“Free men have guns; slaves don’t.”

File this under “Self-defense: International Edition.” Maybe there is still hope for Latin America to become free. In Defense of the Colombian Doctor Who Shot His Attackers.

OK first up, the name of the country is “Colombia.” “Columbia” is the name of a space shuttle that disintegrated on reentry. If it pisses me off when people get it wrong (it does), imagine how the Colombians feel about it.

Three men in a stolen car, attack a doctor. He successfully defended himself. This is an unusual occurrence in Latin America, where the governments work to keep the law-abiding disarmed. The outlaws of course don’t bother about the laws, and get guns from various sources.

Free men have guns; slaves don’t. These three robbers were clearly not inexperienced. They had criminal records, but that day, they faced a free man, not a slave to crime, as most of us Latin Americans are. [SNIP]

Many citizens have become accustomed to the fact that in a robbery, “you have to give up everything.” Lawmakers are at fault for normalizing this mindset. We have no weapons because we are forbidden to possess them, and if we had them and acted on them, we could get into legal trouble.

What follows is a description of the environment in which the law-abiding are disarmed, and at the mercy of the criminals. It isn’t pretty.