The Armed Citizen® August 21, 2015

Score one for the home defender. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office announced earlier this year that Thomas Greer, an 80-year-old from Long Beach, Calif., who killed a 28-year-old woman during a July 22, 2014, break-in, will not be charged. Greer returned from work that day to find a man and a woman in his home, trying to crack open his safe. The strangers said they were police officers, but later they roughed him up, breaking his collarbone. While the interlopers returned their attention to the safe, Greer retrieved his small-caliber handgun from his bedroom. He returned to find the thieves had taken $5,000 from the safe. Greer shot three times, striking the woman in the chest and right knee. The male suspect, age 26, fled but was later apprehended and pleaded not guilty during a December hearing to charges that include murder (because someone was killed during the commission of a felony), burglary and robbery. (Fresno Bee, Fresno, CA, 1/27/15)

A bystander was able to save a young girl being attacked by an aggressive dog through the judicious use of his handgun. A 9-year-old Anchorage, Alaska, girl was playing on the playground when a neighbor’s dog got loose and immediately latched on to the top of her head. Hearing her screams, several nearby adults came to her aid. One man struck the dog with a crowbar and another used pepper spray in the animal, but neither action caused the canine to release its grip on the girl. The dog eventually let go of the girl, instead turning and attacking two nearby adult men, one of whom was able to produce a handgun and shot the beast once in the head. The girl was taken to a nearby hospital where she was treated for non-life-threatening injuries to her scalp. The dog survived its injury, and its fate will be determined by animal control pending the completion of their investigation. (Alaska Dispatch, Anchorage, AK, 6/20/15)

From the Armed Citizen Archives
December 1988 
Confronted by a knife-wielding man on the stairway of her Englewood, Colo., apartment building, a 25-year-old woman was forced into her apartment where the man tried to rape her. She managed to barricade herself in the bedroom, but her attacker broke through. The pair struggled until the woman was able to get a hold of her handgun and shoot her assailant. Police said the man cold face charges of attempted murder and attempted rape in addition to kidnapping. (The Post, Denver, CO)