What happened to Margarita Grachyov is the stuff of horror movies. Her husband, Dmitry was convinced his wife was cheating on him after she asked for a divorce. Apparently, he just couldn’t grasp how someone might not want to stay married to him, so it had to be another guy.

So he did what any sane, rational Russian dude would do. He chopped off her hands.

He drove her to a forest, outside of Moscow on 11 December, after lulling her into a false sense of security that he accepted her wish to end their marriage and jointly raise their two young sons. He bound her so she couldn’t run and forced her onto her knees with her arms on a tree stump before chopping of her hands, and was ecstatic after severing her limbs. First, he battered her fingers with the axe – ‘he was totally calm when he did this to me,’ Margarita recalled. ‘Unfortunately, I felt all the pain very much,’ she said, talking in detail about the attack for the first time. ‘I was dreaming that I would faint. I kept thinking all the time, why am I not fainting?

As horrific as this is, there’s a part that might be even more terrifying. It seems old Dmitry thinks there’s still a future with Margarita, and this is absolutely terrifying to her for what I’m sure are obvious and understandable reasons.

‘He asks me to forgive him but says that he will kill me if I don’t wait for him when he is jail,’ she said. ‘He seriously thinks that now he has punished me, we have a hope of a happy life in future. I just don’t understand how he pictures this in his mind. This is what I am afraid most of all. His threats are real. ‘Before, he threatened to pour acid on me or to hurt me in some other ways. He kept his word. I don’t have any kind of protection.’

Now, guys like Dmitry are rare, thankfully. However, he’s not as unique as many of us would like to think. There are demented jackwagons out there who think like this. They think that after they’ve brutally assaulted their wife or girlfriend that it’s over now, so they can move on. They don’t take no for an answer, and they’re dangerous.

Nothing about this says Dmitry is remorseful about what he did to Margarita. Nothing at all. Instead, a violent individual who may well be a sociopath believes he has a right to continue a relationship with someone who wants nothing to do with him.

While the specifics may vary, it’s a far too common story even in this country.

However, here in the United States, women can arm themselves. They can buy a gun, get a permit (most places) and meet the threat with a response that isn’t likely to be ignored.

More to the point, they don’t have to live in abject fear. They don’t have to live in terror that this gun (I refuse to call him a man) will show up and simply expect the woman he married and brutalized to stick around and wait for him.

What they can do is rest easier knowing that if the butt-nugget does show up and try anything, they have the means to effectively resist and end the threat.

That is why the Second Amendment matters. While anti-gun jihadis have done an excellent job convincing many women that guns are something that can only hurt them, the reality is that many more women can and do survive situations they wouldn’t otherwise because of a firearm.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.