WE ARE DIMINISHED

It always sucks when good friends die.  It sucks worse when they are people who’ve devoted their lives to the good of others.

Word reached me this week that Brian Stover had just died, claimed a few months before his 60th birthday by cancer he had valiantly fought.  Brian was a sergeant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, with decades of intense street experience behind him that had made him one of the best police instructors in the country.  He had served for a decade as a member of the advisory board of ILEETA, the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association.  Before that, Brian was for many years vice-chair of the firearms committee for ASLET, the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers, and I do not exaggerate when I say that he did more work there than any two or three of the rest of us on that committee. The last time someone tried to shoot him and his deputies, Brian shot the offender with his department issue Beretta. Alas, a Beretta doesn’t work against cancer.

Shortly before Brian’s passing, Dr. Joe Davis passed away in Tallahassee.  Joe was one of the all-time great forensic pathologists. Though some say the title character in the TV show “Quincy” was modeled on Los Angeles coroner Thomas Noguchi, others said Joe Davis was the template for that ultimate medical examiner. Joe led the Metro-Dade (now Miami-Dade) Medical Examiner’s Office to greatness, and made it sort of the Harvard grad school from which many other great MEs emerged from his mentorship.  I first met him in the 1970s at a Second Amendment Foundation meeting: Joe was always a stalwart defender of the rights of armed citizens.  His work had taught him that armed victims survived, and unarmed victims came to his stainless steel tables.  When I was teaching at the Metro-Dade Police Academy a short time after the horrendous 1986 shootout that left two FBI agents dead and several more wounded, Joe was kind enough to drop by and give the officers in my class a complete briefing.

Some days before Joe’s passing, we lost Kevin Steele. Still working in law enforcement in his late sixties, despite fighting cancer, Kevin was best known as an authority on knife-fighting, but his expertise ranged across the martial arts and into guns as well.  He was devoted to keeping the good guys and gals alive.

Their dedication, and their ability to face reality, made all three of these fine men advocates for the rights of private citizens to protect themselves with firearms.  Each of them left powerful legacies for all of us who carry on in the justice system.  May all those who follow be as inspiring as they were.

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