Woman who shot at shoplifters vows never help anybody again

[stephogirl]

Woman who shot at shoplifters vows to 'never help anybody again' after conviction

www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/midwest/ct-michigan-shoplifter-concealed-carry-20151211-story.html


Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez thought she was doing the right thing when she pulled out her pistol and fired at a pair of shoplifters as they fled from a Home Depot near Detroit.



She wasn't, at least in the eyes of the law.


On Wednesday, a Michigan judge sentenced Duva-Rodriguez to 18 months of probation and stripped the 46-year-old of her concealed gun permit.



Duva-Rodriguez didn't manage to stop the shoplifters when she rattled off several rounds outside an Auburn Hills Home Depot on Oct. 6, although she did flatten one of their tires.



What she did do, however, was spark a nationwide debate — or at least add fuel to an already raging fire.



The shooting came just days after a massacre at a community college in Oregon, an event that led GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson to call for "more guns" to help fight crime.



But Duva-Rodriguez's attempt at being a good Samaritan badly backfired.


She was widely pilloried for pulling out her firearm when nothing but property was at stake. Gun experts slammed her, saying she was lucky not to have killed a bystander. Prosecutors called her decision to fire her weapon in a busy parking lot "disturbing" and charged Duva-Rodriguez with misdemeanor reckless use of a handgun.



Duva-Rodriguez did not contest the charge in court, but she was hardly contrite.



"I tried to help," she told WJBK after her sentencing on Wednesday, before wryly adding: "And I learned my lesson that I will never help anybody again."



Her lawyer was even more defiant.



"We need more people like Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez in our society," defense attorney Steven Lyle Schwartz told The Associated Press.



The shooting, and Duva-Rodriguez's sentencing, is unlikely to end the debate over whether arming law-abiding citizens cuts down on crime, let alone prevents massacres like the Oregon college incident or the recent rampage in San Bernardino that left 14 people dead.



The idea that "good guys" with guns are the answer appears to resurface with a vengeance after every mass shooting.



Google searches for concealed weapon permits, for instance, have exploded since the San Bernardino shooting and Trump and Carson aren't alone in pushing the idea.



"If more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in," said Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University and son of the late religious-right leader Jerry Falwell Sr., two days after the San Bernardino shooting.



"It just blows my mind that the president of the United States (says) that the answer to circumstances like that is more gun control," he continued. "If some of those people in that community center had what I have in my back pocket right now ..."



The "good guy" theory also appears to be gaining ground more generally.



There are now about 12.8 million concealed carry permit holders in the U.S., up from 4.6 million in 2007, Ingraham reports. And a recent Gallup poll found that 56 percent of Americans say the country would be safer if more people carried concealed firearms.



Despite anecdotal evidence that "good guys" with guns are good for public safety, scientific evidence is much harder to come by. A recent study by Mount St. Mary's University found that people without firearms training had either dangerously itchy or dangerously slow trigger fingers. "Carrying a gun in public does not provide self-defense unless the carrier is properly trained and maintains their skill level," the study's authors wrote.



Duva-Rodriguez saw herself as somebody's savior. She was in the Home Depot parking lot when she heard a scream. A loss prevention officer was chasing a shoplifter with a cart full of stolen power tools. When the man loaded the tools into a waiting getaway car, Duva-Rodriguez pulled out her pistol and fired two rounds.



"I made a decision in a split second," she told judge Julie Nicholson on Wednesday, according to WJBK. "Maybe it was not the right one, but I was trying to help."



"She's there to help; saw something happening; thought it was serious; pulled her gun," added Schwartz, her attorney. "She didn't want to hurt anybody. We didn't know that there were any people in the parking lot, other than this person that was driving away this vehicle. She didn't shoot it in the air; she didn't shoot it at the window, at the windshield. She fired at the tires."



Schwartz also sought to dispel the idea that his client was a yahoo with a gun, calling her a "sharpshooter."



Whether she's a sharpshooter, Duva-Rodriguez will now have to wait until at least 2023 to carry a concealed weapon again, Nicholson ordered.



"I don't believe any malice was involved in what you were doing," the judge said, "but I believe you have to think about what could have happened."



The Washington Post

[downtoearth]

Well, seeing that she was sentenced and her conceal carry taken away, just makes me want to celebrate...

[msmerymac]

What a fucking loon. I'm glad she can't conceal-carry anymore.

[WOT?*]

This idiot is why I'm pro gun-control and anti ccw-is-the-greatest-thing-ever-and-guns-for-all-because-CRIMINALS-and-we-will-save-all-you-damn-pacifists-when-mass-murder-and-mayhem-comes (as I was told by a couple people on one of my sister's "guns will save us all" threads, they'll "protect me as I fall to the ground like the TOLERANT coward that I am." or some such nonsense (the part I remember was the All Caps TOLERANT by the moron who was blasting me.

[laurenpetro]

The fact that she thinks she was helping in the first place is her fucking problem.

[Deleted]

Yes, please don't "help" anymore woman.

[One Girl In All The World]

"She never meant to hurt anyone" when she picked up her gun and SHOT AT THEM.

[ijack]

"She didn't want to hurt anybody...."
She shot a gun. What was she trying to accomplish then?

[penguingrrl]

I'm curious why she though shoplifting was an offense worthy of execution. Even moreso absent law enforement or a jury. And if she wasn't trying to hurt someone, why was she shooting at all?

