Many leftist “progressives” are determined to disarm the populace. They can’t fathom why anyone might find this strange. Their hearts brim with concern for women, gays, people of color, and the poor! But their efforts, if successful, would leave these people more vulnerable to violence than they are right now, and probably more than anyone else.
Our self-appointed benefactors want us to depend on them. Keeping us from depending on ourselves for our own protection is naturally part of the plan. Citizens without recourse to effective self-defense are like fish in a barrel. The barrel may be easy to protect, but the fish are easy to kill.
Over a period of several months, when I was a teenager, I would hear heavy footsteps on the walkway outside my bedroom window. I never so much as caught a glimpse of who was out there. But something drew him back to my bedroom window time after time.
Then one evening I was home alone, sitting in the very den where I now write this essay. It had to be pretty obvious I was sitting there, at a well-lit desk. All at once, the window began to slide open. I ran down the hall to my mother’s bedside table, opened the drawer, and got out the .25 caliber pistol. Meanwhile, back in the den, the uninvited visitor was struggling to pry open the window all the way. I entered the room, picked up the phone, and loudly called the police.
Could I have fended off the prowler without a firearm? I’m glad I never had to find out.
Sounding bored — as if she didn’t believe me, or simply didn’t care — the dispatcher told me she would “send someone out.” The prowler had to hear my end of that conversation, but it did nothing to stop him from trying to get in. I flipped open the curtains, pointing the gun out into the darkness beyond the window. All I saw of him was his shadowy backside as he turned and fled.
About forty minutes later, a police cruiser rolled lazily by. It slowed very slightly in front of my house, then sped on. No one stopped. Nor did anyone from the police department even bother to call and find out if the issue had been successfully resolved — in short, whether I was alive or dead.
I don’t think I heard those footsteps during the next few nights after the near break-in. But a few days afterward, a young man was arrested only a couple of blocks from our house. He’d allegedly beaten his mother to death because she wouldn’t give him money for drugs. I do know I never heard the footsteps after that.
If the mother-murderer and the prowler were one and the same, could I have fended him off without a firearm? I’m glad I never had to find out. But without a gun, against a man big enough to murder a grown woman with his bare hands, a teenaged girl would have had less than a fighting chance.
A quarter century later, when my father suffered a heart attack, I moved back into my childhood home to help care for him. When he died, the house became mine. Though it is in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, there have been several break-ins on my street. Never have the police shown up until after the prowlers have fled. In every case, it has been the homeowner or a neighbor who has driven them away.
It warms my heart that progressives care so much about my safety. Are they right that I don’t need a gun because they’ll protect me themselves? I hope I never have to find out about that, either.
