WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.
They say that the best answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And while there are a lot of questions regarding the people and actions in this video, it appears to demonstrate a similar principle.
The video was posted Thursday to an Instagram account called “Black and Asian Souls Unite,” which said it had been submitted by one of the account’s nearly 30,000 followers.
“The guy wearing all black attempted to car jack an elderly Asian man out of his car when the Black guy with the gun intervened and well you can see what happens next,” was all the description provided. Which is probably fair, as the video speaks for itself pretty well.
Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile Zone 7 Rep. Thao Tran told the Asian-American news outlet NextShark that the encounter happened in the city’s Miracle Mile area on April 27.
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“This video was provided by a resident, to one of my fellow LAPD volunteers,” said Tran, who is also the chair of Public Safety & Wellbeing Mid City West Neighborhood Council.
“When I reviewed the video, I felt strongly that it had to be shared,” she said.
You can watch it here. I’d recommend that you lower the sound, as the language is most definitely not safe for work — but if you turn the sound off completely, you’ll miss something important around 16 seconds in.
OK, let’s unpack that a little.
First, the good: Assuming everything the guy with the handgun says in the video is accurate, and based on the description provided on the Instagram post, this guy came to the defense of an otherwise defenseless man.
Moreover, the man in the white shirt appears to have crossed racial lines to do so, defending an “old-a** Asian man” from a black would-be car jacker. Given the reports of anti-Asian race hatred that have been on the rise in recent years, that’s worth noting.
Also, so far as we can tell, no one got hurt. A potentially dangerous situation was defused, property and perhaps life were protected, and the cost was low.
All that’s to the good. But there was so much that this guy could and should have done better.
If you’re a gun owner, you should know the rules: Don’t carry a gun unless you’re prepared to draw it; don’t draw unless you’re prepared to aim; don’t aim unless you’re prepared to fire; don’t fire unless you’re prepared to kill.
Implied in that sequence: Don’t fire a “warning shot.”
There are numerous reasons for this, including the fact that what comes up must come down. This man fired a bullet into the air (presumably — he was off-camera when he pulled the trigger) and he has no idea what it hit. That’s not a good idea in the wilderness, though it’s less dangerous there. It’s a really stupid idea in a populated area like this neighborhood.
Also, while I suppose the guy is to be commended for protecting both the potential victim specifically and what he called “my street” in general, he sent this perpetrator off to threaten someone else somewhere else. He could have at least made an attempt to detain him and contacted authorities. He threatened to call the police, but so far as we know, he didn’t.
Do you think armed citizens help save lives?
Call me cynical — or just old, which may be another way of saying the same thing — but his failure to do so makes me wonder if he was carrying the gun legally in the first place.
Finally, after the suspect disengaged and began to walk away, the gun owner pursued him down the street. One could argue — and the suspect’s defense lawyer certainly would, if it came to that — that the gun owner at that point became the aggressor in this encounter.
Gun owners need to follow the law and the elemental rules of gun safety at all times, or we threaten everyone’s right to self-defense. That’s especially important if you’re going to carry a gun outside your home.
One man’s act of poor judgment can quickly become a leftist politician’s excuse to impinge our Second Amendment rights (again).
That said, I wasn’t there to see the whole thing and obviously don’t know the entire context of the event, so in the grand scheme of things, I suppose I’m glad this guy was carrying where and when he was.
Things could have turned out a whole lot worse.
UPDATE, Oct. 11, 2022: This article has been updated with additional information regarding the provenance of the video.
