What were you doing.....when?

L

LASur5r

Moderator
What were you doing when you became determined that you were the type of person who was willing to defend your life (and the ones that you love)?

I was in college, when I read of an elderly woman in that town who was hit in the head with a hammer. She was comatose for about a month and she never recovered.
About a week later I was sleeping in my sleeping bag on the side of the bed in the one bedroom apartment that three of us college/blue collar workers rented. We all worked on different shifts so we rarely were home at the same time.
I heard rustling noises at our chest of drawers during the day about noon, I thought it was one of my roomies, so I just half sat up to see which one it was, when I saw that that shape did not match either of my two roommates.
I yelled! He yelled!
It turned out to be the apartment manager.
I jumped on the bed to land next to the perp, grabbed a handful of shirt and threatened him.
He said he was there to fix the leaky faucet. I asked him to empty his[pockets)swiftly.
Gee! Funny how there were some of my friend's jewelry there.
I chased him out of the apartment because we knew where he lived.
The next day, I purchased my first Beretta semi-auto in 1965.
When I got to the dry river bed outside of town to try it out, I knew I did the right thing.
 
I've had that attitude as long as I can remember. My dad and other relatives were cops, so I grew up with the idea that one defends others against the bad guys.
 
'twas a long and gradual process. Growing up in a self-sufficiency minded suburban-escapee family, a few seeds of the self-defense mindset were sown. During college, a friend pointed me to rec.guns newsgroup, which quickly made me aware that the RKBA (a no-brainer) was on its way out. There I kept hearing the name Ayoob. Along the way I decided that "assault weapons" would be banned, and bought an AR-15. Then came a pistol permit & Ruger Mk.II. Then at a gun show I learned that Ayoob would teach two days of "Judicious Use of Deadly Force" nearby, and figured I'd go - that's when the eyes opened. Holy $#@! - realized how ignorant I was, and learned a LOT in 16 hours. 250+ hours under Ayoob and Cooper later, here I am.

There wasn't a face-to-face-with-crime moment. There was the realization that it's probably just a matter of time.
 
Wow...an interesting question.
Not until now have I thought about it. I was always raised like that. My father always had a gun. My earliest memory (7 years old) of that sort of thing was a series of break-ins in my neighborhood while the residents were home! One night I was awakened by my parents rumbling around; mom calling police on rotary phone and dad checking things out with the old Taurus .38spl in his white underwear in the back yard. Since I've grown up, I bought him a Glock 19 as the old Taurus is "fusy". Now that I think of it I don't own white underwear as it really stuck with me how easy it is to see at night. Maybe later I will post my findings on tactical advantages of dark underwear...lol.
 
Willing to defend myself and those I don't know: I was a teenager and looking down the sights of a pistol at a man who had been beating his girlfriend in my driveway (he had actually started beating her while driving his car and she preferred jumping out of a moving vehicle to being beaten). Until that time I didn't know if I had it in me to pull the trigger to protect myself against someone I didn't know. Funny thing, It turned out that NOT squeezing off a round was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I held him until the cops got there and they took him away.

Willing to protect those I love : 6 yrs old, unarmed, totally ineffectual, mother was beaten severely, I ended up "knocked out" with a dislocated hip and a few nasty bruises.
 
I've always had it. I grew up in the country, we had guns everywhere. My Dad taught us correctly I guess.
 
I was brought up not to fight over stupid stuff (ego-related BS), but never had a problem with legitimate self-defense. It wasn't until a couple years ago that I realized I needed better tools (i.e. over 50, out of shape, bad knee & ankle), when a couple of meatballs tried to push their way not my house one afternoon. Went out and bought a SIG 228, rediscovered the joys of shooting, got my CWP. Also got politicized in the process. M2
 
I was raised anti-gun. I KNEW that assault weapons were WAY TOO POWERFUL for the average person to own. When I went back to grad school at Stanford, a couple things changed my mind. First, the school was in the throws of the political correctness nonsense. Being an ornery cuss, it really pissed me off, and helped me question some of my assumptions. Second, while studiously avoiding working on my research, I stumbled into talk.politics.guns. I waded into the arguments on the gun control side, and got reasoned responses from folks like Henry Schaeffer and Clayton Cramer. With a 10 million volumn library at my disposal, I was able to research some of the claims and counterclaims. It was clear that one side had the facts on their side and the other didn't.

I got married shortly after I left grad school. I don't remember any cataclysmic event that caused me to be more defensive minded. I think it was more of a gradual realization that I was now responsible for protecting my wife, and at 5' 9", 155 lbs, I was woefully unable to do so without a firearm.

M1911
 
11 years old, house broken into while me & brother at school, dad at work, mom just happened to be in town running errands. She had not planned on leaving. The only loaded gun the house was a Ruger Bearcat, (which at that age we only touched under supervision of Dad) and the "what if" questions started. I got my first handgun (Para P13) less than a month after the 21st birthday, and it has stayed in the nightstand ever since.
The police are there to write the report and catch the BG's. I am still truly amazed at the number of people who believe that:
#1 The police will protect you
#2 If guns are outlawed, there will be no more gun violence

It's amazing to my country-raised mind
 
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