Reply #36: I'm sorry about your daughter and her friend.

[SPedigrees]

I hope this stalker does not harm either of them, or anyone else.

You are correct that killing or even injuring another human being would be a life-changing experience. I once sat on a jury at a murder trial, and although we found the defendant innocent under the self-defense statute, what he went through during the arrest and trial was surely not an ordeal anyone would want to experience.

Using a weapon in self-defense is indeed a choice of absolute last resort, but far better to have this last resort available than to be at the utter mercy of a random criminal.

I wasn't trying to be funny or flippant. Just that the utter "up is down" mentality as far as very liberal gun laws in a "safe" area, and near prohibitions on owning a firearm in a city where one is far more likely to need to resort to self defense continues to baffle me.

Boston is a great city. I was born there, and I love the place and its people, but the MA gun laws are just plain nuts and they have not reduced crime in that state. I think the stringent laws went into effect there in the early 1960s. I remember my grandfather having to dismantle and store his hunting rifles in locked containers to drive from CT across the border into MA to Logan airport to board a plane for Alaska (where he worked summers as a medic at the fishing canneries.)