White Girl Bleed a Lot (36 page)

“(The suspect) shouted, ‘Give me the (blanking) money and open the (blanking) door!’” Campbell told
The Telegraph
, describing her ordeal. “I said, ‘Oh my God, somebody is going to rob me.’ I said, ‘Baby, you’re going to kill me anyway, so I don’t have to open it!’”

Campbell says the man fired at her, missing. The 57-year-old fired back, striking him in the chest. Her truck sustained eight bullet holes in the hood, one in the grill. Both front side windows were destroyed. The second man fled after she shot at him.

“I carry a gun all the time,” she said.
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Lulu runs convenience stores and is always nervous. Her car was riddled with bullets in the shootout. (Photos of her truck are posted online.)
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In Garden Grove in August of 2012, the sixty-five-year-old owner of a small jewelry store ran five black armed robbers out of her store with a gun. It happened in less than a minute and was caught on surveillance video. The robbers entered the store with guns drawn demanding cash and jewelry. The owner was in the back and saw everything through a small window. She fired
a couple shots at the suspects, and they ran scared.
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Less than a week before and a few miles away in Westminster, three black men with guns and a sledge hammer tried to rob another jewelry story. They entered the store using a wheelchair as a ruse. As they ordered the customers down on the ground, the store owner heard the commotion and responded with a gun.

One of the robbers was shot in the face and the other two apprehended.

In the San Francisco suburb of San Francisco, four black men tried the same thing in May, 2012. Soon there were three: Store owner Everett Pavin shot and killed one. The police are still looking for the other three. A local TV reporter, with a sneer, called it “vigilante justice.” A friend of the Pavin family said: “It’s almost impossible to protect yourself if you don’t have a gun. Every day suspicious people come in and make similar threats to us.”
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Out in Kansas City in June 2011, Roger McBride and his grown son were working at home during the day. They saw a mob of about forty black kids coming up the street. They had been let out of school early and were still in their school uniforms. McBride, an army veteran who’s not scared of anybody, saw the mob kick in his neighbor’s front door and heard glass breaking inside. He shouted at them to stop.

“MacBride says about 12 of the kids turned their attention to him, threatening him and his home and throwing rocks at it. When one kid reached for his screen door, he’d seen enough.” That’s when he grabbed his rifle and threatened the mob. “Dude, I’ve got guns everywhere. I’m a very well-armed individual,” he says. “I love my little place. I love my neighbors. I’ve got the best damned neighborhood in Kansas City, in my opinion.

I know they’ve been taught that ‘if there’s a bunch of us, people won’t fight back. … Just take what you want and run.’ Until they mess up, and I start shooting them in the head.”
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If they didn’t know it then, they know it now. The kids ran like hell to another neighborhood where they started all over in a more congenial environment.

An eerily similar situation took place in Philadelphia at about the same time with a different result. Remember Mark LaVelle from
chapter 1
? He was attacked by a mob of black people in his own home. When the police showed up, the mob left. But they came back when the police were gone to intimidate LaVelle into not testifying. Identical circumstances. Different results. In one case, the mob is running away from him. In the other, they are running toward him. You choose.

Just a few months before a U.S. Marine home on leave from Iraq was looking forward to his first date with his wife, Kalyn, in a long time. Federico Freire took his wife to see
Little Fockers
at a mall in Bradenton, Florida. A group of twenty black people sitting two rows in front of them were talking loudly. Freire asked them to stop. They did not. After a brief ruckus, Freire’s wife called the manager who kicked out the troublemakers. When the movie was over the Freires thought the incident was too, but when they left the theater about fifteen girls surrounded Freire’s wife. “As soon as I saw this I immediately ran and got her out of harm’s way,” Freire told the reporter. He was kicked and punched as they tried to get away. “There were literally 100 teens around us,” Kalyn Freire said.

A gun owner brandishing a weapon took the fight out of that crowd. At least temporarily.

“On our way out of the movie theater, my wife gets surrounded with about 10 to 15 girls that were about to attack her,” Freire told FoxNews.com. “As soon as I saw this I immediately ran and got her out of harm’s way.”

Freire said he was kicked and punched as he and his wife tried to run from the group.

“I leaned down to grab my purse and there were literally 100 teens around us,” Kalyn Freire said, “While the manager was in the corner with his mouth open and not doing anything.”

Freire said one bystander stepped forward and told the couple to follow him to his car, saying he could scare the crowd off with a gun.
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They got the gun. Saved the girl. Six people were arrested. Twice as many were Tasered. The Freire family went to the hospital.

What is it with Florida? In Pensacola, Jack Crawford answered his door only to get cracked on the head with a bat. “About 8:45 p.m., three teenage males knocked on the door.” As soon as Crawford opened the door, “Wham! Split my head open,” Crawford said. “So I shot him and another guy.” Of the three intruders, one was white. “Crawford said he wasn’t too rattled by the attack, and he still felt comfortable staying in the home.” Crawford is not in danger of prosecution because of Florida’s “Stand your Ground” law.
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In North Carolina, four black men broke into the home of C.L. McClure. He was in the basement when he saw a “young black male walk by the door.” McClure thought it was his grandson at first. It wasn’t. They restrained the seventy-six-year-old man and his wife with duct tape, robbed them, and took off.

