Armed Samaritan.(Exercising The Right)

Rebecca Lynn Newton is a gas station attendant in Clayton, North Carolina. Shortly before 9 a.m. on August 14th, she was about to insert an envelope with $400 from her paycheck into an ATM machine at her bank when a man shoved her from behind and blurted, "I'll take that." Newton turned, grabbed the unarmed thug by his shirt, and began screaming.

William Strickland was sitting in his car nearby, waiting for the bank to open. When he heard Newton scream, the permanently disabled former iron worker, who has four titanium rods inserted in his back due to an injury several years ago, grabbed a .22-caliber revolver from the dash of his car and rushed to help her.

The thief had by then jumped into a vehicle backed into a parking spot. As Newton struggled with him through a car door, the vehicle began moving forward. Strickland yelled at the man to stop, then fired two shots at a rear tire. "He still wouldn't stop," Strickland told the next day's Raleigh News & Observer. "I was standing beside the car, and he tried to run me over." With his gun hand poked inside the car, Strickland "asked him to stop again, and he wouldn't do it, so I shot him in the leg."

The wounded thug sped away and escaped. But after ...