Buying The Lie

Yale student Annie Le is murdered, and the comments here are rife with blather about how being armed would have been useless to prevent her death.

You can't protect yourself, don't even try.

Never mind that the "person of interest" in the murder of Yale student Annie Le has "deep scratches" on his chest, arms, and back:

"Sources also said investigators are finding evidence that the pint-size scientist who weighed only 90 pounds put up a fierce struggle against her attacker."

Looks to me like she had ample opportunity to save herself if she'd had effective tools and the training to use them. It takes time to inflict that many scratches. It takes a lot less time to inflict far fewer bullet holes that would have had a much better chance of stopping the attack.

You can't protect yourself, don't even try.

A Johns Hopkins student kills a home invader with a sword, and the so-called "experts" insist that resisting a rapist or robber puts the victim's life in danger.

Resisting puts your life in danger? As if it isn't already in danger when you're facing a violent criminal?

You can't protect yourself, don't even try.

Oh, they pay lip service to taking a "self-defense class," but I can't see the value of any class that doesn't teach you how to inflict sufficient devastation to an attacker to actually stop the threat. I seriously doubt any classes Yale might offer would provide methods to do so.

You can't protect yourself, don't even try.

All these advocates of helplessness have bought the lie that criminals won't harm submissive victims, and that it is impossible to defend yourself effectively against them.

Of course, in their mandatory-disarmament world, that is very likely true. At 4'11" and 90 pounds, Annie Le would be at a serious disadvantage against any average-size man. Three things are necessary to take effective action: tools, skills, and will. The tools, or force multipliers, are what allows a small woman to prevail against one or more larger, stronger assailants. Via Breda, we find out that Annie Le even wrote a magazine article about personal safety that stopped far short of making truly effective recommendations.

You can't protect yourself, don't even try.

Tools are not limited to guns by any means. Even the ever-popular whistle is technically a tool, albeit an extremely weak one. And it carries the expectation that saving my sorry ass is Somebody Else's job, not mine.

You can't protect yourself, don't even try.

Skills are also necessary, training and practice. And tools and skills are worthless without the will to use them. The will is by far the most critical leg of this triangle. But we're told the same thing by The Authorities over and over again.

You can't protect yourself, don't even try.

Never mind the many successful self-defense cases Clayton Cramer documents in his Civilian Self Defense Blog. Never mind the many cases Zendo Deb documents of victims killed by criminals after they complied with every demand.

The Johns Hopkins "safety measures" recommended by their Director of Education for Health and Wellness actually do say you should not resist a rapist. And this so-called advice is from a woman. The Illinois State Police still contend if you can't escape from a rapist you must not resist. Instead, the claim that women should tell the rapist they are pregnant or have AIDS, vomit on him, or poke him with a rat-tail comb. Of course, this is in Illinois, the only state in the country with absolutely no legal means of carrying a defensive firearm. Even Wisconsin allows open carry.

You can't protect yourself, don't even try.

How can these people live with themselves, saying citizens should meekly submit to violence and violation? What do they gain? More power? More control? A more infantilized populace waiting for Mommy or Daddy to come rescue them from the Big Bad? And what do the segments of the populace who believe that crap gain? An officially-sanctioned excuse to abdicate even more personal responsibility than they already have?

You can't protect yourself, don't even try.

It's all a lie, a terrible lie. Mommy and Daddy aren't coming. You're alone in that alley, or that parking lot, or your bedroom, or that Yale laboratory, alone with your worst nightmare, and scratching him with your fingernails isn't going to save you. All that will do is provide DNA evidence to help convict the criminal after you're dead.

Is that good enough for you? Was it good enough for Annie Le?