Danish teen fought off her attacker - now she'll face fine

[Kentonio]

215. The right to self defense does not give you a right to carry illegal weapons

On the off chance that you might be one of the extremely small number of people who ever have to face that kind of attack. It doesn't, because otherwise you have to legalize the carrying of those weapons to everyone. You can't have a law that says women can carry pepper spray but men can't because it would fly in the face of equality and be shot down immediately by any kind of constitutional checks and balances. If you allow everyone to carry pepper spray, then you massively increase the number of people using pepper spray for illegal purposes and create a situation where the police have to actually catch people after the fact, rather than be able to reduce crime overall by possession itself being an offence.

Basically you're supporting a vigilante approach to justice which only America in the western democracies thinks is ok. It's also one of the key reasons why America has many more murders than other western nations because the same stupid logic is applied to gun possession.

We all feel emotion when it comes to terrible crimes, but there's a damn good reason why emotive appeals should have no place in lawmaking.