Armed Maryland Resident Shoots 3 Masked Men Who Threatened Him on Halloween

Three masked men reportedly threatened a Maryland resident with a handgun while he was sitting in his driveway on Halloween night. The resident was armed, fought back, and sent all three attackers fleeing. One attacker is dead, and two others are wounded.

Baltimore County Police are investigating an October 31 shooting in Cockeysville after an armed resident fired at three masked men who reportedly threatened him. iStock-901657484

Three masked men picked the wrong driveway on Halloween night when they allegedly threatened an armed Maryland resident, who drew his handgun and opened fire, killing one and wounding the other two.

The shooting occurred Saturday, October 31, around 10:40 p.m. in the 10000 block of Greenside Drive in Cockeysville, Maryland. According to Baltimore County Police, the resident was sitting in his driveway when three men wearing masks approached and threatened him. At least one of the men was armed with a handgun, but their intended victim wasn’t defenseless. The resident drew his own firearm and fired at the trio, sending all three running from the property.

The resident immediately called 911 to report the confrontation. When officers arrived, they searched the surrounding neighborhood and discovered one of the men dead a short distance from the home. Police identified the deceased as 20-year-old Amon Walker. The other two men, both adults, were later located after arriving at local hospitals seeking treatment for gunshot wounds.

Investigators also recovered a loaded handgun they believe belonged to the three men. Police have not identified the armed resident or released additional information about what led to the confrontation.

Possible Robbery Turns Deadly on Halloween Night

According to WBAL-TV, police described the suspects as wearing Halloween or novelty-style masks and indicated that the display of a firearm suggested a possible robbery. Investigators have not officially established a motive, but the circumstances paint a disturbing picture of three masked men confronting someone outside his own home late at night.

The shooting came just hours after families and children had filled the neighborhood for Halloween festivities. Neighbors told the Baltimore Banner that hundreds of trick-or-treaters had visited the street earlier that evening. Some residents initially mistook the sound of gunfire for fireworks before learning that a deadly confrontation had occurred nearby.

For the resident sitting in his driveway, however, there was nothing festive about the encounter. According to his account to police, he was suddenly confronted by three masked men, at least one carrying a handgun. Fortunately, he was armed and capable of defending himself against a potentially deadly threat.

Baltimore County Police said there was no continuing threat to the community. The department’s Homicide Unit is investigating the shooting, and authorities have not announced whether the two surviving men will face criminal charges.

Maryland’s Restrictive Gun Laws and the Right to Self-Defense

The confrontation also highlights why the right to keep and bear arms matters, even on one’s own property. Maryland has some of the nation’s most restrictive firearm laws, but Maryland Criminal Law § 4-203(b)(6) allows a person to carry a handgun on property they own, lease, or where they reside without obtaining a state handgun carry permit.

Maryland also generally imposes a duty to retreat before using deadly force outside the home when retreat can be accomplished safely. That distinction creates another legal concern for residents forced to defend themselves. However, the law does not demand that someone attempt an unsafe retreat in the face of an immediate threat.

The Second Amendment was never intended to protect Americans only when they are standing inside their living rooms. The right to armed self-defense extends beyond the threshold of one’s front door, and law-abiding citizens shouldn’t be forced to gamble with their lives when confronted by armed attackers.

In Cockeysville, the resident reportedly faced three masked men who threatened him with a handgun. Whatever additional details investigators uncover, the incident illustrates how quickly an ordinary evening at home can become a life-threatening encounter.

An Armed Citizen Refuses to Become a Victim

The facts reported so far tell a familiar story: a citizen going about his business is suddenly confronted by people allegedly threatening violence. This time, however, the intended victim had the means to fight back.

The resident wasn’t out looking for trouble. According to police, he was sitting in his own driveway when three masked men approached him. He had no advance warning and no opportunity to prepare for the confrontation, but he did have immediate access to a firearm.

The investigation remains ongoing, and police have not announced a final determination concerning the resident’s use of deadly force. Nevertheless, the incident serves as another powerful reminder of why armed self-defense is a fundamental right rather than a privilege granted by the government.

Criminals get to choose when and where they threaten innocent people. Armed citizens deserve the ability to defend themselves when that moment arrives.

Related: NYPD Makes Gun Owners Wait Up to 18 Months for Pistol Permits Despite Six-Month Law

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About Duncan Johnson:

Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.

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El-Sayed Wants Muskets, Everytown Wants AR-15 Bans

From founding-era muskets to modern AR-15s, gun-control activists continue challenging the constitutional protection of commonly owned firearms. iStock-2191454516

Speaking at a town hall in Midland, Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed told the crowd:

“I’m gonna swear an oath to the Constitution. The Constitution has a Second Amendment in it, but the Second Amendment, just so we all are clear, even the most conservative folks, they hew to this idea called originalism, and originalism is the idea that you should interpret the Constitution in the context in which the Constitution was written.”

“When they promised the right to bear arms, they had muskets. So, yeah, everyone should have equal rights to a musket.”

The only thing that bothers me more than El-Sayed making the comment is a deep and abiding concern he actually might believe it. Considering El-Sayed is running for the U.S. Senate.

Abdul El-Sayed is very well-educated. He was born and received his primary education in Michigan. He graduated from the University of Michigan and was Rhodes Scholar, earning a doctorate from Oxford.

However, there he was in Midland, Michigan, exercising his First Amendment rights with a wireless microphone while claiming his Second Amendment rights were frozen in the 18th Century, protecting only a smooth-bore, muzzle-loading musket.

