Posted on 01/10/2012 11:13:01 PM PST by neverdem
If the National Rifle Association had an award for Mother of the Year, it might already have a winner. When two men began to break into her home on New Years Eve, Sarah Dawn McKinley of Blanchard, Okla., popped a bottle into her crying three-month-old babys mouth and reached for her guns.
According to her account and that of police, she defended herself and her child in terrifying circumstances. To say McKinley was in the middle of nowhere would exaggerate the centrality of her location in a sparsely populated area about 25 miles outside of Oklahoma City. To say her home was vulnerable would exaggerate the security of a trailer with no alarm system or safe rooms. To say she was on her own would probably exaggerate her sense of connectedness, by herself, tending to her infant, after her husband had died of lung cancer on Christmas Day.
This is the stuff of nightmares. But McKinley never lost her cool. We know because, after shoving the couch in front of her door, she called 911 from her cell phone. The recording of the call should be put in a time capsule to capture the odd juxtaposition in 21st-century America of hardscrabble common sense on the one hand and a polite solicitousness toward the authorities on the other.
Im here by myself with my infant baby, can I please get a dispatcher out here immediately? she asked. Note the instinctive civility of the please. The answer was basically no. With three deputies covering 12,000 square miles, no one could get to her soon. McKinley stayed on the line an incredible 21 minutes. Then, she got to the crux of the matter. Ive got two guns in my hand, she told the operator. Is it OK to shoot him if he comes in the door?
This would seem a superfluous question if you believe your safety is at risk at the hands of someone forcibly entering your home. But not all states have the same castle doctrine as Oklahoma that gives homeowners an unambiguous right to shoot unlawful intruders. And not all jurisdictions are rational about firearms. Visiting New York City from Tennessee, where she has a gun permit, Meredith Graves brought a pistol in her purse to the 9/11 Memorial. When she saw a sign saying No Guns Allowed, she innocently asked guards where she could check her pistol. This query prompted her arrest on yes suspicion of carrying a loaded weapon. She could face jail time, in what promises to be the most pointless trial of the century.
Back in Oklahoma, the 911 operator was cagey, if unmistakable: I cant tell you that you can do that, but you do what you have to do to protect your baby. Thats all the permission McKinley needed. The confrontation ended badly for Justin Martin, a 24-year-old who McKinley says had been harassing her. Police found him dead of a single gunshot wound, armed with a knife. His accomplice told police that they both were high on prescription painkillers and thought they could find medications used by McKinleys late husband.
McKinley says she is sorry about Martins death, but would do it again. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in a case nearly a century ago, detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.
Instances of self-defense are the anecdotes that gun controllers never want to hear. The NRA keeps a running list of them on its website: attempted armed robberies, home invasions, and other attacks rebuffed every month by the would-be victims. Surely, Sarah McKinleys assailants thought the young, slender, widowed mother was an easy mark. Her shotgun meant they were wrong. Who would have it any other way? Otherwise, the intruder has the knife and she has nothing except a cellphone and the wan hope that someone armed with a gun makes it to her in time.
― Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com.
© 2012 by King Features Syndicate
© National Review Online
“awwww crap!”
Here’s another little known anectode that makes local gun controll advocates cringe. Back in the 90’s an abandoned vocational school campus was used by NYC to house some of their homeless. This was located in Chester, NY about 60 miles away. Sure enough there were a rash of break-ins, assaults, muggings, etc. In what could only be described as either shrewdness or abject cluelessness, one of the Chester town council members while addressing this problem to the local newspaper stated that he was “schocked and concerned” about the sudden increase in concealed carry permits being submitted to the Orange Cty Sherrif’s office. The crime rate in Chester plummetted overnight.
If I were the local paper in Chester, I would have made this a front page headline... I tend to think this was a warning shot from a redneck part of New York State.
I see the divide forming between the "Haves", and the "I want what the Have's have, I want it now, and I don't want to work for it)" crowd (can you say "Occupiers"?).
Do I sound PO'd? Good observation!
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