By Bill Rauch
In case you missed Sheriff P.J. Tanner’s press conference last week, here’s the short course.
There was a large crowd in front of Willie’s Bar and Grill at the Corners Community on St. Helena Island in the early hours of Sunday morning, Oct. 12 right around closing time. In the crowd were (at least) two individuals who were engaged in a “feud” between them, apparently because one had recently “disrespected” the other on Facebook.
The aggrieved party was waiting with a “machine gun” across the nightclub’s driveway when the author of the Facebook post exited the nightclub’s front door. That’s when the shooting started.
Both men, and possibly a third, were armed with “machine guns,” and both and possibly the third engaged in the ensuing shoot-out. Four innocent bystanders were shot dead on the spot, and four more sustained life-threatening injuries. Another 12 bystanders were taken to area hospitals with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.
Neither of the shootout’s primary targets sustained injuries that required immediate professional medical attention. The shooters were still at large at the time of the Sheriff’s press conference. And, the Sheriff said, although there were dozens of eyewitnesses to the shootout, none have yet been willing to offer their account of the tragedy. That’s an issue.
But, how could it be that neither of the shootout’s primary targets – the author of the post, and the guy who went to the bar to shoot him – could have escaped uninjured? Because the “machine guns” they were using were the new fad, pistols that have been fitted with “switches.”
Switches block the weapon’s auto sensor from resetting, thus converting a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon. These weapons easily accommodate extended magazines, thus equipping them to fire 30 or more rounds with a single pull of the trigger. There’s plenty more about this readily available on YouTube (including how to install the illegal switch) for those who are interested. That’s another issue.
But here’s the new issue, as it was dramatically demonstrated in the early hours of Oct. 12 outside Willie’s Bar and Grill. Even when the now-automatic pistol is steadied by the shooter gripping with his second hand while the weapon is being fired the extended magazine, the gun is impossible to aim. It just sprays. That’s why the military doesn’t use automatic pistols. Even the burly ATF guys in the YouTube videos who are crack pistol shots can’t control them.
The Sheriff said, “We’ve got a problem in Beaufort County, and it didn’t just start on Saturday night.” The problem to which the Sheriff was referring is that over the past 18 months the Sheriff’s Office has locked up 24 individuals for possessing “machine guns.” Six are still in jail, and the other 18 are out on bonds that, he added, “… you would laugh at.”
It’s not too soon for the General Assembly who make the laws, who appoint the judges, and who set the Office of Court Administration’s guidelines to take a look at the problem the Sheriff described.
Bill Rauch was the Mayor of Beaufort from 1999 to 2008 and has won multiple awards from the S.C. Press Association for his Island News columns. He can be reached at TheRauchReport@gmail.com.
