Fair use)
http://www.gazette.com/archive/01-02-07/daily/opin1.html

Cases cracked
… By invoking an inalienable right

That a 72-year-old Knob Hill woman had the presence of mind and just plain
pluck on a November night last year to grab her .38-caliber revolver and
open fire on a man who broke into her home was itself noteworthy, as we
observed at the time. Laudable, too; it was a judicious and, as authorities
ruled, justifiable use of potentially deadly force in self-defense. He
wasn’t killed but was wounded, twice, and fled in his car only to be
apprehended later by police and eventually charged with burglary and
trespassing, among other offenses.

As it turns out, the shots she fired Nov. 18 at 40-year-old Anthony Peralez
may have done far more than stop an intruder in his tracks. In defending her
home, she also helped police collar the suspect in three home break-ins and
sexual assaults against middle-aged and older women in the Colorado Springs
area since 1999.

The Gazette reported this week that authorities have filed two sexual
assault charges against Peralez for incidents last August and September;
Peralez also has been charged with kidnapping, rape and burglary in a 1999
case. Investigators had compared DNA samples taken from all three cases with
blood from when Peralez was wounded during the November break-in.

Other evidence and hunches had turned up along the way, but police really
got their break when an elderly homeowner drew the line and availed herself
of an inalienable right – to use a lethal weapon in self-defense – that has
been much under fire.

There persists among some a misbegotten notion that self-defense is somehow
incompatible with civilized society. That if only we can enact enough laws
and dispatch enough law enforcers, the rest of us no longer will have to
resort to something as ostensibly odious, as retrograde as the use of
violence in self-defense. Government will protect us from all harm.

Whether or not that vision is even desirable – considering what we’d all
give up in freedom and taxes – it’s just not possible. Sometimes, if we’re
in a position to do so, we must stand up for ourselves.