Good Guy with a Gun #193: Cheltenham Township, PA
DoorDash drivers don't carry cash, but they can still be targets. This one was glad he carried a gun. | Original incident: May 7, 2024
These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.
DoorDash drivers don’t carry cash; nonetheless, they can be targets of opportunity for carjackers and thieves.
In Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, a driver with a legal gun and a permit to carry received a call to the Lynnewood Gardens Apartments. He arrived there at about 2:40 AM. 18-year-old Divine Allen Hargrove and a partner were waiting for him.
Hargrove had a gun. The men demanded his keys.
The victim threw his keys to the ground, and then he says he heard a gunshot. He drew his weapon and fired back, making them run off.
A K-9 sniffed out Hargrove from a nearby hiding place. He had a “ghost gun” near him.
I hate that term, “ghost gun.” It means a gun that doesn’t have a serial number or other identifying marks on it. As usual, laws against ghost guns only imprison non-threatening people, while criminals just do whatever the heck they want.
Since that was the way all guns were when the Second Amendment was written, I think it should apply to “ghost guns” as well. But people like Dexter Taylor, an amateur gunsmith from Brooklyn, have been sent to jail for making or possessing them. (Here’s a GiveSendGo link to contribute to his legal defense fund.)
So I don’t have a problem with Hargrove’s “ghost gun” in principle. Nor his extended magazine with 26 rounds of ammunition. Nor his ski mask.
I don’t have a problem with any of the things.
I have a problem with Hargrove’s actions.
For those actions, he was taken to a correctional facility to face firearm and robbery charges. The other carjacker, unfortunately, got away.
Lt. Andrew Snyder noted, “They feel the need to arm themselves for their own personal protection and it’s incidents like this that kind of reinforce that philosophy.”
You think?
Sources
Primary
The Cheltenham Township PD posted about this crime to Facebook.
Local news
The news coverage all essentially repeats the PD’s report.
The only TV + web coverage I could find was from NBC 10 in Philadelphia.
Fox 29, Glenside Local, and Patch covered the incident.
The Philadelphia Tribune gave it a tiny paragraph in a big page about crime.
2A/specialist media
Ammoland and Dave Urbanski at Blaze Media covered the incident as well.
Wow. "They _feel_ the need" and such incidents "kind of reinforce that policy." Wow.