Carjacker Finds Out Hard Way ‘Arms’ Doesn’t Always Mean Guns

By Terry Tollefsbol, NATIONAL CONSERVATION TRAINING CENTER-PUBLICATIONS AND TRAINING MATERIALS (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The debate about gun control takes up so much bandwidth that we forget the Second Amendment isn’t just about owning and carrying guns – it’s about “the right to keep and bear arms” – and one carjacker found that out the hard way.

The Sunday incident occurred when a teenager tried to force an older Lyft driver to give up her car at knifepoint, WJLA, a Washington, D.C., TV Station, reported. However, the driver feigned compliance, but instead of handing over her key, she retrieved a can of pepper spray given to her by her father and sprayed the carjacker in the face.

“I reach over and I grab the bear spray and I sprayed him and I took out the knife and I started juking with the knife, then I opened the door and I fell out,” the driver, identified as “Angie,” said in an interview that aired Monday evening. “He grabbed the knife and then I sprayed him again. He ran and he came back again and he reached in the car to take my phone.”

“When he went to take my phone, I put my body on top of him and we start to fight,” Angie continued. “I saw him drop the knife. I started punching him in his leg. He somehow pushed over me and he got up and he ran away.”

A neighbor witnessed the incident and called 911, WJLA reported. The carjacker was later taken into custody, still suffering from the effects of the bear spray.

“The Supreme Court has strongly suggested that stun guns and knives are ‘arms’ protected by the Second Amendment,” Second Amendment scholar Stephen Halbrook told the Daily Caller News Foundation, pointing to the Supreme Court’s decisions in Caetano v. Massachusetts and New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

“The Court has held that ‘the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,’ and that this ‘Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States,’” the unsigned opinion in Caetano says.