Found another one...this time at Shoney's
"BE CAREFUL IN CHOOSING YOUR NEXT VICTIM
By Ann Coulter
(08/13/1999) - Remember this name: Thomas Glenn Terry.
It won't be bandied quite as much as "Mark O. Barton" over the next few
weeks, but it should be. Two armed men burst into Shoney's restaurant in
Anniston, Alabama and herded the patrons and employees into a walk-in
refrigerator, at gun point. The robbers kept the manager behind for his
assistance as they looted the restaurant. One patron, however, also remained
behind. Thomas Glenn Terry had opted against being locked in a refrigerator,
and hid from the attackers under a table. As one of the armed robbers
ransacked the cash register, another patroled the restaurant. When he came
across Mr. Terry, he pulled his gun. But unlike the recent victims in
Atlanta, this victim was armed. Using his own legally concealed handgun,
Terry shot and killed the robber. The other armed robber, who had had his gun
trained on the manager, then opened fire on
Terry. Terry shot back, mortally wounding the second robber. The two dozen
hostages were released unharmed. Only the criminals -- who had been armed
with stolen guns by the way -- didn't make it out alive.
You probably hadn't heard of the Shoney's restaurant incident. In the media's
boundless capacity to stultify the public with sensational news stories, they
have made places like Littleton, Colorado household names. But "Anniston,
Alabama" doesn't ring a bell. A massacre is a story. Thwarting a massacre
isn't. Once you know about Anniston, and similar averted tragedies, something
will start to leap out at you as you read news accounts of gunmen
shooting scores of innocents. Massacre stories always include a terrifying
account of how the killers proceeded from victim to victim, pausing to
reload, and shooting again. Mass murder requires that the
victims be unarmed. Thomas Glenn Terry, though heroic, is not altogether
unique. Two years ago in Pearl, Mississippi a
deranged student shot and killed two of his classmates. Fortunately, Joel
Myrick, the assistant principal had a gun in his car. He prevented the
shooting from becoming a Littleton level massacre by holding the student at
gunpoint until the police arrived. A year later, in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, a
14-year-old boy opened fire at an eighth-grade graduation dance, killing a
teacher and wounding three others. A single murder did not become a mass
murder only because a near-by restaurant owner, James Strand, happened to be
armed. As the shooter stopped to reload, Strand immobilized the shooter,
holding him for over ten minutes, until the police appeared. A lot of killing
can be accomplished in ten minutes when none of your victims is
armed. How long did it take the police to arrive in Atlanta? Barton walked
into one office building in Atlanta shot four people dead, then left the
building, ambled across the street, entered another building, and killed at
least five more people. As in Littleton there are film clips of policemen
scaling the building's walls to rescue
terrified and completely defenseless people inside. Most striking in the news
reports of Barton's shooting spree was this: Fully three hours after the
shooting, some people were still hiding in the building. Hiding. Waiting like
pigs before the slaughter. Because none of them was armed. None but the
madman. But for some reason, the government's response is always to disarm
more citizens. Not to disarm itself, by the way, but to disarm people other
than the police who show up 15 minutes after the
shooting has begun. This isn't a complaint about the police, they simply
can't be everywhere at once. It's a plea for more citizen guards. There may
be bad citizens, but, let me remind you, there are also bad police. Why are
they the only ones don't have to hide in their offices when
madmen with guns show up? More guns will not create more Mark Bartons. Guns
can do a lot of things, like protect you from
lunatics, but they don't make you criminally insane. Consider Mr. Barton. The
initial reports have been that he killed his children
because his stock porfolio had declined. Well, that's a rational response.
Whether it was his stocks or his wife or the weather -- he killed his
children. This is a madman. In the absence of a gun, he could have used an
axe, a bomb, or a machette. One of the
most efficient murder sprees this century was accomplished not with guns, but
with machettes. Madmen in Rwanda murdered almost one million people in under
four months, with machettes. If only Thomas Glenn Terry had been there. "
i2i.org |
