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September 14, 2006

NYPD: The Law Is An Ass

Via Joel Rosenberg, a handicapped woman shoots an attacker with a concealed handgun:

A 56-year-old woman was leaving her building in her wheelchair, her only company the small dog perched on her lap.

Her attacker came from behind, the police said, and there was no one else around. But this attempted robbery had an ending unlike many others. As it turns out, the would-be victim, Margaret Johnson, has a permit to carry a .357 handgun — and she carries it often.

The mugging ended seconds after it began, the police said, when Ms. Johnson pulled out her gun and shot her attacker in his arm. Last night, the man accused of the attempted mugging, Deron Johnson, 45, was in stable condition at Harlem Hospital Center with a gunshot wound to his elbow, the police said. He was under protective custody and is facing a robbery charge, the police said.

Ms. Johnson, who was treated at a local hospital and later released, said she suffered bruises to her neck and arm. “I’m tired, I’m really tired,” she said as she sat in her apartment last night, wearing a tan baseball cap and appearing rattled. “He tried to mug me, so I shot him.”

Trained observers will note: the story takes place in New York - a city where the law-abiding citizen needs a permit to have a gun at home, and can only get a carry permit via connections, fame or bribery.

Rosenberg notes that the "home" permit in New York is very, very circumscribed:

She had a "premises permit," which allows her to keep her gun in her home and transport it, on one or two specified days in the week, to the range for target practice -- but it must be carried unloaded, in a locked case, with any ammunition in a separate locked case.
Ms. Johnson's story, according to the Times?:
Yesterday, as is often the case, friends said, Ms. Johnson had her small bichon with her, and was going to a nearby firing range.
So - with a hostile guy directly in her face, confined to her wheelchair, she unlocked the case for her revolver, and the case for her ammunition, and flipped open the cylinder and stuck at least one round into the chamber at 10 o'clock, and shot her attacker, who was still apparently at close range, apparently either hypnotized by the woman's blazing speed or a closet gun nut who wanted to admire the pistol's new nickel-plate job?

Unlikely.

Rosenberg:

But the cops have near dead-bang cold on carrying without a permit -- a felony in NYC. (She's got a permit, but it doesn't cover the activity that she actually was engaging in.) And what do they do?

They turn into the last-but-one-scene in Casablanca, more or less. "Mrs. Johnson has shot Mr. [no relation] Johnson. Arrest him."

Well, good for them. Really...when the application of the law would be so obviously unjust in this entirely predictable sort of circumstance, that law is an ass, and ought to be change.

Here, there and everywhere.

Posted by Mitch at September 14, 2006 07:57 AM | TrackBack
Comments

I think you linked the wrong article. Think this is the right one

http://joelrosenberg.livejournal.com/175704.html

Posted by: Loren at September 14, 2006 02:54 PM
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