From: jkapson@ad-29.Naitc.Com (John Kapson)
Subject: Re: Freaks And Self-Defense
Organization: AC Nielsen Co., Bannockburn IL
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 92 13:21:46 GMT

In article <1992Oct15.164859.22843@igor.tamri.com> donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin) writes:
>In article <1bja6gINNsvr@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> cc697@cleveland.Freenet.Edu
>(Eric Oppen) writes:
>>>Wasn't there a case recently where some freak started shooting in a 
>>>restaurant, and someone shot back, preventing another mass execution
>>>(the type that the media loves)?
>>
>>I believe that it was in Anniston, Alabama.  I don't know the details, but
>>apparently several people in the restaurant were legally carrying firearms,
>>and the nut died the death all such nuts should die.

Is this the story you are refering to?

===========================================================================
Reprinted w/o permission.... 

                         Birmingham Post-Herald
                       Thursday December 19, 1991

		Restaurant Customer Kills Would-Be Robber
                  by Steve Joynt,  Post-Herald Reporter

	Two men robbing a Shoney's restaurant in Anniston late Tuesday
	night thought they had herded all 20 of the customers and
	employees, except for the manager, into the walk-in cooler and
	locked it.

	Then one of the robbers found a customer hiding under a table.
	That was the last thing he ever saw.

	The customer, armed with a .45-caliber automatic handgun that he
	carries regularly in a holster around his waist, fired five shots
	into the chest and abdomen of the armed robber.

	Described by police only as a Vietnam veteran, the customer then
	turned his gun toward the other robber, who held the restaurant
	manager at gunpoint.

	The robber fired at the customer and the customer returned fire,
	hitting the robber at least a few times.  The suspect, Levi Pace,
	25, of Adamsville, was listed in critical condition at Northeast
	Alabama Regional Medical Center.

	His partner, who was unidentified as of last night, was dead at
	the scene.  The manager and the customer were uninjured.

	Police refused to identify the customer, but Thomas Glen Terry,
	46, of Weaver, confirmed that he was the one who shot the
	robbers.  He would not comment further, however.

	At least one other robbery suspect, who left the restaurant
	before the shots were fired, was being sought by Anniston police.

	A Birmingham investigator traveled to Anniston yesterday, seeking
	to find out if these were the same men who robbed a Shoney's
	restaurant in November and locked the customers and employees
	in the cooler.

	Anniston Police Lt. Ted Nothdurft said the customer who shot the
	suspects did have a valid permit to carry the weapon and no
	charges are expected to be filed against the man.

	Information about the shootings probably will be presented to a
	grand jury, however, Nothdurft said.

	"He is not a security guard or a police officer or anything
	that would call for him to carry a weapon that way, but I
	understand he carried it pretty much at all times, " Nothdurft 
	said.

	Nothdurft said it was "impossible to determine" if the customer 
	acted appropriately in such a situation.

	The customer was at the restaurant with his girlfriend when the
	robbers entered about 11:30 p.m., Nothdurft said.  When everyone
	was being pushed into the cooler, "he managed to slip away from
	the group and hide."

	Moses Springer, a customer in the restaurant at the time of the
	robbery and police commissioner of nearby Hobson City, said he
	confronted one of the robbers when the robber started yelling
	at everyone in the cooler.

	"They closed the (cooler) door, and as soon as the door closed,
	that's when the shots started.  I counted eight," Springer said.
	"Everybody (in the cooler) started praying."

	Springer said he assumed when he heard the shots that the police
	had arrived.  It was not until the police did arrive minutes later
	and opened the cooler door that he and the others learned that
	the robbers had been shot by a fellow customer.

	One of the robbers was armed with a .38-caliber automatic pistol
	that had been stolen from a car in Anniston on Monday.  The
	other was armed with a .357 Magnum handgun stolen in Birmingham
	on Tuesday.

	Birmingham robbery Det. Mike Walker went to Anniston yesterday
	to gather information about the case.  Walker has been the
	detective investigating the Birmingham Shoney's robbery on Nov. 10.
	
	"The Anniston case bears a strong resemblance to our earlier
	robbery," Birmingham robbery Lt. Chuck Jordan said yesterday.
	"We feel there is some connections between the two."

	In addition to the robberies involving the same restaurant chain,
	they also were similar in the way the robbers acted, Jordan said.

	During the Birmingham robbery, which occurred at 11:00 p.m., all
	of the customers and employees were forced in the walk-in cooler.
	The five suspects, who wore bandanas around their faces, robbed
	the restaurant's safe, cash registers and at least one customer.

	Chris Vice, the manager of that Shoney's at 9800 Parkway East,
	told police she was in her office when a suspect came in, pointed
	a gun at her head and told her to open the safe "or I'll blow
	your head off."

	While he was in the office, the suspect fired one shot into the
	floor.  Ms Vice was then put into the cooler with everyone else.

	About 30 minutes later, someone called Birmingham police from a
	pay telephone and said there were people locked in the cooler
	at Shoney's.

	Police found nine people in the cooler, cold but uninjured.

	Post-Herald correspondent David Ford contributed to this report.	
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 The following article is under submission as an Op-Ed
 piece. Reproduction on computer bulletin boards is
 permitted for informational purposes only.  Copyright (c)
 1991 by J. Neil Schulman.  All other rights reserved.


