Last year three armed men followed a woman in her 60s into her garage when she was returning home to her home in Seattle. The robbers stole her jewelry and car keys in broad daylight.

The day before that robbery, a man was harassing other passengers on a Metro bus.He began arguing, pushing and kicking one of the passengers. The victim tried to ignore the assault. Then a woman that was with the assailant began hitting some of the victim’s family members. The victim defended himself and his family. The assailant allegedly stabbed the victim and caused him to endure a short stay in the hospital.

Earlier the same week, an armed contractor with a CPL arrived at a home on the North End of Tacoma and saw a vehicle in the driveway. The contractor arrived shortly after 11 a.m. and saw household goods, including a television and weapons, in the driveway. The contractor was armed and blocked the driveway with his truck. The burglar walked out, saw the pickup truck blocking the driveway and decided that the best way to get away was to ram the truck with his minivan.

After the contractor fired one shot that wounded the suspect, the police apprehended the alleged burglar, 32, and took him to Tacoma General Hospital for treatment and criminal charges. In Tacoma during 2011 Jamarr Johnson, 19, died when he unlawfully entered a home and the homeowner shot Jamarr dead through a door.

The following month, a homeowner shot Anthony Len McDougald, 36, when Anthony and another man broke into a home on South D Street. The homeowner confronted the two inside his garage, they charged and the homeowner shot them. The other assailant was only injured. And within about a month, a Tacoma police officer shot and injured a suspected burglar after a confrontation outside a South Tacoma home where the man had crashed his car.

Most of these armed citizens took the risk of being prosecuted or branded as vigilantes, possibly even as racist, like George Zimmerman in Florida. Contrary to the perception fostered by certain parties, full investigations have been ongoing and only reckless disregard for public safety would cause anyone to go around giving opinions as to what happened in Sanford, Florida between Mr. Martin and Mr. Zimmerman. Nevertheless, many of the so-called facts appear quite different than initial media reports caused many to believe.

When you are confronted by a serious possibility of death or grave bodily harm, the risk is worth taking. All these armed citizens are likely to have experienced some kind of intense trauma, just like the syndrome normally experienced by police officers in similar situations. Such individuals are not going to be applauded; nor will they be held in high regard by their neighbors.

And the Spring of 2012 seems to promise another year in which citizens are overcoming chaos. One intruder was shot dead during a home invasion in Puyallup involving three men and a woman .

The police determined that the homeowner, a retired police officer, was threatened with deadly force in his home. One of the attackers was brandishing a crowbar. The homeowner was justified in using deadly force, the police said, when he suddenly found himself confronting two men in his hallway after he heard pounding on his door.

Two of the suspects are in custody and the homeowner probably wounded another member of the gang, Joshua Baker, who escaped and is still at large.

It seems worth noting that, had the homeowner been subject to a duty to retreat, he might have been in some kind of legal jeopardy (and vulnerable to being brained from behind with the crowbar) for “standing his ground“. Florida used to be a state that required a victim to retreat if possible, before deploying deadly force. Stand Your Ground laws have been a hot topic in the news lately.

Another recent justified shooting occurred in North Bend. The King County Sheriff’s Office reported that a 30 year old North Bend man was shot and killed after he broke into a couple’s home:

A couple had been sleeping when they woke up to the sound of glass breaking. The suspect had broken the rear sliding glass door, entered the house and then started “trashing the house.” The couple, a 46 year old man and his girlfriend, hid in a bedroom as they talked to the 911 operator.

The suspect was yelling, “Where are you? I’m going to kill you!” The man living at the home retrieved a handgun from his nightstand and yelled numerous times, “I have a pistol. Get out of my house!” The couple locked themselves in a bedroom as they continued to hear the suspect ransack the house and yell that he was coming after them.

After the suspect kicked down the couple’s bedroom door, the homeowner shot him and deputies found the suspect, who was not known by the couple, dead outside of the bedroom.

Almost the same day, Bonney Lake and Gig Harbor saw two attempted home invasions involving armed citizens protecting themselves from home invasions. In Bonney Lake, a homeowner heard someone kicking the door, grabbed a shotgun and confronted the intruder. The suspect took off in a pickup truck.

In the other attempted home invasion in Gig Harbor, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said two teenagers tried to get in through a doggie door. The woman, at home alone, grabbed a gun and showed it to the teens. The kids took off.

Dave Workman reports that:

A check with the Department of Licensing Thursday revealed that a new record number of Concealed Pistol Licenses are now active in Washington. As of Thursday morning, 357,782 CPLs are now in circulation. March showed a stunning volume of activity, according to a DOL source, with some 12,000 renewals, first-time applications and replacements being processed.

