Irresponsible Gun Owner of the Day: Monica Rodriguez

Yesterday’s mysanantonio.com provided an excellent example of what’s called “English understatement.” Fatal shooting may be case of self-defense. Ya think? “Monica Rodriguez, 43, apparently learned that her boyfriend, who is in his 50s, was fixing his ex-girlfriend’s van. She kicked in the door of a mobile home where the couple lived and ransacked it Saturday, then shot out a tire of his truck, police said. Police said Rodriguez then went to the repair shop in the 5400 block of Old Highway 90, where her boyfriend worked, and shot out the van’s windows. She sent text messages threatening to kill him and returned to Precision Auto ‘furious’ on Monday, police said, and started to argue with him . . .

“Rodriguez told him she was going to her truck to get her gun, and the man shot her in the chest as she returned from the truck, police said. Then he called 911. She was unarmed, and police found no gun in her truck.”

Obviously, it’s not a good idea to threaten someone with a gun. A firearm should only be used in self-defense. OK and hunting and sporting and plinking. But you know what I mean. You can’t go around threatening to shoot someone—or even tell them you might shoot them (unarmed perps have been sent down for armed robbery for suggesting they had a gun).

Note: I didn’t award Ms. Rogriguez a posthumous IGOTD to give aid and succor to MikeB302000, who’s convinced [himself] that 10 percent of all American gun owners are gun loons or gun loons waiting to happen. I don’t want to provide more grist for his mill, which produces the half-baked idea that new, “common sense” gun control could sift out potentially violent nut cases.

No law can do that, and even if it could, it couldn’t do so without seriously curtailing our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. It’s not worth it. Anyway, if nothing else, we don’t know if Ms. Rodriguez owned the gun legally. And even if she did, Ms. Rodriguez’s fatal mistake should be seen for what it is: the exception that proves the rule.

Truth be told, the vast majority of Americans who keep or carry a gun don’t want to use it. If they did, there would be a lot more stories of Gun Nuts Gone Wild than what I’m seeing on a daily basis. But there aren’t. More scientifically, let’s spool-up the Centers for Disease Control’s death app for 2006 – 2007.

To err on the side of caution, I’ve imputed ALL “violence related” firearms deaths: homicides, accidents, suicides (roughly half of the total) and law enforcement shootings (a.k.a., “legal intervention”). The CDC pegs the number of people who’ve pegged out via firearms for 2006 and 2007 at 69,369. Call it 34,685 per year. Shock! Horror!

Yes, well, that’s against a population of 312,218,560. I make that roughly .001 percent. One hundredth of one percent. In other words, you can round down the average schmo’s odds of getting shot (including by his own hand) in The Land of The Free to zero.

Mind you, that’s no reason to take away our gun rights. In fact, here in the United States of America people aren’t shooting each other because of their gun rights. The same principle that stays the civilian’s gun hand keeps us safe from Russian nukes: mutually assured destruction. In the gun rights world it’s called “deterrence.”

Shooting someone is a sure way to piss them off. They might shoot you. Or stab you. Or, worse, hit you with a civil lawsuit. Here’s an interesting aspect of this MAD, MAD, MAD world: the gun-related non-violence is not all about the bad guy’s capabilities. Again, people with guns avoid confrontations because they don’t want to shoot anyone. 

I know that sounds preposterous: gun ownership as a check on personal aggression. It’s counter-intuitive to the gun grabbers’ contention that gun owners are spoiling for a fight. But apply the concept to strangers. I’d bet dollars to donuts that gun owners are less likely to get into it with a stranger than a non-gun owner. After all, they have more to lose.

Specifically, their gun rights. They know they’re never more than a single incident away from firearms confiscation. As in disarmed. Gun owners may or may not have a duty to retreat in the face of aggression, but they have a very strong incentive to do so.

In that sense, gun ownership makes a person more invested in remaining a law-abiding citizen than a non-gun owner. That’s true on both the mundane level (e.g., speeding) and during major conflicts (e.g., road rage).

Despite Ms. Rodriguez’s experience—or because of it—we know that an armed society is a polite society. Condolences to Ms. Rodriguez’s family and friends, but the more gun owning and carrying citizens we have in this country, the better.