Hit and Gun

Concealed carry advocates frequently talk about their imminent need to be armed in public, saying things like, “When seconds count, the police are minutes away.” Unfortunately, what some concealed handgun permit holders consider to be self-defense can rightfully be deemed aggression by others. Additionally, permit holders sometimes display little interest in the assistance of law enforcement even when they are seconds away, as a recent tragedy in Texas reveals.

On March 3, Sonya Randle and her 13-year old daughter Alexis Wiley were driving home from a high school basketball game in Houston, Texas, when Richard Calderon, 24, ran a stop sign and hit their car with his 1998 Cadillac. Before Randle could get out of her Nissan Altima to talk to Calderon, he sped off, leaving the scene of the accident. Randle followed Calderon and was able to get his license plate number. She then passed him to continue her drive home. At that point, Calderon began to chase Randle. After closing the distance between the two vehicles, he drew a 9 mm handgun and fired two rounds into the Altima’s rear windshield. Alexis, who was sitting in the back seat, was hit in the head by one of the bullets. She died from her injuries the next morning at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center.

Randle gave police the license plate number and they located Calderon at the address where the Cadillac was registered. Calderon had covered the vehicle with a tarp. He turned over his handgun and indicated he possessed a permit to carry a concealed handgun. Calderon claimed he had acted in “self-defense” when he saw a front-seat passenger in Randle’s car lean out of the window holding “something shiny.”

Sgt. Brian Harris of the Houston Police Department Homicide Division doesn't buy it. He stated, “Pursuing is not acting in self-defense. [Calderon] was able to clearly articulate there was no imminent threat to him—whatever threat he perceived had already passed.” Sgt. Harris continued, “His story doesn't match the ten other witnesses that we have—and that's the problem.”

Calderon was charged with felony murder and made an initial court appearance on the morning of March 5, posting $50,000 bond. While he went free, family and friends of Alexis Wiley mourned her death. One of her classmates at Johnston Middle School said, “Everyone is walking around and they’re crying, even if they didn’t know her.”

Road rage is a common phenomenon in the United States, and this is not the first time Ordinary People has commented on stories about such incidents involving concealed handgun permit holders (including violent encounters in Fairfax, Knoxville, Memphis, Port St. Lucie and Pembroke Pines). According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, “an average of at least 1,500 men, women, and children are injured or killed each year in the United States as a result of ‘aggressive driving.’”

Meanwhile, there were only 204 instances of justifiable homicide with a firearm by American citizens in all of 2008, according to the FBI.

Had Calderon not been carrying a handgun on March 3, Alexis Wiley would probably still be alive. And Calderon, at worst, would be dealing with the consequences of leaving the scene of an accident where no one was injured. Instead he is facing murder charges, and as Sgt. Harris noted, “you have two families’ lives that are destroyed.”

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

Today we relate the stories of three more “ordinary people” who are not only concealed carry permit holders, but certified instructors paid to provide the safety and training classes required to obtain a permit in their states. If concealed carry permit holders are the most law-abiding citizens in our country, we would expect their trainers to be virtually infallible when it comes to respecting the rule of law. The truth, however, is somewhat less flattering…

On the evening of May 13, police responded to a call regarding a deceased person in a private home in Palestine, Texas. When they arrived, 62-year-old Ronnie Cook, a concealed handgun instructor in the state, opened fire on them from inside the house. The officers took cover and secured a perimeter. Two hours later, Cook called 911 and negotiated his surrender. He then walked out of his house in a pair of handcuffs he had placed on his own wrists. Police entered the home and discovered Cook’s wife, 62 year-old Frances Darlene Cook, dead in the bathroom from a single gunshot wound. Ronnie Cook now faces a murder charge for his wife’s slaying as well as attempted capital murder charges for firing at the police.

In August, handgun training instructor Jason Hernandez, 38, was arrested in Perrysburg Township, Ohio, on charges of selling falsified concealed carry permits. To acquire a permit in Ohio, residents are required to complete 12 hours of instruction. More than 130 individuals allegedly bought training certificates from Hernandez, however, without attending any classes or receiving instruction. Hernandez now faces charges of forgery and tampering with evidence. Wood County Detective Sergeant Scott Koch reported that applicants paid $150 to $300 for a falsified certificate despite the fact that actual training classes cost between $75 and $150. Falsified permits that were issued to individuals in Wood County have been suspended.

On September 28, parents of students attending Saint Gregory School in Tyler, Texas, received an email from Principal Kathy Shieldes Harry informing them that the father of a four-year-old student had inadvertently left a loaded handgun in his daughter’s overnight bag. A teacher discovered the gun while the girl was rummaging through her backpack in class. Her father is a certified concealed handgun instructor in Texas. The child’s mother told the Tyler Morning Telegraph that the school did not inform her of the discovery and that she only learned of the gun when she went to take her daughter home: “We were pulling out of the parking lot and I saw her father pulling in and I asked her if she knew why her dad was at the school, and she told me his gun was in her backpack.” Don Martin, the Tyler Police Department public information officer, said that it is illegal to have a gun on the school’s campus and the girl’s parents could be charged with making a handgun accessible to a minor.

These incidents suggest that certified concealed handgun instructors are vetted no more carefully than their charges in terms of assessing their potential threat to public safety. Perhaps even they are ordinary people after all...

Back Nine

On June 22, an argument at a golf course in Austin, Texas, nearly turned into a tragedy. That day, Matthew Nader (a former stand-out football player for Westlake High School) and two friends were playing golf at the Lions Municipal Golf Course when 73-year-old Edwin Dailey approached the group and complained about their slow play and the way they had parked their golf cart. The argument continued for four more holes. At the 13^th hole, Dailey told Nader that he was prepared to “make them both equal” by getting his gun.

After the 18^th hole, all four of the golfers ended up in the course’s parking lot together. There was another verbal exchange, and Dailey pulled out a .25-caliber Browning handgun loaded with hollow-point bullets and pointed it at Nader. Nader and his friends took cover behind their cars, and Dailey concealed the weapon and walked back to the clubhouse.

The three men were on the phone calling 911 when Dailey returned to the parking lot. “If I feel threatened, I am morally obligated to destroy you,” he told the former football star and his friends. [It is unclear if Dailey was alluding to Texas’ controversial “Shoot First Law,” which removes an individual’s duty to retreat from a potential confrontation and presumes that he/she is reasonable in using lethal force if someone enters or is attempting to enter their occupied home, car or workplace.]

Dailey then left the scene, but was pulled over soon after by an Austin city marshal and taken into custody. Police seized the Browning handgun and also found a .38-caliber Beretta pistol with two magazines in a cooler in Dailey’s car.

In an affidavit, officers stated that they didn’t believe that Dailey had been in physical danger or that his threat of deadly force was justified. Dailey has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony, and was released from prison on $15,000 bail.

Law enforcement officials have reported that Dailey holds a concealed carry permit in the state of Texas. It is unclear at this time whether he has a criminal record or any past history of mental instability. Texas residents can obtain concealed carry permits by showing proof of residency in the State of Texas, filling out an online application, and taking a single 10-hour gun safety class.

A “shall-issue” state, Texas forces law enforcement to issue a permit to anyone who completes these requirements and passes a computerized background check. The federal database searched during these checks, however, is missing millions of records that would potentially disqualify an applicant.

Hopefully, law enforcement authorities in Texas will take prompt action to revoke Edwin Dailey’s concealed carry permit. Any individual who feels a “moral obligation” to shoot and kill someone for their pace of play on a golf course is clearly a threat to public safety and not fit to carry a handgun in public—or anywhere else.