed. We love it.
Yesterday before I went to work, I put my 45 next to the front door and put 6 shells beside it. I then went about my business. the mailman delivered mail. the kids played in the front yard across the street. A kid came by and mowed my lawn. A girl walked her dog by my house. Many, many cars stopped at the sign 200 feet from my front door. When I got home and checked on the gun, it hadn’t shot anyone, it hadn’t even loaded itself. Those guns are sure dangerous.
The United States is 3rd in murders throughout the world, but if you take out Chicago, Detroit, Wahington DC and New Orleans, we are 4th from the bottom.
What a mystery.
I am going to go check on my spoons, I hear they make people fat.
Chuck, I stopped carrying a gun when I learned how to kill a man with my bare hands……
I have no such option, being short, fat and slow. But, good news. Pedro has offered me his protection if I vote for him. I am tossing my pistol in the trash.
Welcome back Wilson, this is what it was like while you were gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-zaO-hUYag&feature=kp
Great to have you back! By the way, did you see where that Kaplan kid you wrote about awhile back pleaded guilty to stalking? You were right all along. It goes to show that you are the real one that is always right, 100 percent of the time!
Thank you Mike and I did see that. I stopped going to his sessions after the 47th continuance. I interviewed a 3rd aledged victim who claims he looked over a women’s bathroom stall partition; she knew it was him but because of a previous bad experience with the Leawood police she refused to file a report.
Thanks for recognizing my always right percentage. Some people may disagree, but I called it here, Sprint merger, SoftBank partnership and a host of other topics.
My position on the detractors? A lion doesn’t lose sleep over the opinion of sheep……
hahahaha….welcome back wislun….
all those were pretty well known before you tried to
be a “savant” and give us the inside info.
Where’s the jewel dude? did he go down yet.
Been hiding from the
vans with all the antennas outside the mission
building? gota be careful…they don’t have much
room under the dash for guys your size…could have
gotten stuck!!!!! lol
oh…and what about your prediction on Romney?
you and whinerry were rght on there!!!!hahahaha
then all the other predictions you’ve made.
come on…its party time wislun….
great story…but againyoure the “barney fife of
kcc”…
this “controversy” is so old and worn out that
its become BORING!!!!
and your story added nothing of value to the
discussion.
My comment did. Lets say you
re with family and wife in starbucks. I’m sure you
carry a concealed weapon. two guys come in with shaved
heads and carry heavy guns (the latest automatics)…what
happens? your wife freak out!!! probably. kids freak
out (I’m sure they would)…would you get nervous…
definitely see you going under the table ….
but what about stand your ground.? readthe law…
could you shoot those guy s if you actuallyfeared
for your life and your familys?
interesting point..would love to hear your take
0n that.
good day…
your friend
Harley!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You’re main detractor is the lion, because he is lion all the time!
no more b.s. mr. scribe:
think about this..
its harder to vote now in many states than it is to buy a gun!!!!!
this is insane. People like you make stupid arguments when the vast
majority of people in the nation want background checks.
Unfortunately scribe we can’t control all the bad guys…but with
the common sense of what almost everyone wants we can add
a little sanity to this issue.
And we don’t know who the bad guys are.
And with these nut cases carrying guns into restaurants…coffee shops..
who has time to ask them if they’re good or bad.
The greatest stupidity is if one of these people walks into a
public place with an automatic weapon…who’s to say that someone can’t
shoot them and kill them and use the “stand your ground” argument.
Ah…figure that one out boys!!!!!!!!
Somewhere out there is a tree working tirelessly to provide you with oxygen; I think you owe it an apology.
You have to give credit where it is due. He is probably providing more CO2 for the tree than what the tree is giving him back in O2.
As usual, Mike, you provide the more valid point. My apologies.
PW, it always seems to me that “gun control” is a problem without a solution. The reason I say this is because what everyone REALLY means when they talk about gun control is they want to “control” the guns from getting into the hands of criminals. Consider an America that had ZERO gun related homicides annually. Would anyone give a damn if everyone owned 100 handguns each or what kind of background checks were required to get them? Nope. You can try to legislate the issue to death, but it isn’t going to change where/how criminals get their guns. I mean, how many decades was pot TOTALLY illegal in all 50 states? Never really stopped anyone from getting stoned if they wanted to, did it?