Each one of us has to decide how to deal with the risk of becoming a victim of violence. Many adults of all ages all around the U.S.- including many women- have decided to make a firearm part of their personal protection plan. While weighing the facts, keep in mind that statistics about people that have been killed with firearms can be deceptive when it comes to identifying the circumstances of the deaths.

How many of the victims of gun violence, reported in supposedly scientific studies of gun violence and published as statistical evidence in the mainstream news, have died by suicide or while engaging in deadly assaults against innocent people?

They all deserve our sympathy to varying degrees, but what if it is a choice between you and a suspect that decides that your family will be his next victims? To willingly surrender the means to protect yourself and your loved ones is a step toward suicide that violates the core principle of providing for one’s own.

Most Americans understand the reality of what we are discussing herein and that is why so many are becoming licensed to carry. Some of the worse instances of violence are barely reported by the media.

Many families are choosing to get trained at professional schools for armed citizens. The Armed Defense Training Association is not a school but we are already bringing quality trainers and armed citizens together in Federal Way and at local ranges.

We are also providing regular opportunities to practice what we are learning with methods that are geared toward the reality of home defense and what can happen when we leave our homes in a world that is getting more dangerous every day.

The Armed Defense Training Association (ADTA) is exploring ways to work with many of the existing ranges in the area — and the new ranges — in order to encourage all community members to work together in fostering responsible and productive shooting events, including safety and training. We even hope to sponsor and organize various shooting competitions.

Plan to attend a special program by the ADTA at 6:30 p.m. May 3. The free public meeting will be held at Genesis Realty, 32014 32nd Ave. S. in Federal Way. Guest speaker will be FWPD Cmdr. Kyle Sumpter, our local “Top Shot” contestant. Sumpter is responsible for FWPD firearms training. He will be speaking on his experience as a competitor on “Top Shot,” which airs Tuesdays on The History Channel. It could be informative to ask Sumpter how a new Federal Way shooting range may impact Federal Way police training activities.

Anti-gun groups and politicians regularly exploit accidents involving children and guns. For example, anti-gun state Senator Adam Kline (D-37) and two other state Senators were primed and ready to propose new legislation (SB 6628)immediately following the incident in which a nine-year old boy recently brought a gun to a Bremerton elementary school. The gun accidentally discharged resulting in another student suffering serious gunshot wounds. Saul Alinsky was the Chicago radical that urged his fellow Socialists to exploit every crisis in order to advance the cause of total government control.

Unfortunately, subsequent events have transpired since the tragedy in Bremerton that seem to indicate that parents are leaving guns around where their kids can find them. While people all over the state were still discussing the Bremerton school incident, an off-duty Marysville police Officer parked his van near Stanwood City Hall.

The officer’s son, left alone in the vehicle, found the officer’s gun in the glove compartment and shot his 7-year-old sister. The girl died from her injuries. So much for the idea that law enforcement officers are more trustworthy when it comes to firearms responsibility!

To make things worse, a 3-year-old boy fatally shot himself with a gun he found in the family car while his family stopped for gas in Tacoma. The mom’s boyfriend put a pistol under the seat of the car and got out to pump gas while the mom went into the convenience store, leaving the boy and his baby sister in the car. The boy climbed out of his child seat, fished out the gun from under the seat and shot himself in the head.

Whenever episodes of gun mayhem get play in the media, Sen. Kline usually finds his way into the news. In the past, he has proposed new state laws prohibiting certain kinds of rifles that he thinks are too much like military weapons.

Despite the fact that the Founding Fathers exhorted Americans that preparing Americans to use militarily useful weapons was their objective when drafting the Second Amendment, Adam Kline wants to ban guns that seem scary; i.e., most guns- if the truth be known.

Kline’s newly proposed SB 6628 would now provide new language to the existing RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT statute making it a crime to let a child obtain access to a loaded firearm. The trouble is that prosecutors already utilize Washington State’s RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT statute to prosecute folks that leave guns in places where children are likely to get hold of them. The “new” provision contains no new penalties and is apparently window dressing to make Kline look like he is doing something about a problem that may not even exist.

While fatal firearm accidents are at an all-time low, poisoning, suffocation and choking on small objects cause many more accidental deaths to children than firearms. In fact, about one accidental firearm death of a child each year is typical in our state, according to state health statistics gathered between 2007 and 2010.

