Civilization one, savagery zero

When three men armed, two with knives, the third with a gun, assaulted a group of American tourists on a beach in Costa Rica, one of the tourists, a U.S. military veteran in his seventies, grabbed the gunman in a headlock, struggled with him, and asphyxiated him with his bare hands. Good job.

I’m reminded of a discussion I once had at my church with an Englishwoman who was totally against private ownership of guns. I told her of incidents in which women had used a handgun to save themselves from rape and murder, and asked her, would she prefer that they not have had those weapons with which to defend themselves? Basically her answer was yes, because in her view people defending themselves made society more violent. I pointed out to her that while she thought gun ownership was immoral, it was her position that was supremely immoral, since she was denying people the right to defend themselves. Now it occurs to me that she would also disapprove of this man who killed a criminal assailant with his bare hands. For the same reasons that liberals oppose the use of privately owned guns for self-defense, they must oppose any lethal (and perhaps any non-lethal) act of self-defense against an armed assailant, even with one’s bare hands.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 25, 2007 08:31 PM | Send
    


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