Georgia Gun Owner Gets 20 Years for Accidentally Killing a Kid While Defending Himself

 
 Luis Efrain Torres

Local news

A grandfather facing trial for felony murder and two counts of aggravated assault on Monday accepted a plea offer to voluntary manslaughter nearly two years after accidentally shooting his 23-month-old grandson.

Luis Efrain Torres was sentenced to 20 years to serve 15 years in confinement, said Dan Mayfield, chief assistant district attorney. The case was heard by Judge Karen Beyers and prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Samantha Routh.

The incident that brought Torres to court happened on Aug. 20, 2013 when Gwinnett County Police responded to a home on Stafford Drive in unincorporated Lilburn. Torres and his grandson’s father, Rochell McCoy, who was 29 at the time, were in an argument when police said Torres fired several shots at McCoy in the driveway. One of them struck 23-month-old Deandre Vega, three weeks from his second birthday. Vega later died at a local hospital. There were no other injuries.

Torres, who was 39 at the time, remained on scene and was present when officers arrived. He was charged with felony murder and aggravated assault.

Defense attorney Edwin Wilson brought up his client’s prosthetic right leg and the subsequent vulnerability when confronted by someone larger than him, such as McCoy. He stressed that Torres had asked McCoy to leave multiple times.

“Are you aware that nobody intended any harm to the child?” he asked Leak.

“Correct,” Leak responded.

Indiana Black Concealed Carry Permit Holder Shoots Two Whites for Calling Him Names and Demanding a Fight - Legitimate DGU?

Local news

Two men were shot over the weekend in Wayne County, IL and the sheriff's office says it appears to be a case of self-defense.

The sheriff says two men, who are white, made racial remarks to an African-American man, 26-year-old Erick Paula, at a party Saturday night.

The sheriff says when Paula was driving home around 3:30 Sunday morning, Greenwood and Barrowman came up behind him and flashed their lights. Paula pulled over because he thought the car was trying to pass.

The sheriff says Greenwood and Barrowman then confronted Paula and said they were "looking for a fight."

Paula warned them he had a gun permit and didn't want to fight.

The sheriff says the men continued to try to fight him, so Paula pulled out his gun and fired ten shots. Barrowman was shot once, and Greenwood was hit several times.

The sheriff says Paula immediately reported what happened to the sheriff's office.

We're told it will likely be up to a grand jury if charges will be filed on anyone.

Where’s The Coverage Of Heroes Who Stop Mass Killings?

Ammoland by John Lott

Heroic citizens stopping someone from killing a large number of people don’t seem to be considered news worthy.

Don’t people want to read about a brave soul risking his life by running towards the sound of gunfire while others run away?  Yet, such stories never get national news coverage by the national mainstream media.

While accidental gunshots get national coverage, few people have any idea how often concealed handgun permit holders stopping mass killings.

The lack of news coverage allows left wing media outlets, such as Mother Jones which should know better, to falsely claim: “In not a single case was [a mass public shooting] stopped by a civilian using a gun.”

The truth is that the more successful these heroes are in preventing people from getting killed, the less media coverage they receive, but the lack of fatalities doesn’t explain the lack of news coverage.  And if the heroes hadn’t been there, the attacks would have been successful and the national mainstream media would have been talking about the attack for days.

It's thoroughly dishonest, as we've come to expect, for John Lott to pretend the lack of coverage of stopped mass killings is because of media bias. It's simply and obviously because there's no proof that something which hasn't happened yet, would have happened.

Having said that, it's also unfair for Mother Jones to imply that no mass shooting has ever been thwarted.

It seems to me that the handful of anecdotal cases cited in the article are just that, a handful of anecdotal cases. The numbers would not add up to much - but of course, no one knows.

Indiana Man Mistakes His Brother for Burglar - Kills Him

Local news with video

A homeowner interrupted a burglary in progress at his home Saturday afternoon and fatally shot the intruder, police said.

