This is why I support concealed carry laws.

[gridlore]

8 Grocery Employees Stabbed in Tennessee

A knife-wielding grocery store employee attacked eight co-workers Friday, seriously injuring five before a witness pulled a gun and stopped him, police said.

Elartrice Ingram, 21, was charged with nine counts of attempted first-degree murder, police said. The attack apparently stemmed from a work dispute, investigators said.

Five victims, one in critical condition, were admitted to the Regional Medical Center, the main trauma hospital for the Memphis area. Three others were less badly hurt and treated at another hospital.

Ingram, chasing one victim into the store's parking lot, was subdued by Chris Cope, manager of a financial services office in the same small shopping center, Memphis Police Sgt. Vince Higgins said.

Cope said he grabbed a 9mm semiautomatic pistol from his pickup truck when he saw the attacker chasing the victim "like something in a serial killer movie."

"When he turned around and saw my pistol, he threw the knife away, put his hands up and got on the ground," Cope told The Associated Press. "He saw my gun and that was pretty much it."

Police arrived within minutes and took the Ingram into custody.

One citizen with a gun. No shots fired. And how many lives saved?

Comments

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Mind you, if Ingram had had a gun, how many murder chrages (as opposed to attempted murder) would there have been?

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

The point is that a deranged lunatic can use anything, and that law-abiding citizens would be far better off if we outgunned as well as outnumbered the lunatics.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Had Ingram planned his attack, and brought the usual plethora of weapons and ammo that are used in workplace massacres, he probably would have killed many more people.

But this was a case of him snapping, and using the weapons at hand. In this case, the citizen with the gun was able to step in and end the situation.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

My point being that if Ingram had had a gun (say a concealed carry permit) then he very likely would have killed people.

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

According to the stats, the people who go to the trouble of getting concealed carry permits are less likely to attempt to commit homicide with a firearm.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

No, the proper solution is to BAN KNIVES!!!1!

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

Ah. You must be British.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

No, but the Brit's have the right idea!!!! As long as a single sharp edge or hard surface exists, innocent people are in danger! Fortunately, The Onion, as always, points the way to a brighter future. (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30359) ;-)

[aitkendrum.livejournal.com]

But why even have guns at all in public hands? Yes, it saved lives this time but how many more massacres have there been with guns in wide civilian circulation.

I certainly feel better living in a society where I know Joe Bloggs isn't at least allowed to carry guns.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson

The United States was founded by people who understood that the greatest threat to liberty is rarely an outside invading army, but the tyranny of one's own leaders. Elected or raised to power by birth the natural tendacy of those in power is to increase power. When military power is entirely in the state's hands, oppresion becomes easy.

How many massacres? A few. How many times have firearms saved an abused wife or stopped a crime? Far more often.

If you look at the stats, states with liberal Concealed Carry laws have lower violent crime rates; even in dense urban areas.

And frankly, I'm not worried about Joe Bloggs. I'm worried about the gang-banger who could really care less about the laws and carries a gun.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

As a young liberal, I was much in favor of gun control. I also believed that most people were basically good and rational, and violence was something that could be eventually eliminated, to the improvement of society and the species. In retrospect, I find this perspective charmingly naive.

I have never handled a gun or learned how to. Frankly, the notion scares me, because I don't want that responsibility; I do not want to hold the power of death in my hand. I'm very grateful to all those in uniform (of one sort or another) who do bear arms so that I don't have to; noncombatant-by-choice is a remarkably privileged status, both historically and in the world today.

The argument that guns in private hands help protect us from the government is a bit specious, however; at the time that the Second Amendment was penned, the weapons available to the government and private citizens were essentially the same. (Heck, we didn't even HAVE a standing army back then.) Nowadays, well... I don't see a lot of people with Apache gunships in their backyards. A notional armed rebellion these days would have to rely as much upon unconventional, improvised weapons (IEDs, etc) as store-bought firearms. Gulf Wars 1 and 2 have demonstrated that you can't outfight the US Army on level ground, but you can hurt the willingness of the State to keep fighting.

On the personal scale, guns are excellent equalizers between the large and the small. Again, as a man, I'm grateful that I don't have to seriously consider carrying such a weapon for my own safety.

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

I certainly feel better living in a society where I know Joe Bloggs isn't at least allowed to carry guns.

Yep. It's against the law for him to carry a firearm. Of course, it's also against the law for him to shoot people (in most circumstances).

The ones carrying legally in public aren't the ones leaving piles of bodies in their wake.

[murbin.livejournal.com]

I used to live in a neighborhood where I knew for a fact that every house on the street had multiple firearms in them. It was a middleclass housing development filled mostly with IBM employees. They were hunters and/or belonged to the pistol club a mile or so down the road. The typical house had at least one handgun, a rifle or three and a shotgun. My parents lived there for over 30 years. Not one single firearm related incident.

Now, I've been in sections of LA where every third person (at least) was carrying and unregistered/illegal handgun. Crack dealers need them for their job. I felt a lot less safe there then I did back amoung the more heavily armed IBMers.

If you do independent research on the victim disarment laws in the US, you will end shaking your head and wondering how they got passed in the first place.

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

If you do independent research on the victim disarmament laws in the US, you will end shaking your head and wondering how they got passed in the first place.

Because most of the discussion of this issue takes place on an emotional level, rather than on an intellectual level.