“Armed and Ready”

Liberals tell us that ordinary citizens have no reason to own firearms. If they had their way, they would ban private gun ownership. Failing that, they would require anyone wanting to buy a firearm to justify the purchase by showing some kind of special need.

Kristin Kasiskas is a public school science teacher who lives, with her husband, in northwestern Wisconsin. I don’t suppose the Kasiskases would have been able to demonstrate any special need to own firearms, but in rural Wisconsin it would be reasonable to assume that they had a gun or two in the house.

You may have heard of Jayme Closs. In October, a man broke into the Closs home, shot Jayme’s parents, and kidnapped the 13-year-old girl. For 88 days, her whereabouts were unknown and her survival was doubtful. Then, on Thursday, her abductor, Jake Patterson, who lived in the same part of Wisconsin, left her alone for a while. She escaped and quickly encountered a woman who was walking her dog. That woman, Jeanne Nutter, rushed Jayme to the nearest house and banged on the door. The Kasiskases were at home. What happened next:

Kristin Kasiskas told Fox News that she and her husband immediately recognized the 13-year-old Wisconsin girl whose October kidnapping captivated the nation when a neighbor, Jeanne Nutter, frantically knocked on their door at 4 p.m. on Thursday.

“When our neighbor Jeanne came in with Jayme, she said: ‘Get a gun. We don’t know if he’s after us,’” Kasinskas said. “So we were armed and ready in case this person showed up.”

This was no idle precaution. Patterson had shot Jayme Closs’s parents in cold blood, and Jeanne Nutter and the Kasiskases had every reason to think he may be in hot pursuit. Unarmed, they would have been helpless.

Finally, a footnote that reminds us that gender is not, in fact, a social construct:

Kasinskas said that three officers initially arrived at her home. They took Closs to safety and told Kristin and her kids to get away from any windows in case the suspected abductor came to their home.

“My kids and I – we went downstairs,” she said. “My husband was asked to stand guard at one of the doors on the upper floor. [Patterson] was then arrested not that far away from our house.”

That is what you expect–usually, not always–not when college kids are nattering, but when the chips are down. Happily, Mr. Kasinskas stood guard weapon in hand.

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