Investigators later confirmed the homeowner and the intruder were brothers.

A Rare Legitimate DGU - In New Jersey of All Places

--(Ammoland.com)- The owner of a northern New Jersey supermarket shot and killed a would-be robber who pointed a gun at him.

Essex County prosecutors say the shooting at the Neighborhood Deli Supermarket in Newark occurred around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. They say no charges have been filed against the store owner, who legally possessed the gun he used in the shooting, but would not release his name.

Prosecutors say 46-year-old Newark resident Mark Robinson pulled out a gun shortly after he entered the Irvine Turner Boulevard store. They say he pointed the weapon at the store owner, who then fired at Robinson.

Robinson was taken to a hospital, but was pronounced dead there a short time later. The store owner was not injured.

Prosecutors say Robinson’s gun was found at the scene.

How much bullshit are alleged DGUs anyway?

In this case, the DGU that turned out to be false, when someone in Doylestown claimed that the Souderton mass shooter, Bradley Stone, had tried to carjack him.  Instead of making himself a hero, this claim diverted police attention and resources from the manhunt.

"We contend that he performed an enormous hoax that cost taxpayers a lot of money," Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler said at a news conference Friday night. "This is terrible conduct. This is unacceptable conduct."

However  the police officers were suspicious about the claim, according to Heckler.

And well the officers should have been suspicious since the two locations are about 13 miles apart.  Mapquest says it would take about a half hour to drive this, which is probably optimistic given the stop lights and traffic.

Of course, the pro-gun side is happy to look at these incidents as proof that ""guns save lives" when the reality here was that it wasted police resources.

I have to admit curiosity as to how many DGUs are actually verifiable incidents: especially now that the Get Away With Murder laws have stopped any inquiry as to the actual events when someone claims "self-defence".  Short of a major amount of evidence to the contrary, the claim of self-defence stands.  In fact, even with evidence to the contrary, the claim can pass (e.g., Trayvon Martin).

Breaking, it seems that Bath Township detectives believe they have “overwhelming evidence” to prove a former Navy SEAL, Chris Heben, lied when he claimed he was shot during an altercation with three black men outside of a popular shopping center.

"We have overwhelming evidence based upon video, cell phone records and interviews that the shooting did not occur in the West Market Plaza and that Mr. Heben made false allegations to us," said Bath Township Police Chief Mike McNeely.

George Zimmerman recently pointed out that you should have insurance if you are going to go around shooting people due to the legal costs.

Nothing I haven't been telling you, but you all know the law better than I do.

Yeah. right.

See also:

• Bucks man accused of carjacking hoax during manhunt for Bradley Stone
• Manhunt for Shooting Spree Suspect Bradley Stone Intensifies in 2nd Day | NBC 10 Philadelphia
• Bath Twp. Police: Former Navy SEAL Chris Heben lied about getting shot at West Market Plaza - newsnet5.com Cleveland

Illinois Home Invasion Sparks Wild Defensive Shooting - 1 Bad Guy Dead, 1 Wounded

Local news reports

Media Bias against Defensive Gun Uses?

I know, I know, you would like me to say that things which don't exist just happen to exist, but unlike an certain intellectually dishonest person (or is he just a pretentious, ignorant fool?), I will not say things I have not found to be true are true.

There is no proof for the 2.5 million defensive gun uses that are claimed by the pro-gun side, which is no surprise since scrutiny usually shows that their arguments are specious.

That said.  The York (PA) Daily Record ran the following editorial about this topic:

Here's another in a series of occasional editorials pointing out that "the media" (or at least this media) do, in fact, report on "defensive gun uses."

Many Second Amendment enthusiasts and letter-to-the-editor writers believe that news organizations refuse to publish stories about people who use their firearms to protect themselves. Some researchers estimate there are more than 2 million defensive gun uses annually in United States, the vast majority of which go unreported.