I'm quite comfortable with her losing the right to carry. It sounds like she's exactly the type of person we need laws to protect ourselves from.

[alexis]

Dec 11, 2015 13:06:27 GMT -5 ijack said:

"She didn't want to hurt anybody...."
She shot a gun. What was she trying to accomplish then?

What exactly did she learn in her concealed weapons class? My H took a three day concealed carry class. Most of it was about the grave responsibility that comes with having a gun. Specifically they wrote a lot and answered very specific questions about when they felt using a weapon was justified and the moral and legal consequences of using a gun. There was a strong emphasis on the fact that if you draw a gun you should be prepared to kill someone with it. Unfortunately the state doesn't do anything near this level of introspection. H didn't even get out want a permit.

[sparkythelawyer]

She should be thanking her lucky stars that is all that happened to her. What a nimrod.

[elleblue]

Dec 11, 2015 13:03:02 GMT -5 laurenpetro said:

The fact that she thinks she was helping in the first place is her fucking problem.

Right? Nobody wants your "help" ffs. Glad to see she no longer has her concealed carry permit. 

[penguingrrl]

Anyone else now humming the eternal wisdom of Free to Be You and Me? "Some kind of help is the kind of help... we all could do without!"

[debatethis]

Dec 11, 2015 13:23:52 GMT -5 alexis said:

Dec 11, 2015 13:06:27 GMT -5 ijack said:

"She didn't want to hurt anybody...."
She shot a gun. What was she trying to accomplish then?

What exactly did she learn in her concealed weapons class? My H took a three day concealed carry class. Most of it was about the grave responsibility that comes with having a gun. Specifically they wrote a lot and answered very specific questions about when they felt using a weapon was justified and the moral and legal consequences of using a gun. There was a strong emphasis on the fact that if you draw a gun you should be prepared to kill someone with it. Unfortunately the state doesn't do anything near this level of introspection. H didn't even get out want a permit.

It doesn't look like MI actually requires a specific CC course.
"4. Have knowledge and training in the safe use and handling of a pistol by successfully completing an appropriate pistol safety training course or class."

www.michigan.gov/msp/0,4643,7-123-1878_1591_3503_4654-10926--,00.html

[cattledogkisses]

Dec 11, 2015 13:23:52 GMT -5 alexis said:

Dec 11, 2015 13:06:27 GMT -5 ijack said:

"She didn't want to hurt anybody...."
She shot a gun. What was she trying to accomplish then?

What exactly did she learn in her concealed weapons class? My H took a three day concealed carry class. Most of it was about the grave responsibility that comes with having a gun. Specifically they wrote a lot and answered very specific questions about when they felt using a weapon was justified and the moral and legal consequences of using a gun. There was a strong emphasis on the fact that if you draw a gun you should be prepared to kill someone with it. Unfortunately the state doesn't do anything near this level of introspection. H didn't even get out want a permit.

I don't know about her state, but there are some states where you don't need to take a concealed weapons class, or even have a concealed weapons permit, unfortunately. 

Mine is one of them.  Anyone can carry concealed here, no class or permit required.  It's kind of terrifying.

[btdt]

Does anyone really think this woman is going to stop carrying her weapon? Really?

[Nonny]

She's lucky another "good guy with a gun" didn't think she was the criminal and shoot her.

[sangria]

Shooting at shoplifters fleeing is a totally porportional response.

[jeaniebueller]

Dec 11, 2015 13:51:56 GMT -5 debatethis said:

Dec 11, 2015 13:23:52 GMT -5 alexis said:

What exactly did she learn in her concealed weapons class? My H took a three day concealed carry class. Most of it was about the grave responsibility that comes with having a gun. Specifically they wrote a lot and answered very specific questions about when they felt using a weapon was justified and the moral and legal consequences of using a gun. There was a strong emphasis on the fact that if you draw a gun you should be prepared to kill someone with it. Unfortunately the state doesn't do anything near this level of introspection. H didn't even get out want a permit.

It doesn't look like MI actually requires a specific CC course.
"4. Have knowledge and training in the safe use and handling of a pistol by successfully completing an appropriate pistol safety training course or class."

www.michigan.gov/msp/0,4643,7-123-1878_1591_3503_4654-10926--,00.html

It is a specific cc class for michigan.

[ttt]

"I made a decision in a split second," she told judge Julie Nicholson on Wednesday, according to WJBK. "Maybe it was not the right one, but I was trying to help."


THIS IS THE POINT. Don't make split second decisions that can kill someone!! JFC!

"Well, I tried and that's what counts!" is a bad enough excuse coming from a 7th grader handing in a shitty paper. You are a grown woman who believes she has the right to possess and use a deadly weapon.

[skwcm80]

I could do without her "help".

[Miss Phryne Fisher]

She probably didn't know that shoplifting wasn't an offence with a death penalty. She is a helper, yall!

[One Girl In All The World]

Dec 12, 2015 18:17:40 GMT -5 Miss Phryne Fisher said:

She probably didn't know that shoplifting wasn't an offence with a death penalty. She is a helper, yall!

If only there were people who were paid to know that kind of thing.

On a related note, I'm just going to leave this here, found it in an antique shop today and thought of CEP:


From 33 years ago, folks.

[cookiemdough]

If this is the face of a "good guy" with a gun then we are most certainly screwed.

[daisyn]

I can't believe that's only a misdemeanor