Image courtesy Cherokee County Sheriff's office

The first rule of gunfighting is — we all know this, right? — have a gun. Once you have a gun, conventional wisdom suggests your choice of caliber is not of primary importance. There are, of course, limits to this conventional wisdom. A 23-year-old Georgia man discovered that no legitimate defensive caliber begins with “point one seven seven” . . .

Let’s head to Channel 11-Atlanta for the details:

Ryan Jones was shot at around 4:30 p.m. Sunday outside a house in the 9900 block of Bells Ferry Road near Holly Street in Canton.

Witnesses told Cherokee County Sheriff’s investigators that Jones arrived at the house with a BB gun and demanded to be paid for a debt he claimed he was owed.

A person inside the house, 43-year-old Brian Turner of Woodstock, shot Jones with a shotgun. Turner was a guest at the house, according to Cherokee County Sheriff’s Lt. Jay Baker.

Jones was taken to Northside Hospital Cherokee with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.

Baker said investigators obtained a search warrant for bodily fluids to determine if Turner was under the influence. Turner refused to comply with the warrant and was arrested for obstruction; he has not yet been charged in the shooting.

Jones is being held in the Cherokee County Adult Detention Center on $1,000 bond.

The outcome of this confrontation came as a surprise to…whom? Other than exactly nobody, ever?

I’ve got two questions for the Armed Intelligentsia. First, what are the odds Jones wasn’t drunk? And second, how old does the allegedly 23 year-old Jones look to you?

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43 COMMENTS

    • Not in Georgia. According to the carry laws here that I’ve found, it is illegal to discharge a firearm with a BAC over 0.08, except in self defense.

      This is not legal advice, just my readings.

    • HEY! Don’t throw the “O” word around too easy. I’m senior to your dad. Someday if you’re lucky you’ll resent the “O” word too.

  4. It looks like your usage of “Jones” in the last paragraph for the first instance should be “Turner” as only his blood alcohol was mentioned in the quoted text in the post above.

    • It would seem that Turner was the one arrested, which explains the orange jumpsuit. And yeah he looks 43. I think Jones is in the hospital.

  5. I would say the odds of him not being drunk at the time are in the 1% range.

    I would guess his age at mid forties, but I hear alcoholism and sleeping on park benches can age someone prematurely.

  6. If him and I are the same age, that’s news to me. But I guess I didn’t follow the same aging technique of drugs, alcohol, and poor choices. Not necessarily in that order.

    • I’m 23 as well, and something tells me even if he shaved off that beard, he’d still look in his 40’s at least. I shave mine off, and I look like I’m in my teens. If I. It’s funny because a couple weeks after I bought my first handgun, I shaved, and the guy who sold it to me refused to sell me ammo until I showed my id. That’s what hard living does to you.

    • LT spoke at my high school back in 98 or 99. After about 15-20 minutes of some crazy stuff, his closing message was (i’m paraphrasing here because my memory is a bit cloudy) : “If you’re gonna do drugs, god bless ya..but do some for LT, because i’m done with em”

  10. Off topic:

    He totally looks like the bad guy from 22 Bullets (a good film).

    On topic:

    40-50 I would guess.

      • I was playing DayZ (a zombie game) the other day, when my character picked up some .357mm ammo. I was thoroughly impressed that something that small could even be picked up, much less used to put down the walking dead.

    • Interesting. The tenor of that news article is not one of Defensive Gun Use at all. Turner is made out to be the bad guy all the way. Jones is hardly mentioned, and nothing about HIM being charged with brandishing or anything along those lines.

      It mentions Jones brought a gun, but kind of glosses over that detail…that perhaps Turner was shooting self defense.

      There’s more to this than being reported, I fear. From the article, the picture is painted that Turner just opened fire, but they admit he’s not being charged (yet).

      Some thing is off about this.

      • Anti-gun bias (loathing) seeping into the story from the Patch’s Kristal Dixon?

        Nah, that would never happen.

        At least it offers more complete details.

  14. Reminds me of a Simpson’s episode, but I can’t find a clip 🙁

    “Smoking ruined my life. I’m only 35 years old.”

  15. Clearly, the police are using his online profile for ID purposes. “23 year old blue-eyed go-getter, likes long walks on the beach and sodomy.”

  16. The photo above is that of Mr. Turner, age given as 43. From what I can gather, Mr. Jones, who lives about 20 miles away in Cartersville, visited Mr. Turner, who is apparently a guest at a third party’s home in Canton, was visited by Mr. Turner who demanded payment for a debt with a weapon, to wit, a BB gun of some sort.

    Mr. Turner may well have been intoxicated, after all it was Sunday evening and they could have been having a BBQ on the porch or something. But as Kelly in GA noted, it’s not illegal to discharge a firearm even under the influence if it was in self-defense. As this appears to be one party’s word against the other’s without any mention of the homeowner or other witnesses, I’d say Mr. Turner could be on shaky legal ground to say the least. But Mr. Jones may still get the short end of the deal if he’s charged with attempted robbery or something of the sort, AND he got shot (which he’ll get a nice big bill from the hospital for) to boot.

    I’m chalking this one up to stupidity deserving an equal and opposite stupidity, for now.

    Tom

    • Details are a LOT sketchy, but your whole first paragraph sums up what I read. And honestly it reeks of stupid people in stupid places doing stupid things.

  17. Defensive caliber? It seems to me that Jones was the aggressor, and came armed–inadequately to be sure–to the party. Was turner supposed to correctly guess the caliber of a rifle being brandished by an angry man who was demanding money? Or was it reasonable for him assume that Jones presented a reasonable risk of imminent bodily harm? Drunk or not, there seems to be evidence to support a DGU.

  18. You’ll put yer eye out kid! How would most people know it was a BB gun? and you COULD use it as club(lol). I vote DGU.

  21. Did Turner bring the shotgun with him? If so, how many guests bring loaded shotguns to a friend’s house? A handgun, sure!

    • This is Georgia. Shotguns are very common. I was once shooting trap on my property and offered a guest who stopped by to shoot with me. Asked him what shotgun he’d like to try. “Don’t worry, I have my own in the truck.” An autoloader at that.

      • I live in, and grew up here, Columbus, Ga. Home of Ft. Benning! Yeah!
        Anyway, I have been known to have a rifle or shotgun in my vehicle, but I don’t ever remember carrying one in someone else’s home. (Except when staying over for a hunt the next morning) though I have often carried my sidearm on me.

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