A suspect in Sterling Heights, Michigan, allegedly grabbed a woman from behind then fled when she pulled her concealed carry handgun and pushed the barrel against his stomach.
The incident allegedly occurred “near 15 Mile and Van Dyke” during evening hours, as the woman was walking her dog.
According to Fox 32, Sterling Heights Police Chief Dale Dwojakowski said the woman noticed a van park up ahead of her and leave the engine running. The unidentified woman told police, “That’s kind of odd—that time of night, why is this van running? And it’s a black van with no windows.”
The woman said she noticed a suspect get out of the van and that he “started walking parallel to her.” She instinctively reached under her coat and put her hand on the handle of her gun. Then the man disappeared.
Suddenly, the man reappeared and was coming right at her. Chief Dwojakowski said, “He grabbed the back of her jacket and tried to grab her and pull her towards him.”
The woman drew her handgun, put the barrel against the suspect’s stomach, and said, “I don’t want to kill you.” At that point the suspect fled the scene. He is described as “a black male in his 30s, medium build, clean shaven, with a scar on his upper lip.”
This incident is critical for understanding defensive gun uses (DGUs) in America, as many DGUs prove successful merely by brandishing a gun rather than pulling the trigger. On February 17, 2015, Breitbart News reported that Florida State criminologist Gary Kleck reaffirmed his estimate of a minimum of 760,000 DGUs in America each year. He first began working on this estimate on 1993 and it has yet to be refuted with empirical evidence.
A large portion of these 760,000 DGUs are instances in which guns are justifiably brandished to stop crime, without the trigger ever being pulled.
AWR Hawkins is an award winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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