I’ve been a vocal supporter of Second Amendment rights ever since…well, since I wasn’t.<\/p>\n
Looking back, there was probably a time I was hinky about guns. I grew up among non-gun-owning Democrats, after all. I suspect the North Dakota Boys’ State platform I wrote for the Federalist Party back in the summer of 1980 may have had something in it about handgun registration.<\/p>\n
That eroded over time, of course; I became, bit by bit, a believer in the right of the citizen to defend him\/herself – and in the original, real intent of the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n
It came to a head with me in the summer of 1988. I was living in a duplex in the Midway with a couple of chowder-headed roommates, including one who was (it turned out) addicted to drugs, booze, sex, smokes and gambling. But I’m getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n
We were all working nights at the time. I had a night off; the other guys had left. It was around 11 at night. I was upstairs; the phone, and the exit, were downstairs.<\/p>\n
I heard voices. Not my roommates’ voices, either; strangers.<\/p>\n
I picked up a gun – a .22 semiautomatic rifle, in this case – and walked to the top of the stairs. It was an old duplex, so the floor creaked mightily. The voices downstairs stopped – but didn’t leave the building.<\/p>\n
I crouched behind the banister at the top of the stairs. “Who’s down there”.<\/p>\n
I heard a creak of someone moving across the floorboards.<\/p>\n
“I have a gun!”, I yelled, and racked up a round. The bolt snapped forward with a perky \\little “ka-snick” – I’d have preferred the mighty “KA-SCHLACK” of a 12-gauge at about that point…<\/p>\n
…but I heard a muted “oh, shit”, and saw the backs of a couple of pairs of shoes as they ran out the door.<\/p>\n
I waited – my heart pounding, trying not to hyperventilate, at the top of the stairs – for what felt like half an hour, before I slowly crept down the stairs, rifle loaded and levelled, to make sure they were gone. The front door was wide open, and a few things – a boom box, I remember – were missing. I had a serious talk with my roommates about locking the door on their way out the next morning.<\/p>\n
And I thought – because I had all too much time for thinking, back then – that it wasn’t the sound of me moving upstairs that sent ’em running; it was the immediate, real potential that I could blow them away (or, given the gun involved, pepper them with little holes) that decided the matter for them. What if I’d had no gun?, <\/em>I wondered.<\/p>\n And so I became a believer.<\/p>\n I knew back then from reading about the subject that shooting someone, even in utterly-justified self-defense, is difficult – sometimes devastating. That lesson was reinforced by my concealed carry training class, about a year and a half ago, with the excellent Joel Rosenberg<\/a> (who I recommend without reservation to those of you who are looking to get qualified); shooting a person, even when it’s utterly justified, is at best the beginning of an emotional rollercoaster, the entree to years of trouble.<\/p>\n So it’s nothing anyone should look into lightly. Lesson learned.<\/p>\n