By: José Niño

A 69-year-old woman successfully used a gun to intervene in a scuffle her husband had with an intruder.

Twenty-one-year-old Keyarra Tompkins broke into the home of the North Olmstead, Ohio couple that night. The homeowner, a 72-year-old man, confronted Tompkins and got in an altercation with her.

Realizing that her husband was in danger, the elderly woman picked up her firearm and shot Tompkins in the stomach. Tompkins ended up dying from her gunshot wounds once she was taken to the hospital.

According to a News 5 Cleveland report, police Sergeant Dan Barrett revealed that the elderly couple had no acquaintance with Tompkins whatsoever. Barrett stated, “They don’t know who this girl is, where she came from. We’re checking with neighbors, nobody knows her.”

Defensive gun use cases are not hypothetical scenarios that Second Amendment proponents randomly put forward. They’re very real incidents that take place daily throughout American cities. Based on 17 surveys that he has analyzed, Second Amendment researcher John Lott found that there were 760,000 instances of defensive handgun use and 3.6 million defensive use cases that involve any kind of firearm on an annual basis.

Security is never certain, and law enforcement cannot always be relied on to protect an individual’s life and property. On the other hand, having lawful access to firearms at least gives people a fighting chance against criminals.

Policymakers who want to achieve a high degree of public safety should not shy away from policies that allow more lawful individuals to arm themselves.

José Niño is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. Sign up for his mailing list here. Contact him via Facebook, Twitter, or email him at [email protected]. Get his e-book, The 10 Myths of Gun Control, here.