Originally Posted By Donny A Georgia mother who shot an intruder at her home has become a small part of the roaring gun control debate, with some firearms enthusiasts touting her as a textbook example of responsible gun ownership. Melinda Herman grabbed a handgun and hid in a crawl space with her two children when a man broke in last week and approached the family at their home northeast of Atlanta, police said. Herman called her husband on the phone, and with him reminding her of the lessons she recently learned at a shooting range, Herman opened fire, seriously wounding the burglary suspect. The National Rifle Association tweeted a link to a news story about the shooting, and support poured in from others online, hailing Herman as a hero. The local sheriff said he was proud of the way she handled the situation. "This lady decided that she wasn't going to be a victim, and I think everyone else looks at this and hopes they have the courage to do what she done," Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman said Wednesday. Herman was working from home Friday when she saw a man walk up to the front door. She told police he rang the doorbell twice and then over and over again. He went back to his SUV, got something out and walked back toward the house, a police report said. Herman took her 9-year-old son and daughter into an upstairs bedroom and locked the door. They went into bathroom and she locked that door, too. She got her handgun from a safe, the report said, and hid with her children. At some point, she called her husband, who kept her on the line and called 911 on another line. In a 10-minute 911 recording released by the Walton County Sheriff's Office, Donnie Herman calmly explained what was happening to a dispatcher. His part of the conversation with his wife was also recorded. "Is he in the house, Melinda? Are you sure? How do you know? You can hear him in the house?" Donnie Herman said. His wife told him the intruder was coming closer. "He's in the bedroom? Shh, shh, relax. Just remember everything that I showed you, everything that I taught you, all right?" Donnie Herman told his wife, explaining later to the dispatcher that he had recently taken her to a gun range. It wasn't clear from the recording exactly when they went to range and Donnie Herman told the Associated Press on Wednesday the family didn't want to talk about the shooting. After Donnie Herman told his wife police were on the way, he started shouting: "She shot him. She's shootin' him. She's shootin' him. She's shootin' him. She's shootin' him." "OK," the dispatcher responded. "Shoot him again! Shoot him!" Donnie Herman yelled. He told the dispatcher he heard a lot of screaming, but he seems to get increasingly worried when he doesn't hear anything from his wife. Melinda Herman told police she started shooting the man when he opened the door to the crawl space. The man pleaded with her to stop, but she kept firing until she had emptied her rounds, she told police. She then fled to a neighbor's house with her children. The man drove away in his SUV. Police found the SUV on another subdivision street and discovered a man bleeding from his face and body in a nearby wooded area. Police identified the suspect as 32-year-old Paul Slater of Atlanta. Chapman said the hospital asked him not to comment on Slater's condition, but he said he is not certain Slater will survive. Authorities have a warrant but haven't formally arrested Slater yet. They plan to charge him with burglary, possession of tools for the commission of a crime and aggravated assault, Walton County sheriff's Capt. Greg Hall said. A phone number for Slater was not listed and it was not clear whether he has an attorney. Authorities believe Slater targeted a home in another local subdivision but left when confronted by the homeowner, Chapman said. <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/09/mom-shot-intruder/1821905/" target="_blank">http://www.usatoday.com/story/...1821905/</a>
Originally Posted By TomSawyer And nothing in the proposed laws would prevent this woman from owning a gun. She would still have been able to do exactly what she did. The NRA knows this, of course, but they deal in fear rather than truth.
Originally Posted By ecdc Yes, this has become the big rallying cry. Of course, as Tom points out, nothing is stopping this woman from being able to get a gun. And this one anecdotal story doesn't change the reality: This woman is the extreme exception; statistically, she was much more likely to be a victim of her own gun. Citing her is the equivalent of pointing to the lottery winner and saying everyone should go buy a ticket.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< And nothing in the proposed laws would prevent this woman from owning a gun. She would still have been able to do exactly what she did. >>> That's for sure. I didn't read in the story where the woman had a 30-round clip, and but for being able to have one over 10 rounds, she wouldn't have been able to stop the intruder.
Originally Posted By mawnck So Donny, how many weeks have you been waiting for a story like this to come over the wires? And how many shooting deaths of people WITH guns have we posted about in the intervening time? See you in about a month, when you find the next one.
Originally Posted By DyGDisney >>>Melinda Herman grabbed a handgun<<< You mean she didn't use a semi-automatic with a 30 round clip...the type some of us are supporting making illegal for normal citizens?
