Kudos to The Plain Dealer

Since I mentioned my distaste in a post yesterday for how they covered a self-defense situation, I have to give them a lot of credit for what they've published today. Not one, not two, but three excellent articles about the incident and CCW in general.

The Legal Gun Won This Fight

...Arthur's relatives and friends are upset that the law isn't going after Wells.

They want someone to blame - other than Arthur. But they shouldn't be allowed to bully the police or the city administration into taking action against a guy who was minding his own business on his own porch when suddenly confronted by an armed teenager.

Then there's the conceptual side of the argument - the big-picture side that says citizens shouldn't be allowed to have guns and certainly shouldn't be allowed to walk around with them.

This kind of incident proves knee-jerk gun foes wrong, and they know it.

"This is one of the few where they actually used it [a legally carried concealed weapon] to stop a crime," Toby Hoover of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence grudgingly told a Plain Dealer reporter.

But there are more than a few such cases. There are thousands every year, all over the country.

And where are the statistics on gun crimes committed by holders of concealed-carry permits? Something tells me that if they happened at anything approaching the rate of the hundreds of thousands of crimes perpetrated against unarmed Americans every year, we'd be hearing more about them.

The fact is, the concealed-carry "threat" has turned out to be malarkey, just as it was in the many states that debated such laws long before Ohio...

After I wrote about last week's outrage at Virginia Tech University, I got a series of sneering e-mails from a reader, along the lines of, "Next, you'll be suggesting that teachers should be armed."

I think I'll take him up on that...

How different things might have been at Virginia Tech if Seung-Hui Cho hadn't had the only gun on campus.

No Sympathy for Thug Culture

After the shooting, someone smashed in his front windows. The house looks deserted now, with sheets of plywood nailed over the windows and front door.

Ever since the shooting, people have stopped at the nearby memorial to scrawl messages honoring Buford.

"God gave me a new angel man . . . Why Da Good Die Young . . . I'll see you in eternity . . . You are with the Lord and we happy for that."...

Buford's cousin had grumbled to one reporter about the shooter being allowed to run free...

I can't bring myself to call Buford the victim of a shooting. He was the instigator of one.

His family should be ashamed of his actions and apologize to the man he tried to rob...

If there is any debate here, it shouldn't be about gun control.

It should be about thug control.

Shooting Sparks Neighborhood Anger

Damon Wells and his home appear no longer safe.

The .40-caliber handgun that Wells carries legally for defense may not be enough to protect the 25-year-old man and his home in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood.

Sunday night, a day after Wells shot and killed a 15-year-old who threatened him with a gun on his porch, Wells' home was under siege. Police sent a car to guard it.

Now the doors on his house are boarded up; the windows, too.

No one appears to be home.

Outside Wells' home Tuesday night, a crowd of about 50 people gathered to mourn Arthur "Ace Boogie" Buford, whom Wells killed during the attempted robbery...