Good Guy with a Gun #194: Portland, OR
We don’t recharge fire extinguishers because we’re afraid. We don’t carry guns because we’re afraid, either. | Original incident: May 9, 2024
These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is somewhat updated from the calendar version.
“Why do you carry a gun?” anti-gunners say. “What are you afraid of?”
Maybe it’s the guy who was “aggressively banging on apartment windows” at 9 PM in downtown Portland.
“Call 911,” they say.
Multiple people did. The police didn’t come quickly enough to do anything about it.
“Call apartment security,” they say.
Two private security guards tried to get him to leave. It didn’t work. In fact, while they were talking to him, he charged at a passerby.
“Run away,” they say.
But when you try to run away, he just. keeps. coming.
We don’t carry because we’re afraid, any more than we recharge our fire extinguishers because we’re afraid.
We do it because things happen outside of our control, and we need to be ready to deal with them as well as we can.
“Violence is never the answer,” they say.
But of course violence can be part of the answer. The judicious application of gun violence has helped prevent further violence hundreds of thousands of times a year. The mere threat of gun violence has helped prevent further violence even more hundreds of thousands of times a year.1
In this case, the passerby judiciously used his gun — lawfully acquired, lawfully carried — to shoot a single bullet at the man who was trying to inflict violence on him.
That man went to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The passerby was apparently uninjured.
Anti-gunners are wrong about most things. This one incident demonstrates many of them — though not even close to all of them.
Sources
Local news
The only local news source I could find with this story was KOIN 6. Hit the link for the web page, or watch the YouTube video below.
“Man shot by passerby after disturbance in downtown Portland” is the headline. Maybe that should read, “Man bangs on windows, assaults passerby, gets shot.” It’s both clearer and shorter.
Or at least say “Man shot by passerby after causing disturbance in downtown Portland.” It’s not like the gun shot itself for no reason.
Specialist/2A media
Sean Holt at USACarry and Brandon Curtis at Concealed Nation also covered the story.
One survey clearly showing this result is the 2021 National Firearms Survey conducted by Georgetown University’s William English. Because I dislike trusting any particular single survey, I recommend David Kopel’s article at Reason, “Refereeing the Debate over the 2021 National Firearms Survey.” Kopel describes English’s results this way:
His estimates of defensive gun uses (DGUs) — 1.67 million times a year, with a shot fired in about 300,000 — is [sic] credible, if one believes that DGUs can be measured at all.
Especially well done on this one. Someone once remarked to me that she didn't want to go around being afraid of people all the time, and I told her that the fact that someone I am usually with carries is _why_ I am _not_ afraid all the time. Alert, yes, but not afraid.