      IF A GUNSHOT STOPS THE BAD GUY, IS THERE A SOUND?

                     by J. Neil Schulman

      This is the story you saw on the evening news:

      At lunch hour on Wednesday, October 16th, George Jo
 Hennard of Belton, Texas smashed his Ford pickup through
 the plate glass doors of Luby's cafeteria in Killeen,
 injuring some patrons immediately.  While other patrons
 rushed toward the truck believing the driver was a heart-
 attack victim, Hennard calmly climbed out of his pickup,
 took out two 9-millimeter semi-automatic pistols, and
 started shooting people in the cafeteria's serving line.

      Hennard continued shooting for ten minutes, reloading
 five times.  One of his pistols jammed repeatedly, causing
 him to discard it.  There would have been plenty of
 opportunity for any of the cafeteria's customers or
 employees to return fire.  None did because none of them
 were armed.  Texas law forbids private citizens from
 carrying firearms out of their home or business.  Luby's
 employee's manual forbids employees from carrying firearms.

      Police officers were inside Luby's within minutes, but
 before they were able to corner Hennard in the cafeteria's
 restroom, causing the gunman to turn his gun fatally on
 himself, Hennard had killed 15 women and 8 men, wounded 19
 more, and caused another 5 or so people to be injured
 attempting to flee.

      The Killeen massacre was ready-made excitement for the
 media: a madman with a gun, lots of gruesome pictures.  CBS
 News ran a one-hour prime-time Dan Rather special on it. 
 Sarah Brady of Handgun Control, Inc., capitalized on it in
 her syndicated column to call Congress cowardly for voting
 down more stringent gun laws the next day.

      Now here's a story you probably didn't see:

      Late at night on Tuesday, December 17th, two men armed
 with recently-stolen pistols herded twenty customers and
 employees of a Shoney's restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama
 into the walk-in refrigerator, and locked it.  Continuing
 to hold the restaurant's manager at gunpoint, the men began
 robbing the restaurant.

      Then one of the robbers found a customer hiding under
 a table.  Thomas Glenn Terry, legally armed with a .45
 automatic pistol, fired five shots into that robber's chest
 and abdomen, killing him instantly.

      The other robber, who was holding the manager at
 gunpoint, opened fire on Terry.  Terry returned fire,
 hitting the second robber several times and wounding him
 critically.

      The robbery attempt was over.  The Shoney's customers
 and employees were freed.  Aside from the would-be robbers,
 no one else in Shoney's was hurt that night.

      Because Thomas Glenn Terry was armed, and used his gun
 to stop two armed robbers who had taken a restaurant full
 of people hostage, there was no drawn-out crisis, no
 massacre, no victims' families for Dan Rather to interview. 
 Consequently, the story hasn't received much coverage.

      Among those who rely on national news media for their
 view of the country, the bloody image of Luby's Cafeteria
 is available to lend the unchallenged impression that guns
 in private hands serve only to kill innocent people.  The
 picture of twenty hostages walking out of Shoney's
 refrigerator unharmed, because a private citizen was armed
 that night, is not.

      In the month that we celebrate the bicentennial of the
 Bill of Rights, it's worth noting that the Framers wrote
 the Second Amendment so the people's defense would be in
 our own hands, and we wouldn't have to rely on a "standing
 army" or "select militia" for our security.  Though no
 police departments existed in America then, there's no
 historical doubt the Framers had considered centralized
 public defense, and considered it not merely ineffective,
 but itself dangerous to public safety.  Recent vigilante-
 type police attacks lend credence.

      Yet, it's fashionable to relegate constitutional
 protections to the dustbin of history.  Judges sworn to
 defend the Constitution ignore its clear provisions, as do
 legislators and executives. Virtually every major organ of
 society -- from both parties, to media, to the ABA, to the
 ACLU -- urges them to do so.

      Today's "consensus reality" asserts that private
 firearms play no effective role in the civic defense, and
 that firearms must be restricted to reduce crime.  The
 media repeat these assertions as a catechism, and treat
 those who challenge them as heretics, consigning them to
 the perdition of marginalization.

     Yet, we have before us an almost scientifically
 controlled experiment, showing us alternative outcomes.  In
 case one, we have a restaurant full of unarmed people who
 rely on the police to save them.  The result of the
 experiment is 23 innocent lives lost, and an equivalent
 number wounded.  In case two, we have one armed citizen on
 the scene and not one innocent life lost.

      How can the choice our society needs to make be any
 clearer?

      It's time to rid ourselves of the misbegotten idea
 that public safety can be achieved by unilateral
 disarmament of the honest citizen, and realize that the
 price of public safety is, like liberty, eternal vigilance. 
 We can tire ourselves in futile debates on how to keep guns
 out of the wrong hands.  Or we can decide that innocent
 lives deserve better than to be cut short, if only we, as a
 society, will take upon ourselves the civic responsibility
 of defending our fellow citizens, as Thomas Glenn Terry did
 a few nights ago in Birmingham, Alabama.
===========================================================================

John Kapson   NRA ILA
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,ou.politics