Those darn civilians with guns

Breaking news from Texas: a 43-year-old man came gunning for his ex-wife of 22 years and their adult son yesterday. He came prepared, wearing a bulletproof vest and waiting for them outside a courthouse. He was able to kill his ex-wife and wound his son, but was chased away and later cornered by police and killed.

Why am I interested? Because the only reason the son survived was the goodwill of an unrelated fellow citizen who saw the event going down and drew his own legally-carried concealed pistol and returned fire. According to reports, they exchanged rounds and the intervening good samaritan was killed. Before we start wailing about guns on the streets, read this quote about how it happened:

[T]he police chief said Wilson shot at Arroyo several times but his rounds weren't penetrating the armor.

"They traded shots, missing each other, and then the gunman hit Wilson and Wilson went down," Tyler Morning Telegraph publisher Nelson Clyde III said in Friday's editions of the newspaper. Clyde watched the shooting from a nearby restaurant.

"The gunman walked up to Wilson and shot him while he was on the ground," Clyde said.

So on the one hand you've got basically a madman who's intent on killing his own son, who would wound someone and walk up to them and without remorse finish them off point-blank; and on the other a bystander who's willing to lay his life down to protect someone he doesn't even know. Ask yourself which man you'd rather have own a gun, and which man is more likely to follow whatever gun control laws we see enacted. Personally I hope there's a Mark Wilson on hand if I ever find myself in the middle of a situation like that. Now realize that while it's very easy to take the gun out of Mark Wilson, the law-abiding citizen's hands, it's almost impossible to take it out of David Arroyo, the criminal's hands. That realization should preface and inform every conversation and debate about the principle and efficacy of gun control legislation.