Woman and Daughters, Armed with Pistol, Butcher Knife and Axe, Take Out Attacker

It often has been said that statistics on crimes involving firearms are fairly easy to track, but use of firearms to prevent a crime are not.  There are some who make a determined and rather accurate effort to discover a good estimate (Professor John Lott, Jr being an excellent example), but circumstances restrain a proper accounting: mere brandishing of a weapon, real or implied (hand on holster); knowledge by a criminal that certain people or areas are likely to be ‘defensive-minded’, particularly in groups and running the law of averages as to how many may be carrying concealed firearms (criminality and intelligence are not necessarily mutually exclusive); fear of reporting a thwarted crime because of likely police reaction in some areas to mere possession of a firearm … the list goes on.  There are any number of local anecdotes that leak out though, but not very far.

 

Martha Lewis (by WVTM-TV)

 

One such example is this delicious case of Martha Lewis in the small town of Dora, Alabama (population around 2500) in rural Walker County.  The Blaze seems to be the only source that passes for a national news outlet to have picked this up, and provides a good account of the incident, but the web log ‘Weapons Man’ found it and ran with it, in his droll manner of explication.

 

The core of the story is that Lewis’ front door was kicked in early one morning and she encountered one Michael Jacobs standing in her house.  In short order she ran to fetch her handgun (disappointingly unidentified in the account), called 911, awakened her two young daughters and told them to arm themselves with whatever they could, and returned to her landing to confront the intruder.  It would seem that the 25-year-old Jacobs was besot with drugs, alcohol, or a deadly case of super-optimism – or all three – when he asked her if she would shoot him, as he started to climb the stairs.  By now, perhaps unbeknownst to Jacobs, Lewis’ daughters hovered well in the background, but were armed with a butcher knife and an axe.  Lewis explains:

I knew when he stepped on the landing that I would have to shoot him.  He starts like coming up the stairs and he said, ‘would you shoot me?‘  And I said ‘I don’t want to have to but I will.’

It is at this point that some pop culture-infested thoughts are supposed to appear in the mind of Lewis, who one might be led to believe, should be at least spiritually trembling at the possibly mortal challenge before her in her choice of endangering another of God’s creatures with a gun, perhaps struggling with his own inner demons brought on by whatever societal impulse that brought him to her home. 

Nope.  She shot him.
 

Jacobs stumbled out to the front yard and collapsed at the spot where the police found him when they arrived.  The story doesn’t divulge the reaction time of the police, but we all know that the police only show up after a crime is committed.  The ‘Weapons Man’ explains it well:

She was under no illusions about the steep odds facing a small woman in a physical altercation with a large man.  "There's no way I could have fought him off.” … But while God may have created man and woman in sexually dimorphic forms, Sam Colt, as the saying goes, made them all equal.

Jacobs faces an array of violent crime, property damage and drug charges, and the police have made it clear that there's no reason for them to charge Lewis.  [In situations like this in Texas, the term is ‘no-billed’. --ND]  Asked if she was hesitant to defend herself and her daughters, the feisty lady said no:

It wasn’t like, oh can I pull the trigger?  It was like when should I shoot?  When will he be close enough that I know I won’t miss him?  That’s one of the things that was going through my mind.

In fact, she did just about everything right: called police, armed herself and – as a mercifully unneeded backup – her daughters.  And then, because the situation allowed it, she gave Jacobs all the verbal warning a wiser man would have needed to get hat and begone.  She stood her ground – flight would have let him overtake and overcome her – and she fired without hesitation and with accuracy.

These situations happen, with the proper result like that of Ms Lewis and her daughters safe and sleeping soundly at night – as the news report attests – and the criminal, who happened to survive, incarcerated and currently incapable of menacing other petite women and their children.  We should hear of more of these stories – people like Ms Lewis stiffen the resolve of our populace besieged by criminals and a post-modern culture.

 

Good job, Martha Lewis.  We should all be so prepared, and our state laws should be all so supportive.