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Melchisedec Williams is 50 years old and legally blind. He has no sight in his right eye, and only minor vision in his left, because of Glaucoma. He took in his 15 year old nephew to try to help straighten the boy out after he got into trouble while living at his mother’s house, but the teen had disappeared a week earlier.

From theglobaldispatch.com:

Melchisedec Williams was woken up on Sunday night when he heard a crash and stomping. The 50-year-old man grabbed his gun, Tampa police said. The intruder, armed with only a knife, had cut the power to the man’s house and broken in through a bedroom window, police added.

After the lights went out and he heard the window crash, Melchisedec found his .38 revolver. He called out his nephew’s name, but got no response and could only see a shadowy figure with a flashlight approaching him. That’s when he fired, hitting the intruder in the leg. Melchisedec heard his nephew groan and stopped shooting.

“The more I tried to help him, the more he had this hatred towards me,” Williams told Tampabay.com in their Aug. 25 coverage. “This boy has got a real demon inside of him. But I never imagined he would try to come in and kill me.”

Police later told Mechisedec that in addition to a flashlight, his nephew was also holding a kitchen knife when he was shot. The boy has been hospitalized in serious condition.

People who have limited vision often compensate with more acute senses such as hearing. They shouldn’t be denied their Second Amendment rights because of their disability.

Williams knows that he did what he had to do.

“I have no remorse for what I did,” he said. “It’s sad what happened, but I’m glad it happened. That way it took him off the streets and people can sleep calmer at night.”

No charges have been filed against anyone in the case thus far.

©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Gun Watch

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55 COMMENTS

  1. Mr. Williams gets it.
    Unfortunately, Shannon will put a hash mark in the “children hurt by gun violence” column.

      • Well, we (anyone, really, who supports gun rights) should be hash-tagging these stories as on Twitter as

        #ItDoesntHappen

        and optionally include other hash-tags such as:

        #MomsDemand
        #GunSense
        #ShannonWatts
        and other tags they enjoy using.

        It doesn’t matter if someone has already tweeted the exact same story with the same tags before you either. Making another tweet about the same thing just helps reinforce it and give it more presence on twitter.

        • I should add to that that anyone tweeting with the hash-tag #ItDoesntHappen should absolutely add at least one of those optional hash-tags to connect it to MDA/Everytown and their lies, otherwise they are just random individual tweets.

  3. Didn’t we just go through a media firestorm of mockery at a gun-rights group that was training blind people to shoot? Will the media be issuing apologies for their “war on the disabled”, such as Mr. Williams? Will Hell be freezing over anytime soon?

    • Yep. We did.

      This will never be mentioned by the progs. If brought up in argument, it will be ignored, belittled, called ‘luck’, or “He shot his own nephew because he could see him!” (oh the humanity).

      • I get 3 or 4 a week. They’re not dangerous. Poor wights are just looking to get out of the heat. And since I am an evil, privileged, non-minority who is educated and has a job, I feel guilty so I give up my home and belongings to the poor benighted souls. It is the right thing to do, after all.

        /sarcasm

        • You’re being sarcastic but isn’t that exactly what “we” are doing with amnesty for illegal immigration? I’d like to see some of these progessives give up their McMansions to someone who broke in because they are just “chasing the American Dream”

  4. The boy is lucky he didn’t have a shotgun. When a friend of mine started to lose his sight he switched from a pistol to a shotgun.

  5. I’m not legally blind, but I am getting there. I have kerotoconus in both eyes but my dominant eye is all but shot. I compensate by training my non dominant eye. Hopefully, a treatment will become available that I can afford before both eyes are too bad. Either way, if anyone tries to tell me what rights I can or can’t have because their body doesn’t suffer any breakdowns….. I will gladly show them how capable I am…..and, God forbid, when I can’t use a firearm effectively, I will be the one to hang it up.

