My hometown…from today’s Daily Breeze:
A Torrance stamp and coin shop dealer shot and wounded a would-be armed robber Thursday, prompting support from neighbors who said the criminal “picked the wrong guy” to hold up.
The 79-year-old owner, reportedly robbed three or four times in the past year, fired one shot at the gunman at 1:50 p.m., hitting him in the hip. The suspected robber, Joshua Edward Reyes, 20, of Torrance was booked at County-USC Medical Center jail ward in Boyle Heights, Torrance police Lt. Patrick Shortall said.
…
Shortall said the shooting appears to be a “robbery that was interrupted by the victim.” Police will present their reports on the shooting to the District Attorneys Office to determine whether the shooting was self-defense.
The shooting was the second time in less than a year that a downtown Torrance business owner fired a gun at a robber.
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The crime rate in Torrance (12.7/1000) is 43% of the rate in Los Angeles, and 75% of the rate in Beverly Hills.
…“robbery that was interrupted by the victim.” Has kind of a good sound to it.
I have a correspondent who forwards me, using fake email addresses, stories about tragedies involving people hurting others with guns. I know, and we all know, about these because they are well-reported in the press.
In much of the country, stories like this one seldom get reported.
So, mystery correspondent, this one’s for you.
While the mystery corrspondent will likely write off all such references as Evil Gun-Nut Propaganda, the NRA regularly catalogues such incidents of defensive gun use in their “Armed Citizen” page.
If you’d care to look, keepandbeararms.com does a pretty good job of collecting defensive firearms stories from around the nation at their site at Operation Self Defense here: http://www.keepandbeararms.com/opsd/default.asp
There’s quite a few.
I read in one of the earlier blog entries that someone was arguing that no one in the US really wants to ban all guns…..And that there is no organization out there trying to ban all guns.
Well, let me present Exhibit A….
http://www.handgunfree.org/HFAMain/resources/quotes.htm