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74-Year Old Armed Citizen Stops Intruder, & Other Stories Of Self-Defense

AP Photo/ Rick Bowmer

It would be easy enough for the national media to regularly feature a roundup of armed citizen stories, but other than Fox News doing an occasional piece, for the most part the big networks pay no attention to defensive gun uses even though they’re quite common. I feature an armed citizen story on every episode of Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, and my struggle is usually trying to pick which defensive gun use to cover, so I know that these stories are out there. Local media generally does a decent job of reporting these events, but most of the national media aren’t just uninterested but downright hostile to the idea of armed self-defense.

In other words, don’t expect to see this story on CNN or MSNBC today.

According to Samantha Karges, spokesperson for the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department, about 9:19 p.m, deputies were sent to a reported burglary in progress at a home in the 700 block of Poole Road.

Karges told us, “Deputies arrived on scene and observed a 74-year-old an elderly female in possession of a firearm, detaining a male suspect. The resident complied with deputies’ requests to set aside the weapon and the firearm was rendered safe.”

Deputies took the suspect, whom Karges identified as 21-year-old Dustin Beau Campbell into custody.

“Through their investigation, deputies learned that the resident arrived home to find the door open and several items out of place,”Karges told us. “While inside the home, the resident located Campbell. At that time, the resident drew her personal firearm, holding Campbell at gunpoint until deputies’ arrival.”

Now maybe Campbell wouldn’t have harmed the 74-year old if she hadn’t been armed, but I’m glad that she didn’t have to find out how far he was willing to go to avoid arrest or what he might have done had she shown up at her home unarmed. Like the vast majority of defensive gun uses, the armed citizen never had to pull the trigger here; the presence of the gun in her hand was enough to stop the crime from escalating any further.

That was not the case in Philadelphia on Sunday, however. A home invasion suspect was shot by a homeowner around 4:30 Sunday afternoon as he was trying to break in through a back window. The 58-year old suspect was taken to a local hospital, and while reports are vague, it sounds like he didn’t suffer any life-threatening injuries.

Another recent home invasion, this one in southern California, ended up with one of the suspects shot dead by an occupant of the residence.

Patrol officers responding to reports of gunfire arrived to find a 31-year-old suspect mortally wounded in the residence, OPD spokeswoman Jennifer Atenza said. The man, whose name was withheld pending family notification, died at the scene.

Meanwhile, other officers pulled over a suspicious vehicle in the area and detained its five occupants, including a man who had suffered a gunshot wound. Medics took the injured suspect, identified as 29-year-old Deshawn Ingram of Oceanside, to a hospital, where he was admitted in stable condition.

“It is unknown at this time if the (home-invasion victim) shot the … suspect who is currently in the hospital, or if this suspect was shot by one of the other suspects, who were also armed with a gun,” Atenza said late Wednesday afternoon.

The suspects taken into custody along with Ingram during the traffic stop were arrested on suspicion of robbery and murder. They were identified as Eric Dunnigan, 21, of Vista; Jaylen Harvey, 24, of Oceanside; Michael Simmons, 21, of San Diego; and Sydni Tucker, 25, of Oceanside.

Ingram was recently convicted of assault with a firearm and was out on bond and awaiting sentencing at the time of his arrest in connection with Wednesday’s incident, according to police. 

So the state is letting convicted violent criminals out of jail while they’re awaiting sentencing? All the more reason why California’s gun control laws need to be purged from the books and the right to keep and bear arms be returned to law-abiding citizens.

In my opinion, that last little nugget of information about Ingram’s criminal history makes this story even more newsworthy, but I can’t find any evidence that it’s been covered outside of local San Diego news.

I wish I believed that one day I’ll no longer be able to bitch and moan about the anti-gun bias in the media because it’ll get its act together, but I harbor no realistic hope of that happening. I’m just glad that, thanks to VIP members like yourself we can at least bring these stories of self-defense a little more attention.