A 14-year-old boy with a history of troubling behavior used a semiautomatic rifle to shoot and kill two fellow students and two teachers Sept. 6 at a high school in Georgia, police say.
The teen faces criminal charges, as does his father—who police say recklessly gave his son “unfettered access” to the gun despite knowing he’d been investigated previously for threatening to carry out a school shooting.
Such events, while rare, are devastating. The media spotlight shone on them can make well-meaning people question whether the grave consequences of the criminal abuse of firearms outweigh any positive impacts the Second Amendment might have on society.
In reality, it’s far more common that peaceable Americans rely on their right to keep and bear arms to successfully defend themselves and other innocent victims from imminent harm. And every day, countless numbers of Americans are rendered safer by their ability to put up an armed defense.
Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to the most recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the subject. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.
For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accounts from past years here.)
The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use during crimes that we found in August. You may explore more using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database.
- Aug. 1, Las Vegas: Police said a man who’d just been fired from his job for showing up to a work site “in an unfit condition” got into his SUV and chased down his former boss, ultimately ramming him into a wall and seriously injuring him. A nearby witness ran outside armed with a shotgun. The driver also attempted to run over the witness, police said, but the witness fired several rounds into the SUV, killing the assailant.
- Aug. 5, Albuquerque, New Mexico: A disabled Vietnam War veteran awoke to the sounds of someone using a knife to open his bedroom window, police said. The veteran grabbed a pistol from a nightstand and, as the intruder raised the window, fired a single shot that killed him.
- Aug. 7, Cypress, Texas: Police said three men approached bank technicians as they performed routine maintenance on an ATM and demanded money from the machine, warning that they had a gun. One technician was armed and shot at the would-be robbers, sending them fleeing. Police said they quickly arrested one.
- Aug. 8, Norwood, Pennsylvania: A dog walker with a concealed carry permit shot and wounded a dog that charged at him and attacked his dog. Police issued an arrest warrant for the loose dog’s owner, saying he had threatened to kill the dog walker and screamed racial epithets before fleeing.
- Aug. 13, Cape Coral, Florida: During a fight with her boyfriend, a woman called her brother to come help defuse the situation, police said. When her brother arrived, however, her boyfriend assaulted him outside with a wooden rod and brass knuckles. The woman’s son, a minor, feared for his uncle’s life and retrieved a gun. After warning his mom’s boyfriend to stop beating his uncle, the child fired multiple shots at the boyfriend, killing him. Police said he would not be charged for defending his uncle and mother.
- Aug. 15, Brookhaven, Georgia: Police said that a woman called a neighbor for help after her home surveillance system detected four armed men had broken in. The neighbor confronted the men and, according to witnesses, exchanged 15 to 20 rounds until police arrived and the suspects fled in a car. After a chase and a second exchange of fire with officers, three of the four were taken into custody, police said.
- Aug. 19, Albany, Georgia: Police said a man broke into his ex-wife’s house intent on burning it down with himself inside, but changed his plan when the woman unexpectedly returned home with her three children and boyfriend. The ex-husband attacked the woman, doused her with gasoline, grabbed her in a “rear chokehold,” and tried to set her on fire before her boyfriend shot and wounded him, police said.
- Aug. 21, Liberty Hills, Texas: As a homeowner surveyed his backyard with a contractor, he saw a machete-wielding man climb a fence, enter his property, and try to get into his residence, police said. Afraid for his wife and two young children, the homeowner locked up before getting his gun and confronting the man on a deck of the residence. Seeing the gun, the intruder began to walk away and was arrested by police. He was charged with criminal trespass.
- Aug. 23, Falls Mills, Virginia: Police said a would-be carjacker assaulted a female driver at a rural gas station, telling her child in the back seat: “I’m going to rape your mommy.” Bystanders, one with a handgun, heard the woman’s screams and came to her aid. The carjacker charged at the armed good Samaritan, who shot and wounded him. Police said that the assailant was wanted on outstanding criminal charges. The local sheriff publicly praised the bystanders who intervened, telling reporters, “This could have been a very different outcome.”
- Aug. 24, Medford, Oregon: An armed resident fatally shot an intruder who forced his way into an apartment and threatened another resident with a knife, police said.
- Aug. 30, Muncie, Indiana: Police said a man approached a group of people he didn’t know, waved a gun, and threatened to kill everyone before opening fire. Two witnesses retrieved their own guns and shot back, wounding the assailant. He was charged with criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm by a violent felon.
Yes, sometimes otherwise law-abiding people abuse the right to keep and bear arms, and to devastating effect.
It’s undeniable that any person who’d give a mentally and emotionally troubled 14-year-old unfettered access to a firearm has little interest in upholding his or her duties as either a reasonable parent or a responsible gun owner.
Gun owners who recklessly or intentionally facilitate criminal violence should be punished. But their failures constitute the exception to the general rule, not the norm.
Although we should strive to make our schools and communities safer, we must ensure that we don’t do so at the expense of the millions of peaceable gun owners who, every single day, act prudently and reasonably with their firearms.
