HOUSTON — A couple of strangers came to the rescue when a man was robbed at gunpoint. Now, the victim wants to say thank you to the Good Samaritans.
Police believe the criminal who was canvassing a neighborhood in the 2500 block of Wichita near Hermann Park had no idea what he was in for when he picked his target.
The victim in this case had just walked back to his car from a bar around the corner.
Kevin Dorsey says he hadn’t even closed his car door Thursday night when a man wearing all black and a ski mask put a gun to his chest. The man took Dorsey’s wallet, cell phone and car keys.
After he was robbed, Dorsey began running down the street and says two men in a Mercedes asked him what had happened.
Dorsey told them and they not only caught up with the suspect, but they started shooting at him.
The suspect fired back. In the end, the two witnesses turned vigilantes won and took down the bad guy.
“I don’t believe in guns,” said Dorsey. “I don’t own a gun. I’m totally at the mercy of my saviors. They obviously sent two angels to help me. These people protected me when I couldn’t protect myself.”
After the robber had been shot, police say he jumped over a fence and was attacked by a German Shepherd. That attack prevented him from getting away.
The suspect, identified as Christopher Hutchins, is being treated at Ben Taub Hospital. He’s expected to recover.
You’ll never hear the national media report on the hundreds of thousands of crimes preventing or stopped by law-abiding people who get concealed-carry permits and legally-owned firearms. It doesn’t fit their agenda.
UPDATE: Right Scoop posted this video of a very attractive young lady demonstrating that ALL the weapons that people want to ban are semi-automatic, and that means one trigger pull per bullet.
Shapiro: I think the reason that it’s about left and right here is because fundamentally, the right believes that the basis for the Second amendment–and they believe in the Second Amendment–the basis for the Second Amendment is not really about self defense, and it’s not about hunting. It’s about resistance to government tyranny. That’s what the Founders said, and that’s what the right believes in this country.
Morgan: Which tyranny are you fearing, yourself?
Shapiro: I fear the possibility of a tyranny rising in the country in the next fifty to a hundred years. Let me tell you something, Piers. The fact that my grandparents and great grandparents in Europe didn’t fear that is why they’re now ashes in Europe. So this kind of leftist revisionist history where there’s never any fear of democracy going usurpatious or tyrannical, is just that. It’s fictitious.
The fascism that arose in Germany in the 1930s sprang from a political vision called “National Socialism”. They stood against free trade, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and private ownership of arms – just like the Democrat Party of today. Socialism means big government, and big government means smaller individuals and less freedom.
Piers Morgan and the UK ban on guns
Whenever I get into discussions about gun control, I always mention two academic books by John R. Lott and Joyce Lee Malcolm.
Here is a paper by Dr. Malcolm that summarizes one of the key points of her book.
Excerpt:
Tracing the history of gun control in the United Kingdom since the late 19th century, this article details how the government has arrogated to itself a monopoly on the right to use force. The consequence has been a tremendous increase in violent crime, and harsh punishment for crime victims who dare to fight back. The article is based on the author’s most recent book, Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Harvard University Press, 2002). Joyce Malcom is professor of history at Bentley College, in Waltham, Massachusetts. She is also author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an AngloAmerican Right (Harvard University Press, 1994).
Upon the passage of The Firearms Act (No. 2) in 1997, British Deputy Home Secretary Alun Michael boasted: “Britain now has some of the toughest gun laws in the world.” The Act was second handgun control measure passed that year, imposed a near-complete ban on private ownership of handguns, capping nearly eighty years of increasing firearms restrictions. Driven by an intense public campaign in the wake of the shooting of schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland, Parliament had been so zealous to outlaw all privately owned handguns that it rejected proposals to exempt Britain’s Olympic target-shooting team and handicapped target-shooters from the ban.
And the result of the 1997 gun ban:
The result of the ban has been costly. Thousands of weapons were confiscated at great financial cost to the public. Hundreds of thousands of police hours were devoted to the task. But in the six years since the 1997 handgun ban, crimes with the very weapons banned have more than doubled, and firearm crime has increased markedly. In 2002, for the fourth consecutive year, gun crime in England and Wales rose—by 35 percent for all firearms, and by a whopping 46 percent for the banned handguns. Nearly 10,000 firearms offences were committed.
[...]According to Scotland Yard, in the four years from 1991 to 1995 crimes against the person in England‟s inner cities increased by 91 percent. In the four years from 1997 to 2001 the rate of violent crime more than doubled. The UK murder rate for 2002 was the highest for a century.