Now, do I think that “smart” people need to try to do SOMETHING about the issue? Of course. Just not sure what the hell that is.
Jim, my point exactly. Not that Harley ever makes any sense, but his comment below makes less sense than most of his. I know of NO ONE who is opposed to enormous levels of background screening. No one. Yet, he and his ilk feel that good background checks will weed out criminals from getting guns. Those are sold, with no middle man, on the corner or back alleys of the hood for cash or drugs.
I agree with you totally, but some people have less control over their kookie side than our pal Justin Bieber…..
sorry paul but information is incorrect again!!!!!!!!
you have no basis for your point that guns are bought
with no middle man on the corenr or back alley.
actual stats show that this is an incorrect statement.
atf stats prove you wrong.
most were bought legally.
ever been to a gun show? the one at 115 and Metcalf?
go there and see how it works.
the guns used by killers are usually legally bought under
the law. many from gun shows!!!!! no background checks
is as easy as buying them on the street.
sure we all want bg checks…but your pals at the nra
have a stranglehold on 5the politicians and won’t
let it happen.
You sound like the guy at Nevada ranch…
you’re wrong again…sorry to keep proving you wrong.
get the real stats from real sources instead of verbatim
from nra literature.
Always good to hear from you Wilson!
I got into a lively, civil debate with an anti-gun nut attorney (like I always do) on another comment board. He refuses to admit that the real common denominator in most of these incidents is a crazy or violent person.
Like the kid in Cali recently-he cant get laid, snaps, shoots a bunch of people, and its the NRA’s fault how?
Its better to have a gun a not need it, than need one and not have it.
Lib, you could not be MORE on point and exactly correct.
We have a country full of cowards who want to BE protected rather than PROTECT.
And for all the flaming libs who want to talk about our gun ownership/murder rates being highest anywhere in the world, they are correct. The dirty little secret is, remove the numbers from the inner city of DC, Chicago, Detroit and KC and guess what happens? We zoom to the bottom of that list.
So I ask you, do we have a gun problem or do we have a bigger issue with a culture of violence that lives within our inner cities? Do we have a gun problem or a bigger issue with a breakdown of the family unit and male leadership?
Control alllllllll the guns you like. Our cities will continue to decay from the heart outward and guns will still flurish when the bad guys need them.
We are a spineless society who refuses to look at the problem head on. Know why? That would make you a racist. Do you want to be a racist? Hell no. So that stops everyone in their tracks, as powerless as the TSA when it comes to doing something that matters!
tsa….what would you suggest they do as something that
matters?????
please expound professor.
was on flight to ny….seemed normal for the times…
I got special notation on my ticket and bypassed
the regular check thru.
must be I’m a celebrity!!!!!
Everything you say is true Paul, ( but you and the rest of us already know that). Speaking only for myself ( is there any other way?) all I’d like is some way for health care professionals, counselors, psychologists, whatever, to be able to make some notation with regards to a person they may be seeing that has exhibited a dangerous behaviorial trait that might play out badly and would be shared on a national basis, creating the probability that a gun background check would show up, preventing a dealer from making that sale. Maybe even notify law enforcement of the situation so they could follow up. ( Man was that a run-on sentence or what ??) . I realize some would call this an invasion of privacy and another example of Big Brother trying to take away our 2nd amendment rights.
You are absolutely correct that there is a breakdown of the family, a frightening excess of violence in our inner cities, and anyone who wants a gun can get it pretty easily. All valid points. I’ll also admit that I’m one of the first people that point out racists. All I’m saying is that it crushes my spirit and breaks my heart every time I see a grieving parent on television whose child was murdered by a crazy. Yes, we need to face head on the breakdown of the family, the ridiculous violence of our inner cities, and our almost infinite other problems. But can’t we find enough common ground to take this small step. Just stoping one crazy from getting a gun would be worth it. As a parent, I’m am so thankful that both my kids are out of elementary school, high school, and college. Seems like these stories are on the news daily. I don’t know the answer but …..