Originally Posted By DyGDisney And, again, Donny disappeared. Did you find a story where a mom uses a semi-automatic gun with a 30 round clip to save her babies in her home yet?
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<And, again, Donny disappeared.>> He's too busy mugging for the camera at WDW.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox This woman was damned lucky the intruder wasn't armed, given her stupid behavior in how she handled the situation. First off, if she's working at home by herself with her kids, then why don't they have some kind of security system like ADT installed, along with surveillance cameras? If she and hubby can afford to purchase guns and practice shooting at the range, they can afford security monitoring and surveillance. Second, why the hell didn't she take the kids and run out the back door? Or if she insisted on hiding out upstairs in the crawlspace, why did she lock the bedroom door and the bathroom door, clearly advertising to the intruder that someone was home, behind the doors? If she couldn't run out the back door, then she should have left the bedroom door and the bathroom door open, hid in the crawlspace with her kids and called 911 immediately. But advertising to the burglar that someone was home, hiding in the bathroom, was stupid. Had those doors not been closed, he probably would have busied himself with ransacking the place, giving the police enough time to show up and catch him, or at least scare him into running out the back. If she had managed to keep her kids quiet, he never would have known they were in the crawlspace. Backing yourself into a corner with no escape route and then advertising to the world this is what you've done is moronic. Then pulling out the gun without knowing if he was armed or was close enough to grab your gun was also moronic. Cheering for this woman and what she did is blood lust. And it makes me sick. A huge chunk of our society is still stuck in Kohlberg's Stage Four of Moral Development, the "Law and Order" stage, what some sociologists also refer to as "eye for an eye." The rest of the developed world has long since moved beyond this. We're still culturally retarded like the middle eastern nations run by fundamentalist religious whackjobs.
Originally Posted By tiggertoo <<And, again, Donny disappeared.>> We've seen this model before. Darkbeer used to drop incendiary news stories all the time, rarely if ever commenting to the challenges posed as to its credibility, et al.
Originally Posted By DyGDisney Donny --- here is my honest question, again: Have you found a story where a mom uses a semi-automatic gun with a 30 round clip to save her babies in her home?
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<When there is an honest question I will answer it.>> We ask you "honest questions" all the time! DyG asked you one yesterday. You've always refused to answer questions where any response makes you look stupid. If you can't look like a genius in answering other posters' questions, you ignore them and disappear. FACT.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox Here's my "honest question": Why aren't security experts and law enforcement officials coming forth and chastising this woman for acting like an idiot in her home? What she did was not heroic. It was moronic. She and her kids are damned lucky to be alive.
Originally Posted By barboy ///Donny --- here is my honest question, again: Have you found a story where a mom uses a semi-automatic gun with a 30 round clip to save her babies in her home?/// .....looks to me like your 'honest' question is actually sheer rhetoric. You knew the obvious answer before you delivered it to Donny. Anyway I'm thinking that there is little chance getting through to gun keepers and lovers unless something big time goes down on them-----like accidentally shooting and killing a 4 year old in the home.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 That happens with some frequency, and never seems to sway them. I guess if it's somebody else's kid...
Originally Posted By SuperDry << .....looks to me like your 'honest' question is actually sheer rhetoric. You knew the obvious answer before you delivered it to Donny. >> It's as honest as the original post is. There's an implication that we shouldn't enact stricter gun control laws because of situations like what happened in the article. But the thing is, I haven't heard of any component to anything that's likely to be proposed that would limit a homeowner's ability to have a .38 revolver with standard ammunition in their homes for self defense purposes.
Originally Posted By DyGDisney >>>It's as honest as the original post is.<<< Exactly. If Donny can use one situation of a mom using a hand gun to protect her home as a reason why we should NOT have stricter gun control, I can ask how many mom's with semi-automatic weapons have protected their homes. The whole point is not that rifles are less dangerous than hammers, or that a mom kept her kids safe by killing an intruder with a handgun; legistlation is needed to restrict access to semi-automatic weapons and high round magazines. Stricter background checks, waiting periods, and, IMO, a limit to the number of guns a person should legally own. There are many necessary steps to reduce the number of gun deaths in this country from over 30,000/year. But Donny was happy to let us know that one mom protected her kids with a hand gun. Talk about sheer rhetoric.
