Saturday, May 14, 2011

Obviously this guy didn't get the message

Doesn't he know a .22 has no stopping power? *

The male was armed with a kitchen knife, a struggle ensued between the two of them. She fell in the bathtub injuring herself," Gwinnett police spokesman Edwin Ritter said.

The woman tried to fight the man off with a shower a rod, and he forced her into her bedroom, police said. They said she told her attacker she had money in the room. But she grabbed a .22-caliber handgun and shot the man nine times, police said.Police said the man ran out of a back door and collapsed in the yard. He later died at the Gwinnett Medical Center. The victim, who was injured in the scuffle, was also taken to the hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries. Police have not released her name.

Obviously Mr. Puentes sucks at conventional wisdom altogether, as he also thought it was a good idea to take a knife to a gunfight.  And the almost-victim here is bad at it too, 'cause guns are bad news for women, right?

In all seriousness, this woman should be lauded as a hero.   According to the article, he had likely been stalking her for days, and police say he also probably had other victims.  She may well have literally saved lives here, people.  Bully for her.




*Every time I have this conversation with Erik, I tell him of my theory that if you shoot something enough times, it will be stopped, .22 or no.  I count this as evidence for said hypothesis.

7 comments:

Bob said...

Every time I have this conversation with Erik, I tell him of my theory that if you shoot something enough times, it will be stopped, .22 or no. I count this as evidence for said hypothesis.

True enough, but while you're waiting for him to die of blood loss from mosquito bites, he could very easily crush your skull or cut your throat. That's why the emphasis is on stopping power, not killing power.

Sabra said...

Ah, but he was stopped, as evidenced by the fact that he attempted to flee. Granted, it took nine shots, but offhand I'm thinking that unless your assailant is on drugs, even a .22 isn't going to be a "mosquito bite" to most people, it's going to register as "Fuck, I just got shot." Whether that will result in fight or flight is of course an open question, but a .22 is inarguably better than, say, Mace.

BobG said...

It's all a matter of placement; if he had been shot in the face or the testicles, I'd be willing to bet it would only take one or two shots to make him retreat.

greg said...

I tend to agree with you, Ma'am. My wife is very happy/comfortable with her Walther P22, and almost as comfortable with her Firestorm .380.

More than once I have tried to get her interested in something a bit bigger...but, I keep coming back to the argument that I am not trying to turn her into John Mclain...

If she is comfortable enough with her .22 that in a stressful situation she can put 4 or 5 rounds into someones torso, well...I have to hope that that will be enough.

kx59 said...

kudos to her, 9 hits out of 14 or 15.
She was obviously effective with the pistol. My suggestion would be hollow point rounds. If she had managed to center one in his sternum, he'd have gone down on that round.
Good for her. No court case, no probation, no m'fer getting out on parole that she has to worry about.

TOTWTYTR said...

It depends on how you define stopping power. In this case, the attacker stopped, ran away, and died. In another case, he might have killed her, ran away, and died.

I've had patients riddled with .22 caliber bullet wounds who died, but they died slowly. What you want in terms of stopping power is to stop the attack right now.

That being said, there is no stopping power in a near miss, so if a .22 is what you shoot best, it's better than a .45 that you miss with.

John B said...

Normally the best thing to do with silly remarks, Like .22 having no power, is to ignore them.
When I was younger and less even tempered. I carried a .25 for a while, until I could get a small .22lr. Restaurant manager where I grabbed coffee, had strong opinions about everything I did. I expected waitress, to be waitresses, not people who were just killing time until they could hit the bar.

This manager told me that the 25 was useless as a self defense stopper and the 22lr slightly less so. He then proceeded to tell me a story, probably made up on the spot, about a convenience store manager, who got shot with a 25 in the head, and it only circumnavigated the skull between the skull and the skin.

I asked him if he believed that enough to take a round from such a pistol. He declined. I opined that maybe the average criminal or whacked out idiot might share his wisdom.