10 year old boy defends mother

http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-i...uine-hero-tale

Bellingham boy’s defense of mom with BB gun a genuine hero tale
Dave Workman
November 23, 2011 (I just recieved this)
A story that should streak across the internet but for one key fact – it involved the defensive use of a gun, in this case a BB gun – is the kind of stuff that legends are made from, and so are little heroes.
The unidentified 10-year-old whose tale of heroism is being told by the Bellingham Herald, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Associated Press this morning is also the kind of story that makes gun prohibitionists cringe. It throws water on the notion that kids and guns – even BB guns – don’t mix. In this case, they mixed very well for an outcome of an otherwise harrowing story that could have gone very bad as Thanksgiving looms on the horizon.

Here is a story, incidentally, that unfolded on the 48th anniversary of the birth of the modern gun control movement. Forty-eight years ago, on Nov. 22, 1963, the nation was shocked into mourning with the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas. It was the end of a grand liberal fairy tale, the end of the “Camelot” dream, at the hands of a man with a surplus Italian rifle, purchased through the mail. The slaying ignited the gun ban movement with as much, if not more blame pointed at the rifle and how the assassin got it than at the man, himself. Two days later, the alleged assassin – he was never convicted in a court of law – Lee Harvey Oswald, was himself gunned down on live television by Dallas nightlife figure Jack Ruby. That is history. What happened Tuesday in Bellingham is a current event.
Her son was awakened by the commotion and tried to stop the assault by shouting at the attacker… When that didn't work, the boy smacked Newman with a wooden board.—Bellingham Herald

Published reports say a man identified as 45-year-old Paul F. Newman “came home drunk” to the house where he was renting a room. The 46-year-old mother was in her own room when the enraged suspect reportedly kicked in her door and began choking her.

Enter the woman’s 10-year-old son. He first yelled at Newman. That didn’t work, so he reportedly picked up a wooden board and whacked the drunken man with that. The Bellingham Herald reported that Newman ran outside, apparently believing he was chasing the youngster.

Proof positive that 10-year-olds are smarter than boozers of any age. The kid instead went one notch higher on the force continuum and grabbed his pump-action BB rifle. The mother, meanwhile, locked the door, but Newman tried crawling inside through an open window, the newspaper said. When the mom tried to shut that, Newman grabbed her arm and held on tight.

When the boy appeared with his BB rifle, Newman allegedly threatened to kill him. The youngster wasn’t having any of it and he fired, perhaps as many as four times, and shot Newman in the face. Reactions from Herald readers are almost universally on the kid’s side with a few suggesting it was a shame the boy didn’t have a real gun instead.

The son then returned with a pump-action BB rifle. When Newman saw the rifle he threatened to kill the boy and the mother…so the boy shot him in the face as many as four times.—Bellingham Herald

One annoying detail in the Herald’s story is a quote from Bellingham Police spokesman Mark Young, who reportedly said the boy will not be charged because he was defending his mother.

State statute on the use of force, including lethal force, in self-defense is very clear, and it covers not only the act of defending one’s self from criminal attack, but defending a family member or some other innocent. In this case, there is the added factor of disparity; a child versus an adrenaline and alcohol-charged adult.

Newman was arrested for investigation of assault and felony harassment.