You’ve heard it many times before: The best answer for a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
The reason you’ve heard it so often is because it’s true. It’s just as true if the bad guy has a knife.
That truism proved itself out once again in Pennsylvania on Friday, when an unidentified lawfully armed gun owner defended his or her life and property from a criminal genius with a kitchen knife.
Harrisburg Police responded to an attempted burglary and “shots fired” call just before 5:00 Friday afternoon, according to arrest details provided online by the Harrisburg Bureau of Police.
The way the report was worded implies that the suspect was identified by the homeowner before he was located by police, but the report is a little unclear on that.
Regardless, officers learned that one Keon J. Washington had attempted to break into a residence, which was at the time occupied by the homeowner, who had a firearm.
Police said that the homeowner warned Washington multiple times, but the suspect — again, a criminal genius if ever there was one — was allegedly undeterred.
Until the unidentified homeowner shot him, that is. That apparently deterred him a fair amount.
Police found the criminal mastermind approximately two blocks away, armed with a “large butcher knife.” One would think that, in two blocks’ worth of travel, the 32-year-old culprit — excuse me, alleged culprit — could have found somewhere to ditch the blade.
Do you support the right to own firearms for self-defense?
But what do I know about criminal mastermindery?
The report did not specify where Washington had been shot, but he was treated at a local hospital for “non-life-threatening injuries.”
“Washington has been charged with felony trespassing and attempted burglary charges, as well as terroristic threats and recklessly endangering another person,” according to the arrest details.
“Terroristic threats” in Pennsylvania law generally refers to making threats with the specific purpose of scaring someone — it’s often used to charge people in domestic violence cases, for example. That’s another reason I wonder whether Washington knew his intended victim.
One hates to speculate about what might have happened had this homeowner not been in possession of a firearm for self-defense, particularly given the dearth of information provided in the online report.
Was the homeowner elderly, at risk of bodily injury or even death? Was she female, at risk of sexual assault? For that matter, given that we know so little about Washington, it’s possible that the homeowner was male and at risk of sexual assault.
There’s so much we don’t know, and guessing probably isn’t going to be very productive.
But here’s what we do know: A crime, and possibly a number of crimes, were prevented Friday by a gun owner exercising his or her God-given right to self-defense.
Police were called, and they showed up to arrest Washington and, hopefully, do whatever is necessary to prevent him from doing harm to himself or others. I’m glad they did.
But the point is that they came after the fact. Had this homeowner not been prepared to defend him- or herself, authorities might have found themselves responding to a very different kind of 911 call.
Average police response times are difficult to quantify in the aggregate and vary widely by location, but one study in Durham, North Carolina, put them at 6 minutes and 20 seconds earlier this year.
The average armed homeowner, on the other hand, can respond to threats in a matter of seconds.
You can do the math. And if you need help with it, there’s a homeowner in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who would probably be willing to help.
