William Saletan examines the case of the “armed hero” who rushed to help when he heard the Giffords shooting—and almost shot an innocent man in the process.
Now comes the tragedy in Tucson. And what do gun advocates propose? More guns… The new poster boy for this agenda is Joe Zamudio, a hero in the Tucson incident. Zamudio was in a nearby drug store when the shooting began, and he was armed. He ran to the scene and helped subdue the killer. Television interviewers are celebrating his courage, and pro-gun blogs are touting his equipment. “Bystander Says Carrying Gun Prompted Him to Help,” says the headline in the Wall Street Journal.
But before we embrace Zamudio’s brave intervention as proof of the value of being armed, let’s hear the whole story. “I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready,” he explained on Fox and Friends. “I had my hand on my gun. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this.” Zamudio demonstrated how his shooting hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and fire. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a gun. “And that’s who I at first thought was the shooter,” Zamudio recalled. “I told him to ‘Drop it, drop it!’ “
But the man with the gun wasn’t the shooter. He had wrested the gun away from the shooter. “Had you shot that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess,” the interviewer pointed out.
Zamudio agreed.
Um. I also did not shoot someone yesterday. Is that an argument against guns as well?
Many many people refrained from shooting anyone yesterday. I’m not really clear on how that point supports gun control arguments?
It shows that even a law-abiding citizen with good intentions and a registered weapon can mistake a good guy for a bad guy and end up killing an innocent person. This asshat did nothing at all to help the situation with his gun, but instead put another innocent person in danger.
That was big of you not to shoot anyone yesterday.
Eli is on a roll with mind-boggling posts lately. He should take over the Bieber beat.
Using responsible gun ownership as an example of the dangers of firearms in general won’t win any converts. It just makes them (or me) think that there is absolutely no evidence in favor of responsible gun ownership that you would ever accept. And I have mixed feelings about gun ownership myself. This guy did EVERYTHING right. You still think he did the wrong thing merely by owning a gun, apparently. I have a hard time imaging Eli with half the balls this (responsible!) gun-toting private citizen seems to have.
There are valid arguments to make against gun ownership. This certainly isn’t one of them.
@The Darkness – Wait, who mistook a good guy for a bad guy and killed an innocent person? Because that never happened in the article that I just read.
Ouch! My comment is deleted. Sorry if I hurt any feelings.
Anyway, let me try again: This tragedy is being used by EVERYONE, regardless of their political affiliation, to support their stances on pet issues. Hate guns? Check. Hate video games? How about pot? Check and check.
These “arguments” tell us nothing about anything other than the author hates such-and-such and will bend any current event to support his views, no matter how hard he or she has to strain.
Sorry I lied and said my post was deleted. Stupid browser and its stupid cache!
Jasper’s got it right.
The article quoted by Eli explains how a man who owned a gun was very responsible and didn’t use it. I don’t see how that’s an argument against guns.
I’m sure there are LOTS of things that he didn’t do that night. He also didn’t use a hammer that night, or a jetpack. Does the article also ‘prove’ that we need stronger laws against jetpacks?
I want to live in a country where we have a constitutional right to own a jetpack.
i’m calling BS on jaspeers reasoning. sure there are those that will use tragedy to further their own agendas, and this is no different. to say this guy did EVERYTHING RIGHT is really fucked up, from my point of view. as a gun owner myself, I am not going to rush into a situation like that with gun drawn, SAFETY OFF, no training, and no context. responsible gun ownership? right. just what we need is any clown with a concealed/carry running around trying to “protect” us. that does not take balls, BTW. just a gun.
i don’t want to take away from the gentleman in question, and his bravery to run into the situation looking to help (he did help keep the shooter subdued, apparently), it’s just that people running around like cowboys heading to a shootout with guns drawn is bound to turn tragic someday soon.
Whatever. Gun control is dead. It’s a fantasy. The Federal assault weapons ban, which ironically would have prevented Loughner from purchasing his weapon, expired in 2004 with almost no discussion (much less a political battle) over renewing it. Add it to the long list of issues the left has cravenly surrendered on in the last decade or so. And every time another massacre happens and someone timidly brings it up, they’re accused of exploiting a tragedy, as though they were a circling vulture and not, you know, a concerned citizen wondering why responsible discussion about gun ownership is absolutely verboten.
Is it really such an outlandish idea to have mental health screenings for people purchasing firearms?
@Ovidius – Nope, it’s sure not. I was only commenting on Eli’s failure of logic, here.
Sorry, Reymont. I was sort of obliquely addressing Jasper’s strawman remark about gun control being a “pet issue,” akin to video game and music censorship, that some are exploiting this tragedy for. As though guns are so unrelated to the massacre that Loughner’s Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol may as well have been a Nintendo Light Zapper.
