Some readers claim “It Should Have Been a Defensive Gun Use” is morally equivalent to anti-gunners’ agitprop. The reverse of “waving the bloody shirt” (i.e., using firearms-related suicide and homicide to promote gun control). I don’t think so. Exploiting a horrific attack to try to deny peaceable Americans their Constitutionally protected right to armed self-defense is profoundly amoral. Highlighting an incident where innocent life might have been protected by force of arms reinforces the life-and-death importance of their natural or God-given right to self-defense. Which brings us to this particular affront to human dignity [via nydailynews.com] . . .
A group of men raped two women in separate but similar encounters in Detroit’s west side as their male companions were stripped of their clothing and personal belongings, before being forced to watch, local reports said.
One of the latest assaults involved six men who cornered a 21-year-old woman and 22-year-old man late Thursday and ordered them into a secluded alley by gunpoint.
The pair had been walking together when they encountered the suspects at about 10 p.m. in the 13000 block of West McNichols Road, according to authorities.
“The male victim was forced to watch the female victim get sexually assaulted. Their clothing was taken,” Detroit Police Deputy Chief Charles Fitzgerald told the Detroit News on Friday. The suspects fled on foot leaving the victims partially naked.
This is the third reported – note reported – incident of this type in the Motor City:
The second assault occurred at about 1 a.m. Friday, and was perpetrated by four men along McNichols Road with one suspect believed to be connected to the first rape. The victims were a 19-year-old woman and 21-year-old man.
Police sketchings of three suspects have been released by Detroit investigators.
Both sexual assaults are believed to be similar to a prior encounter on July 11 that left a woman raped and a man robbed.
I don’t know about you, but if I had a firearm in this situation I would use it. If I didn’t have a gun, I’d spend the rest of my life wishing I did.
Anyone who argues that it’s a good thing that the couples attacked by these brutal thugs weren’t armed – that the solution to this kind of crime is to “make it harder for bad people to get guns” or that “the bad guys would only use the victim’s gun against them”- is delusional. And lacks normal human empathy.
I repeat: there is no moral equivalence between agitating for gun control and working to defend and extend Americans’ gun rights. None whatsoever. This should have been a defensive gun use. Period.