My wife has a number of fears in life. Then again, considering that her mother disappeared when she was little and the most likely explanation is that she was killed, she has some basis for those fears.
One of her fears, though, is a home invasion.
I’ve done what I can to protect her and, more importantly, to help her protect herself, which helps a great deal. The fact that she’s an excellent shot probably doesn’t hurt, either. (Seriously, her first time at the range, she had one flier…and it hit right between the eyes. I’ll take that!)
Not every woman has that, though. Over at SOFREP, they have a story by a woman who endured just that:
I moved there to live with my husband, who is a firefighter. After moving, my husband needed to leave town for training. So I was left home alone, pregnant with our child. I didn’t mind too much, as I thought it would be a little staycation. I couldn’t go anywhere, anyway, since our clunker of a car was in the shop.
In hindsight, I should have known that no car being at our home for an extended period made the wrong people think that both of us were gone. Sure enough, that happened. When two thieves broke into my home through the kitchen door, it happened so suddenly that I had no plan of action. My heart racing, I ran into the bathroom where I thought it was safe and took out my phone.
I frantically started to call 911. However, my phone could not get through to a responder. The bathroom was a dead zone for phone service where I lived. However, my phone was connected to my WiFi. I contacted my sister on Facebook, and she managed to call 911.
As I waited for the police to come, my heart continued to race. What if the police did not respond in time? There are many cases of the police taking too long to respond to a situation that requires immediate action, as many factors can delay response time.
As I heard the thieves rustling around the house, I wondered what they would do. Steal my TV or jewelry? That was replaceable. However, what if they found me and did something horrifying to my unborn child and me?
Marcie, who wrote this–the only name given for obvious reasons–was anti-gun before this happened. That changed that night, which isn’t surprising.
Luckily, Marcie was unharmed. The police arrived swiftly and scared off the intruders. A bystander told her that the thieves appeared to be armed, which meant Marcie’s fears were far from ungrounded.
The truth is that we never know if or when we’ll be the victim of a crime. Most people reading this will never be faced with this kind of thing. Yet some will and we have no way of determining which camp is which.
I read Marcie’s account and I can’t help but think of all the news reports we hear of people being killed in home invasions or armed robberies or muggings and I can’t help but wonder how scared those people were. Did they know this was it, or were they hoping that they’d make it out alive?
As for me and for a lot of other Americans out there, we don’t want to have to hope that the police come fast enough to help or that the criminals are merciful. We want to make sure that the deck is stacked in our favor should that time ever come.
It’s stuff like this that makes me take the assault on our Second Amendment rights personally. It’s not some vague notion that gun rights matter. Not for me.
I vowed to protect my family and to help them learn to protect themselves, but for them to do that against armed intruders, they need access to firearms.
Taking away my right to keep and bear arms, or even restricting it, means restricting our ability to protect ourselves, and that is something I will not tolerate. I don’t want my wife to have to hide in a bathroom with our kids and hope that the bad guys aren’t interested in them.
