Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
We’re only 50 days into 2015, but those 50 days have been wild ones in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and a bad one for criminals.
Tusla’s residents have already put five bad guys in the ground in shootings that have been ruled justifiable self-defense.
It’s not a trend that anyone expects to continue. There were only eight legal homicides in Tulsa in all of 2014, and only two of those incidents involving average citizens. The other six justifiable homicides in Tulsa in 2014 involved police officers.
Tusla Police Sgt. Dave Walker notes that it’s been an unusual year so far.
Of the 11 homicide victims so far this year, five have been killed by civilians or security guards in shootings Tulsa police have deemed self-defense. For comparison’s sake, only eight such homicides occurred in all of 2014, and six of those involved Tulsa police officers. Tulsa police have not been involved in a shooting yet this year.
“It’s been an odd year,” Walker said. “I’m sure it will even out over the next 12 months, but, yeah, … it’s been odd.”
We’re sure that critics of so-called “stand your ground” laws would love to blame Oklahoma’s 2006 adoption of legislation that, “specifies that the victim need not be in fear of his or her life — use of deadly force is protected as long as the victim has ‘reasonable belief’ the intruder might use ‘any’ physical force, ‘no matter how slight.”
The problem for critics is that in four of the five shootings the state’s version of “stand your ground” clearly wasn’t relevant, and in the final shooting, where two serial armed robbers were killed by a store clerk, the District Attorney personally noted that the bad guys fired first.
Moms Demand Action and other gun control groups keep attempting to pretend that good guys with guns don’t make a different in their communities.
Then again, these groups are far more often wrong than right.