Gun Owning Woman vs Masked Thief with Pepper Spray -- Place Your Bets!

One woman in Blooming Grove, Wisconsin, is alive today because of her trusty firearm.

The gun owner, who chose not to be identified, was at her home in the wee hours of Saturday morning when she heard commotion in her house. The 29-year-old naturally thought that it was her roommate returning from a night on the town, but a quick text to her roomie proved that hypothesis wrong.

She grabbed her gun, dialed 911, and waited for the inevitable. She recalled, “I heard somebody coming up the steps to my room and I just kind of said, ‘here goes nothing.’”

A short while later a man wearing a dark jacket and a bandana over his face barged into her room and attempted to use pepper spray on her. She opened fire on the intruder, who quickly fled. Getting a face-full of pepper spray might sting, but there’s no way that it hurts half as much as bullet wounds. We’ll take a pistol over a spray can of hot sauce any day of the week, thank you very much.

The woman later found herself wondering how the confrontation could have gone differently. “What if I didn’t have it?” she asked. “Where would I be right now, you know? Like what would have happened to me if I didn’t?”

She added that she originally got the gun as something of an afterthought, and she was somewhat reluctant to buy it: “I got the gun in case something were to happen, but I never ever thought in a million years I’d actually have to use it.”

It’s a good thing she made the right choice!

Investigators poked through the crime scene and had some mixed results. They believe that the man forced his way into the building through a secured window and stole several items. However, they were unable to find evidence that might lead to the subject’s identity and they were unable to conclude whether or not the man was injured by any of the bullets. The only trace that he was there were some dark fabrics.

It might be comforting to know that the man was there to swipe valuables and didn’t have rape and murder on the agenda (probably), but this gun owner is still on full alert. “I don’t know what to do now,” she said. “I’m watching my back. I’m watching all of the cars driving past my house.”

There are a couple of things that we can take from this story. At the top of the list would probably be “Don’t try to steal from people, you moron, or you’ll probably eat a bullet.” Right beneath that, though, we have the issue of less-than-lethal weapons.

Carrying a weapon for self-defense is generally a good idea, but you will quickly run into a debate regarding which weapon is right for the job. Pepper spray and tasers can debilitate an attacker, even if that attacker is physically stronger than you. But what if your attacker is stronger than you, and he also has pepper spray?

That’s why you upgrade. We don’t care how many jalapenos you condense into a tear-inducing aerosol. Nothing turns a calculating criminal into a sprinting wuss faster than a gun. We’ll take a pistol over a spray can of hot sauce any day of the week, thank you very much.