*Update* 3/6/2013 Researching and verifying authorship of this post.  Necessary corrections will be made.

*Update*  Just read a news story relating to the subject matter  – (Patch.Com) Gwinnett Police have released a recording of the 911 call made by a Duluth woman after she shot the knife-wielding intruder who attacked her at home last Wednesday (May 11). Her assailant, identified by police as Israel Perez Puentes, 34, of Alpharetta, died later from the gunshot wounds.

The incident occurred about 6:30 a.m. when Punetes entered the home in the 2800 block of East Mount Tabor Circle in unincorporated Duluth, as the resident, a 53-year-old woman, was coming out of the shower, according to a Gwinnett Police spokesman. “She was exiting the shower when the man wielding a [kitchen] knife entered her bathroom,” said Gwinnett Police spokesman Cpl. Edwin Ritter.
The woman tried to fight off the man with the shower rod after she had fallen into the bathtub. Her attacker then forced her into the bedroom. Puentes apparently was going to sexually assault her, Ritter said. She was able to retrieve her .22-caliber pistol and then shot him multiple times, according to Ritter. Puentes left the house through the rear door and collapsed in the backyard.
A neighbor to whose home the woman had run after the attack placed the 911 call then put her on the telephone. Sobbing hysterically, she managed to tell the dispatcher about the attack and give her address.
“I was in the shower and the lights cut out in my house, and a man came in with a hood, and he had a knife in his hand….He told me to be quiet. He told me to get out of the tub, and he tried to force me on(to) the bed,” the woman told the police dispatcher.
The woman was able to retrieve a .22 caliber pistol that she kept in a nightstand near the bed. “I took my .22, and I shot him as much as I could.” The woman informed the dispatcher she locked the rear sliding glass door after he ran out, and she rushed out the front door to the neighbor’s house. She said she wasn’t sure of his whereabouts.
Puentes was transported to Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville where he later died from his injuries. The woman was transported to Gwinnett Medical Center in Duluth and was treated for minor injuries, Ritter said. No charges are expected to be filed against the woman. “It was apparently a justified use of deadly force,” he said. (read more)
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“The Gun Is Civilization” By Maj. L. Caudill, USMC (Ret)
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat – it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed.
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation… And that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret.)

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