Unfortunate as it is, the Roger Witter incident in Portland gives us the opportunity to consider one very important fact: human life is worth more than any property.
Mr. Witter wasn’t protecting anyone from harm. Two shoplifters were leaving the scene without violence. Furthermore, he showed an utter disregard for the 4th cardinal rule of gun safety when he fired after them in the direction of a busy rail station.
He placed people in danger to serve a very surreal definition of civic duty. In the moment he pointed a firearm at someone and pulled the trigger, he equated a piece of merchandise with a human life.
Please think long and hard about that.
The most important lesson I ever learned about the defensive use of firearms comes from Massad Ayoob. Loosely recalled, it reads like this: human life is the most precious thing in this world. If you can’t recognize its worth, you have no right to a tool that so easily robs someone of it.
I don’t care what the law in a given locality might allow, or what a grand jury might say. Things can be replaced. Life cannot be. Pulling a trigger is easy; absolution is not.
Guns are marvelously efficient tools for rending flesh and bone. They can be a tool of malice or coercion in the hands of the oppressor or the criminal. They can also preserve life in the face of imminent harm.
Just be sure you know the difference.