  6. What is the point of cutting the power these days? Everyone has a cell phone on their night stand anyway.

    • Not everyone has a cell phone … much less a cell phone on their night stand. And many people have land-lines. Cutting the power would also make it harder for a person to see an intruder and take appropriate action. Of course the homeowner was blind so cutting the lights may have been of limited benefit to the intruder.

        • “A good read that will provide some insight:”

          Good read and insight, then you provide a link to cracked.com?

          Sorry, but NO. Their blind squirrel writers might catch a nut once in a while and their stopped clock brains might manage to hit the correct time a couple of times per day, but cracked is not “insightful” or useful in any way.

          I sometimes wonder if it’s just one of those trained monkey experiments.

    • Cutting the land line takes out the alarm system’s ability to notify the central dispatch. Luckily mine is pretty well hidden by bushes.

      • A good alarm system will notify the police or alarm company if the phone line is cut. I worked for a security company 30 years ago that did this. Surely systems have improved even more by now.

    • I have a cell phone and flashlight with strike bezel on my nightstand. The pistol and reloads are inside and ready to go when I sleep. Cutting the power would afford the bad guy zero advantage in my home. I figured most of TTAG would be the same way.

    • Stupid move. Especially when the perp knows the occupant is blind.

      If I were blind, I would put a main power switch right next to my bed. Then if I heard a bump in the night, the first thing I’d do is kill all the lights in the house. I might install something to close the shutters on all the windows too, to make it completely dark inside. “Now we’re both in the dark, but I’m accustomed to it, and you’re not. The more noise you make stumbling around, the easier it is for me to sneak up and kill you.”

      • It doesn’t work like that for most people.

        Why did the homeowner hold a candle if he didn’t need light? Just because he’s legally blind doesn’t mean he doesn’t need light to navigate.

  7. He took in his nephew to straighten him out? And then he takes off and returns to rob/murder? Is thir what Just starting to turn his life around means?

  8. He took in his nephew to straighten him out? And then he takes off and returns to rob/murder? Is this what Just starting to turn his life around means?

  9. On a side note, I think this is the only reference I’ve ever heard of someone named ‘Melchisedec’ outside of Sunday Mass. I think normally spelled ‘Melchizedek’?

    • It’s a Hebrew name loosely transliterated, and there’s no uniform system to transliterate. The name of the priest-king in the Bible would be more closely spelled Malki-Tsedek. It means “my king is righteous.”

  10. Were there drugs involved. Why aren’t the people pushing legalization of that demonized like the NRA?

    Was the youth of ‘voting’ age? Was he registered (D)?

    Did he have the time/opportunity/energy to rob and kill his uncle because he was adequately supported on food stamps and welfare that he didn’t need a job?

    Did the youth wear his pants low (in solidarity with those in prison and so as to indicate that he intended [God willing he himself survived the requisite act] to end up there eventually himself)?

  11. Unfortunately, legally blind doesn’t mean blind. That’s the problem with banning guns for ‘blind’ people who still have very limited vision. Most people imagine black sunglasses and a cane when that isn’t true at all.

    • The police found the uncle with a dripping candle and smoking gun. They found the nephew with a dripping body.

  13. You say they shouldn’t be denied their second amendment rights because of a disability. I’m inclined to agree with you due to the background on freedom and such. However, don’t we deny these same individuals a driver’s license because they can’t see and thus could hit and kill people? Don’t we deny a driver’s license to people who have otherwise proved that they cannot physically carry out the responsibilities of driving? Indeed, my own driver’s license has a restriction: I must be wearing my glasses while I drive.

    Do I say deny them the right to own a gun? No. But I will strongly caution people to consider how much legal trouble you could be in for arming the blind, should a stray bullet hit the neighbor’s daugher and kill her in her sleep, for instance. I know that if it had been my son who died in his sleep because the blind man next door was armed, I’d sue him and the person who armed him. With great power (gun or vehicle) comes great responsibility (being able to competently, safely use it). For the blind, therefore, I am against it, but not against it to the point where I want to enact laws to enforce this.

