In January 2013, 43-year-old Chad Oulson was sending a text message to his young daughter while sitting in a movie theater. Curtis Reeves, who was sitting behind him, did not appreciate that Oulson was texting during the coming attractions. Popcorn was thrown and eventually a gun was fired, killing Oulson and wounding his wife.

The lawyer for Curtis Reeves, the retired Tampa police captain accused of shooting and killing a man in a Wesley Chapel movie theater last year, said Wednesday that he plans to use Florida's "stand your ground" self-defense law to have the criminal charges against Reeves dismissed.

Reeves was Oulson’s judge, jury, and executioner. Oulson's crime: Sending a text message to his daughter prior to the start of a movie.

On October 6, 2015, two men were being chased out of a Home Depot in Auburn Hills, Michigan. Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez pulled out her concealed handgun and shot at the shoplifter's vehicle as it was leaving the parking lot.

Duva-Rodriguez told detectives that she, a Home Depot employee and one of her employees were loading drywall into her truck when the incident began. She heard a scream from a Home Depot employee and saw other employees standing at the door facing the parking lot. She said the employees were not chasing the suspect but were screaming “help” and “stop” from the vestibule, the report states. . . .

She was not under any threat, yet she pulled her gun and fired it, not knowing what the situation was or why the employees were yelling “help” and “stop.” She decided to take the law into her own hands. Luckily, she did not hit anyone with an errant shot in her attempt at vigilante justice. She has been charged with reckless use, handling or discharge of a firearm.

On October 31, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois, Reginald Gildersleeve ...

… walked into a store in the 2700 block of West 51st Street in the Gage Park neighborhood around 7 p.m., announced a robbery to an employee working behind the counter and displayed a handgun. Another employee came from the back of the store, and the gunman pointed his weapon at her, police said. He then made her go to the back of the store, which also serves as a currency exchange. After that, a customer who was also inside the business pulled out a gun and opened fire at the robber, killing him, police said.

The gun Gildersleeve was carrying? A paintball gun. The man who shot Gildersleeve will likely not be charged in the incident. Again, the shooter in this case played the role of judge, jury, and executioner. In 1984, when Bernard Goetz shot four young men on a subway car in New York City, vigilante justice was almost unheard of. It was so rare that a story that was local to New York made national news, and this, in a time prior to the 24-hour news cycle, was inconceivable. Today, thanks to the NRA selling fear, more and more people are carrying concealed weapons, and thanks to Hollywood, many of these folks who carry concealed weapons see themselves as the hero there to save the day.

With the exception of Chad Oulson, most of the people mentioned in this post were likely bad people. But none of them deserved to be judged by someone carrying a concealed weapon. Carrying a firearm can give one a feeling of power and invulnerability. It takes a split second to pull the trigger, and once it is pulled the bullet cannot be stopped. It is indifferent to who it hits, and who it kills. None of the people in this diary who were shot had a chance to be judged in front of a jury of their peers for their actions. Robbery, shoplifting, and texting before a movie are not capital crimes but in each of the cases above, a person carrying a concealed weapon made each of theses crimes a capital offense.

Carrying a concealed weapon does not mean people can take the law into their own hands. It should be a weapon of last resort. We live in a civilized society, we are a nation of laws, and having a concealed carry permit does not mean you have a right to be judge, jury, and executioner. Our justice system's bedrock foundation is that you are innocent until proven guilty, and that you have a right to trial by jury—but guns have exposed the cracks in that foundation.