You know what they say — don’t mess with Mama Bear. Especially when Mama Bear is an armed war veteran who is sick and tired of the nonsens...
You know what they say — don’t mess with Mama Bear.
Especially when Mama Bear is an armed war veteran who is sick and tired of the nonsense of America’s crime-ridden cities.
Charise Taylor, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, was recently forced to pull a gun on a man who tried to enter her vehicle in traffic on Interstate 10 in New Orleans while she and her 2-year-old sat inside.
It’s a good thing she was armed and had the training that she did, but she is not too happy that she was forced to resort to such measures, something she told WDSU she never thought she’d have to do.
“You shouldn’t have to navigate your own city like a war zone. It’s un-American,” Taylor griped to the outlet. “The crime is out of control and it’s terrifying. At this point, having to use the same tactics in an American city that you use in Iraq and Afghanistan simply to navigate through the city — it’s scary, and I’m not the only mom feeling this way.”
Taylor was stuck in gridlock traffic when she let a group in a truck pass in front of her.
Next thing she knew, a man came up to her passenger door, which he proceeded to try to open.
“So, as he comes up, he’s close and he’s pretty aggressive, trying to get the car door open. [He] makes eye contact with me; he’s still trying to get it open a couple times,” she recounted.
At this point, she aimed her gun at the man, warning him it was “locked and loaded.”
While she was not forced to fire, her apparent willingness to do so did the trick; the man eventually ran off.
To her annoyance, however, the crime of attempting to enter her vehicle was logged by the New Orleans Police Department as a mere “disturbance.”
“The NOPD is actively investigating a disturbance that occurred on Interstate 10 West at the Canal Street exit on February 11, 2022 at about 5:20 p.m.,” a statement from the department reportedly read.
“The incident classification is based on the available information regarding the incident at the time the report was written. We do not have any additional information to provide this time.”
Taylor described the incident as trying, but said she would have been willing to do what she needed to do had it come down to firing upon the aggressor.
“The emotions — honestly your body takes on a different form. I stayed in my body, of course, but everything transformed. I’m trained to do this, I’ve gone to classes, I’m prior military; if I have to pull this trigger, that’s what I have to do,” she said.
Thankfully for Taylor and her child, she was both armed and well-trained to defend herself and the baby, should she have needed to.
Yet her annoyance that she might have been forced to use training that she underwent largely to defend American troops and civilian life in literal war zones resonates in the midst of a major national crime wave.
Most women in America driving down interstates with their children in the car are not trained war veterans, and while women have comprised the fastest-growing demographic of gun owners in recent years, there are likely many who are not armed.
Now, I’m a big believer in the Second Amendment and the great equalizing force of the firearm — I carry whenever I leave the house, as a rule — yet I also think it needs to be stated that it’s a sad state of affairs in our country to think that a woman can’t even drive down the highway without possibly being forced to defend herself and her children from an aggressor like the man who targeted Taylor’s vehicle.
Yes, we live in a fallen world where our physical safety can never be fully guaranteed at any given time, which is why it’s wise for citizens, particularly women, to take full advantage of our right to bear arms.
Yet we simply cannot stand by as crime skyrockets to the extent that our cities make war veterans feel like they’re back in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Taylor is absolutely right: She’s not the only mom who feels this way. Mothers, fathers and other law-abiding citizens of cities like New Orleans, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco are daily confronted with the harsh reality of progressive, soft-on-crime policies.
Not only are their lives affected by the kinds of policies that empower criminals, but they are threatened — and even sometimes taken — by people who are the happy beneficiaries of slaps on the wrist from city officials more interested in making a name for themselves among idealistic defund-the-police activists than they are in doing their jobs.
Thank the Lord that Taylor was able to take matters into her own hands in this case — but no American should be forced to do so.
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