    • Can the driver’s license analogy please die, once and for all? Driving a car is not a fundamental human right, protected against infringement by our constitution. Keeping and bearing arms in self-defense are.

      I’m sure the legally blind, would- be victim in this case appreciates your concern. I would hazard a guess that anyone able and willing to use a firearm responsibly in self-defense knows and respects the risks and responsibilities involved.

    • So, like, where in human history has your horror fantasy ever happened, of a child (of course) being killed by a stray shot from a blind neighbor? Here we have one REAL, verified use of a firearm in self defense, and you fire up your imagination to come up with a ridiculous excuse to remove that possibility? Complete with threats? WTF?

    • “the person who armed him”

      What does that even mean? The store that sold the gun? You do realize blind people go to stores, right? It’s not like they could legally hire a straw purchaser to bring them a gun.

      Blind people can also buy and own and drive all the cars they want, provided they have enough private property to do so on. Driving on a public road is not anyone’s *right*.

    • We are talking about the right to keep and bear arms . Your analogy fails because we don’t deny the blind the right to own a vehicle, we disallow them to operate them on public roads. Since guns are never legally operated in public except for dire circumstances the drivers license comparison is false.

    • But if the stray bullet came from a person who could see clearly you’d think “Well, it’s just one of those things…”?

    • I am gonna call bullshit on the we don’t give legally blind people drivers licenses!
      I use to have a boss who was legally blind and part of the business needs had him driving over sometimes twisty mountain roads, and yes I was in the car some of the time. He was a careful driver and the entire time I knew him, he never had an accident. Just because your vision is poor does not mean you should be denied your rights to self defense either!

  14. “…The intruder, armed with ONLY a knife…”. Only a knife. What weapon would it have taken to print “armed with a ????.

  16. Our alarm system is tied to cell phone a/landline backup. If that doesn’t work, we’re talking .223 Saiga and 9 mm XD, should be enough.
    We will call the cops but that will take 1/2 hour. What could go wrong in that time?

  17. as a totally blind person with a concealed weapon and a 1911 strapped to my hip as I type this, I feel I might be able to clear a few things up. Yes, blind people have an increased responsibility when we choose to arm ourselves. We’re faced with the responsibility of training ourselves to use that firearm safely and effectively. we’re faced with the need to choose a load that is appropriate for our needs. Personally I use the Guard Dog ammunition. We’re faced with the responsibility of only firing when its safe. For me, this means point blank range. If you look really closely though, you’ll notice that all of these responsibilities are the exact same thing sighted people face. The only differences I’ve ever run into are that I don’t have to waste money on fancy sights and gun lights for my pistols, and if I ever do have to shoot someone, I have to be aware of the fact that I’m going to lose contact with the world for a short while. At least until they find ways to make guns quiet.. So please, relax about blind people with guns, and stop comparing it to driver’s licenses. Its not the same thing.

  18. He got what he deserved. Cutting the power on people who are blind or almost blind does the perp more harm then us. I am 3/4 blind I know. I know my home so well I can walk it with a blind fold on. We also know every sound our homes make.

  21. @TTAG:

    The shooting wasn’t the end of this. Mr. Williams was apparently a felon, and was not legally allowed to own a firearm:

    “…Williams’ role in the incident, and his history with law enforcement, could place him in a difficult position.

    By law, Williams should not have been in possession of a gun. He has been convicted of grand theft and forgery and, in 1993, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison, state records show. Florida law bars felons from possessing guns unless their rights have been restored by the state’s Clemency Board, which Williams’ haven’t, according to a Department of Corrections official.

    But there is disagreement about whether convicted felons can use guns to protect themselves under the state’s “stand your ground” self-defense law.”
    ( http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/police-legally-blind-tampa-man-shoots-nephew-in-self-defense/2194530)

    This article should be updated, or a follow-up article should be added to TTAG.

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