I think that peer-reviewed studies – from Harvard University, no less – should be useful to those of us who believe in the right of self-defense for law-abiding people. You might think that CNN actors would be vetted to make sure that they are familiar with research papers and academic books before they open their mouths, but actually they are just ignorant celebrities. They know nothing whatsoever about the things they talk about.
Amid energetic lobbying from both sides, the Obama administration is taking part in month-long negotiations at United Nations headquarters aimed at finalizing a conventional arms trade treaty, which supporters say will save millions of lives but opponents fear threatens to restrict Second Amendment rights at home and U.S. arms sales policies abroad.
[...]In a letter to Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the eve of the conference, 130 Republican lawmakers outlined their concerns that the treaty being negotiated could negatively affect U.S. security, foreign policy and economic interests – as well as Americans’ constitutional rights.
“The ATT must not accept that free democracies and totalitarian regimes have the same right to conduct arms transfers: this is a dangerous piece of moral equivalence,” the letter stated.
“Moreover, the ATT must not impose criteria for determining the permissibility of arms transfers that are vague, easily politicized, and readily manipulated,” it continued, referring in particular to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and Israel.
The lawmakers warned that they would oppose the appropriation or authorization of any taxpayer money to implement a “flawed” treaty.
The Bush administration in 2006 cast the lone negative vote when 153 nations passed a U.N. General Assembly resolution that began the treaty-drafting process, which is now in its final phase in New York. President Obama reversed that position in 2009, backing the initiative but making its support conditional on consensus decision-making.
[...]ATT proponents and the U.N. say the initiative will not affect domestic gun ownership, but Second Amendment advocacy groups are adamantly opposed to the treaty, which Gun Owners of America calls “a backdoor attempt by the Obama administration to impose radical gun control on America citizens.”
Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference last February, National Rifle Association vice-president Wayne LaPierre accused Obama of working behind the scenes with the U.N. on a “treaty that could effectively ban or severely restrict civilian ownership of firearms worldwide.”
“I’ve been around long enough to know that the U.N. has little regard for our Constitution and none at all for the Second Amendment,” LaPierre said. “But I never thought I’d see the day when an American White House would tolerate a proposal that would literally gut one of our most fundamental freedoms in this country.”
Last March Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) introduced legislation prohibiting any funds for negotiating an ATT that would restrict U.S. citizens’ Second Amendment rights. The bill has 19 co-sponsors, all Republicans.
I think when deciding whether to believe the nice-sounding words of the Obama administration, we should look at their record on gun control and their record of keeping their word. They are gun control radicals, and what they claim will happen to us before a bill is passed often isn’t any great predictor about what follows next. Remember “you can keep your current health insurance”? Not so much.
Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that the Second Amendment to the Constitution means that individual Americans have a right to bear arms, what can we expect?
Those who have no confidence in ordinary Americans may expect a bloodbath, as the benighted masses start shooting each other, now that they can no longer be denied guns by their betters. People who think we shouldn’t be allowed to make our own medical decisions, or decisions about which schools our children attend, certainly are not likely to be happy with the idea that we can make our own decisions about how to defend ourselves.
When you stop and think about it, there is no obvious reason why issues like gun control should be ideological issues in the first place. It is ultimately an empirical question whether allowing ordinary citizens to have firearms will increase or decrease the amount of violence.
[...]If the end of gun control leads to a bloodbath of runaway shootings, then the Second Amendment can be repealed, just as other Constitutional Amendments have been repealed. Laws exist for people, not people for laws.
There is no point arguing, as many people do, that it is difficult to amend the Constitution. The fact that it doesn’t happen very often doesn’t mean that it is difficult. The people may not want it to happen, even if the intelligentsia are itching to change it.
When the people wanted it to happen, the Constitution was amended 4 times in 8 years, from 1913 through 1920.
The whole point of strict gun control or lax gun control is to reduce violent crime rates. All we have to do is look and see whether stricter gun control, like the UK handgun ban of 1997, raises or lowers violent crime rates. It’s not for judges to make that assessment – it’s for the people, and their legislators, to decide. I used to be a judicial activist supporter when I was younger. But not after I read Tom Sowell’s “Conflict of Visions” book.
