Recently, a friend told me that pulling on pistol to fend off a gang of rapists — such as those in Cologne, Germany — would have lead to a stampede endangering multitudes.
- Defensive ammunition is unlikely to penetrate more than two bodies, and the attackers were stacked a lot more deeply than that.
- Fired from retention, a handgun is difficult to take away. The key here is to avoid complete encirclement at the start.
- Deep magazines and sufficient reloads are essential. A 5-shot revolver might not be enough, but a 17-shot autoloader would almost certainly be sufficient to create a bulwark of incapacitated attackers.
- While sufficiently large crowd could swamp the lone defender, it’s unlikely that recreational rapists would be so motivated. In a dense crowd, they have no way of knowing how many defenders are firing on them or how much ammunition is available.
- While a stampede could injure the members of such a crowd, they are unlikely to be innocent bystanders.
In sum, I think that a gang rape is the classic crime calling for deadly force to be used and all casualties inflicted on the attackers would be well deserved. To the defender, the religious, gender, ethnic, or any other identity of the attackers is irrelevant. They may be straight white men or green reptilians of the Xth gender and FSMian affiliation, the forcible response to attempted molestation would and should be the same.