I wouldn’t expect El-Sayed to know about the Kalthoff Repeater, the Girandoni rifle, or the breech-loading Ferguson Rifle, but I have to assume he knew about the Kentucky Long Rifle.

The Second Amendment’s protection doesn’t stop there: It extends to swords, spears, lances, halberds, bows, all arms out of antiquity, as well as all the arms that appeared after December 15, 1791, the date the Bill of Rights was ratified.

I think it’s reasonable to assume El-Sayed has at least heard of District of Columbia v. Heller but he might want to Google Caetano v. Massachusetts when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously the Second Amendment protects weapons that weren’t in existence at the time of the Founding.

The Second Amendment is timeless, just like the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights.

One has to assume Abdul El-Sayed was being disingenuous, if not dishonest. Perhaps he is a full member of the League of Lobotomized Parrots, mindlessly regurgitating the pap excreted by the gun control movement.

El-Sayed says he’s “Gonna swear an oath to the Constitution.” Why? He obviously knows little to nothing about it, so his oath isn’t worth much.

Some memes are like cockroaches, impossible to eliminate.

Among these is the idiotic “weapon of war’ claim, which is based on the preposterous notion that the Constitution prohibits citizens from owning not only military-style but actual military surplus equipment, including firearms, artillery, and even fully functional tanks. Congress, with its taxing power, does regulate many of these things, but they can still be transferred. The exception is machine guns not registered by May 19, 1986. The Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 closed the door on the transfer of new automatic or selective-fire guns to private citizens.

Janet Carter is the managing director of Second Amendment Litigation for Everytown Law, Not long before the wannabe Senator shared his ignorance with an appreciative audience, Ms. Carter was interviewed on The Center Square, a newswire service covering federal and state governments. Greg Bishop, the host, asked Ms. Carter about pistol grips and other characteristics, saying that gun rights advocates call them cosmetic.

“It’s not cosmetic. There’s a reason why this is the weapon of choice for mass shooters. We’ve seen this, uh, that in the l–, the 10 highest casualty mass shootings over the last ten years, all of those shooters have used both an assault weapon and a large-capacity magazine and speaking to those features in particular, so, uh, the things that define an assault weapon under the statutes that are challenged in this case are a couple of things: First is the ability to accept a detachable magazine that allows a shooter to not only fire whatever rounds are in the magazine but also quickly to reload and keep shooting. Uh, the other features, things like a pistol grip, a forward grip, those are features of the gun that allow the shooter to re-aim and keep firing quickly and that’s why these are the features that were on these weapons when they were created for the military. They are designed to allow soldiers to fire quickly at a–, uh, enemy combatants. And these are not features that somebody needs for self-defense or for hunting.”

It appears Ms. Carter knows as much about self-defense and hunting as she does about firearms.

The first American semiautomatic rifle with a detachable magazine holding more than ten cartridges was developed for – and marketed to – hunters. It fired at the same rate as the AR-15, one shot per pull of the trigger. The year was 1907. The rifle was the Winchester Model 1907.

Fast-forward to 1942. The M1 Carbine was a semiautomatic rifle with a 15-round magazine. It was an actual weapon of war, designed and produced for the U.S. Military and issued to warfighters by the millions.

Late in the war, the Army fielded the M2 Carbine, a selective-fire version of the M1 Carbine.

The basic M2 didn’t have a pistol grip, or a forward grip, a flash hider, or a ‘thing that goes up’, but it did have a 30-round, detachable magazine, and a rate of fire comparable to the M16.

The M2 met all the functional requirements to be considered an assault rifle. Since it was semiautomatic only, the M1 Carbine did not meet those requirements. On the other hand, the M1 was still military grade and was used in combat in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

In the early 1960s, the U.S. government began dumping tens of thousands of surplus M1 Carbines onto the market. Prices were as low as $20 for NRA members. They could be bought at five-and-dime stores, such as F.W. Woolworth’s.

In 1968, Congress changed the National Firearms Act of 1934 because the M1’s barrel was less than 18 inches long. M1s have been used in seven mass shootings beginning with the University of Texas Tower incident in August 1966. With all that, the M1 Carbine was not among the guns proscribed by the 1994-2004 federal assault weapons ban.

Compare that to the AR-15. Virtually every gun-grabber claim is completely false, from Josh Sugarmann’s 1988 paper “Assault Weapons and Accessories in America” where he suggested using the term “assault weapon” to make the AR-15 and similar rifles appear more threatening, to the fantastic claims about lethality and rate of fire.

Of course, no gun control zealot worth their salt can mention “assault weapon” without breathlessly invoking mass shootings.

Americans own an estimated 30 million rifles like the AR-15, AK-47, SKS and others. Of that number, 92 have been used in mass shootings over the past 49 years.

Hardly seems like an existential threat.

Despite the mountain of data arrayed against bans, Ms. Carter says she’s “cautiously optimistic” because multiple federal district courts have upheld bans in the past. Guess she missed the memo about the Third Circuit Appeals Court declaring New Jersey’s bans on certain rifles and standard-capacity magazines were unconstitutional. This was an en banc ruling with the judges voting 10-5 to ban the bans.

The rulings supporting bans, like those from the Seventh and Ninth Judicial Circuits, used suspect reasoning, such as a resemblance to military weapons, to arrive at a politically palatable decision. Since the U.S.government has been selling surplus military firearms to citizens since 1903, that line of reasoning is unlikely to sway the Supreme Court.

Related: Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Thinks the Second Amendment Only Protects Muskets

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About Bill Cawthon

Bill Cawthon first became a gun owner 55 years ago. He has been an active advocate for Americans’ civil liberties for more than a decade. He is the information director for the Second Amendment Society of Texas.

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