Off-Duty Police Stop Shootout In Parking Lot

SALISBURY, MD — An off-duty law enforcement officer was forced to stop a shootout in a restaurant earlier this month, and the community’s response to the event does not look promising.

As Delmarva Now reports:

An off-duty Maryland state trooper working security interrupted an apparent shootout between two men, one of whom who is believed to have just shot the other in the parking lot of a Wicomico County restaurant early Sunday, police said.

The two deceased men were identified as Michael T. Ward, Jr., 27, and Jaquan M. Griffin, 21, both of Salisbury, Maryland State Police said. Both were transported to Peninsula Regional Medical Center where they were pronounced dead.

In response to Sunday, a “Stop the Violence Rally” is scheduled to take place Monday at 7:30 p.m. in Billy Gene Jackson Park just before the start of the annual Kappa League basketball tournament.

And there is the rub.

Sentiments are wonderful, but holding a rally is just not a practical way to prevent violence — we’ve seen it again and again, and residents of the home state of Baltimore, one of the most dangerous cities in these United States, should know better.

Although there is no question that peaceful strategies to reduce crime are viable options — better education, building trust between communities and their law enforcement, etc. — it is nearly as certain that if this rally to stop violence had occurred before the shooting instead of after, that shooting would still have happened.

Stopping violence is a wonderful sentiment — and a necessity for the success for any given culture — but this just won’t cut any ice.

That’s why we have to be responsibly-armed in the first place.

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