commentary by Patrick H. Moore
The issue of self-defense in your own home is a complex one, but here in America I believe people are justified in possessing firearms for self-defense and are justified in using them BUT ONLY in cases of extreme necessity. I wish it wasn’t this way and I wish I could state unequivocally that no one should have guns in their home for self-defense because no one needs guns that purpose.
However, in our violent and often vicious society, in which people in real need of protection cannot count on over-taxed law enforcement agencies coming to their rescue, there unfortunately are times when an otherwise defenseless house or apartment dweller has little recourse other than to pull the trigger. A new case out of Las Vegas appears to be emblematic of this appalling situation.
Phil Caulfield of the New York Daily News writes:
A Nevada woman blasted two shots into an obsessed former flame’s chest after he broke into her home, and later reportedly posted a photo showing the bullet-pocked door under the title, “I shot my stalker.”
The woman, who wasn’t identified, shot and wounded Douglas Eugene Jackson, 22, after he kicked down the door of her Las Vegas pad at about 1 a.m. Sept. 26.
The good news is that the shooter did not kill Jackson; in fact, after the victim shot him he managed to flee the apartment “but was later tracked down in some bushes by police K9 units and taken to a hospital, FOX Las Vegas reported.”
Hilary Hanson writes for Huffington Post:
According to Fox 2, the woman wrote in a reddit post days earlier that the man had been stalking her for six months, after the two had dated for one month. The post says he incessantly called her, texted her and harassed her online, at one point threatening to taser and rape her “using [her] boyfriend’s blood as lube.” She even moved to a new residence, but he allegedly managed to find out where it was and showed up on her doorstep multiple times, but always fled before police arrived, according to the post.
So it seems very clear that this young woman did everything in her power to avoid trouble from Jackson, including, according to one report, taking out a restraining order against him. The problem is that if an individual is truly sufficiently dangerous and determined to ignore a restraining order, chances are he (or she in some cases) will ignore the restraining order as if it were never issued.
In fact, according to Graham Noble of Liberty Voice, the stalker, who referred to himself as “Doug” stated:
“…a restraining order is just a piece of paper.”
The woman reports that’s Doug’s behavior was obsessive to such a degree that he would call her multiple times on a daily basis, send her 50-page text messages and threaten to kill her and her family. Doug soon figured out where she had relocated to “and he would frequently bang on her door and ring her doorbell repeatedly, in the early hours of the morning.”
The woman’s reddit blog was essentially a cry for help and she tried to find a private investigator to find out where Jackson was now living. (He had apparently also moved.)
In her online call for help, the woman wrote quite persuasively:
“People overuse the word ‘stalking’ so much these days that no one takes it seriously anymore. As soon as someone doesn’t like someone anymore they call them a stalker. This isn’t staring at your ex’s new lover’s timeline longer than you healthily should. This is the real ‘scared to sleep at night’ deal. I have felt the fear before and it’s eating away at me. I need help. Badly.”
It’s interesting to note that in the final analysis, despite her pleas for help, no one came to the woman’s aid. She had to help herself and she did. Sometime after she shot Jackson and after he had been captured, she posted on a photo of her door on a photo hoisting site called Imgur with the caption:
“I shot my stalker tonight.”
In an accompanying post, she writes:
“I awoke around 1:15 a.m. to the sound of the door giving way after one kick, followed by the sounds of my stalker struggling to dislodge the chair while forcing his way inside.” (She had kept a chair wedged against her door for some time at night.)
“I jumped up and grabbed the gun I’ve learned to do everything even shower with.”
“I stood at the top of my stairs and fired twice. Hitting him in the chest, I hear his scream, his disbelief that I’d stood up for myself … 0 to 100 in milliseconds.”
She also described shaking while watching the K9 units “drag him out from … under a bush.”
“For months of him evading the police I began to question whether he was unstoppable. Untraceable. Houdini, he would murder me and get away with it.”
“As of now I’m in a haze of guilt, surprise, relief and disbelief … I survived, where so many people do not. Holy s–, I survived.”
Jackson was treated for his injures at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada. According to Fox Las Vegas, he’s charged with home invasion and aggravated stalking.
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Wow! If I ever need a bodyguard, I know who I’m going to hire.
In all seriousness, this case provides strong justification for keeping a weapon in your home for self-protection here in our dark and bloody land in the event you feel it’s necessary.
That being said, having a firearm to use in your home in cases of TRUE self-defense is a far cry from blasting away with insufficient provocation as we’ve sometimes witnessed during our 19 months of traversing the American crime terrain. Responsible gun ownership means precisely what it says: Responsible gun ownership!
The case also demonstrates the need to be extremely careful in choosing who to become involved with in relationships, even casual ones. Of course, how can you ever know for sure if a person is reliable? The human race is a deceptive race and nowhere is this more true than in matters of the heart and loins.