Here’s a personal experience…
I’m a lawyer and a woman, and when I was in law school I interned one summer at a large city DA’s office. Naturally, I was in contact with a lot of criminals, and being young and somewhat naive, I always tried to be friendly to them.
One was a twenty-something gang member that was about to go to trial, and I remember wishing him good luck. He looks me over and says something about maybe getting together if he manages to beat the charges. It made me nervous, but I remember thinking that it was late in the summer and I was about to pack up and head back to school in a few weeks, so I didn’t worry too much about him.
A few days later, the thug calls the DA’s office to speak with me and I find out that he was arrested on a minor charge and released as part of a plea deal. At first, I just wouldn’t take his call, but he kept calling and calling, and finally I made the mistake of inadvertently picking up the phone and it was him. I politely tried to tell him I was leaving soon and that I just was too busy for socializing, and from the tone of his voice, I could tell he was insulted. I remember every word of his chilling response to this day: “aw, but you’re so pretty – you can’t keep that all to yourself…maybe I should come visit you with some of my boys one night and you’ll change your mind”.
Well, I was panicked now. I spoke to one of the prosecutors I worked with and pretty quickly realized there wasn’t too much I could expect from the legal system until a crime was committed. It drove home the thought that I was pretty much responsible for protecting myself, and so even though I had always been relatively liberal and pro gun control, I decided to get myself a concealed carry permit. Thankfully this was a southern state with “shall issue” attitudes and Castle Doctrine/stand your ground laws…I just needed a one-day training class and a background check, which I already passed in order to work in the DA’s office.
I felt like it was divine intervention – there was a concealed carry class being offered by the local sheriff’s office the next day, and it looked like I could get a permit pretty quickly. In the meantime, I purchased a handgun for home defense that I left in my small apartment. I didn’t know anything about guns, but the dealer ultimately swayed me into a nice 9mm Beretta Px4 subcompact, sealing the deal by throwing in a nice fashionable holster (I confess – it was pink). At the time, I remember wondering why anyone would ever need the 13 rounds this little pistol could hold, and feeling sort of guilty for betraying my own anti-gun beliefs.
The summer wound down without incident. The Beretta mostly sat in my nightstand until I got my concealed carry permit. Before I knew it, I moved back to school, and life quickly became that of any third-year law student – nonstop work.
Then, it happened.
I came home to find that my apartment door just didn’t look right. It had been kicked in, and someone leaned it back against the opening so it looked like the door was still closed. I thought maybe we’d been robbed, but I could hear muffled cries from what I thought might be my roommate. I knew she’d been in a few bad relationships, so I thought perhaps some ex of hers showed up and she might need help. Well, it was worse than I ever expected.
Thinking her life might be in danger, I walked in and saw that some sort of fight had taken place…everything was upside down, and there was broken stuff everywhere. I turned the corner and there she was – naked, beaten and covered in blood. Her face was so swollen, her eyes were barely open, and it looked to me she had been violently raped.
It was the thug from the DA’s office and one of his friends, and now they were just sitting there on my sofa making small talk while my friend was bleeding to death.
“Oh, I was wondering when you’d be home sweetie…what? You think you’re that hard to find?”
I consider myself to be pretty tough, but it was too much for me. I was frozen with fear in a way I would have never imagined before.
He started to get up off the sofa in a casual way, like he could sense my fear. He probably thought of me as just another dumb blonde, and that he could do whatever he wanted to me. At that moment, that’s exactly how I felt…powerless, with that sense of impending doom. Something really bad was about to happen, and I had no ability to stop it.
“I think your friend liked it. I’ve been saving myself for you, but she was just too tempting, like an appetizer before the main course. She was pretty good, but don’t worry – I have more than enough for you too. Wouldn’t want to come all this way and leave you unsatisfied.”
I had my gun in my hand, and even though I was too petrified to speak, I raised the gun and pointed it at the creep. He was maybe ten feet away, and his friend was still sitting on the sofa. I think maybe they were both high on something…they seemed to think it was funny I was standing there with a gun.
“Oh – the girl’s got a gun? How sweet…I got one too, and I think mine’s much bigger than yours.”
I was shaking, and for a brief moment, I thought about the ramifications of pulling the trigger. I knew the main criteria would be whether I legitimately believed my life to be in danger, but by entering the apartment instead of running for help, I knew I could be at risk should a prosecutor want to come after me.
But then I saw the look in his eyes, and I knew if I didn’t do something right then and there, I’d end up just like my poor roomate. He was reaching for what I presumed was his own weapon, and if he got to it, I was in trouble.
I pulled the trigger. I’d be lying if I said I remembered each shot – it was just a blur at that point. I later learned that I fired eight shots at him, and hit him six times. Shoulder, arm, upper thigh, two in the stomach, one in the jaw.
I was surprised that a person could be hit repeatedly at short range and not fall to the ground immediately. I think the bullet that hit his upper thigh shattered a bone because he did fall to his knees at some point. But he was still conscious and trying to cock the gun in his hand right up until the moment he seemed to pass out.
But it wasn’t over…by this point, his friend was standing and he had his gun out. I remember hearing a shot and thinking that it wasn’t from my gun before it sunk in that he was shooting at me. Luckily, he wasn’t much of a shot and was holding his little revolver from the waist without really aiming it. Maybe he was scared too.
