These Don't Happen Often

These Don't Happen Often

But they do happen, and we should not pretend otherwise. They don't happen very often--but consider this a sobering reminder that if you are going to get a permit to carry, you better be darn sure that you aren't going to let a trivial argument turn into a tragedy. From the February 8, 2009 Memphis [Tennessee] Commercial-Appeal:

An argument and a gun, a flash and a crack, and just like that, three children were made orphans.

That's what happened in the parking lot of the Trinity Commons shopping center in Cordova around 9 p.m. Friday, police said.

Police charged Harry Coleman, 59, with second-degree murder Sunday in the shooting of Robert "Dutch" Schwerin, 52, after the pair argued over how close their vehicles were parked.

Schwerin died in the parking lot, leaving behind two sons, Dallas, 21, and Colt, 19, and a daughter, Savannah, 15. Emilie Schwerin, his wife and their mother, died in 2004 from medical problems.

...

The incident apparently began outside the Villa Castrioti restaurant, where Schwerin and his children were celebrating the birthdays of his father and father-in-law.

But on the way out, according to Dallas, Schwerin and a woman began arguing over how close his GMC Yukon Denali was to her Hummer.

At that point, Harry Coleman joined the argument, which then seemed to dim. But then it boiled over again, Dallas said, leading Coleman to reach into the Hummer for his gun. He then walked back to where Schwerin stood and shot him in the torso, according to the police affidavit.

Police took him into custody there and found the gun in his back pocket.

Coleman, who is scheduled to appear in court at 8:30 a.m. today, was granted a state permit to carry a handgun in June 2006.

I find stories like this utterly amazing--mostly because my experience has been that regularly carrying a gun makes me more inclined to walk away from disputes.

I have long said that not everyone should own a gun. There are people that the law prohibits from being armed, and generally with good reason: convicted felons; minors; those with histories of mental incapacity because of retardation or psychosis.

There are people that the law does not prohibit from being armed, nor should it--but who I strongly discourage from being armed.

If you regularly get intoxicated, you probably shouldn't own a gun. Intoxication doesn't go well with guns (or cars, power tools, ladders, or much of anything else). If you have ever come to in the morning in a vehicle that you don't know who owns it--that's a bad sign. If you have ever returned to consciousness and found yourself wearing only a lion skin loincloth, while holding a chicken, with a crowd around you yelling, "Kill it! Kill it!": a gun's probably not the right thing to own.

If you are prone to severe depression, you better have a darn good reason to own a gun--because the risk that you might use it for suicide is high.

If you or someone that you live with is prone to losing your temper, and becoming violent: you (and those around you) are probably best off if you don't own a gun.

Read that story above, and ask yourself if you can imagine yourself letting a stupid little parking lot dispute escalate to the point where you would shoot an unarmed person who was, apparently, only shooting off his mouth. If you can imagine it, you are probably best off not carrying a gun.