Other scholars say such uses are far more infrequent. Much depends upon how you define a defensive gun use and whether or not a person who, say, flashes a gun at someone who appears to be a threat reports such incidents to police.

But the bottom line is that when such incidents are reported to police, and police share such information with reporters, it's very likely to be printed in newspapers and online.

Such was the case with a story that appeared in page D5 in last Sunday's edition.

Southwestern Regional Police said a 31-year-old Glenville resident used a gun to greet a man who allegedly kicked in her front door at 7:45 a.m. March 26.

According to the story: "When the man entered her home in the 770 block of Glenville Road, the woman pointed her gun at him and told him not to come any closer. He allegedly obeyed her order and left the residence."

According to police, the man apparently stepped out of a neighboring home, became disoriented and believed he was returning to the same house — and his friend had locked him out.

He was charged with criminal mischief, a minor infraction. Police and the homeowner believed his story of disorientation.

If the story as reported is accurate, the alleged intruder might be lucky to be alive because, according to the Castle Doctrine, the woman might have been within her rights to shoot first and ask questions later.

This seems like an appropriate use of a gun for self-defense — and you might even argue the woman used admirable restraint.

That, of course, is not to say that defensive gun uses can't go horribly wrong.

We've all heard stories of people who shoot and kill friends or family members, thinking they are intruders. See: Oscar Pistorius, the South African track star who claims such a scenario in the shooting death of his girlfriend — though the jury in his ongoing trial will determine the veracity of his story. Also see a recent case in Fayetteville, Franklin County, where a man allegedly took the gun of an armed intruder and hunted him down, shooting him.

These kinds of cases should make all well-intentioned gun owners think twice about whether it's a good idea to keep a loaded weapon under the mattress or in a bedside table.

We think gun owners should keep their weapons locked up and unloaded to avoid mishaps — perhaps even tragic mishaps where a child finds such a weapon. We've all heard many of those kinds of stories too.

Gun storage is an issue that gives rise to reasonable debate.

What's not reasonable, however, is the conspiracy that some Second Amendment enthusiasts believe exists to keep gun-related self-defense stories out of the news.

It's just not accurate.

When we hear about such stories from official sources such as police, we report them.

They're usually interesting stories. They bring high reader interest. There would be no logical reason not to report them.

That doesn't necessarily mean they belong on the front page. But they do have a place in print and online.

There's no need to fan the flames of antipathy between the First and Second Amendments.

They're both important freedoms. They can both be used for good or ill — and most news organizations do their best to report both.

In other words, even the media admit that they would report these if they were as common as is claimed by the "pro-gun" side.

So, my answer to the people who keep repeating that the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution covers a personal right is that I have looked into it and found that is not the case.

I will not take the word of someone on the internet who I don't know and will not provide his credentials and qualifications for his "opinion".

Not all opinions carry the same weight, and from what I have seen of this person's knowledge and expertise, his is not worth paying attention to.  In fact, I'm not sure why I am mentioning him other than I find him ignorant and intellectually dishonest.  I sincerely doubt he has the qualifications he claims as well.

If he were intellectually honest, he would not be  "pro-gun".

Diane Sawyer's Examples of Defensive Gun Uses

Slate Mistakenly Represents DGUs vs. Gun Crime

Slate

7. Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively. “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year … in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008,” says the report. The three million figure is probably high, “based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys.” But a much lower estimate of 108,000 also seems fishy, “because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.” Furthermore, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

I don't know where the "300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008" comes from.  I thought it was more like 500,000.  But the problem is this figure does not include all the kinds of incidents that are included in the DGU count. DGU estimates are based on a calculation that a certain percantage are unreported brandishings.

So, the Slate editorsseem to have been trying too hard to be fair and objective to have allowed such an apples and oranges comparison as that.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Guns Do More Harm than Good

 Washington Post

Overall, the Justice Department report said, firearm-related homicides dropped from 18,253 homicides in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011, while nonfatal firearm crimes declined from 1.5 million in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011. The drop extended to schools: Homicides at schools declined from an average of 29 per year in the 1990s to an average of 20 per year in the 2000s.

