AL: Grandmother uses Semi-Automatic Rifle to Hold Suspect for Police

On 17 June, 2019, in Limestone County, Alabama, the police had been pursuing a stolen vehicle. The driver crashed the vehicle and fled. Four hours later, a 15 year old girl spotted the suspect and immediately told her 75-year-old grandmother. Marcia Black got her Ruger 10-22 rifle and confronted the suspect, Cameron Powers, in her driveway. Then she held him for police. From waaytv.com:

About four hours after deputies say Cameron Powers crashed a stolen car during a high-speed chase on E & L Lane, he showed up in Black's grandmother’s driveway.

“He didn’t have a shirt on and didn’t have any shoes on," Allie Ruth Black said.

Black spotted Powers and immediately called 9-1-1, while her 75-year-old grandmother, Marcia, got her rifle and confronted the man about the crash that happened just down the road from her home.

"He said, ‘No, ma’am, I don’t know what you’re talking about,'" Black said. "And she said, ‘Well, I’m going to need you to lay down in the grass.’”

When the man kept moving closer to her home, Black's grandmother reacted.

“She shot up in the air and he hit the ground as hard as he could," Black said.

The police came and arrested Powers. We know the rifle make because 15-year-old Allie showed it to the reporter.

The home is in a rural area in Alabama.

Image from Google maps

Marcia Black fired a warning shot to obtain compliance with her demands to Powers. In this case, the warning shot worked; the suspect complied.

A warning shot poses less danger in a rural area. Fired into the air or into the ground, there is a lower possibility of the bullet hitting a human or destroying property.

A .22 shot into the air can still do significant damage when it lands, but the velocity will have been reduced.

Marcia used a variation of the popular Ruger 10-22 semi-automatic rifle.

While a .22 rimfire may not be the first choice in a self defense firearm, the rifle is easy to shoot, very accurate, and powerful enough to deliver fatal wounds. Many people have been killed with .22 rimfires.  A .22 rimfire semi-automatic is capable of rapid, accurate followup shots. Three hits with a .22 deliver as much energy as one with a 9mm.

.22 sem-automatic rifles are extremely popular. They are almost certainly the most common type of action for .22 rifles in the United States. Because they are a simple blowback type of action, they are cheaper to manufacture than bolt action, pump action, or lever action guns. The simplest bolt action single shot rifles may be a little less expensive.

Magazines with capacities of 10, 25, 30, or 50 rounds are available for the Ruger 10-22 type rifles. In the video from WAAVTV, only a 10 round magazine was seen.

Many variations and clones of the Ruger 10/22 have been made over the years. This rifle has much in common with the Ruger's collector series 10/22, but it has the open rear sight instead of the peep sight.

Perhaps an alert reader can tell us what variation it is.

©2019 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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