"For Middle-Class Pakistanis, a Gun Is a Must-Have Accessory"

Katherine Mangu-Ward | January 6, 2009

Greatest headline ever.

In today's Wall Street Journal, an story about incentivizing private solutions when public law enforcement fails:

After escaping kidnappers who chained him to a bed for 25 days, Mohammad Javed Afridi pressed Pakistani law enforcement for swift justice. The police offered him something else: temporary permits for four automatic assault rifles.

Since Mr. Afridi's ordeal ended in mid-October, police in his hometown of Peshawar, in northwestern Pakistan, haven't made an arrest in his case....

So the cops allowed Mr. Afridi to arm himself against future abductions. The 35-year-old journalist now carries an AK-47 to work and back home to his wife and five children. Relatives rotate duty as his bodyguards. If his car is again stopped by armed men on a dark road, Mr. Afridi vows to shoot first.

In Pakistan, at least, sometimes you really do need to own four assault weapons in self-defense—even the police think so. Suck it, Brady Campaign Myth #8.