Good heavens! He's a VERY, very fortunate man. And his family is incredibly lucky he's still alive.
You have your wife and kids in your car and you're in motion heading away from what turns into a scene of armed violence.
So you STOP THE CAR (
with your wife and kids in it!!!) and GET OUT, and go take your own gun into a gun fight in progress and start making commands?
I'm glad, I guess, that the guy says it was "instinct." At least then he has an excuse to claim he didn't consciously make those incredibly poor choices willfully.
Augusta Police Lt. Christopher Massey said:
“From our standpoint,” Massey said, “everybody has a constitutional right under the Second Amendment to have a gun. In an incident like this, we certainly would tell people that they should get themselves and their families to safety and be a good witness.”
Hats off and a deep thank you to the good Lt. here who has a sound head on his shoulders. I'm sure he's grateful he's not filling out a report on the death of this good Samaritan or one of his children.
(EDIT: Or having to explain to a confused public and distraught family why Mr. Good Samaritan is now in jail facing felony charges for his mistakes while thinking he was doing the right thing.)
This is how it's done folks. Daniel Chavanne should be the poster child for responsible gun ownership.
Absolutely NOT. This is a textbook case of what NOT to do.
Just because someone got incredibly lucky is no excuse for lauding or emulating their daft actions.
Whatever was going on between the four miscreants who were arrested, it wasn't worth ONE FRACTION of what Mr. Chavanne risked to stop it. ***
Unfortunately, the real lessons of such a thing are always lost amid the comic book superhero adulation of those who have no clue what really was in play.
*** --
"Hey, look! There's four irate 'People of WalMart' rednecks blasting at each other in a parking lot. I think I'll take my own life, or my own freedom, the lives of my wife and my children, my ability to provide for them, their ability to make the rent, pay for groceries, go to college, have a successful start in life, my wife's security in her later years, and the love and nurturing presence of a father and husband that it is my duty to provide -- I'll take all that and count it as worth LESS than whatever these knuckle-dragging ingrates are up to beating on each other in a public parking lot. Yeah, that makes GREAT sense."