Words can’t always stop a bad guy with a gun; are you willing to leave it to chance?
Aug 22, 2013, 9:56 AM | Updated: Oct 14, 2024, 12:54 pm
In this undated photo provided by the Dekalb County Police Department, Michael Brandon Hill poses with an AK 47-style rifle that authorities believed is the one he had when he was arrested at a Decatur, Ga., elementary school on Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013. Investigators say that Hill took the photo and packed up nearly 500 rounds of ammunition, then headed to the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy. No one was injured, but the suspect exchanged gunfire with police. (AP Photo/Dekalb County Police Department)
(AP Photo/Dekalb County Police Department)
Taken from Thursday’s edition of The David Boze Show.
There was a remarkable story earlier this week about a school employee that was able to talk down a 20-year-old man armed with an AK-47 that came into a school.
At this elementary school, we had a woman who’s a clerk at the school who stepped up to the plate. The appropriately named, Antoinette Tuff, stepped up, spoke to the 20-year-old potential shooter, Michael Brandon Hill, and convinced him to put down his weapons. Tuff told him she loved him. She was able to stop him with just her words.
Hill had gone into the school armed with an AK-47 style rifle and nearly 500 rounds of ammunition, police said. No one was injured, but police said the suspect shot into the floor and exchanged gunfire with officers who had surrounded Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, a suburb east of Atlanta. The school has 870 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.
Some are saying this case proves the NRA is wrong when they say “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
That is just nonsense.
Sometimes we call people who do evil things, we say that they’re sick or mentally ill, when the reality seems to be that they’ve chosen to engage in the exercise of fulfilling their evil fantasies.
For example, the three kids that killed Chris Lane, they’re not mentally ill, they’re evil. The guy who shot up Newtown, there’s a wickedness there. The guy who shot up the theater in Colorado, there is a glorification in the evil going on. They’re in there engaging in an orgy of their own desires.
In this case at the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, Tuff was able to talk him down, some shots were fired, but nobody was killed. This guy had the look of killing, but even during the incident, he was talking about his medication, he was ashamed of himself, so there’s something else going on here. He’s got a mental illness problem.
Stopping a man with a real mental illness problem is not the same as stopping a bad guy with a gun. A bad guy with a gun is somebody who is committed to doing bad things. This guy is mentally ill.
There is the potential that someone could be both, bad and mentally ill. But bottom line, these people got lucky. He could have said, ‘No I don’t like the way you spoke to me.’ The words ‘I love you’ could have done nothing. Antoinette Tuff could be dead.
This idea that somehow the NRA notion that in order to ‘stop a bad guy with a gun, you need a good guy with a gun’ has been invalidated, is nonsense. Are there times when words will do the job? Yes. Do you get lucky with that? Yes. Do you want to leave it to luck? That is up to you.
Taken from Thursday’s edition of The David Boze Show.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Related:
Seattle mayor encourages businesses to shun law-abiding citizens
Seattle gives businesses the option of being ‘gun free zones’
JS
