Although many gun control advocates assert that Americans would be safer with increased restrictions limiting legal access to firearms, a staggering amount of anecdotal evidence contradicts that position.
One recent example in Connecticut involves a store owner who is arguably alive today because he had access to a gun.
According to police in East Hartford, a pair of would-be robbers entered the Humble & Paid Co. clothing shop on Thursday evening and one of the individuals brandished a gun.
When the suspect fired at the victim, the store owner returned fire and hit one of the suspects multiple times. That individual, identified by authorities as 26-year-old Jashar Haslam, died from his injuries shortly after he was transported from the scene to a local hospital.
Authorities say the other suspect was able to escape and remained at large as of the most recent updates available.
The store owner reportedly had access to two guns and was prepared to defend himself against the suspects, but he was still shot in the back during the struggle. He was transported to an area hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.
This incident is one of many in which a legally armed citizen has been in a position to defend life and property against a violent criminal.
Watch how a Duluth gas station store clerk stops a knife-wielding, masked man in his tracks, thwarting an attempted armed robbery –>@FOX5Atlanta pic.twitter.com/4RGJV3Xbad
— Emilie Ikeda (@EmilieIkedaNBC) January 29, 2020
Last month, a convenience store clerk in Avondale, Arizona, was reportedly confronted by an armed man who demanded money. The employee, identified in local news reports as Ryan, recalled that the suspect aimed his firearm at a customer during the incident.
He said that when the suspect turned away from him, he saw an opportunity to fire his own weapon.
“I’m not happy I had to shoot him, but I’m not stressing,” Ryan said. “The moment he pulled the gun on me he set the situation and I just followed it. He made the situation what it was.”
The Washington Times compiled a list of cases in which a “good guy with a gun” was able to neutralize the threat of a violent attacker, including a gruesome act of workplace violence in 2014.
According to a local police spokesperson, Alton Nolen had recently been fired after complaints that he was attempting to convert his coworkers at Vaughan Foods to Islam. When the assailant returned to the company armed with a knife, he beheaded one woman and attacked another before Chief Operating Officer Mark Vaughan pulled out his gun and shot Nolen.
