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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Reposting on request from Zorba:

The discussion of defensive gun usage in a major survey in the CW thread got me thinking about an experience I had some years back. I thought I'd tell the story to illustrate the sorts of things that can happen around violent or potentially violent situations. For what it's worth, I'm not sure if I classify this as a defensive gun use or not, but it qualifies under the terminology of the survey. It was very much a memorable night, and made me rethink the way I carry guns and the sorts of scenarios I prepare for.

First thing: I was drunk. Dancing-in-public drunk. My girlfriend and I had attended a wedding of some friends, someone else was the DD, so I took full advantage. At the time, my girlfriend lived with another single girl in a house outside town. Isolated, quiet. Cornfields and scattered houses. The housemate had been on a date, and the two of them were back at the house when we got dropped off. We said hello and left them to do whatever people on dates do on darkened living room couches while we went upstairs to bed. I passed out almost immediately.

The GF woke me up a short time later, there was a commotion downstairs. A strange man had arrived and was banging on the main door of the house, loudly demanding to speak to the housemate's date. I went downstairs, the date said he knew the man, that it was his pastor. He said he'd handle it, so I went back upstairs. As a precaution, I retrieved my carry gun and kept it close to hand. At this point, I was regretting the drinking. Waste of a good drunk.

Outside, the date had gone out onto the porch to talk to the guy, we could hear muffle conversation, then escalating in volume. There was a series of loud crashes, and the housemate started screaming that she was calling the police. Fuck me running. I remember clearly getting out of bed the second time, gun in hand, wearing basketball shorts, dress socks and nothing else. An ironic thought occurred to me: "so this is why people look like this on 'Cops'". Not the sort of situation I had envisioned when I started carrying a firearm.

I got downstairs and the date was bleeding from his face, apparently his pastor had assaulted him. The housemate had called the police, but it would be over twenty minutes before they arrived (given where we were, that was probably a fast time). Meanwhile, the pastor had discovered a hatchet that had been left out of the shed and started walking around the house, hitting the siding with the hatchet and shouting for the date to come back out and talk to him. Needless to say, that dude didn't seem enthused about the proposition. The crashing I'd heard had been the date falling into and through the screen door on the porch after the guy decked him.

The GF was curious, but I sent her back upstairs, told the housemate to lock the door behind me, and went out onto the porch. I might be tanked, but it was not my first rodeo. I leaned against the wall of the house (casually, I hoped) both to stay steady on my feet and to conceal the pistol I was now holding behind my leg. The situation was fairly simple: The man would have to make a 90-degree turn to come up the steps to the porch, after which I'd be within arms reach. I set my line at the bottom of the steps. If he tried to come up onto the porch, I would shoot him.

For a lunatic who was banging a hatchet on the side of a random house at 2AM in the middle of a cornfield, the pastor sounded lucid. He just wanted to talk, he felt bad, the whole thing had gotten out of hand etc. etc. Whole time he had the hatchet in his hand. In my hazy state, I decided to go with simplicity. "Put down the ax, go back to your car, and drive away". He'd try to argue something, and I'd just repeat it. This went on for maybe ten minutes. I was feeling like a broken record, but finally, finally he walked away. He dropped the hatchet, got into his car, and drove away. Shortly thereafter, the police showed up.

I went back to bed.

The coda is that the date didn't press charges, turns out the "pastor" was a self-proclaimed one with a long history of mental illness, sort of a street-preacher type. The housemate had to pay for the siding repair herself. The police were little help, and the prosecutor's office wasn't interested in dealing with a mental patient over property damage.

So that's the story. It's weird, but in my very limited experience it looks a lot more like the median "DGU" than a shootout in a pawn shop. These are the sorts of stories that do not generally make the papers or the police reports, but happen on a daily basis, many many times.

While this would certainly qualify as a defensive gun use, this is the kind of use that makes me highly suspect of the actual utility of it. Yes, from the story you tell it sounds like you would have had a clear case of self-defense, but I (and presumably anyone else reading this) is going to be biased toward your side of the story. The police, however, are not necessarily going to share this natural bias. Suppose you shoot and kill the guy; what then? Your story makes a good case for self-defense: The guy had already assaulted the housmeate's date and was brandishing a dangerous implement, which he was already using to vandalize the house. He refused to leave when asked to, and approached you with the hatchet in a presumably threatening manner.

There's another side to this, though. You were drunk. The guy didn't enter the house. You didn't know the guy and weren't involved in the initial altercation. You deliberately left the safety of the house and went outside with a gun looking to confront the man. I'm not trying to say that your actions were unreasonable given the circumstances, just that the cops don't know what happened and they aren't going to just take the word of the guy in basketball shorts and dress socks who has a pretty good reason to tell stories.

Unless you're incredibly stupid, you aren't saying anything without a lawyer present, and given that it's 2 am on a Sunday morning and you're drunk, you can pretty much guarantee that you'll be spending the rest of the night in a police holding cell. Best case scenario you can raise a lawyer the next morning, the police buy your story, and they let you go right away without pressing charges. All it cost you was at least $500 in attorney's fees (put probably more like a thousand) and the worst night of your life.

More likely, though is that the police do an investigation that lasts months. This is a homicide, after all, and it isn't a clear-cut case of self-defense like a home invasion or attempted robbery. the victim's family could pressure the police. The story you give might not match up with ballistics. The investigators could simply not believe you. The police are going to interview everyone who was in the house last night, and who there can corroborate your story? Your girlfriend was upstairs the whole time and probably can't do anything but testify to the banging and yelling. The housemate might be able to provide a little more detail about the altercation, but probably not too much. The date can provide the most information, but given that he didn't want to press charges against the guy (and he presumably looks to him for spiritual support) there's a good chance he downplays the whole incident and makes it look like your actions were unjustified. Now you're looking at months of hell and thousands in attorney's fees, even if it all ends with the DA declining to press charges.

There was a case in Western PA last winter where a guy at a hunting camp was shot after erratically firing an AK-47 and forcing the other people at the camp to stay at gunpoint. The incident happened in December but the investigation dragged on until the middle of March before the DA announced that they couldn't overcome their burden of proof in a self-defense case. This was in a rural area that is generally pro-gun. Alternatively, had you stayed inside, ordered the others upstairs, and waited with the gun in case the shit hit the fan, the police probably would have arrived before he was able to break in (if that was even his intention), and if you had to shoot him, the self-defense case in much clearer.

This is all true, and it's why I didn't make a statement to the police at all. I'm fairly sure I was on firm self-defense territory, but I'm glad we never got to find out. You never know when you're going to fall into a media scandal, or an overzealous prosecutor, or just a bad cop. At the time, my thought was that with the hatchet, he could break the sliding glass door on the other side of the house and be inside in seconds. It is also the case that staying on the porch was on purpose, as it is legally part of the house (or curtilage).

Of all of it, the intoxication thing got to me the most. Prior to that night, it never occurred to me that just because I don't carry a gun to the bar doesn't mean I might not have to use a gun while drunk. There's no straightforward solution except to not have guns or not drink, and neither option appeals to me. I drink less now, and the lessons of that night are one reason.