I didn’t know if my little Beretta had any bullets left, but I turned to thug number two and pulled the trigger. Turned out there were five rounds left, but I only hit him once. It wasn’t enough to bring him down, but it was enough to convince him that he had enough. He scurried out of the apartment, and he’s not been seen since.
I didn’t realize it, but one of thug number two’s bullets hit me in the leg. Thankfully, it was just a grazing shot, but now I’ve got a two-inch scar just above my knee to remind me how close to death I came. Anytime life gets difficult or stressful, I look at my scar and I’m reminded that I’m blessed to be here.
The whole thing was over in seconds, and thankfully one of my neighbors was home at the time. He’s a cop, and he came rushing over pretty much as soon as he heard the first shots. There was a quiet time where I was able to weep uncontrollably for a few minutes while we waited for the army of police, paramedics and so on to show up.
My roommate was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. In addition to the rape, she had about a dozen broken bones, two stab wounds puncturing her lung and a serious concussion. It took her a few years but she’s mostly healed, and she claims to have no recollection of the days around her attack, which I suppose is also a blessing.
The attacker wasn’t so lucky. He was alive and conscious when the ambulance arrived, and the last memory I have of him is being tied to the stretcher and yelling threats and obscenities at me. He later died as a result of his gunshots. His partner has yet to be arrested.
As for me, I was arrested on suspicion of murder, and that part was almost as scary as the incident itself. The prosecutor argued I had a duty to retreat before I entered the apartment, even though I knew there might be someone inside that might be hurt. There were some tense moments, but eventually all the charges were dropped and life went on for me. My family mortgaged the house to help me pay my legal bills, and I ended up missing a year from law school. All in all, I suppose I’m luckier than most victims.
These days, a few years have passed and I’m left with a lot of thoughts about the whole incident. I find myself questioning why I wanted to intern in a DA’s office in the first place, and I wonder whether I did something to bring this on myself. I wonder why I was friendly and sympathetic to people that turned out to be so evil, and I’ve certainly changed my opinions of gun control and handgun ownership.
I also find myself reflecting on what it means to take a human life. No matter how much of a dirtbag he was and how justified I was in doing it, he was one of God’s children nonetheless. About the only thing that makes sense to me is that if I hadn’t shot this guy, no doubt many other people would have suffered over his lifetime, and so perhaps I was acting as God’s instrument to protect other as yet unknown victims. I’m a Christian, but the entire episode has left me confused and questioning in many ways.
I also think a lot about the guy that got away. Perhaps I hit him somewhere serious and he’s living somewhere as a cripple. Or, perhaps he’s healed 100% and just can’t wait to settle the score against me. I’ve decided that I don’t want to live in fear of him popping up some day, so while I continue to be vigilant, I don’t obsess over him. I do pray that the incident showed him the error of his ways, and that somehow he’s found the strength to lead a clean life since.
The event also changed me professionally. As a practicing attorney, I want nothing to do with criminals or defending them, even though I once pictured myself doing exactly this type of work. Instead, I veered into corporate law and public policy, mostly because I know that I’m forever biased against criminals, and I never want to put myself in a position again of having to deal with these thoughts.
There was some investigation about how the thug was able to find me, and it turned out it was a corrupt worker at the DA’s office. He pretended to be romantically interested in me and paid this worker $100 for my phone number and address. I don’t believe anything ever happened to her – not even a procedural slap on the wrist – and I’ve declined to bring any sort of civil suit against the DA’s office, even though I believe what she did was wrong.
The voices of the Founding Fathers also echo loud in my thoughts, and I’m definitely humbled by the notion that I was once a gun-control advocate – but now, I’m only alive because I chose to exercise my right to carry a weapon and to protect myself. In the end, the gun was just a tool, no different than a phone or a fire axe or a fire extinguisher or any of a hundred other things that can come to your assistance under the right conditions.
Sometimes, I’ll think that if I happened to live in NY or Chicago, I wouldn’t be here today because of those states’ gun control laws. In NY, for instance, even if I had a handgun, I wouldn’t have been allowed to have 13 rounds in it, and as it turns out, I needed all of them all.
It’s also not lost on me that even after shots were fired, it took about 15 minutes for the police to show up. The “event” and many others similar to it start and end in a flash…no matter how well-intentioned, there’s no way any third-party can possibly be there to protect every last citizen under these cases.
To sum it all up, I suppose what I lived through was an impossible situation that could have gone a number of different ways, and none were good. The outcome I achieved was probably among the best possible, but while I’m thankful to be alive, my life was still turned upside down and I’m left with lasting scars. In the end, the gun itself contributed very little to all of this and it’s not the center of the story – rather, it’s really just a footnote in a longer and more painful story. The real story starts with a decision made by a criminal, and ended with me and my choice of surrendering to victimhood or not, and then confronting evil by exercising what I felt to be my best option. It wasn’t easy at the time, and it still isn’t easy today.
To others like me that haven’t lived through something like this, I’ll just say that all of us need to do some soul-searching on whether we’re prepared to participate in our own defense against evil. After all, someone unwilling to participate in her own defense is the very definition of “victim”, and that’s not a choice to be taken lightly – especially when our system provides us with the tools that provide better options.
Learn your rights. Stay alive. Don’t surrender to evil, including the evils of political correctness preached by people that have never faced life-or-death situations. The responsibility belongs to each of us, and if you take it seriously, you may be scarred, but you might live to talk about it.