Quote:
Originally Posted by S&Wshooter
They neglect to mention in the article that the situation in Louisiana got much worse after the authorities began confiscating civilian-owned firearms. I know many people who would have been harmed or killed in the aftermath if it were not for their guns and the guns of those around them, and while my father was up there as a Search & Rescue volunteer, his Colt AR-15 convinced a group of young men in New Orleans that continuing to try to rape a young woman and hack her brother to death with machetes would be incredibly hazardous to their health. While what happened at Algiers Point was an entirely avoidable tragedy, such an event is not an accurate representation of the way armed citizens behaved during the disaster.
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On a side note, New Orleans actually appears in Left 4 Dead 2 as a
virtual location.
The problem I see there is that the government tried to contain the potential damage panicked and/or ill-informed people could have caused with their firearms by firearms confiscation, but failed to back that up by sending enough police/military troops to secure the area (by no means their only failure in that disaster). Assuming your story is true, your father saw one of the benefits of that bungled policy; the would-be rapists were
not armed with their own firearms.
If your father was by himself (you don't mention if he was), and each of the aggressors had handguns (for the sake of argument), it would have been far likelier that he would have been shot ("It's us against you. So, cracker, what are you going to do about it?"). If your father had decided to "go tactical" and shoot from hiding (whether directly at the aggressors or just over their heads), it would not have been difficult for the aggressors to take the woman along with them (inadvertently or purposely turning her into a human shield). If he made like John Wayne and killed all the would-be rapists, word would eventually get out and likely be the cause of more racial violence (never mind that he'd have to answer for that one way or another).
It is not difficult to get a group of people to believe irrational or manifestly harmful things. Give them guns and the danger gets all the worse.