It CAN happen to you so you'd better be ready

From The New York Times:

The wife and two daughters of a prominent Connecticut endocrinologist were killed yesterday morning by two men who invaded their suburban home in Cheshire, held them hostage for hours, set fire to the house and then rammed three police cars with the family’s sport utility vehicle before they were subdued, the authorities said.

The doctor, William A. Petit Jr., 50, medical director of the Joslin Diabetes Center at the Hospital of Central Connecticut, survived the attack and staggered from the burning house with what a neighbor described as a bloody head wound. He was hospitalized in stable condition.

Law enforcement officials in Cheshire, a prosperous suburb 15 miles north of New Haven, declined to identify the two men who were in custody, or the charges against them.

Neighbors of the Petits on Sorghum Mill Drive, in a subdivision of tall trees and manicured lawns, described a chilling sequence yesterday. They said the family’s house was suddenly engulfed in flames, police cars converged, and two young men — one with a shaved head and the other with closely cropped hair — ran from the house and tried to flee in one of the family’s vehicles.

“In Cheshire, we are not used to this type of event,” said Michael Cruess, the town’s police chief. “It’s very tragic, and it is probably going to reach right down to the roots of this community.”

The authorities said that Dr. Petit’s wife of 22 years, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, were declared dead at the scene after the police and firefighters arrived at the home shortly after 9:30 a.m.

What do you want to bet that if you had suggested to Dr. Petit that he should get a handgun and that every member of his family should be taught to use it and that it should be kept loaded and accessible (maybe even two or three scattered about the house) that he would have looked at you like you were a stark raving lunatic?

What do you want to bet that even if Dr. Petit had been that sensible that the suggestion that theirs should become an armed home and that she and her children should become proficient with firearms would have sent Mrs. Petit into orbit?

What do you want to bet that neither of the Petit girls had ever even held a gun, let alone fired one?

The two women and girl in the above picture are now dead. They are dead and the best we can hope for them is that they weren't raped or tortured before they were murdered and that they were shot dead before they were set on fire. Given the moral state of the nation today I wouldn't care to bet my right arm on either of those things, however.

Dr. Petit, if he survives, will have to live the rest of his life with the knowledge that he failed to perform the most fundamentally important task that he was put on this earth to perform. He failed to protect his family.

I don't know about the rest of you but I would keep going through the trial and appeals because my testimony would be needed and then I would join my family.

When you fail to prepare yourself to deal with criminal violence you, in essence, become an accessory before the fact to your own victimization.

Is there anyone out there, even the moonbat trolls, who doesn't think that it would have been better for any member of that family, even the 11-year-old girl, to have gotten one of the family's Glocks and blown the heads off of the two home invaders before they hurt anyone?