I just need to tell you that the kind of honesty you exhibit is not only refreshing, it is healing for me. Even as a liberty-conscious gun owner, I've become one jaded human being when it comes to the political process and the war against our freedoms, but your willingness to say what you just said spoke right to the bug that was keeping me from getting in people's faces in defense of our freedoms.

My daughter was raped. He came in her own apartment, which she could barely afford because we're just not a very rich family. I've been working all my life, and I'm still finding ways to make extra money to put my other daughter through college. My beloved wife works too. We raised our children with values. You don't hurt people, you be kind and generous, helpful. You don't invade people's space, their dignity, their spirit. (She didn't get pregnant, Thank God.) I'm crying as I write this, 14 years later: This guy darn near cut one of her nipples off, Angel. THAT ROTTEN-SOULED PIECE OF HUMAN TRASH DESTROYED THE VERY PRECIOUS INSTRUMENT OF NATURE AND GOD THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SUCKLED BY THE TWINS SHE HAD 8 YEARS LATER!  Angel, the "man" who disfigured my daughter - physically, emotionally and spiritually [editor emphasis] - made her do some other things that, when I found out about them, prevented me from sleeping for over a year.

I could tell you more details, but let's just say that my daughter knew how to use a gun quite well. I raised her to be able to protect herself, like any good father should do. And here comes my point of all points: she was not allowed [editor emphasis] to carry a gun to stop this from happening to her where she was living at the time, and he caught her as she was going into her apartment. What goes through my mind every time I think of this - and every time I hear someone like the late Governor of Missouri Mel Carnahan denying the right of a woman to stop such an attack - is this: the guy approached her by cornering her in the squared section leading up to her door, trapping her, but with plenty of time for her to have pulled her gun and stopped the attack. All he had was a knife, the same one he used to make her lose a pint or more of blood from her breast.

Angel, the media would not print a word about the disfigurement. In fact, they only gave this story four lines in their regular reporting of local crimes. I guess it was just too terrible for them to say, but their refusal to warn other women that this mad "man" was at large made me so mad I thought, many times, about going and killing the legislator who spearheaded the drive to block the legislation that would have - at the time - allowed my daughter to avoid years of agonizing emotional turmoil. (Honestly, and I hope you print this, I still think about killing that son of a bitch, and he's even more powerful now, too, and still making people believe it's right to deny a woman the right to not be raped. [editor emphasis]) And I also thought about, literally, killing the "editor" who said to me these exact words, "I'm sorry this happened to your daughter, but we cover a lot of news every day, and we have to pick and choose, and we don't want to scare the community."

I couldn't believe it either, and I won't repeat what I said to him because I don't want to turn people off who are offended by four letter words. But I did tell him that God is just, and His memory lasts forever. Think of all the other rapes that guy could have committed against an unaware community of women in a city where everyone is told not only that they can't protect their own lives except inside their homes, but they are told by misguided people that guns are bad. Guns are not bad if you're a good person with gun training; they are lifesavers -- and DIGNITY savers.

So keep telling it like it is, Angel. Some people may not want to hear the truth, and some people will probably turn against you for being so direct as you just were, but the people who really and truly understand this issue can probably imagine a cargo plane full of anti-self-defense people like Mel Carnahan going down in the Pacific Ocean, and all of us being better off for it as far as our lives and our safeties are concerned. I feel for the pain Carnahan's family went through and is going through, I honestly do. But I refuse to let him die under the same false notion that he lived under: that his life is more important than that of the citizen he was hired and paid quite well to serve.

Respectfully, and in Gratitude,

A father with a daughter who is finally outliving the memories of the people who know this story, and who doesn't wish to ever rekindle a painful flame in her life and thus chooses anonymity...but I sure hope you print every word.

Dear Father,

I hear a lot of horrible things like this, often with requests not to share them, but this one takes the cake. I edited out two spelling errors and added a couple of commas, but that is all, as you surely see. The fact that the media didn't warn local women that an extra-sick psycho was on the loose is utterly revolting, but not surprising. Should your daughter wish to make a statement to women through our website, we will publish every word, even anonymously, provided I can verify authenticity through a phone call where I don't even need her name, just a little time with her to "make sure," as I trust you can understand...

Billy Graham said something that says at least one of the many important points you bring up with your heartwrenching message:

"Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened."

To me, it doesn't really take bravery or courage to say that a dead tyrant is a good thing. But I understand what you're saying, completely. I had trepidation about saying what I said, not out of concern over what people would think of me, but more out of concern that there might be a good many gun owners who aren't aware enough of the severity of the anti-self-defense movement to see the truth. THAT concerned me, and I am happy to report that not only have all but two responses I received from my "eulogy" of Mel Carnage-ahan been positive, I had 8 or 10 people approach me at or after a public meeting to thank and even congratulate me for saying what needed to be said. People are ticked off about our rights being stolen by people who reserve the same rights they deny others.

People who understand the peril our freedoms are in need to hear the gut level truth, Father. When someone stands up, people around them often take new measures to stand up, as well, and the circle of resistance to tyranny widens. My biggest question is: how can we widen it faster? More "politically incorrect" honesty? Okay.

You said you thought about killing the legislator who helped make your daughter easy to mutilate. With the pain you went through and nurtured your baby girl through (she is still your baby, as all fathers know), your feeling this way is not only understandable, in earlier times, he's have been hung a long time ago. Though I cannot (and will not) urge you to take such action, I can say this: if you did, I would not only celebrate personally, I'd explain publicly exactly why that virus needed some penicillin, using his own voting records to bury him while he toiled with demons in Hell for his crimes against humanity. We've got "rap stars" using "music" to tell people to rape women and kill cops and getting awards for it! All I am doing is saying that if somebody did kill bona fide, thoroughbred tyrants who break their oaths of office while supporting the abuse of the precious daughters of America, I'd explain why such actions were not only predictable (and predicted), but a long time coming as far as the Standards of a Free Society go -- and if America is to return to being a Republic.

There was a time in our past when Real Men protected women, even if it meant they died in the process. Men fought to the death because a woman's honor was tarnished wrongfully for God's sake! And though there are millions of men who'd protect a woman from harm if the situation arose - and many do so to this day - there are "men" in positions of power denying women the right to at least protect themselves, and and more people every day are seeing how truly wrong that is. In all honestly, I'm a soft and squishy, romantic, lovey dovey person who has a teddy bear next to his bed and cries at a good movie. 1, 2  At the same time, I am a spiritual warrior as well as a realist (with very idealistic constitutional and libertarian tendencies), and our liberties and our pride and our very fates are being determined by Godless and gutless vermin who enjoy the very armed protections they deny many of us in this nation. For denying women the right to refuse to be raped, they are themselves asking to become victims at some point, at the hands of a father who just couldn't stand the pain of his armed-and-trained daughter being raped while he pays the taxes an anti-self-defense politician uses to hire bodyguards to protect him from the very people his anti-self-defense policies offend.

In other words, I hear you, I am with you, and I am glad you sent in your letter. Go hug your daughter for all of us who work to get things straightened out, and know that, from where many patriots sit, stepping on a roach is not a crime.

It has been said that one of the worst things you can do in a war is to let your enemy think you are weak or broken down. Not gonna happen here. You know what I am really scared of these days? I mean petrified. Shaking in my boots?

Nothing.

I woke up to fear as an ally through a simple process a few months back.