This point about judges interpreting the law also applies to businesses and capitalism. If judges can change the rules that businesses operate under arbitrarily, then fewer people will start businesses. It’s bad enough that they have to put up with so many taxes and regulations. If one loopy judge can take away everything you own by legislating from the bench, then what is the point of even trying to start a business?
If you want jobs, you need small business. If you want small business, you need strict constructionist judges. If you want strict constructionist judges, you vote Republican. (And you get pro-life and pro-marriage for FREE!)
Thomas Sowell is my #1 favorite economist.
UPDATE: Hot Air wonders how the liberal SCOTUS guys can oppose the clear meaning of the Constitution so openly.
After the first day of confirmation hearings, gun owners have good reason to worry. Those of us who respect the Second Amendment are concerned about the case of Maloney v. Cuomo, which reviewed whether this freedom applies to all law-abiding Americans or only to residents of Washington. If it’s incorporated, the Second Amendment prevents the states from disarming honest Americans. If it’s not, the Second Amendment is meaningless outside of our nation’s capital.
Judge Sotomayor was on the U.S. 2nd Circuit panel that decided the Maloney case in a short, unsigned and clearly incorrect opinion. The fact that the Maloney panel misread precedent in order to avoid doing the 14th Amendment “incorporation” analysis required by the Supreme Court is troubling to say the least.
Equally troubling is the fact that Judge Sotomayor said she wasn’t even familiar with the Supreme Court’s modern incorporation cases. There are few issues more important for a judge to understand than whether the fundamental guarantees in the Bill of Rights apply to all Americans. Our First Amendment right to free speech applies to all Americans. Our Fourth Amendment protection from illegal search and seizure applies to all Americans. It’s hard to believe that a potential Supreme Court justice wouldn’t be familiar with those cases.
Despite that judicial amnesia, Judge Sotomayor co-authored an opinion — in January — holding that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. So that leaves two options: Either she failed to follow the Supreme Court’s direction in Heller that judges are required to analyze the modern incorporation cases or she actually did review those cases but came to an incorrect conclusion. Neither option gives gun owners much confidence in her view of the Second Amendment.
Yoest is a calm, articulate, smart abortion opponent — the kind who gives abortion-rights supporters nightmares. Since virtually the moment Sotomayor’s name surfaced as a possible Supreme Court candidate, AUL has been conducting vigorous opposition research. It has set up two Web sites, including Sotomayor411.com that compares Souter to Sotomayor on a variety of issues, including abortion, end-of-life issues and the rights of abortion demonstrators. Suffice to say that Sotomayor doesn’t fare too well. And it has also has AskSotomayor.com, which lays out 10 questions that it says senators need to ask her.
I am so glad that we have someone intelligent and articulate to speak for us at Sotomayor’s hearings. A lot of people are pro-life, and are not really informed about it. But Charmaine is going to go out there and make a solid case in the little time she has available!
RT @newsbusters: MSNBC's Ratings Fall to Seven Year Lows - As NewsBusters has been reporting, Americans are tiring of MSNBC. Dead... http:… 13 hours ago
07/01/2010 • 6:00 PM 2
Tom Sowell on gun control and judicial activism
Thomas Sowell
His latest column is here.
Excerpt:
The whole point of strict gun control or lax gun control is to reduce violent crime rates. All we have to do is look and see whether stricter gun control, like the UK handgun ban of 1997, raises or lowers violent crime rates. It’s not for judges to make that assessment – it’s for the people, and their legislators, to decide. I used to be a judicial activist supporter when I was younger. But not after I read Tom Sowell’s “Conflict of Visions” book.
This point about judges interpreting the law also applies to businesses and capitalism. If judges can change the rules that businesses operate under arbitrarily, then fewer people will start businesses. It’s bad enough that they have to put up with so many taxes and regulations. If one loopy judge can take away everything you own by legislating from the bench, then what is the point of even trying to start a business?
If you want jobs, you need small business. If you want small business, you need strict constructionist judges. If you want strict constructionist judges, you vote Republican. (And you get pro-life and pro-marriage for FREE!)
Thomas Sowell is my #1 favorite economist.
UPDATE: Hot Air wonders how the liberal SCOTUS guys can oppose the clear meaning of the Constitution so openly.
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Filed under: Commentary, Constitution, Federalism, Firearms, Firearms Ownership, Gun Control, Interpretation, Judicial Activism, Jurisprudence, Ownership of Firearms, Second Amendment, Strict Constructionist, Supreme Court, Thomas Sowell, Tom Sowell