A large dental college is my client. I went down to take a look at a job we are doing and while gathering my thoughts in the waiting area, I was seated across from 2 moms, obviously there waiting for kids getting deep discount dental care.
They started out in normal conversational tones but it reached a frantic pitch as they commiserated with each other over the attitudes of their son’s teachers over their grades. The air turned blue with swear words used to describe these teachers and administrators having the nerve to admonish their two sons over grades. The final comment involved one telling the other that if it happened one more time, she was going to “go get up in bitches face” and tell her to shut the F up because her son wasn’t there to please her fat ass over grades, HE was there to play “bassetball” and his teachers needed to understand that before she had to “come up in there and beat it into them.”
Yes, I’m sad too when we see grieving parents of slain kids, it would break anyone’s heart especially if you have kids of your own. But at the same time, this problem is bred so deep I’m not sure what’s going to fix it.
THAT STORY IS B.S…..
COME ON WISLUN./////
where was this at?
why try to pull stuff over us.
just so happened….
just like the jewel dude…..
you crack us up!!!!!!
but I give you e for effort
Harley, you dolt, the story happened where I said it happened 4 feet from me.
I love how you discredit anything with no facts to back it up . But in the end, as I said earlier, a lion loses no sleep over the opinion of sheep. For clarification, you are the “sheep.”
In other news, in New York.
http://nypost.com/2014/06/10/shootings-spike-in-nyc-over-the-last-year/
Good shot(pun font on), Wilson.
Numbers dont lie; People do.
You worded my thoughts a LOT more eloquently than I would have, and I attribute that to your coiff.
My coif is my finest attribute, other than knowing Hearne.
Thank you for your kind sentiments.
Word .
To throw an added wrench into the horrible mix, we are in danger of stereotyping everyone with mental illness as a potential shooter. I don’t know of a more misunderstood minority population in this country than those who live with mental illness. And we are talking about taking away the constitutional rights of people who are far more likely to be victim than perpetrator.
Just one more angle.
No one opposes background checks? The republicans in the Senate plus a few democrats–http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/294571-senate-rejects-tougher-background-checks-on-gun-purchases. America – the leaders in murders among developed nations.
First, as a veteran, I believe there should be extensive background checks. I know people who have C&C, and they are nuts. Looking at this at a different angle, I am a local government employee, on the Kansas side. Government employees are allowed to bring have C&C to the workplace. Do I feel safer? No, I, as with many other employees are more scared of employees having side arms, then having an active shooter from the outside come in. Most of these people are not qualified to even shoot a weapon. I have read the training requirements, not impressive. Hitting a non-moving target is easy, they should be training on hitting a moving target. Also, the time and money in spent background checks for applicants is crazy. They are going back to the 50’s and 60’s looking at records. And still, most of them should never touch a hand gun.
where is your ace sports handicapper?
where is he now that royals are on fire…second plaace and moving
up…..
where is glaze?
2 games out…..with the best pitching in the al..
whats he think about davis and Holland now????????????????????
he’s hiding from Harley!
There’s only one sensible solution to this problem and it has nothing to do with gun laws: stop giving these individuals the attention they seek. They think by shooting up a school they’ll receive notereity – deny that and the mass killings will end. It’s not just mental illness that’s a problem it’s mental illness plus narcissism. Remove the ability to fulfill the latter by getting their names splashed all over CNN and these kinds of shootings will stop.
Normally I ignore anything by Conor Friedersdorf but agree with him on this one:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/05/mass-murder-should-not-be-a-ticket-to-fame/371599/
First Harley who are you to call out any stat printed here when you have never laid any proof of any of your outrageous comments. Seems we all decided to overlook that in a number of these cases the background check would have stopped nothing. Background checks are fine the VAST majority of gun owners undergo the wait and the delay in purchase to get cleared then responsibly take their purchases and safely store and use them. Queue the mass media to fuel insane personalities and psychopaths with “immortality” and the “do gooders” think the answer is to legislate a solution and when they can’t just ram it down our throats.
If you are a sativa or indica (FDA sched 1) end user then you are a “prohibited person”. As such you will be required to surrender your implements of destruction to Barry’s boy, Eric, per 1968 Gun Control ACT. So much for bad guy control.