McClure escaped and gave chase, gun in hand. He caught them and, thinking one of the looters was reaching for a gun, killed him. Police soon had two others in custody. After checking for the presence of anyone in the area wearing an electronic ankle monitor, they found the fourth nearby in the bushes.
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Another good shoot, said local prosecutors.

In Detroit in 2011 “a Detroit pizza delivery man turned the tables on three would be crooks.” The black men ambushed the driver. He killed one. Police caught the others. The delivery man had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. “The manager at the pizza shop told Action News … many of his other drivers” have permits too. Every year hundreds of delivery drivers are robbed. Over the last several years, hundreds have been killed. Most do not carry guns. That is why the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls it one of the most dangerous jobs in the country.
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Back in Florida, John Lee, a father of four, was on his way to work at Sam’s Club when four black men demanded his money and then opened fire on him. “I got my concealed weapons permit a few years ago,” he said, “hoping I would never have to use it.” But he did. And it’s a good thing he did. He drove the thieves away but not before taking three rounds in his arms, leg, and abdomen.

“If I didn’t have that gun on me, I would not be talking to you right now,” he told the CBS affiliate in Palmetto Bay. “They would have finished me off.” The men escaped, one bleeding.
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In Avondale, Pennsylvania, a group of black men broke down the door of an apartment only to find seventy-seven-year-old Clyde Tucker waiting inside with a gun. He was “not afraid to defend his home with lethal force.” He shot one of the thugs, but they got away.
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In 2010 in Atlanta three black people attempted a home invasion robbery on Dexter Tucker. Dexter is actor and comedian Chris Tucker’s brother, and a smart man. He defended his property with his gun, shooting one of the perpetrators in the leg; the other two ran off. All three ended up being arrested. And the
District Attorney announced almost immediately the shooting was justified.
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No one knows how often guns are used for self-defense. According to a Cato Institute white paper called Tough Targets, the number of crimes thwarted by guns every year ranges anywhere from tens of thousands to as high as two million. The work of author John Lott is the best place to go for more of this kind of information.
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Lots of journalists could use it. Like two reporters at the Fox affiliate in Philadelphia who seemed heart sick at the news that some suburban folks were buying guns. Following up on a report of a June 2011 flash mob of twenty black people at a local department store, one reporter explained how “people are talking about how afraid they are of being caught in the path one of these flash mobs … and they want to be ready.” The local police department was receiving ten to twenty applications a week to carry a gun. “People now are fearful and carrying guns because of children,” said the local police chief.
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Those who expected any congratulations for making their neighborhoods safer had another thing coming.

“I couldn’t believe when I heard this one earlier,” said the worried anchor. “It sounds like a ‘I’m going to get them before they get me’ mentality.” Before he had a chance to explain why defending yourself was bad, the reporter in the field confirmed that it sounded unbelievable. “But law enforcement says believe it. It is a nightmare in the making.” Of course the nightmare they are talking about is people protecting themselves. “I talked to a number of private citizens tonight who said they used to keep their guns only inside their home,” said the reporter. “Now they are strapped every day, just about everywhere they go.”
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Back at the studio, the anchor looked concerned not for victims, but for the predators. Still wondering what got into those
crazy suburban people.

Steve Kates knows. He is a Phoenix area talk show host and gun safety instructor who says more and more people are taking personal responsibility for their own safety—and that is the way it should be. “Every state has its own laws regulating how you can carry and use a weapon when you feel threatened,” Kates said. “So you have to know what they are. But having said that, a lot more people are feeling a lot less safe. With good reason. So having a firearm and knowing how to use it is more important today than ever.”

This could be its own reality show.

E
very sports reporter knows how many sports reporting careers were ended with an indiscrete racial comment. The sports guys are walking on egg shells.

So when racial violence erupts in the world of sports, reporters head for the hills, rather than report it and risk heading for the unemployment line.

There are lots of examples: Let’s look at a few:

In October 2011 in Hancock County, Georgia, when thirty black people beat up a white football coach the media did not call it for what it essentially was: a race riot. The Associated Press called it an “ambush.” A local TV station said a “fight broke out.” The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
said “
the brawl
left Daniel, the Warren County head coach, hospitalized with head injuries” (emphasis mine). Maybe the coach attacked the mob, instead of the other way around. I doubt it. They beat him with helmets and left the coach with several broken bones in his face.
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We know it was not a race riot because we would have read about that in the newspapers. Right? Wrong.

The Hancock riot began when one of the Hancock County coaches sent threatening and vulgar messages to players of the opposing team the week before the game.

“Better stay yo stupid [expletive] in [Warren County] B4 som1 get really hurt.”

After the fight, Dishman said Blount told a Warren County player via an 11:22 p.m. text that he had no idea why the fight occurred:

“How th[e] [expletive] I kno[w] about yall bull[expletive]. Yu started this [expletive] last week. Remember yu started this.”
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Down in Sarasota, Florida, the Gators, a black high school football team, objected to a call from a white referee. So they calmly argued their case? Not in this book. Instead they attacked him. First the coaches were arguing and following the ref around the field. Then “things got really ugly, with a Gators player rushing in and tackling the referee with a full-speed take-down hit.” A few dozen players and coaches started kicking the ref while he was down. It was “one of the most disgraceful things I have ever seen,” Huskies Coach Mike Cody said. Some people were arrested. Next.
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