If Only He'd Had A Gun To Defend Himself. Oh, Wait…. (gunmaker and gun show producer)

The gun crowd is always saying, “If only the victim had had a gun, they could have defended themselves.”  After all, according to the NRA's Wayne LaPierre in his unhinged call to arm all schools, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Well, last week the gun crowd lost one of their own.  Pro-gun extremist Keith Ratliff was the star and producer of a wildly-popular YouTube channel, FPSRussia, devoted to high-powered guns and explosives, and owner of a customized firearms company, FPS Industries. 

This guy is a poster-boy for the pro-gun extremists.  He once tweeted that he took his concealed gun to a movie theater, "praying that somebody would try to pull a Batman!"  Only a gun loon would desire such a thing.

Here's an example of his videos, where he shoots an assault rifle with a silencer made from a MagLight (Notice how quiet it is!  So much for the gun guy argument that silencers really aren't so "silent".)

Here's another video where he boasts about how easy it is to make a semi-automatic assault rifle into a full-auto ("It doesn't take but a second!" he says), and demonstrates it firing:

Well, Ratliff’s weapons didn’t help him at all last week when he was shot once in the head and killed on a rural road in Georgia.  From an article:

Keith Ratliff, who was a business partner at FPSRussia, YouTube's ninth most popular channel with more than three million active subscribers and a combined half billion views, was discovered on a rural road in Carnesville, Georgia. 

Ratliff had a single gunshot wound the head and police are treating his death as a homicide.

That's horrible.  If only he'd had a gun to defend himself!  Oh, wait...

When authorities made the grisly discovery on Thursday, they noticed there were several guns near Ratliff, according to a local radio station report. 

 'For him not to pull out that gun and try to defend himself, he had to feel comfortable around somebody. Either that or he was ambushed,' said Ratliff's heartbroken widow, Amanda.

As with other cases of pro-gun extremists, like this one, it would seem that he should have been more fearful of his fellow gun owners than the boogey-men they always blame for gun violence (gangstas, Mexicans, druggies, whatever).  As studies have shown, you are MORE likely to die if you have a gun around you, than if you don’t (whether you are at home or carrying concealed).

I’ll be watching the news closely.  It’ll be interesting to find out who the killer was, if they catch him, and whether the shooter was truly another gun nut.

According to another article:

On his LinkedIn profile, Ratliff stated, “After a life of loving firearms and computers, I have combined both into one great new business that offers both viral marketing and quality firearms from one place. We are FPS Industries Global LLC, a type 10 Destructive Device Manufacturer and Viral Marketing superpower on YouTube and Facebook.” 

Every life is precious, even those who glorify violence.  Ratliff leaves behind a wife and young daughter, who greatly misses her daddy.  It’s a shame he made a “life of loving firearms” and glorifying his “type 10 destructive devices” … to the grave.

[this post is part of an ongoing series of people being shot to death or attacked despite being armed (and sometimes because they are armed)]