The myth of the “good guy with the gun” is most often deployed as a cudgel to distract from the fact that guns in this country are most often not used for self-defense, but for crime, escalating grievances from petty to deadly, and generally providing easy opportunity for people to shoot themselves and their relatives, friends and coworkers either on purpose or, as is tragically frequent, on accident.
Still, pro-gun zealots love to trot out heroic good guy narratives anyway, claiming that it proves their point that a more heavily armed population is a safer population. One such banner incident arose this weekend at a Houston taqueria, where surveillance video showed an armed robber being shot and killed by a diner before the gunman leaves.
Was this necessary for self-defense? The robber seemed to be on his way out when the diner opened fire. After the assailant has fallen to the floor and is laying motionless, the vigilante keeps firing, a total of four more shots, including one at point-blank range to the head. This type of shot is often called “execution style,” but no jury and judge ever pronounced a death sentence in this case.
It’s clear that the robber mainly intended to make off with a couple hundred bucks. He was obviously not a mass shooter, and police have since said that his gun wasn’t even real. Even if it had been, he had fallen and dropped it before the final four shots. Without those, it’s possible the man would have survived. Police departments have internal policies that mandate they try to save the life of someone they’ve subdued or shot, but we apparently have no such compunctions with our civilian vigilantes.
Before the bad faith trolls roll in, obviously there have been scenarios where an armed bystander was able to stop carnage from taking place, like the man who stopped an active shooter at an Indiana mall. Yet it is dangerous to suggest that in every case, a bystander is justified in joining the fray.