The biggest question about the recent spate of gun accidents is why folks obtain concealed pistol licenses and then leave their guns behind when going about in public. That one time that you are outside your vehicle pumping gas could just be the time that you need the weapon.

But even if you never need to protect yourself or your family, the best way to keep a pistol out of reach of children is to have it on your person. Otherwise, it should be unloaded and properly stored.

A Seattle anti-gun advocacy group is placing signs on buses to persuade Seattle residents and commuters that gun ownership is more dangerous to family members or loved ones than it will be to a predatory criminal. The Washington State Supreme Court has consistently championed firearms rights and the right to self-defense is deeply engrained in our state’s laws, including numerous case law precedents. Adam Kline, on the other hand, is reportedly a former radical and still seems to favor governmental solutions over individual responsibility.

I am constantly amazed when I hear the children of the Sixties railing against gun ownership. These are often the very folks that went around U.S. campuses inveighing against capitalism and chanting, “All political power comes from the barrel of a gun!” Chairman Mao, the tyrant that cheerfully murdered over 60 million of his fellow Chinese citizens, coined that catchy little dictum.

After he marched across China and took control, the first thing Mao did was ban guns, depriving the people under his control from possessing the means to defend themselves against numerous Maoist purges. But, notwithstanding the fact that all tyrants ban possession of firearms by their own citizens, lock up your guns when you are not using them! And keep firearms out of the hands of unsupervised children.

Range time on TV: Root for local ‘Top Shot’ contestant | Firearms Lawyer

By MARK KNAPP

Republished with permission from the Federal Way Mirror
The Firearms Lawyer
February 3, 2012

Television programs that feature weapons and shooting technology are becoming very popular.

One of my favorites is “Wednesday Night at the Range” on the Outdoor Channel — actually several different programs about self defense, competition shooting and the history of firearms.

Then on Tuesday evenings at 10:00 PM Pacific Time on the History Channel there is Top Shot. The program has matches in which top military, law enforcement and competitive shooters compete with everything from antique pistols to .50-caliber sniper rifles and machine guns.

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Sometimes they even throw rocks or tomahawks and shoot crossbows and other primitive weapons.

Just getting selected as a “Top Shot” participant requires candidates to compete against men and women that are highly ranked in various shooting disciplines. Most are experts with a certain kind of pistol or rifle. It takes the ability to master whatever weapon is at hand in order to be successful on the show.

Federal Way Police Department’s Cmdr. Kyle Sumpter recently cleared all the initial hurdles and went on to compete in a series of “Top Shot” episodes in Santa Clarita, Calif. Sumpter supervises firearms training for Federal Way police officers and previously headed up Valley SWAT, the largest SWAT agency in the state. Although Sumpter has already completed the “Top Shot” competition, not even Chief Brian Wilson knows the results. Sumpter knows how he did, but the results will be a secret until the episodes air this spring (season starts Feb. 14).

My occasional talks with Cmdr. Kyle Sumpter, mostly by phone, have me looking forward to seeing him on and off the range. You don’t have to talk to him for long to realize that Sumpter is dedicated to the craft of shooting and that he is the kind of honest, straight talking professional that makes him worth paying attention to. That is why the Federal Way Police Department has him in charge of training officers.

Some of my best memories growing up are of watching Westerns on television with my dad. There was more to some of the programs than just bullets being thrown back and forth by men on horseback. Greatness of character and decency could often be discerned in some of the really good shows.

Of course, a gun itself is not somehow a mark of excellent character — or even being good with a gun. It takes courage to face the people in society that are organized against decency. Sometimes it takes a whole lot of character just to figure out who the good guys and the bad guys are.

I don’t know whether kids think about stuff like that today or not. But get your son or daughter to watch “Top Shot” with you this spring. If you want your kids to see one of the good guys who keep Federal Way safe, and learn something about why America is great, you will not be disappointed.

This year, the day after Thanksgiving saw Americans finally getting back to the business Americans love: Shopping!

FBI statistics show that a new record was set during that one Friday for background check requests from gun buyers. There were 129,166 requests to the NICS. That was a third more than the previous all-time record of 97,848 on Black Friday 2008. On Black Friday last year, there were 87,061 requests.

Some of the buyers believe that stockpiling guns is a better way to prepare for hard times than gold. Nevertheless, many of those shopping for guns at several gun stores in the Federal Way area were almost certainly women purchasing guns for their own protection.

Federal Way’s local Armed Defense Training Association has been in contact with an instructor named Jennie at Rivendell Sales and Consulting in Kent. Jennie teaches women how to shoot. She owns and operates a store that markets to women who shoot.

