Guns Save Lives – by Dan Cannon
File this one under weird defensive gun uses.
An attempted armed robber, who actually ended up being armed only with a toy gun, ended up being shot by one of his potential victims.
According to local media reports:
Court documents say 31-year-old David Cotner tried robbing the Mart by handing the clerk a note that said, “Give me all the money in the drawer.”
The clerk allegedly tried to enter the manager’s office, when Cotner ran off. Then, the owner of the store followed Cotner to try to get a license plate number, according to the documents.
Someone called 911 and the owner followed the suspect to Walgreens, where police say the man was trying to rob that store. Police say the Mart owner told the man to stop, and showed him his firearm. That’s when court documents say Cotner pointed a realistic-looking toy gun at the Mart owner. So the owner reportedly shot Cotner in the shoulder.
Cotner is expected to fully recover.
This incident is the one of the most common types of defensive gun uses. That is, one in which no one was killed. Despite this being one of the most common types of defensive gun uses, these incidents are often not included in statistics about defensive gun uses. Many of these statistics and studies focus solely on justifiable homicides, which represent only a fraction of total defensive gun uses.
This is the 48th defensive gun use we’ve documented in the state of Missouri and the 1,378th defensive gun use we’ve documented overall.