But This Never Happens, or News the Networks Never Report

From Keepandbeararms.com, dateline McAlester Oklahoma (a shall-issue CCW state):

Combs Gets His Man

As Longtown resident Bruce Combs prepared to pull his pickup off Kiamichi Street onto State Highway 9, he noticed something unusual.

Combs had stopped to let a truck and trailer heading west on Highway 9 go by before he pulled on the road.

Watching the approaching vehicle through the early-morning darkness last Sunday, Combs started to wonder about the other driver.

"The driver had his lights off; I thought that was odd," Combs said. He also thought the trailer looked kind of familiar.

Then, as the truck and trailer by him passed by, Combs suddenly realized why the trailer seemed so familiar to him.

"He drove by and I thought 'Hey, that's my trailer!'" Combs said.

Combs recognized the trailer as the C&C Quality Building trailer he had left parked at his store, Longtown Texaco.

Priority #1 - PAY ATTENTION

Already fed up after previous break-ins at the store, Combs swung his pickup behind the other driver. He tried to call 911, but wasn't sure if there was a link to Longtown so he wasn't surprised when that didn't work.

He attempted to contact the police but was unsuccessful. HAD he contacted police, the response time would probably have been several minutes, as this was apparently a rural area.

As you can see, Longtown is pretty far from both Tulsa and OK City.

As the driver in front of him started to pick up speed, Combs threw the phone in his pickup seat, pulled into the passing lane and grabbed a pistol he carried with him.

"I pulled up next to him and yelled at him to pull over," Combs said. When the other driver ignored him, the determined Combs hit the gas pedal and quickly swerved his pickup in front of the other vehicle.

"He pulled off the highway" and into the parking lot of a nearby restaurant, Combs said.

With both vehicles stopped, Combs said he jumped out of his pickup and leveled his pistol at the other driver.

"I said 'Get out of your truck and keep your hands where I can see them,'" Combs recalled. He said he also ordered a woman who was with the driver out of the truck. He let a boy with them remain inside the vehicle, he said.

Note that Mr. Combs did not let the evil brain-melting rays from his handgun cause him to gun down the man, woman and boy. Nobody was shot. Nobody died. Mr. Combs performed his civilian duty to stop a crime in progress.

The other driver tried to negotiate, according to Combs.

"He said 'I'll take your trailer back,' and I said 'No, you won't,'" Combs recalled.

"I told him to keep his hands up. He had on a long black leather coat and he kept putting his hands down and I couldn't see his left hand, so I fired a shot into the ground" Combs said. "He quit doing it after that."

Once again, Mr. Combs neither injured nor killed anyone. His handgun is obviously defective.

Combs called the Pittsburg County Sheriff's Department. He said Deputy Dave Grider, who was in the area, made it to the scene in a few minutes.

Good thing. Though I imagine that when you reach the police and tell them "I'm holding a guy at gunpoint!" they tend to move just a bit faster than if you tell them "He's driving away with my trailer!"

Grider arrested the other driver, identified as Everett Whittaker, 33, of Pryor, who has been charged with grand larceny and second-degree burglary.

The sheriff's department then launched an investigation that led to the recovery of an estimated $75,000 in stolen property.

1 Alert, prepared citizen + 1 handgun = 1 crime-in-progress stopped + 1 multiple offender captured + $75k in stolen property recovered. Good job, Mr. Combs.

Combs and others are now thinking of beefing up a neighborhood watch program in Longtown.

"We're going to see if we can get some people together," he said.

And, I'd imagine, more than a few of the members will have firearms.

But, we're told, guns are useless in the hands of citizens. We should give them up and instead rely on the State for our protection. This kind of incident never happens, or we'd hear about it on the nightly news.