This is why the gun-nuts must hang onto those absurdly high DGU estimates.  Even without suicides, we have on the order of a half-a-million gun crimes REPORTED. The true number is obviously much higher.

In order to exceed that number for defensive uses, they have to include every possible incident, many of which are actually offensive and criminal, and then they have to factor in a whopping 95% for estimated brandishing events.

Obviously, this is a fatuous argument.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

The Scientific Rebuttal to Large DGU Estimates

The Huffington Post

Though the scenario plays out in virtually every western and action film ever made, good guys stopping bad guys with guns is a rare occurrence as we know from reports from the U.S. Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice and the Harvard Injury Control Policy Research Center's David Hemenway. Every year there are even a few token incidents in the news of this occurring, but for most part these events are uncommon. And there is a good reason for why that is: Human physiology.

When people are put in a crisis situation the fight-or-flight response is triggered and the sympathetic nervous system kicks into action involuntarily. Stress hormones like epinephrine are released en masse into our blood stream increasing arterial pressure and blood flow to major muscle masses, dilating the blood vessels. This boosts our gross motor skills. Still some blood vessels constrict which reduces blood flow to the ends of appendages to limit injuries. The heart rate increases. A report from Killology Research Group, that studies the science of combat, explains that "extreme SNS activation will cause catastrophic failure of the visual, cognitive, and motor control systems." Tunnel vision and auditory exclusion impair our ability to take in our surroundings, we lose complex motor control (meaning we fumble performing anything but the most basic movements) and irrationality and confusion prevent sound action.

Your Brain in a Shootout: Guns, Fear and Flawed Instincts

Time

In the roiling national set-to over whether guns would make schools safer, most of the debate has been a caricature of itself. One side wants to install guns in every school, and the other wants to banish them. “I wish to God [the principal] had had an M-4 in her office, locked up,” Republican Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas said on Fox News after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, “so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out … and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids.”

But the research on actual gunfights, the kind that happen not in a politician’s head but in fluorescent-lit stairwells and strip-mall restaurants around America, reveals something surprising. Winning a gunfight without shooting innocent people typically requires realistic, expensive training and a special kind of person, a fact that has been strangely absent in all the back-and-forth about assault-weapon bans and the Second Amendment.

This is a fascinating analysis of the phenomenon of a gunfight.What do you think?

Please leave a comment.

Georgia Mom Shoots Intruder

CBS Reports

In a 10-minute 911 recording released by the Walton County Sheriff's Office, Donnie Herman calmly explained what was happening to a dispatcher. His part of the conversation with his wife was also recorded. "Is he in the house, Melinda? Are you sure? How do you know? You can hear him in the house?" Donnie Herman said. His wife told him the intruder was coming closer.

"He's in the bedroom? Shh, shh, relax. Just remember everything that I showed you, everything that I taught you, all right?" Donnie Herman told his wife, explaining later to the dispatcher that he had recently taken her to a gun range.

After Donnie Herman told his wife police were on the way, he started shouting: "She shot him. She's shootin' him. She's shootin' him. She's shootin' him. She's shootin' him."  "OK," the dispatcher responded.

"Shoot him again! Shoot him!" Donnie Herman yelled. He told the dispatcher he heard a lot of screaming, but he seems to get increasingly worried when he doesn't hear anything from his wife.

Melinda Herman told police she started shooting the man when he opened the door to the crawl space. The man pleaded with her to stop, but she kept firing until she had emptied her rounds, she told police. She then fled to a neighbor's house with her children.

The man drove away in his SUV. Police found the SUV on another subdivision street and discovered a man bleeding from his face and body in a nearby wooded area. Police identified the suspect as 32-year-old Paul Slater of Atlanta.

