The Time I Needed A Gun #033

Reflections

I.

In 2007 I lived in Springfield, MO. I was up late one night talking with an ex-girlfriend and after I hung up around 1-2 AM I started getting ready for bed. That was when I heard a knock on a door. It was not mine, it was my upstairs neighbor who I’ll call Whitney (not her name). The knocking intensified till I started to hear yelling. I rinsed the toothpaste out of my mouth and went back to my living room and saw a bright light in my window. Then I heard a loud crash, followed by “no, leave, don’t come in. Get the F**K out of here”. Then screams. Gunshots. More screams. And someone screaming “stupid b**ch” a lot. I was horrified.

I immediately grabbed my phone and dialed 911. I couldn’t get through, something was wrong with my phone? I went to my window and saw the source of the light. A car had pulled up next to the steps leading up to the apartments but no one was in it. I grabbed the license plate number and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man jump down the stairs and run past the car. He had what I later would learn was a pix ax in his hand and he proceeded to beat Whitney’s car with it. Another man jumped down the stairs, got in the car, and screamed at his accomplice to get in. The first man turned around and we made eye contact. I knew him. He was Whitney’s boyfriend. He raised the hammer up so I could see it and started to run towards my window, screaming.

I quickly ducked out of the way and ran to the wall on my left in my living room and ripped down a display sword I had from the Lord of the Rings movie. I unsheathed the sword from the display and waited. After 1-2 minutes nothing happened so I went back to the window because I heard screaming as the headlight faded away. When I looked outside, Whitney’s ex was still bashing her car in but the guy in the car had moved it away from the apartments and started pulling away screaming at Whitney’s boyfriend to get in. He turned back and saw me again, ran towards my window again, but as he got closer he saw me standing there now with a 53” replica sword. He stopped in his tracks, looked up at the light, and threw the pick ax at it to try and kill all the light. He missed and it bounced back towards him. He gave me one last look and by now his buddy was pretty far down the road so he turned and ran to his buddy. The police arrived just a few minutes later.

Lord of the Rings Sword hanging on my apartment wall a few days after initially moving in.

II.

Whitney was pretty beat up but thank God she was alive. The two men had broken down her apartment door and proceeded to throw her through walls, beat her with the pick ax, and left her for dead. What I thought were gunshots were both men throwing her through walls. When the police arrived they got my statement and all the information I had written down and about a week later I was called by a lawyer to be deposed for a domestic violence suit.

The only thing I really remember about my deposition was walking into the room scared. This was the first time I had experienced this. I was asked a lot of questions and about 30 minutes later I was free to go. As I was leaving a few cops pulled me to the side and explained that I needed to take precautions because there was a chance both men could get out on bail and there could be drug/gang issues with them. I thanked the police and immediately drove over to Bass Pro Shop to purchase a gun.

While I waited for my background check to come back clean I stayed at a friend’s house and tried to process everything that had happened. That’s when the night terrors began. After a few days, my background check came back (because every gun purchased in the United States requires a background check) and I went to Bass Pro to pick up my handgun. I also enrolled in a gun safety course to freshen up my memory.

For the next couple of weeks, I woke up with night terrors every night. Every knock on my front door caused me to reach into my safe and grab the gun, waiting for the door to break down. This continued for over a month so I sought counseling to deal with the terrors and fear and reached out to my pastors to deal with the theological struggle I was having. Was I a good neighbor? Should I have tried to go up there and stop them instead of just listening? Was it wrong to buy a gun? Could I, a second-year seminary student, shoot someone in self-defense? Would Jesus want me to do this? It was in the midst of all this turmoil (and after finishing my gun safety course ironically) that I got a call from one of the lawyers who deposed me. Both men had pleaded guilty. The lawyer thanked me and explained my testimony, along with Whitney’s, solidified their case. She thanked me for my courage and bravery. I still don’t feel brave.

A few weeks later I saw Whitney and she limped up to me and gave me a hug. I broke down in tears in her arms and apologized I couldn’t protect her. She smiled, scars all over her face, and reassured me that I did the right thing and she was grateful I took a risk in doing what I did. We walked upstairs and I helped her move her stuff out. It was the first time I had seen the apartment and it was destroyed. I was shocked.

III.

After every instance of gun violence or mass shooting, I think back to that night. I think back to the helpless feeling I had ripping the Lord of the Rings sword off the wall preparing to defend myself. I don’t think back to it because I see myself as a victim of any of those things, but because I keep seeing people say there’s never a reason to own a gun. I see Christian brothers and sisters say that we should not defend ourselves because Christ commands us to pacifism. After all, those who live by the sword, die by the sword, and we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

For me, the guilt I had about not going up and trying to protect my neighbor was crippling. My pacifism sent me to counseling. I remember sitting in my pastor’s office explaining that I had broken the second greatest commandment (love thy neighbor) by doing nothing. If my mom, a family member, or even a friend was getting attacked I would have run up there with no thought for myself. Yet, because I did not know Whitney that well I didn’t. I explained to my pastor that I was not the Good Samaritan - I was the man who walked by sending my “thoughts and prayers.”

IV.

After a mass shooting, social media explodes with people expressing outrage, grief, and anger. We'll see posts like “we need common sense gun laws” (okay what are you proposing?) or “we need to do more” (okay what more?) but these phrases are completely devoid of meaning. There’s often no substance to them. Which on its face is understandable when facing unspeakable tragedy. Usually, when I see these posts I don’t respond because I’ve learned it’s never received well to ask questions in these situations. And while on an interpersonal level it’s best sometimes to leave these questions alone, on a societal level we cannot.

I keep coming back to the same starting point on all of this: nothing is monocausal. So often pundits or politicians default to: “The only way to stop this is [unspecified legislation]. Why can't we all come together in a bipartisan way and pass [unspecified legislation]?” We get frustrated that nothing ever gets done but we participate in nothing getting done because depending on our political ideology we see things through a strict single issue lens. It’s never that simple. If we are serious about addressing the contagion of school shootings in our country this may be the one place where the general idea of intersectionality would be incredibly helpful.

As you can tell, I don’t have a profound theological treatise I argued here. The reason I am writing this now is that I keep seeing people post there’s NEVER a reason to get a gun. I wish this was true. I wish the police could have done more to guarantee my safety between my deposition and the guilty pleas. I wish our politicians did not need to have armed security whenever they go out into public. I wish the Supreme Court justices who had to be evacuated from protestors did not need armed security. I wish Beta O’Rourke and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not need armed security. I wish for all of these things. But there was a time I needed a gun and as G.K. Chesterton said:

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”