To Brian, who was mugged and shot three times in DC two nights ago. Addie thankfully reports that he’s going to make a full recovery, despite having his spleen removed. And true to form, he’s cracking jokes and has friends by his side.
Also, Ezra makes graphs.
Hang in there, Brian, we’re thinking about you!
Its relieving that we don’t have something like a Handgun Ban that would get in the way of this sort of tragedy…
Hypatia,
Yeah, if there had only been a law! The mugger would have no doubt respected it just as much as he respected the statues against assault and robbery, and the whole tragedy could have been avoided.
Can anyone explain why Washington, D.C. is so violent? I hear more about their murders and shootings than their crooked politics.
Wasn’t DC the murder capital of the US while it had a handgun ban? I know Chicago was…
Hypatia:
The sort of folks who mug & shoot people are not the sort of folks who respect things like handgun bans (I seriously doubt he got his gun in the past week). Nor are they the sort who are qualified to even possess, let alone carry, firearms under state and federal laws.
Hopefully, with Heller, more responsible citizens of DC will obtain handguns and start deterring/stopping this sort of violence. According to almost every empirical study conducted, places that have liberalized handgun ownership laws or concealed carry laws, or have expanded the castle doctrine, have seen noticeable reduction in violent crimes, because criminals are worried about facing armed victims. In such a violent society as ours, it makes no sense to force ordinary, law-abiding people to outsource their personal protection to police forces.
Also, in general, someone got shot. Its tragic, and its wonderful that he’s making a full recovery. Lets leave it at “yay, he’s getting better” instead of trying to use this tragedy to score political points in either direction. I think it was pretty clear that Jill was posting this as a “best wishes” thing not a “lets use this as a jumping off point for a political discussion” thing. In light of that, I apologize for taking the bait.
Thanks, William.
And yes, for everyone else: This is not the place to be talking about your love of guns. Brian is a pretty fierce liberal, and I really doubt that he’d appreciate having people use his getting shot to talk about about how handguns for everyone will deter this kind of violence. I can’t speak for him, but I can take a pretty educated guess and say that he doesn’t want to be the spokesperson for concealed handguns. Any more pro-gun comments will be deleted.
This is a thread to wish Brian well. From what I hear, he’s recovering well, which is a huge relief.
I work for an indie magazine that Brian contributes to on a regular basis – we were all shocked and horrified at first, of course, but we did get quite a kick out of his deadpan idea that it was the NSA :) He’s an awesome guy and we’re all glad that he made it through!