I asked her what ladies need to know when they first decide to buy a gun. The first consideration, she stated, is not to let someone at a gun shop — or a well-meaning significant other — sell you a small gun that “you shoot once, it hurts and you put it away.”

Jennie said a woman needs her own gun that fits. “I have seen too many ladies with a gun that does not fit their hand, one that is too large a caliber for a beginner, or they are told at some gun shop that the itty-bitty gun is just the one for them. The gun that does not fit you right just goes unused and sits on a shelf.”

Jennie encourages her students to consciously make the decision to defend their own life. “If you are killed or severely injured, how will your family function without you?”

Of course, hardly anyone ever actually states that his or her own life is not worth defending. But, despite all the philosophical and political arguments, take the steps to get trained and actually get a gun into your hands. This demonstrates that you are prepared to fight back.

Jennie demystifies the “danger” of guns. She told me, “I have seen many ladies not even sure they want to touch a gun. Her students learn quickly that a gun does not go off by itself. Once a woman realizes that she can effectively and safely operate the efficient little safety device, fear goes away and smiles start to appear.”

However, too many women take a beginner class and think that they are ready to go out on the street and deal with all the legal, physical and emotional things that go with armed self-defense.

“In order to carry for self-defense, you have to make the commitment to train and practice,” Jennie explains. “Training generally teaches you a skill and how to practice that skill; practice needs to continue on a regular basis.” Jennie recommends competition to test skills, keep skills sharp and make training interesting and fun.

“The holster that fits a slim man will usually not work for a curvy lady.” Men behind the gun counter, who have absolutely no idea what a lady needs for shooting gear, are the reason why Jennie became an instructor and opened her gun shop. Apparently, in the world of women’s self-defense, most of the old wives’ tales are perpetuated by men.

According to John Lott, the longer “shall issue” laws (such as Washington’s concealed carry law that requires a permit to issue within thirty days) are in place in a state, the more effective they are. In the period studied, for every five years a shall-issue law was in place, murder rates dropped by at least 15 percent, robberies by 11 percent and rapes by 9 percent. The benefits of concealed-carry laws for women are especially striking. According to Lott’s research, one additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about three to four times more than one additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men.

According to LAUREL S. BARTON, a guest columnist in the Seattle PI:

Most people will be horrified and will fail to ask the crucial, underlying question: How many of those guns were purchased legally? After all, laws will affect guns legally acquired, not those from secondary sources. The answer: 15 percent of guns used in crimes are legally obtained. That leaves 85 percent unaffected by changes to gun control laws.

The number of crimes prevented by firearms based on incidents reported to the police nationwide is roughly 64,615 yearly; the estimate can jump as high as 2.45 million if one factors in unreported cases. Compare those numbers to 30,000 gun-related deaths yearly and one can see the difference is, at the very least, 34,000 people saved by guns.

According to an article in the Detroit News a few years ago, Americans own more than 200 million firearms, more than 60 million of which are handguns (National Institute of Justice statistics):

“Figures vary widely about the gender breakdown of ownership, but federal statistics claim 9 percent of women own guns.”

Brian Anse Patrick, a professor at the University of Toledo who studies gun culture, has observed that, as concealed carry permits are becoming more available due to rapidly changing laws in many states, the issue of concealed carry has become mainstream and more women are carrying:

“Before the CCW laws were liberalized, the people getting trained traditionally in gun culture were the old white guys,” Patrick said. “But after (2001) women said, ‘I am a woman and at risk and it’s a pretty sensible thing to do.‘”

In Colorado, a woman named Jeanne Assam, was thrown right into the path of a mad-dog killer:

Amid deafening cracks of gunfire, smoke-spewing canisters and the flight of thousands of New Life Church members, Jeanne Assam said she suddenly saw the hallways clear and a gunman come through the door.

“I took cover. I identified myself. I engaged him. I took him down,” the 42-year-old former law officer and volunteer church security guard said Monday at a news conference in the Colorado Springs police station.

The armed attacker invading the church was carrying two handguns, an assault rifle and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition, said Sgt. Jeff Johnson of the Colorado Springs Police Department.

See also Michelle Malkin “Feminization of Gun Debate.”

“Generally a lot of women are out alone at night and they just want to feel like they have that level of protection. There are also a lot of single moms who feel it is important to protect their family and their kids in that regard.”

If you are a woman or man that has questions, comments or additional information, including statistics pertaining to concealed carry permits issued in the Seattle-Tacoma area you should send us an e-mail at knapp.m@comcast.net.