There are a ton of people in the world and in the USA that think that there is no reason that people should own guns let alone be allowed to carry them around with them in public. I own several guns and I am fortunate enough to live in a state that has open carry laws (no permit required) as well as concealed carry permits (obviously, permit required). There are very few places that you are not allowed to bring these weapons with you even though it varies from place to place as each county and even city can tweak the laws a little bit but not completely override the state law.
I became a fan of weaponry when I was a child because my own father was an outdoorsman and he also believed in a man being able to look after themselves and not to need to rely on law enforcement to protect them. This ideal was a seed that he planted in my head at a very young age when he taught me gun safety and also took me to local gun ranges before I was even 10 years old. As a consequence, this began a lifelong interest in firearms including safety, maintenance, and understanding that there are dire consequences for people who do not adhere to the rules, whether they be official or unofficial. This is something that I think most people don't do with their kids these days and go ahead and call me a redneck if you want to, but I really think folks should do this.
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When I went off to college there was a lot of excitement because I was the very first member of my family bloodline to do so. We rednecks never stray too far from home because family is very important so the school I went to wasn't exactly on the other side of the planet but merely an hour or so from where I grew up. I did the semester of living in the dorms and after that time period myself and a few friends that I had made instead decided that we were going to move into a 3-bedroom house near campus that was for rent instead of living in a dormitory. It was a great introduction to freedom, that is for sure. I cherish those memories and the parties that we had and since we could actually see the campus from our front porch, we were actually closer to most of our classrooms than we would have been living in the dorms. For the most part, even though the house was a piece of crap that the owners definitely let fall into disrepair to take advantage of college students, it was a good time.
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this isn't the house, ours was much more run down... but it is on the same street!
The added bonus of having a sorority that was literally across the street from us was also a lot of fun. Things were good for us until one ill-fated night where my penchant for weaponry that my roommates did not share came in very handy for us and had I not been like the way that I was then and am now, things could have turned out very differently.
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It was around 10pm and one of my roommates was sitting in the living room playing guitar, smoking cigarettes (hard to believe but we used to do that indoors), and watching TV all at once when I heard a loud BANG noise as the front door was kicked open. I was awake and in my room studying (rednecks study for exams too!).
My roommate ran down the hallway as our house was one of those "shotgun" houses where there is just one hallway that connects all the other rooms of the house and by the time he ran down the hall shouting at us to warn us I had already emerged from my room to see him heading my direction. I then saw the 3 people that had just broken into the house. Turns out they didn't need to break the door (they did) because it wasn't even locked. One of them had a knife and the other had a stick of some sort. The other guy as far as I could tell was unarmed. I, on the other hand, was definitely armed.
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I like to imagine that it was like the above picture but I was actually gripping with both hands and of course am not a T-800 from the future but the effect of putting fear in the heart of these guys at the end of the hallway, who could see me because of the hallway light and also the little red dot that I moved from each of their chests as I told them to get down on the ground was extremely effective.
I want you to understand that in this situation I was well within my rights to kill all three of them. They had clearly broken into my house and clearly posed a very real and immediate threat to me and both of my roommates. They froze like deer in the headlights when they realized that I had the ability to end their lives very quickly if they continued along this path that they had chosen. I didn't fire a single round but at this point my other roommate, who was less scared of everything and hadn't been shook up by the door getting kicked in, went over and checked their pockets for guns and even took the ID card of two of them. What sort of a stupid criminal carries their driving license with them during a home invasion?
While he was searching them I kept reminding them that I "will shoot you if you do not do exactly what I say and I wont even have to go to court if I kill you. If you don't want to die today, stay on the ground"
My other roommate at this point was on the phone to the police and it was a good 10 minutes before they actually turned up - which is waaaaay too long given the situation.
The police came in the house with guns drawn and as soon as I saw them I placed my own weapon on the ground and stepped away from it with my hands in the air. The police still held me at gunpoint but this was just protocol. Obviously I was not arrested nor was my gun confiscated but this is for the safety of the officers. For all they know the residents are the ones on the ground and the thieves are standing waiting to ambush them.
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A really fantastic way to ensure that you get shot is to be armed, even if it is legally, and to have that weapon pointed in the direction of police officers or to refuse to drop it even if you haven't done anything wrong. I'm a little on the fence here on this one but I do understand why police have the authority in this particular situation because we did call them after all.
I was never cuffed but my weapon was dismantled and one of the officers asked that we remain in the living room while they took the "suspects" into custody. We were asked a bunch of questions including if there were any other weapons in the house - which I refused to answer and was within my rights to refuse since I was not the one in trouble here. Our details were taken down, and the 3 guys who broke in were taken away in cuffs.
One of the main rules of gun training is that you "never pull your gun on anyone unless you are willing and prepared to shoot them." I was willing and prepared. However, there is also this idea that gun-owning rednecks like myself are just dying to pop off shots at people and kill them and you couldn't be any more wrong if you think that.
I have ZERO desire to kill almost anyone but I have significantly less interest in being killed. If the opportunity arises where that choice has to be made (and it potentially was on that ill-fated night) it is going to be the other guy that ends up in a pine box, not me.
The three guys that were arrested and later charged - 2 of them did time for this. Not a lot, because they hadn't hurt anyone and 1 of them got off with probation because he was an "unwilling accomplice" or something like that. I testified in court briefly but it was a long time ago so I don't know for sure.
I do know that I ran into one of the guys involved in it years later and he apologized to me when he recognized me at a pizza place (where I was also armed and had released the safety on my holstered 9mm and stood up when I saw him approaching.) However, he was not hostile and told me with tears in his eyes that he truly regrets that day and said that he paid his debt to society and learned his lesson from that incident and had turned his life around. I invited him for a beer and then found out that he no longer drinks alcohol. So I bought him a Coke and got the full details of what was going on in his mind that day (I'll tell that story another time.) This was nice to hear because normally I believe that prison makes people worse than when they went in.
I can only imagine what would have happened to my roommates and I that day if I wasn't a "gun nut" and because of that day and many other incidents that happen like this all around the world I will remain strapped for the rest of my life.