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Editor’s note: This is the final installment of the Good Guy with a Gun series.
Since the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the left has once again taken up its two-pronged attack on the Second Amendment: pushing additional gun control legislation in Congress and flooding the news and internet with anti-gun articles – many of which are merely clever works of fiction.
To combat the falsity – such as the myriad articles “debunking” the “good guy with a gun myth” – Liberty Nation will highlight six real stories this week focusing on incidents that would have gone horrifyingly differently had some good guy with a gun not intervened. The claim that private gun ownership doesn’t help stop crime is demonstrably false – and here’s the proof.
Trooper Saved by Passerby
In January of 2017, an Arizona state trooper who had been brutally attacked on the roadside was rescued by an armed motorist who happened to be driving by at the time. NBC News reported that the 27-year veteran trooper was responding to reports of shots fired at about 4 a.m. on Interstate 10, about 40 miles outside of Phoenix.
The officer spotted a rollover accident and a woman who appeared to have been thrown from the car. Naturally, he stopped to investigate. While blocking off the scene with flares, the trooper was shot twice – once in the shoulder and once in the right side of his chest – by a man who seemed to be waiting in ambush. After shooting the officer, the assailant then attacked him with his hands, slamming his head into the pavement repeatedly.
A passing motorist stopped, took out his weapon, and ordered the man to stop. When the officer’s attacker refused to relent, the passerby shot him and killed him.
Even the Police Need Help Sometimes
The driver was just a guy who happened to be headed to California with his wife. He saw the incident and stopped to intervene. If the anti-gunners had their way, that man wouldn’t have been able to own a firearm in the first place – never mind travel across state lines with it.
Had he not stopped the attacker, there would be one less Arizona state trooper alive today. It seems pretty clear that the attacker intended to kill the officer – and he planned to squeeze every bit of sick pleasure from the experience as possible. Why else would he put away his gun after shooting the officer twice in the torso to crush the man’s head against the pavement with his bare hands?
As mentioned earlier in this series, often times the good guy with a gun is a cop. But we’re all just human, and sometimes the police need help too. As Col. Frank Milstead, director of the Arizona Department of Public Safety said: "In our worst hour, we may need your help, and this was today. ... Thank you. Thank you for the support."