She fired until the gun was empty and they guy was still able to drive away? And she kept firing even when they guy was down and begging her to stop?

These questions make me wonder about the story. What do you think?  Isn't there a better way to handle it when you see someone intent on breaking into your home?  Most burglars are not intent on rape and murder.  I would think if they knew there was armed resistance awaiting their entry they'd just go away.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

More Proof that DGU Claims are Exaggerated

Like approximately 30,000 other interested people, I read The Truth About Guns every day. I find it to be the single greatest source of information on gun rights and gun control issues, bar none. Recently the readership has topped 1 million unique visitors per month, which breaks down to over 30,000 a day.

Regular commenters must number about 100, maybe more, and one of their favorite topics is DGUs, defensive gun uses.  They have a lot at stake in pushing the exaggerated and inflated estimates of how many DGUs there are each year.  The most popular and most frequently repeated is the famous 2.5 million which Professors Kleck and Gertz came up with some years ago.  If this were true, gun control folks would be hard pressed to compete. Fortunately, many people in many ways have debunked this ridiculous claim, my favorite is The Propaganda Professor's.

Here's another one. If there are 100 million gun owners and 2.5 million DGUs per year, the percentage of gun owners who use their gun defensively each year is 2.5%.  Agreed?

If there are 30,000 unique daily readers of TTAG and 2.5% of them have personal defensive gun uses each year, we should see 750 first-hand reports each year.

I have seen none, not one single first hand report of a defensive gun use by a TTAG reader. Of course it's possible that I missed one or even ten, but there should have been 750, that's more then 2 each day.

Before anyone gets upset about my slanting the numbers, let's do this. Even many gun-rights fanatics admit the 2.5 million figure is too high.  They often say a million or so.  That would bring the 750 down to 300. And let's say there may be readers who are too shy to share their experience on the internet.  I find that hard to believe but let's go wild and say HALF of the folks who have saved lives with their guns and read TTAG every day chose to keep it to themselves.  Now we're down to 150.

I repeat, I have seen none.

The explanation is obvious.  Estimates that put the true figure of DGU down around 1,000 per year make for a percentage that looks like this: 0.00001%.  When you apply that percentage to the 30,000 TTAG readers it's easy to see why we don't regularly see reports of defensive gun use.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

More Hilarity from the Kleck Gertz "Study"

The National Institute of Research on the Kleck and Gertz telephone interview which produced the famous 2.5 million figure. From page 8.  via democommie

Forty-five respondents reported a defensive
gun use in 1994 against a person
(exhibit 7). Given the sampling
weights, these respondents constitute
1.6 percent of the sample and represent
3.1 million adults. Almost half of
these respondents reported multiple
DGUs during 1994, which provides
the basis for estimating the 1994 DGU
incidence at 23 million. This surprising
figure is caused in part by a few
respondents reporting large numbers
of defensive gun uses during the year;
for example, one woman reported 52!

How Many DGUs Are There? Further Explanation

The last paragraphs of The Propaganda Professor's response to Frail Liberty.

Yet you have chosen to adamantly take exception to that observation. Well okay. No harm will come to you because of it. But surely you will concur that those cases in which a gun was fired generally make it into the media. No, wait – I’ll more than meet you halfway. Surely you’ll concur that those instances in which the offender is killed or wounded will generally make it into the media. Well, those add up to roughly 300 per year. But let’s continue to be generous and call it 500.

Now according to Kleck-Gertz, these comprise 8 percent of the total. As I’ve stated before, this figure is surely far too low, because Kleck and Gertz are extremely loose in their definition of a defensive gun use. But I don’t have a better figure to offer, so we’ll use it. If the generously high figure of 500 represents the generously low figure of 8 percent, then that makes the total around 6250. It’s simple grade school arithmetic. People who claim that my “math is off” are not only incorrect, they’re off track. It’s not exactly MY math that has become the basis of dogma.

