A post by Sebastian led us to this post at the Defensive Handgun Blog, about the possible legal issues associated with using an Evil Black Rifle in self-defense. (I’d actually be more concerned about over-penetration in an apartment than the legal issues, but I’ve heard other people say that .223 tends to break up and not go through sheet rock. Does anyone have some definitive knowledge on this?)
A link in that post, in turn, led us to one of our favorite tales from “The Ayoob Files” feature in American Handgunner: the story of Gary Fadden, or as Mr. Ayoob puts it, “F— you and your high powered rifle!” As a matter of fact, we were just thinking about this story the other night, and are delighted to find a linkable online version.
Short version of the story: Mr. Fadden and his fiancee were out for a Sunday drive when they got into a confrontation with a group of bikers. The bikers chased Mr. Fadden and his beloved for over 20 miles (this was prior to ubiquitous cellphones) before Mr. Fadden decided to make a stand at his office.
Mr. Fadden’s office was at the Heckler and Koch plant, where he worked as a salesman for H&K. In the truck with him was a legally-owned personal Ruger AC556 (the full-auto version of the Mini-14; one question that isn’t answered in the article is why a salesman for H&K was using a Ruger product, but we figure that’s none of our beeswax). Mr. Fadden made his stand, fired a warning burst into the air, the biker uttered the phrase that pays (quoted above), charged Mr. Fadden, and Mr. Fadden put a six-round burst into the biker, killing him deader than the box office of “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”.
What makes this story interesting is that the local prosecutor, who was apparently up in arms that someone would use a full-auto rifle in self-defense (as opposed to an engraved Perazzi over/under, perhaps), chose to charge Mr. Fadden with first degree murder. Mr. Fadden was found not guilty in a somewhat unusual trial (an undercover police detective actually broke his cover and testified in Mr. Fadden’s defense; the prosecutor spent so much time waving the AC556 around that the judge actually gave special instructions to the jury), which resulted in the local prosecutor throwing another temper tantrum.
We commend both Mr. Ayoob’s article and the one at the Defensive Handgun Blog to your attention.
In other news (blogged elsewhere, too, but we can’t let it pass without comment) the WP has discovered that people in other parts of the country do things differently. For example, some of them carry…guns! And they take their kids shooting! (The WP user poll, “Should parents teach their children to use guns?” is running 87% “Yes” at the time I write this.)
This has also been blogged in a few other places, but we did want to highlight this post by David Kopel over at the Volokh Conspiracy about the latest questionable activity by the Obama administration; blocking South Korea’s efforts to sell 100,000 surplus antique rifles in the United States.
fan 
! (I have that book, but have not had a chance to read it yet. Craig Ryan’s 
is a pretty spiffy book, though, so I expect his work on Kittinger’s autobiography to be just as good.)