Ross: A worst case scenario for two good guys with guns
Oct 17, 2019, 8:04 AM | Updated: 10:30 am
(Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News via AP)
It started with this phone call to Fort Worth police:
“Their front doors have been open since ten o’clock, it’s not normal for them to have both of the doors open this time of night.”
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That was from James Smith, who saw the doors open at neighbor Atatiana Jefferson’s home at 2:30 a.m. He was worried, and as he later explained, he just wanted an officer to check it out.
“When I made that non-emergency call, I didn’t say it was a burglary; I didn’t say is people are fighting across the secret; I didn’t say anything that would make them think they needed to … have a gun,” he described.
But of course the police officer did have a gun, and so did Atatiana Jefferson.
When she heard the noise outside, she probably wasn’t thinking, “it’s a police officer here to help me.” She probably thought, “bad guy.” So she went to her purse and got her gun.
And when the police officer saw that gun through the window, instead of thinking, “that’s just the homeowner protecting herself,” he too thought, “bad guy.”
He pulled his trigger before she could pull hers.
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Only when it was too late did the truth come out: That up until the moment the shot was fired, there were no bad guys; only two good guys — two good guys with guns.
Which, as we have been told so many times, is what will make us all safe.