For those of you who haven’t had firearms training, target acquisition is a course in itself. So the guy saw someone and didn’t shoot them. uhh.. Big deal?
@eric “i don’t want to take away from the gentleman in question, and his bravery to run into the situation looking to help”
But you spent the entire preceding paragraph doing just that.
@ovidius – there’s certainly room for disagreement but I don’t think anything I said rises to the level of a straw man.
” Is it really such an outlandish idea to have mental health screenings for people purchasing firearms? “
No. But that’s not the same as blaming guns for this specific event.
jaspeers – i spent the entire preceeding paragraph calling into questions your assertion that he did everything RIGHT, and the danger of allowing armed citizens running into conflicts like the one being discussed.
this dude obviously entered the fray looking to help, and eventually did that, putting himself in a very dangerous situation. kudos to him. doesn’t make me think his initial actions were in the public’s best interest. HE had the good sense to assess the situation in front of him before pulling the trigger, but i’m not convinced every yahoo carrying a pistol will take those extra seconds to be absolutely sure of who they’re pointing a deadly weapon at. jesus, they’re plenty of stories off cops shooting people they THOUGHT were holding a gun, and they’re TRAINED in those situations.
Driving my car yesterday, a person jumped out in front of me. I slammed on the breaks and avoided hitting them. This proves that cars should be illegal? Same logic. (Sarah Mirk will probably call this argument valid.)
I don’t see that this guy’s action says anything for or against gun ownership. He apparently didn’t save anyone or harm anyone. However, as someone who was kept safe as a child by the use of a gun — actually, just the threat of the use of a gun –, I’d like to know that responsible gun owners can continue to protect themselves and their families.
There are incidents that should make even the most ardent gun supporters take a second look at their beliefs, but this doesn’t seem to be one. This guy was a nutjob. As a nutjob, he probably would have come up with any method he could have, whether building a bomb or running his car through a crowd, to hurt people. The yearly statistics from any urban area would make a much stronger case.
The failure here wasn’t with gun policy. It was with people and systems that let someone who was obviously disturbed go on without intervention to help him and protect others. His family failed him and the eventual victims. As did the police who had dealt with him previously. As did his community college who was warned about him and saw fit to ban him from their school grounds, but made no effort to make sure that he was treated.
I’m not blaming guns for this. I’m blaming a psychopath who was able, with ease, to obtain a powerful assault weapon. There’s a reason it’s called “gun control.” This isn’t about abolishing the second amendment and rounding up everyone’s hunting rifles. No one is going to take away the handgun your dad kept in his sock drawer when you were a kid. It’s about responsible measures (“control”) that would help prevent a mentally deranged kid from playing Travis Bickle at a Safeway.
Any society that experiences as we do, with relative regularity, massacres of this kind would begin to ask serious questions about their gun policies. Why do we need assault weapons on the street? Why don’t we do mental health screenings, or at least background checks, before the approval of a weapons sale? This has nothing to do with exploitation, nor is it a tenuous “pet issue” only remotely related like video games or other media. Nor is this a slippery slope about banning all guns, or whatever red herrings come up about cars and papercuts also being deadly.
But the point is moot. Congress has already said it will not take up any form of gun control legislation. Not a big surprise.
@Ovidius: I think you need to get your facts straight.
A glock 9mm isn’t a powerful assault weapon. It’s a pretty standard semi-automatic pistol, similar to what a police officer carries. The only thing about this weapon that is questionable is the extended clip, which could hold about twice as many bullets as a standard clip.
A background check did occur and he passed. There has been some calls for more limitations on people with mental illness being able to acquire firearms in the wake of this, but even some liberal groups, such as the ACLU, have stood up against such measures. In general, you have to have a court judgment against you showing that you could be a harm to yourself or others before you would be blocked from purchasing a gun.
Most gun control happens at the state and local level, btw..
It sounds like gun control to me. He did not shoot the wrong person.
@Eric Cantona – An example of person who did everything CORRECTLY is NOT “Evidence That the Answer to Gun Violence is Not More Guns.” To make YOUR point, you would need an example of someone who made a MISTAKE. That’s just a retarded-level logic failure. You should have your keyboard taken away – this is diarrhea.
@ Reymont – nice. jump to conclusions much? point out to me where I said that this was “Evidence That the Answer to Gun Violence is Not More Guns.” it’s not a problem with my logical abilities when you fail at reasonable comprehension of an argument.
let me make my point as clearly as i can and then i’m done with this string. i don’t want UNTRAINED citizens wading into situations like this pointing deadly weapons at other human beings because eventually an innocent person is going to get dead, and i find that unacceptable.
never mentioned anything about gun control in any of my preceding posts. “retarded-level logic failure”? are you the pot, or the kettle?