Bottom line: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof; but the only “proof” ever offered for the extraordinaily high DGU counts is that some people say so. Sorry, but I find that quite inadequate. The 2.5 million claim is a legendary beast of titanic proportions, and if it existed, it would leave an appropriately large footprint. But the only footprint in evidence so far is miniscule. Show me the behemoth footprints and I’ll consider it more likely that the beast itself exists. Until then, I must remain skeptical.

I'm not as reluctant to use speculation as the Professor is.  I believe that a significant percentage of those 300 to 500 reported DGUs each year are false.  And I believe an even higher percentage of the rest are false, the ones that don't get reported at all.

This brings us right back down to the 500 mark. 

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Estimating the Number of DGUs

The Propaganda Professor made this wonderful post about six months ago. To my mind there has never been a better, more thorough and convincing explanation of this subject.

He concludes:

This is not a scientific study, just a suggestion or two about how one might be conducted. My figures may not be precise but they are, if not in the ballpark, at least on the right planet. If I had to wager whether the true DGU tally is closer to (a) 2.5 million, (b) 65,000 or (c) 500 to 1000, I’d bet the deed to the Ponderosa on the latter.

What's your opinion? Does it bring to mind my recent suggestion that there are about 500 a year?  Many pro-gun folks thought I was kidding, saying it for effect.  I wasn't.

The Professor uses the expression, "(assuming these incidents are all genuine non-duplicates)" when referencing some of the standard sources. I'm not quite that generous.  I do not assume they are all genuine, as I've frequently pointed out. Here's the most recent false DGU, it's of the brandishing kind. And everyone remembers the recent event in Washington State where a lady drew down on a pervert in the park and threatened to kill him.  Both of those were counted by the gun-rights crowd.

No, I'm afraid any list of so-called DGUs is chock full of criminal acts which were disguised as defensive and legitimate. That's how we can be sure the true number is as low as 500, give or take.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment.

A Legitimate DGU in Georgia

Local news reports

A hunter is recovering after being bitten by a rattlesnake, and his 9-year-old son is credited with shooting the snake and keeping his wounded father alert until rescuers could reach their location on a mountain.

Authorities say 43-year-old Shane Newton was recovering at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital after being bitten in the leg Sunday near Waleska.

Newton told dispatchers he was shaking badly. His health deteriorated during the nearly hour-long call for help. His son Grant followed the dispatcher's directions to keep his dad alert and talking.

Newton told dispatchers he shot the snake, but later his son said the rattler was moving again and coming toward them. The boy told dispatchers he would shoot the snake again, and reported that he thinks those shots finally killed it.

True DGUs are rare. Most are unnecessary or actually wrong. True DGUs against animals are even rarer. In order to reach the ridiculous numbers they claim, gun-right folks count everything they can, shooting at supposedly rabid racoons, or even imaginary threatening animals in the bushes.

This rattlesnake story is an exception. And the 9-year-old is a hero.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Criminal Act Disguised as a Legitimate DGU

Local news reports

A Longview woman who was walking at Lake Sacajawea with her 6-year-old son pulled a gun on a man who exposed his genitals to her Wednesday evening, according to police.

The 35-year-old woman was near Martin Dock around 8:10 p.m. when the man approached her “aggressively,” sat down and began performing a sex act, then suggested she should watch him, according to the woman and accounts from police.

“I put the magazine in my gun. I cocked it,” the woman said in an interview Thursday night. “I said, ‘You need to leave or Ill shoot you. I’m going to blow your brains out.’ ”

“Oh, [expletive]!” the man declared, before running away.

As distasteful as this guy's behavior was, there was no threat of bodily harm. There was no reason to draw the gun and certainly no reason to threaten to blow his brains out. A simple walking away and calling the police would have sufficed.

You see, this is one of the ways gun-rights fanatics compile those incredible totals of so-called DGUs. Many of them are criminal acts disguised.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.