I survived a life-changing event approximately 30 years ago. Late one
night, my wife, daughter, and I heard a knocking at the front door. I answered
the door, stepped out, and began talking to 2 friendly young men. Despite the
lateness of the hour the 3 of us had not yet retired for the evening, and I was
dressed in an ancient reversible T-shirt from my engineering school days at
Oregon State University, and almost as old a pair of gray sweatpants, and
shower thongs.
They had the name of a fellow written down on a small piece of paper
and asked if he lived at my address. I assured them I did not know him and that
he did not live with me. They appeared to be a bit confused and were emphatic
that the address was correct. I did not realize until the next day that the
person they were looking for had recently moved into the apartment next to
ours.
Chatting with those fellows, I suggested that because of the lateness
of the hour, they go home and come back the next day, and I would gladly help
them locate the fellow they were looking for. For some reason, my suggestion to
help them enraged them. The pair’s leader got up in my face and defiantly insisted
that I had no right to tell him what to do. When he was a ¼ inch from my nose,
I detected that he was intoxicated. While he was yelling at me, his friend
began circling behind me.
This was not my first rodeo. Having reached the age of 40 after growing
up on Indian reservations and being the only white kid in the school, I had
passable skills. When the two-on-one skirmish began my next-door neighbor,
Linda, could be heard screaming into her phone to the 911 operator to get the
police over here as quickly as possible, “Two big guys have jumped my neighbor!”
I survived. The two guys who jumped me survived, barely. And one of
them would never again have the same profile. Despite the lateness of the hour,
two police officers showed up in a patrol car 40 minutes later. Note that. 40 minutes later!
While Ofc. Galvan was interviewing me for his incident report; he
remarked that it was good that those two guys were white, or they would almost
certainly have been armed with knives or pistols.
That episode was a life-changing event for me. I did not know those
guys. I did not know what they wanted. However, I was the only person between
those two men and my wife and little girl. The police did arrive on the scene,
but they came 40 minutes after the 911 dispatcher told them I was under attack.
They arrived 40 minutes after the incident had
concluded.
As nearly as I can conclude, I survived as an approximately 40-year-old
man while being attacked by two young men who were in their 20s only because I
had learned things in the school of hard knocks growing up on Indian
reservations. To that point in my life, I owned no firearms. But what if my
assailants had been armed? Or what if those same two men were to attack me now?
My present age is 72?
According to economist Thomas Sowell, I am what is called an
intellectual. He roughly describes an intellectual as a person whose profession
involves thoughts and ideas rather than producing a physically tangible work
product. Having been a gospel minister for almost 50 years, I suppose Thomas Sowell
is correct.
However, I was a spacecraft design engineer before my almost
half-century in the gospel ministry. Before I was a spacecraft design engineer,
I was a construction worker. Before I was a construction worker, I was a United
States Air Force Academy cadet. And before I was a United States Air Force
Academy cadet, I lived on Indian reservations throughout the United States,
spending a significant amount of time demographically outnumbered several
hundred to one in school.
I know what it is like to be in the minority. I know what it is like to
be in the majority. I know what it is like to be in physical conflict while
unarmed and incapable of defending yourself except with your fists. I also know
what it is like to be an old man who can no longer protect myself with my
fists.
Add to that the fact that I am a husband. Further, add to the fact that
I am the father of a daughter. As well, consider that the only time in my life
I needed the police to be on hand immediately to guarantee the personal safety
of my daughter, my wife, and me, they arrived on the scene 40 minutes after they were informed of my danger. The police
station was only one mile away!
As an intellectual, I am very comfortable considering theories,
hypotheses, and abstracts. I would be delighted to discuss the Second Amendment
with anyone with the moral courage to sit down with me over a cup of coffee for
a discussion about the absolute right of every human being to defend his life
and the lives of his loved ones.
However, I suspect that a discussion of principles will not sway anyone.
What will persuade someone is a personal experience that you survive. Another
of my Hoover Institute heroes besides Thomas Sowell is Victor Davis Hanson, the
classicist, historian, author of more than 25 books, and fifth-generation
farmer in the San Joaquin Valley of California. While I cannot remember the
specific topic that gave rise to the conversation, his response to someone who
inquired about his passionate involvement with an issue was, “It is obvious you
have not woken up in the morning to find a dead body in your front yard.”
It really does take something like that to persuade most people. If you have not yet had such an experience as mine, I would be delighted to advocate the Second Amendment to you. However, if you have already survived the situation in which you were the only person standing between a threat and your wife, or a threat and your defenseless child, and you do not yet understand the importance of having immediate access to a firearm equalizer to scare off the threat or to defeat the threat, then I have no use for you. You are already a victim.
