“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” The unofficial slogan of the National Rifle Association, pounded into the public’s consciousness by the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, is probably the single most powerful idea behind the arming of America.
And until Michael Dewayne Bowman fired several bullets into the back of Griffin police officer Kevin Jordan, according to witnesses and police, he was presumably a good guy with a gun. A Glock, in this case.
Bowman had obtained a gun carry permit. Police say they do not know whether it was still valid. The probate judge’s office said it cannot release such information because of privacy concerns, even for back-shooting cop killers. The law’s the law.
Bowman was scheduled for surgery midweek because he was shot twice by Jordan’s big brother, who police say was visiting from Illinois and who happened to be on the scene of the cowardly crime. Police say Raymond Jordan, who was in town to attend his nephew’s high school graduation, will not be charged with a crime. He, too, had a permit to carry his Glock.
“The only regret I have is that I didn’t kill him,” Raymond Jordan told the news. Many people share the sentiment.
But the scenario where a good guy with a gun, Officer Jordan, a religious man and father of seven, was killed by a one-time good guy with a gun turned bad guy, Bowman, who then was shot by another good guy with a gun, Jordan’s brother, is one more tragic story from the front lines of our messy, violent era.
‘They walked in with a bad attitude’
The whole thing started, as many deadly confrontations do, with late-night drunken stupidity.
Witnesses and police say the hulking Bowman, who is an Army veteran, was drunk when he entered a Waffle House after 2 a.m. Saturday with Chantell Mixon, his petite and mouthy girlfriend.
Loud and obnoxious, witnesses say. “They walked in with a bad attitude and were asked to leave,” said Christina Burell, a Waffle House employee.
Before long, workers asked Officer Jordan, who was in uniform and working off-duty as security, to confront the troublemakers. But Mixon didn’t back off when Jordan asked her to calm down, Burell said. “She was jumping up in his face, saying ‘Arrest me! Arrest me!’ “
Devin Campbell was in the corner booth with his girlfriend watching the scene unfold. “You can ride home in your car or ride in mine,” the cop warned the angry woman. “When she was at the door, she dropped the N-bomb. After that, Officer Jordan was out of niceness.”
The officer followed Mixon outside with his handcuffs and either tripped with her to the pavement or pushed her down to gain control. “That’s when that SOB came up from behind and gave it to Officer Jordan in the back,” Campbell said.
He said Bowman then turned “and looked up at everyone in the Waffle House. There was nothing in his eyes. They were hollow. He grabbed the girl and they started across the parking lot. Then it was ‘Boom. Boom. Boom.’”
Jordan’s brother avenged his brother and stopped the now-suddenly dangerous man.
‘From what I heard, he was a good guy’
Burell, the Waffle House worker, said no one knows what caused Bowman to snap. She said he originally was trying to calm down his girlfriend. “I don’t know what went through his head. From what I heard, he was a good guy.”
Bowman, 30, is the father of four. Facebook pictures show him enjoying family activities with tow-headed kids. He did a stint in the Army and the Georgia National Guard. His email is Bubba48th, referring to the 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, the “Macon Volunteers,” said to be one of the oldest units in the Army.
More than 30 of his Facebook friends are dressed in Army uniforms or indicate that they served. Another dozen of his friends have changed their profile pictures to a Griffin police badge with black tape in honor of Jordan.
Bowman’s family, too, is in shock. They have spoken little since the shooting, other than to express grief for Jordan family.
One cousin, on her Facebook account, wrote: “Unfortunately he was very intoxicated and made a life-altering decision that has already changed so many lives.”
Griffin, an hour south of downtown, has a small town feel and is mobilizing in support of the hero cop and his grieving family. Griffin residents are expected to line the city’s streets for the funeral procession Monday that includes a horse-drawn caisson.
“He was a soldier through and through; he followed orders,” said Griffin police Lt. Mike Richardson. “I don’t think he ever called me by my first name, it was either ‘sir’ or ‘lieutenant.’”
‘I want to be able to shoot back’
The police report on the tragedy lists 17 witnesses. Campbell, the guy in the corner booth, said at least three or four other patrons had guns, although none of them had time to use them.
“This has really got me thinking I need to get my permit,” he said. “I want to be able to shoot back. If I had my gun with me, I’d like to think I’d have shot Bowman through the window.”
He paused and then added, “Of course, you never know what you’d really do.”
I called Jerry Henry, executive director of Georgia Carry. “When I hear that there’s a shooting, one of the first things I think is, ‘I hope he didn’t have a (carry) license,’” he said. “It paints us all in a bad light.”
Henry said an estimated 700,000 Georgians legally carry, a figure that is growing. “If you look at the percentage of people with licenses who commit crimes, the percentage is very low,” he said. “One percent of crimes are committed by people with licenses.”
It makes sense that people who follow the law to get a license are usually law-abiding. In fact, most go out of their way to behave themselves so they won’t lose their permit, Henry said. But verifying Henry’s claim that only 1 percent of crimes are committed by license holders is almost impossible because determining who has a permit is guarded and not readily available for studies.
Laura Bordeaux, a founder of Georgia Gun Sense Coalition, worries more people packing means more accidents or spur-of-the-moment shootings. She said NRA rhetoric causes many people like Bowman, people who may not have been stable, to start packing. “He was told there are bad guys everywhere,” she said.
This year, LaPierre spoke of a world populated with “terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, road-rage killers and killers who scheme to destroy our country.”
Carrying a gun enabled Michael DeWayne Bowman to join that group. And then it enabled the slain cop’s brother to shoot the good guy gone bad.
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