State Rep. advocates arming domestic abuse victims (IN)

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — State Rep. Jim Lucas is known for his defense of gun ownership and gun rights.

Nevertheless, the Seymour Republican raised some eyebrows with comments made on the House floor Thursday.

Every week this session, someone in the House presents a domestic violence fact in the effort to increase awareness regarding domestic abuse.

Thursday, Lucas felt the need to react. Watch his statement in the video player above by clicking the play button.

“There are options out there for women,” he said. “Applications for a license to carry a handgun are up significantly in the state of Indiana according to the Indiana State Police. Women can take it upon themselves to defend themselves.”

Meanwhile, studies show that domestic violence is five times more likely to end in homicide when a gun is present.

I know of a real, living example of this where it worked great.

Many years ago now, a judge became sick of seeing the same abused women appearing before him time and again, their husbands or boyfriends ignoring the “mere scrap of paper” court orders that they stay away from their victims.

So he issued a different kind of bench order, requiring the abused women to have a loaded gun with them when in public, and that they must carry a copy of that bench order with them to show to any police officer who asks about the gun.

He soon included the idea that if they could not afford a gun and bullets, the judge would pay for them.

Importantly, the number of women appearing before him twice dropped to zero, yet nobody needed to be shot. When the police figured this out, they took up a collection to help the judge pay for the guns and bullets.

This worked for several years, until the judge retired, and his replacement was horrified with the idea of giving guns to abused women, so discontinued the program.

So while this is a good idea, it does need to be accompanied by a protective order. The reason being is that protective orders are a “two way street”, not only keeping the abuser from approaching the victim, but it is also a violation of the order for the victim to approach the abuser.

Thus the order would protect both parties, because if the abuser violated the order to approach the victim, they would have no legal defense because they had violated the order. The same if the abused person decided to go hunting for their abuser. If they paid them a visit and shot them, they could not claim self defense.

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