Hey, I’ve always thought of the second amendment as an important, but more so as a cultural tradition and symbol of government by the consent of the governed than as something I’ve viscerally felt that was necessary for my own personal safety. But I’ve looked at what happened to the guy who was attacked by the cannibal-LSD guy and I’ve wondered whether the perpetrator would have been deterred had he known that the person he would have attacked was openly carrying a firearm. Or whether if the homeless man was secretly concealing a firearm, would he be able to successfully defend himself, that is, have a good chance of this man’s attack being neutralized.
Imagine how different the situation would have been if the homeless guy was carrying an AK-47 (provided that was legal). It is my opinion that even a crazed man on LSD bent on tearing off a man’s face will still “remember” that a man with a gun is a man that will kill you if you try to do such a thing to him and you fail to take his gun away.
Since I see no question with a factual answer in the OP, let’s move this over to IMHO for now. Whether or not it goes on to GD may depend on how seriously anyone takes this.
Since a police officer pointing a gun at the guys head and saying, roughly, “Stop or I will kill you,” didn’t get the guy to stop, I doubt that the homeless guy would have had much more luck.
Seconded. I’ve seen too many people on LSD, but I have never seen or heard of anyone maintaining a high level of aggression while on the stuff. Besides, people seem to lose the ability to concentrate on complex tasks. Maybe if the victim was unconscious for the entire attack then I might believe it, but I’d put my odds on the killer noticing that his shoelace was frayed and spending the next two hours depressed about that instead.
Having a gun *might *have helped him. Still, for a gun to be effective, you have to draw it, possibly load it, chamber it, aim it and fire it, all of which are not always easy to do when a naked lunatic is bearing down on you at full speed.
Heck, didn’t the officer have to shoot the guy four or five times to get him off the victim? Not only did “Hey! Stop or I’ll shoot!” not work, shooting him 3 times didn’t work! If getting shot multiple times by the police officer didn’t deter him, why would the threat of getting shot by the victim have worked?
I am curious as to how the victim got into the state where the perp was able to eat his face.
Was he passed out from intoxication? Did the eater beat the victim into submission?
I don’t remember any of the news articles addressing this. I do remember mention of surveillance tapes, but from here and from Fark people were saying it only showed the legs of the victim and perp. I guess we won’t ever know or we will only know if the victim lives and is able to tell us.
A Miami Herald building’s security cameras picked most of it up. The homeless guy was just sitting/napping in the shade along the sidewalk. It was a chance encounter and Rudy Eugene was already nude and walking along, crazed I assume. He pounced on the 65-year-old and brutalized him with punching and kicking for quite some time before rolling his body further down the side walk, pulling the victims clothes off and eating. So yeah, the victim was probably insensate through most of it. One hopes.
However, agreed that unless you are anticipating an attack, it takes longer to draw and ready a weapon (especially one in which a round is not already chambered) than depicted on the televisor. For “normal” types of crimes there is usually an escalation period that allows a defender to position and prepare for defense (or better yet, find a way to de-escalate or evacuate from the situation) but for a spontaneous, unprecipitated-type of attack such as this it is difficult to get the drop on an attacker before they are within close quarters, and drawing a firearm with an attacker at touching range is generally a very bad idea for the defender as it exposes the weapon to interference or grappling.
For what it’s worth regarding the LSD, I’ve read it was bath salts, which may be trying to mimic LSD, but since anyone can do whatever they want chemically and call it ‘bath salts’, who the f*ck KNOWs what he was on.