Teen Shot After Attacking 61-Year-Old Armed Citizen For His Gun

Older people tend to gripe about how the younger generation shows no respect for their elders. For Darius Summers, a 61-year-old Detroit man, he’s got an anecdote that should illustrate that bit beautifully to anyone who cares to listen. Luckily, he’s still around to share it.

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It starts with Summers walking into a gas station to get some coffee. Inside the gas station was 16-year-old Xavier Futrell.

Futrell was allegedly armed, and reportedly noticed that Summers was as well.

According to WDIV in Detroit, it did not go well for Futrell.

He said a 16-year-old boy armed with a gun saw that Summers was also armed, and the teen tried to take his weapon. He stuck his gun in Summers’ back, thinking he was an older, easier target.

“I said, ‘All I want to do is leave,'” Summers said. “He said, ‘You can’t leave.’ I said, ‘OK. What do you want to do?'”

Summers said the teen was controlling him, but then the 61-year-old man pulled out his own gun and shot the boy in the stomach. The teen picked up the gun that he dropped and limped out of the store.

Summers said there’s no way he was going to let an armed 16-year-old make him a victim.

“I didn’t shoot to kill, I shot to save his life,” Summers said. “I got him up off me.”

It’s kind of hard to feel sorry for Futrell. There’s literally no version of this that doesn’t paint him a colossal jackwagon.

First, he was trying to steal Summers’ gun. That’s strike one all on its own.

Strike two is seeing an old guy and thinking he’s a pushover. Futrell would do well to remember that old guys become old for a reason, and it’s usually not because of stupidity. There are exceptions to that rule, of course—example: Sanders, Bernie—but it’s a decent rule of thumb for not getting shot in the stomach.

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That’s not to say Mr. Summers couldn’t use some mentoring in the art of carrying a pistol. For example, a case can be made that not displaying he had a weapon might have avoided this confrontation, which John Boch over at The Truth About Guns makes, and I tend to agree. People can’t take from you what they don’t know you have.

That said, it still counts as a net win for the good guys. One more alleged bad guy is off the streets, and this one has the opportunity to illustrate the error of his ways going forward. Potentially, at least.

I’m just glad that Summers, despite his apparently minimal training—he told WDIV he’d never even fired a gun before, which indicates the Michigan Concealed Carry Class was the extent of his training—was able to do what needed to be done to keep himself and others safe.

It’s also good that Futrell, should he be convicted, may serve as a testimony of what happens when bad guys mess with good, armed people. Maybe his experiences will dissuade future attackers from going after old guys…or anyone else for that matter.

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