I think it took me three “conversion experiences� before I became serious about getting a CHL and starting to carry. First a shooting outside my house, then an attempted strong-arm home-invasion, then a threat of imminent shooting.
Background facts:
I grew up in the Midwest, in a culture where every house has a cabinet full of rifles and shotguns. (Oddly enough, I used to find knives a little spooky.) Handguns, however, were simply not a part of my experience. My grandfather used to carry a revolver when taking his business receipts to the bank, but I only learned about that after his death, in my 30s.
I don’t have a moral problem with responding to criminal aggression with appropriate violence. I’ve been practicing various kinds of martial arts for over 20 years, and it’s been useful. Handguns weren’t part of my toolbox firstly because they weren’t part of my mental landscape—no role models or mentors. Secondly, when I did think about them, I dismissed the thought due to expense and concerns about storage, concealment, and availability of training and practice facilities.
First serious experience: random shooting nearby
After grad school, I moved to another city. I’d been living in the university part of down for about a year when I heard a shot fired in the street right in front of my house. I saw the individuals involved, and police response to my 911 call was good. The 12 gauge that lived in my closet was a comfort, but the event was still a definite pulse-quickener and probably my first brush with deadly force.
Second: attempted home invasion
A few years later, in a different part of the same town, I was walking home with my girlfriend from the grocery store. We both had our hands full with bags of groceries. We met a young fellow sitting on the steps to our back porch. I made polite inquiries, and was met with surly belligerence. I shepherded my GF up the front steps, accompanied by this young man continuing his incoherent ranting down my neck. We stepped inside, I closed the door, and was just commenting to her about what a wack-job the boy was when our front window crashed in.
I yelled for her to get clear and call the police, I opened the door (French door, didn’t want to eat the glass panes), and I stood in the doorway. I didn’t want our new friend getting past that choke point—and there he was, coming at the door with a thin 1’ x 5’ plank in his hands. He focused on me, dropped his plank, and started walking forward like he was going to walk right through me. It was at this point I noticed the freely-bleeding cut on his forehead, and guessed he’d head-butted the window to break it. I met him at the threshold, and stiff armed-his shoulder. We stood there at the threshold, just sorta braced, while he huffed and puffed, blood running down his face from his cut, each breath spattering a little blood on my front. Time slowed, my vision tunneled, and my hearing faded out. I found myself focusing on his throat and thinking about its future if he started to shove past me. Weirdest damn thing.
I finally found my voice and started using it—and it worked. I backed him away from the door, off the porch, and down the steps a ways. I kept yelling at him to get down, get down (back down to the sidewalk). In whatever state he was, apparently ‘get down’ meant to take a runner’s start position. He’s on toes and fingertips, and I’m getting ready to receive a charge, when he finally notices his blood now splashing on the deck in front of him. Looked to me like he started to get shocky about then—this was when the police cars rolled up.
The police took him across the street and laid him down on the boulevard as the ambulance arrived. I don’t recall whether I or my GF were offered medical attention. The police used a whole variety of standard interrogation techniques to try to get me to say I’d hit the fellow—which I never had. (He had it coming, I wish you _had_ hit him, anyone can see it would be out of character for you, I know you had to, it’s fluke, etc.) They seemed annoyed that I hadn’t let him step across the threshold so they’d have a better case for burglary. I figured that him reaching inside was good enough, and certainly his blood entered our home.
I later got a letter from the prosecutor’s office that this guy got convicted of some minor misdemeanor, I think it was low-grade trespass.
This was a pretty stressful experience. I spent months rehashing it with myself and second-guessing. The main take-away messages I got from this were a) never let the guy get in that close, b) never turn my back, c) never let him that close to the house, d) if he –is- that close, maybe it’s worth it to let him get one step inside the house, and e) consider upping the level of my response.
Third: “I’m gonna blast you!�
The clincher for me was a few years later. Same city, downtown, November evening, standing in the rush hour crowd at the bus stop waiting for my lift home. I’ve got my workout bag over one shoulder, my briefcase slung over my other shoulder, and I’m reading a book to pass the time. When I read in public, reading the material stays below eye level and at about half extension, and I do keep checking my surroundings. It was while doing this that I saw a group of young people coming up the sidewalk from my left. I stepped back to let them pass, to the chain link fence separating the parking lot behind me from the sidewalk the crowd was on. I gave the little crew one glance over as they neared me. The guy bringing up the rear was a bit beefy, little over six feet, wearing one of those puffy jackets I associate with sub-freezing temperatures and snow, not a 50-degree autumn evening. He focused on me, and at about two steps’ distance he changed his direction and took a step toward me, smacked a fist into a palm, and yelled “BOOM!�
I had no idea what brought this on, but I decided this was ‘game on.’ He took another step forward and I raised both my hands to eye level, fingers extended, and stepped into his line. This changed his mind about coming forward, and he ducked and bobbed away off to his left side as the rest of his friends scattered and reformed. Suddenly I had this younger guy and girl in my face, talking a mile a minute about why I had to go and be like that, why I had to hit his boy, etc. I lost track of the others in the group at this point—tunnel vision again—as I quietly explained to these two that I’d never touched him. Major eye contact with these two, and I think my demeanor was probably too calm for the circumstances.
Then I noticed Beefy regrouping about 20’ down the street to the right, pulling up his jacket with one hand and pawing at his waistband with the other. “I’m gonna blast you!� he called to me. Oh well, I thought to myself. No way I can outrun this—too burdened, dressed wrong, too crowded, too tired. I felt sad more than anything, and just looked in the eyes of the two up front, then back to Beefy to see what I could work with. They all seemed to lose a little confidence, and the front boy turned to the other, patted his chest, and told him to forget it and that they should get out of there. They bobbed on down the sidewalk, with one or two backward glances.
After I lost sight of them was when I became conscious of the adrenaline kicking in. For a minute or two I kept doing a scan of the area to see whether they were circling back. Finally I figured the hell with that, and walked two blocks over to take a different bus. Didn’t take that route for months after that either.
After-action ruminating included What if he’d drawn? What if I’d been carrying a firearm? What triggered the encounter? How can I keep my vision from tunneling? How should I try to manage contacts with 6+ people? How should I try to manage witnesses during and after?
Within a few months I owned my first handgun, and within a few more I was licensed to carry it concealed.
I had been making trips to a local range for a few years with a friend who was a former police officer. Great place—good selection of rentals.
Life’s been a lot better since then. Just carrying, I’m more aware of my surroundings.
My friend had been teaching me the basics of gunhandling and marksmanship, and continues to coach me. (Mindset is something I’ll always be working on.) More lessons have come from him and a friend I met through him, another former police officer and ex-military man. (The Tueller Drill was especially eye-opening.) I miss those guys—they’ve done a lot for me, and continue to even though I now live in Texas.
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