A Tribute to a Defender of Freedom and Scholar, Robert A. Waters by Miguel A. Faria, MD

Robert A. Waters is the author of several eloquent and brilliant books chronicling true crime stories that demonstrate how citizens have protected themselves as well as friends, family members, innocent people and even assisted good police with firearms. Waters has been a defender of freedom and the right to self-defense, par excellence. In my estimation, as a fellow researcher in this endeavor, I feel he deserves a tribute for the labor of love that has spanned many years in painstakingly documenting factually cases of self-defense throughout the United States.

A Florida native, Waters lives with his wife in Seminole, Florida, one of the freest states in America. He has two adult children, Sim and LeAnn. Waters received a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Middle Tennessee State University and a Master’s Degree in Rehabilitation Counseling from the University of Georgia in 1983. Armed with education and training, he worked with disabled adults for twenty-five years. As the reader will learn from his books, scholarship, and writings, Waters is also an amateur historian and journalist.

Waters has written six books, including his latest titled Guns and Self-Defense, co-written with his son Sim Waters. His first book, The Best Defense: True Stories of Intended Victims Who Defended Themselves With a Firearm (1998),recounts fascinating human-interest stories and heroic tales of individual citizens defending themselves with firearms, including shop owners, bankers, and jewelers defending themselves in the workplace.  The book also contains cliffhanging stories of citizens defending themselves and family against serial killers and sundry vicious predators or stalkers at home and on the dangerous streets in America today.

The stories related reiterate the fact that the police simply cannot be there to protect every citizen every time a crime occurs. Here are some of the other valuable lessons readers will learn:

1. Why a father (or mother) must be capable of defending the home and family.
2. Why a private citizen may need heavy firepower with high-capacity magazines or even the use of semiautomatic, so-called assault weapons, to protect not only himself but also assist the police in times of crisis.
3. Why a woman defending herself against a robber in her home may need a high-caliber gun to protect herself from a much larger and determined assailant.
4. Why a couple doing business in a thriving community and tourist city like Orlando, Florida, may be unexpectedly attacked by thugs and have to defend themselves to protect their lives, businesses, and even customers.
5. Why concealed carry laws are needed in states that don’t have them, and national concealed carry reciprocity should be a national priority.
6. Why proper gun training and safety can be lifesaving.

In Guns Save Lives (2002), Waters establishes several additional axioms that are momentous not only in the annals of armed self-defense that he has almost single-handedly established but also in the field of criminology. Among the axioms we find that when a criminal assailant, such as a rapist or burglar, is stopped by an armed citizen, countless others, who were not even aware they might become victims, benefit and are saved from potential injury, robbery, rape, or even death, and their property is protected. And Waters recounts several cliffhangers that illustrate this point.

In one case, a serial rapist was shot and killed by a college student when he attempted to rape her in her bed. The predator had been terrorizing the community and had been arrested and released several times previously. His death brought an end to the terror for young females in the city and at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. After the rapist’s death, DNA results linked the assailant to four other rapes in the area. As Waters writes, “Serial rapists commit at least 20 rapes or sexual assaults before being captured, which means that this intended but intrepid victim, who fought back and turned the table on her assailant, saved more than a dozen other women from being raped or murdered.”

In another case, a mass shooter was found to possess a list of victims he intended to kill, but an armed citizen prevented him from carrying out his serialization of mass murder. The lives of those fellow citizens and neighbors were saved because of the person who fought back and stopped the serial killer. Those good citizens and neighbors, some who may have been hoplophobic, would never know their lives had been saved because of an armed Good Samaritan.

Read this book to learn the valuable lessons from the many other stories!

In his last tome, Guns and Self-Defense (2019), which was co-authored with Sims Waters, the authors narrate “23 inspirational true crime stories of survival with firearms.” And once again, the reader won’t be disappointed. Highly entertaining, the thrilling stories provide lessons in sociology and survival:

1. Convenience store clerk’s work is inherently dangerous, second only to that of the cab driver, and especially so for the clerks working at night. Yet most convenience store chains forbid employees to carry weapons, making them sitting ducks for robbers and other dangerous criminals. This is testified to in two dramatic cases, one in Toledo, Ohio, and another in Naples, Florida.

2. Carjacking can be deadly, and a determined citizen can play a pivotal role even if they did not intend to do so. In this case, a valiant and determined nurse defended herself with a firearm and “single handedly” stopped a vicious carjacking ring in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

3. Armed citizens have assisted cops in life or death situations by coming to their aid as related in two cases: One case in the Arizona desert, and another near Ocala, Florida.

And once again, read this book to learn the lessons in sociological and human survival imparted from these spellbinding stories.

Kudos to Robert A. Waters for his years of dedication to scholarship—that is, essential scholarship in the change of ideas for the preservation of liberty. And visit his blog to read more tales of survival, human-interest stories, and the historical vignettes he has researched and collected as well as the magnificent book reviews posted there.

Written by Dr. Miguel Faria

Miguel A. Faria, M.D., is Associate Editor in Chief in neuropsychiatry; history of medicine; and socioeconomics, politics, and world affairs of Surgical Neurology International (SNI). Dr. Faria is a retired Board Certified Neurological Surgeon. He is the author of Vandals at the Gates of Medicine (1995); Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine (1997); Cuba in Revolution: Escape From a Lost Paradise (2002), and America, Guns, and Freedom: A Journey Into Politics and the Public Health & Gun Control Movements (2019). His most recent books are Controversies in Medicine and Neuroscience: Through the Prism of History, Neurobiology, and Bioethics (2023) and Cuba’s Eternal Revolution through the Prism of Insurgency, Socialism, and Espionage (2023; in press) published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, England. His website is https://haciendapublishing.com.

This article may be cited as: Faria MA. A Tribute to a Defender of Freedom and Scholar, Robert A. Waters. HaciendaPublishing.com, May 8, 2023. Available from: https://haciendapublishing.com/a-tribute-to-a-defender-of-freedom-and-scholar-robert-a-waters-by-miguel-a-faria-md

Copyright ©2023 Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D.