The importance of the civil right to bear arms
You would think that a bicycle camping trip would be a good way to enjoy life. And it is in the United States — but not in India.
A middle-aged couple from Switzerland were on a cycling tour of India, and heading north towards the area of the Taj Mahal. They stopped near the village of Jhansi, where they camped about one quarter of a mile off the road "in an area of scrub." The 39-year-old woman was viciously attacked by a "group" of men. The victim’s husband reported that at about 9.30pm, a group of "up to eight" men came into their camp, beat him with sticks and tied him up before raping his wife in front of him.
About an hour after the attack, the couple were able to flag down a passing motorcyclist and were taken to the local police station. What did the police have to say about the matter? They said that "the Swiss woman and her husband were partly to blame for the attack." "Inspector Avnesh Kumar Budholiya said the tourists had been careless in traveling to a remote part of the country they knew little about." "The police don’t want to take responsibility. Indian women are not safe, in small towns, villages or the big cities, partly because the police are not assuming responsibility for keeping women safe. They blame the dark, the clothes a woman wears, everything but their shirking of their duties.”
Evidently, gang rape is an all-to-common problem in India.
Human nature is the same everywhere, so what keeps this sort of thing from being a major problem in the United States? The answer is, respect and a right to bear arms.
As Rama Lakshmi reported in the Washington Post, "Although India's 1959 Arms Act gives citizens the legal right to own and carry guns, it is not a right enshrined in the country's constitution. Getting a license is a cumbersome process, and guns cannot be bought over the counter -- requirements that gun owners describe as hangovers from the colonial past, when the British rulers disarmed their Indian subjects to head off rebellion."
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the police have no legal requirement to protect individuals from violence; in other words, you cannot sue the police for failure to protect you. Without the 2nd Amendment guarantee, we could wind up in the same shape as India.
-fl