In a number of incidents this week, a young person has made an error while searching for a door or car or driveway and been shot, one fatally. In one case, Ralph Yarl, a black sixteen-year-old, was looking for his younger siblings and ended up at the home of Andrew D. Lester, a white man of eighty-four years who shot the teen through the locked glass door, claiming that Yarl was reaching for the door knob, though Yarl disputes this. In the second, a group of cheerleaders were heading home after practice when one of them opened a car door, having mistaken the vehicle for her own, and were then pursued and fired upon by the man, Pedro Tello Rodriguez, Jr., who had been in the passenger seat of the other car, seriously wounding Payton Washington. And in the third, a group of young people entered the wrong driveway in rural New York and were fired upon by Kevin Monahan, the homeowner, as they were leaving, killing twenty-year-old Kaylin Gillis. Monahan claimed to law enforcement that the car had been approaching rapidly with a revving engine.
In only one of these has race been identified as a possible factor, that of Lester’s shooting of Yarl. One of his grandsons said that their relationship has been strained in recent years as his grandfather became increasingly paranoid under the influence of right-wing media, and Lester told police that Yarl’s size frightened him. In the driveway incident, both the victim and the shooter were white, and in the case of the parking lot shooting, Rodriguez and Washington are both persons of color. Both Lester and Monahan are much older than the persons they shot, while Rodriquez and the cheerleaders are close in age. The first two incidents occurred in Missouri and Texas, states whose gun control measures have been given the grade of F by the Giffords Law Center, while the third happened in A- receiving New York.
All of these incidents come after a recent spate of mass shootings, reinforcing the impression held by many that America is experiencing a crisis of gun violence. As I suggest above, there is no simple answer as to why they occurred—other than what will come immediately to the minds of some: guns.
No, I have not transformed into a gun control advocate. It is necessary to note here that thirty percent of Americans owned firearms in 2019, according to the Pew Research Center, and this was prior to a rise in sales that accompanied the COVID pandemic. That makes nearly a hundred million of us, the vast majority of whom did not shoot anyone, in error or otherwise. But just as with cops and CEOs and members of Congress, public perception is often shaped by the worst members of a group, and I have no doubt that for a lot of people who see guns either as an evil or as a subject of concern, the face of Andrew Lester will be the one that comes to mind whenever guns hit the news.
It would be simple to call that a fallacy of hasty generalization, insist that the Constitution forbids gun control, and leave matters there. But public perception is all too frequently treated as reality, and laws are made and constitutions edited by the votes of majorities in countries like ours.
That being the case, it is up to us gun owners who wish to preserve the right to personal arms to speak out on two points:
First, we must call out acts such as the ones above or a Florida case in which charges were recently dropped against a driver who fired multiple rounds through his car at another vehicle during a road rage incident. Whether or not the shooter is ultimately found guilty under the law, we in the gun community have to make it clear that the irresponsible setting off of firearms is unacceptable in our culture. There may be people in this world who no longer see shame as a useful corrective, but we cannot be among that number.
But more importantly, we have to make it clear to the general public when lethal force is justified. Gun control advocates will often exaggerate the concept, when not outright spreading lies, and their behavior in that is their own alone. It is up to the gun community to explain that no, it is not legal to open fire on speculation or at the slightest provocation.
The simplest way to explain what justifies lethal force is provided by Massad Ayoob and others as ability, opportunity, and jeopardy, which is to say, someone with the physical capacity, either in strength or weapons, to cause you serious harm is within reach and is making moves that a reasonable person would interpret as demonstrating intent to cause that harm. Which is to say, entering the wrong driveway or knocking on the wrong door does not qualify. Opening the wrong car door might, unless as was the case above, the person in error immediately backs away. Engine noise or skin color in no way changes this. Any of the ten thousand mistakes that human beings make in getting through their days do not.
The reality is that as responsible gun owners, we cannot react without thinking. Does this mean that some of us will be injured or killed by attackers? Yes. And that is too bad. We have a duty of restraint, even at some peril to ourselves. Lethal force is not something that a simple “oops” will cover, and we must be damned certain that it is justified if we ever take a shot at another human being.
Otherwise, Andrew Lester will be the face of gun ownership.
It is starting to look like a deluge rather than a spring rain. This is not good.