The movies have contributed some great gun-related quotes to American culture. “Go ahead, make my day,” comes immediately to mind. Of course, the Callahan oeuvre also includes, “Do you feel lucky, punk?” And then there’s the eternal Duke fave, “Fill your hands you sonofa bitch!” But it doesn’t take a Hollywood screenwriter to come up with a classic. Plenty of regular, real-life folks manage to conjure them from time to time. Just like a little old lady from South Carolina did Sunday . . .

A suspicious dude had been making his way through a Greenville, South Carolina neighborhood asking to borrow a flashlight. One elderly lady obliged and asked him to leave it on her porch when he was finished. According to foxcarolina.com, he knocked on the door again.

This time, she came to the door with a gun in her walker. And when the man – who she saw was holding a gun – told her to move back and tried to get into her home, she replied, “I will not back up, but I will kill you.”

Which was all the aspiring home-invader needed to send him scurrying off as fast as his legs would carry him. Unfortunately, we can’t attribute the inspired line to the woman as she’s understandably avoiding the spotlight. But that doesn’t make it any less of a classic.

[h/t Bruce Krafft]

28 COMMENTS

  1. I hope you got some sleep last night. According to MikeB you must have spent most of the night scouring the internets for this most rare of gun uses.

    Or maybe MikeB is just willfully ignorant.

    • Why do we feed the trolls? There are plenty of starving kids around the world. If he continues to ignore fact and trivializes our opinions for the sole purpose of soliciting the same repeated response; HE IS A TROLL.

      • Why do we feed the trolls? Because it is fun! I love reading about the latest outrageous idea MikeB has come up with and then mock him mercilessly over it. His latest, “hidden criminals”, has been a gold mine so far.

      • MikeB is an important part of this community. I don’t agree with his overall philosophy and I hardly ever agree with any individual point he makes, but he is passionate and civil and, in questioning just about everything I believe, helps me to think more clearly.

      • (my last post was truncated because my phone “just went off” and sent it)
        Anyway, MikeB helps me examine my positions the way someone who agrees with me does not. So, “thanks!” to him.

        • Phones don’t just go off!!! Keep your finger off that “send” button, and you won’t submit negligent posts!

    • I think MikeB has fun poking us with his “willful ignorance” and watching the fireworks. I have fallen victim to it myself, I’m sorry to say.

      • Did you ever notice that what you accuse me of can also be said of you? The “willful ignorance” charge can be equally said of you. I keep offering you sensible points and you keep ignoring or rejectinig them.

        The DGUs for example, let’s say Robert was able to produce 10 a day, every single day of the year. Does that add up to 2.5 million, of even a piece of it?

        The truth is, but having an army of contributors scouring the local news all over the country, you can produce a steady stream of them, like Clayton Cramer used to do. But what does it add up to? Nothing.

        Then, and here’s where it gets difficult for you guys, you have to wonder how many of them were either unnecessary, or actually criminal – that’s the same thing actually. To consider such a thing one needs an open mind and some degree of honesty. Human nature is such that most people having brandished a weapon prematurely or wrongly, and especially most people who shoot an aggressor too quickly and unnecessarily, are not going to admit their wrongdoing. They’re gonna say it was justified.

        So, whatever small number of DGUs there really are, is diminsihed even further. You see how it works?

        • This may be cynical of me, but I just don’t believe there’s any sincerity in your posts here. I think you enjoy stirring things up and if that floats your boat, have at it.

          You think the stories if DGUs are fiction. I don’t. You trust your sources and I trust mine. It’s a judgement call based on assumptions that I have made, I respectfully suggest you examine yours.

          I sincerely apologize if this hurts your feelings, but I don’t trust you or anyone who would try to tell me or some little old lady we should let hardened criminals have their way with us and our families.

          Would I shoot someone I “perceive” is trying to maim or kill me or someone in my family? Damn straight!

        • Mike, why don’t you go and read the actual peer reviewed research that was conducted that arrived at the 2.5 million DGUs per year number? Unlike your speculations “hidden criminals” and “human nature”, there is actual empirical evidence and a statistical methodology behind the 2.5 million DGU per year claim.

          Until you find some facts to back up your position, we’ll remain unconvinced.

            • Ultimately, I know that, but the point still needs to be made. Anyone coming to this debate without context needs to know which side has the hard data and which side is relying solely on emotional pleading.

        • Most mikey? I think you are projecting. What we assume in others usually originates with how we would do it. As for an open mind and some honesty…you first. You sre as much the adamant ideologue as any. Honesty? When you use words like “most” to create your own stats, make bs claims and never verify when called on it, when you encourage or condone the rabid nastiness of your cobloggers – I am more likely to let satan the father of lies school me on honesty than you.

        • Yes because every cookie-cutter instance of a mugger running off without getting shot goes in every paper and on every tv channel within a hundred miles as the most newsworthy event of the year. Sorry buddy, but you can’t say that the reality isn’t the reality simply because you don’t see every single fact ever every time you watch the news. This is one of the most pathetic traits the information age has given us, is that easy access leads fools to believe that the snap decision the pundit just made for them is factually accurate. So we haven’t posted every instance of DGU up on this (single, as in one, as in limited, as in not omniscient) site, that has nothing to do with how often guns are used (usually without even needing to be drawn, let alone fired) in self defense. And for Pete’s sake don’t come at me because that’s speculation, I’ll just chant Hidden Criminals at you a thousand times.

          • I understand completely, Jake. It’s quite all right for you to use supposition and guesswork, but when I do it you want proof and accuse me of using my “feeeelings.”

            I get it.

  2. I live in Greenville and I am sorry to say that this story is not getting as much “run” in our local media as our resolute senior-citizen neighbor deserves.

  3. Cool comment, but if she actually had to shoot, it would have been used against her. She should have said something Yoda-like, ‘Shoot you then I must” that sounded more like her purpose was to stop the attack or end the threat.

    • Actually, the statement would be very helpful to her case in the extraordinarily unlikely even that she was charged. Issuing a strong verbal warning is a plus.

      Women who defend their homes from incursions by strangers are rarely charged with anything anywhere in the country, except New York.

      • And, if they are charged, and I am on the jury, they will rarely be convicted. Actually, that goes for men who do the same. Do I believe in jury nullification, you betcha.

        • The jury (or trier of fact) is charged with determining whether every single element of the crime has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. As a juror, you would have the power to decide that every element was not proven, and then you could vote to acquit and still fulfill your oath as a juror.

          I don’t like it when judges make up laws, like the Warren Court did for so many years. After all, nobody elected the judges.

          I like it even less when jurors try to take on legislative power, even when I approve of the outcome.

        • jury nullification

          Once I was called in for jury duty and the case was about concealed carry by a juvenile. The prosecutor ask if any of us had CC permits; a few of us did. I figured that was my get-off-the-jury-free card but just to be sure I asked him to explain jury nullification.

          He said that he couldn’t talk about that during a trial but over a beer sometime he’d be happy to discuss it.

          In the end I wasn’t selected for the jury but probably because they filled the slots before they got down to me, number 39.

        • Do I believe in jury nullification, you betcha

          I played my get-off-the-jury-free card once by asking the prosecutor to explain jury nullification.

          He said he couldn’t talk about that in the trial but would sometime over a beer. I should have taken him up on that.

  4. See how Gun Control works… this helps the criminal element terrorize and overpower senior citizens and the weak. That is why jails have weight rooms so the convicts can overpower their victims upon release.

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