Anti-homosexual Gang Flees

CATO@LIBERTY

Even Imaginary Guns Save Lives
Posted by Ilya Shapiro

Because we care about individual liberty here, we think you should be able
to engage in self-defense to protect that liberty (and your life, if it comes to that).
That includes the right to armed self-defense, of course, a right that becomes
all the more important when encountering potential assailants who are stronger and/or more numerous than you.

Indeed you might recall from the legal fight to guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms,
that my colleague Tom Palmer once fended off some anti-gay marauders by just showing them that he had a gun,
and now we see that same story play itself out,
except the would-be victim scared off a homophobic gang by merely
maintaining the impression that he had a gun:



It’s unfortunate that the people Mr. LaSalvia encountered are around — whatever their motivations — but would we
be in a better world if people like him couldn’t imply the potential for armed self-defense?

Of course, in DC and Chicago, — which, after the recent Supreme Court rulings,
must allow guns to be kept at home — it’s still illegal to carry a gun
(open or concealed) in DC and Chicago.
If the thugs Mr. LaSalvia ran into knew the local gun regulations
(as many professional criminals do) and accurately gauged their target as a law-abiding citizen,
they would have known that he was bluffing.

Is that what gun-control proponents — many of whom I surmise strongly support gay and women’s rights — want?