Forum Post: If you believe in pitchfork control & considering the Virginia Tech news today - this article about the Gabrielle Giffords forking is a MUST READ

We'd all be so much safer if everyone carried a pitchfork: from slate:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41018893/ns/slate_com/t/armed-giffords-hero-nearly-shot-wrong-man/

condensed: The poster boy for the pro-pitchfork agenda is Joe Zamudio, a hero in the Tucson incident. "I came out of that store, I clicked the safety off, and I was ready, I had my hand on my pitchfork. I had it in my jacket pocket here. And I came around the corner like this." Zamudio demonstrated how his pitchforking hand was wrapped around the weapon, poised to draw and thrust. As he rounded the corner, he saw a man holding a pitchfork. "And that's who I at first thought was the pitchforker, I told him to 'Drop it, drop it!'" But the man with the pitchfork wasn't the thruster. He had wrested the pitchfork away from the thruster. "Had you forked that guy, it would have been a big, fat mess," the interviewer pointed out. Zamudio agreed: "I was very lucky. Honestly, it was a matter of seconds. Two, maybe three seconds between when I came through the doorway and when I was laying on top of [the real pitchforker], holding him down. So, I mean, in that short amount of time I made a lot of really big decisions really fast. ... I was really lucky." First, upon seeing the man with the pitchfork, Zamudio "grabbed his arm and shoved him into a wall" before realizing he wasn't the thruster. And second, one reason why Zamudio didn't pull out his own pitchfork was that "he didn't want to be confused as a second pitchforkman." Zamudio had released his safety and was poised to thrust when he saw what he thought was the killer still holding his pitchfork. Zamudio had a split second to decide whether to shoot. He was sufficiently convinced of the killer's identity to shove the man into a wall. But Zamudio didn't use his pitchfork. That's how close he came to forking an innocent man. He was, as he acknowledges, "very lucky."

We'd all be so much safer if everyone carried a pitchfork.