Never Leave Home Without It

I have been trained and raised in handgun use since I was extremely young. My dad was special forces in the military, and now has been a police officer for over 20 years. It was very important to him that my sister and I were trained and protected from an early age. When I turned 16 my dad gave me my first handgun, a 9mm. It was to stay in my room at all times, unless I was going somewhere then it was suppose to be in my truck with me. I always followed that rule, except for the one night where it actually mattered.

I was 21 and I drove to my boyfriends house and hung out with his family and played games until extremely late. His neighborhood is right next to mine, only a 3-6 minutes drive depending on catching lights. Since it was so close, and it was our neighborhoods I didn’t take my gun out of my room and into my truck. Nothing bad happens in your own neighborhood right? Wrong. It was about 1:30am and I was turning onto my street but there was a car running in the middle of the street. I figured they were dropping someone off or picking someone up, no big deal. They began to drive forward to get out of my way and I parked in the road in front of my house. I then started to get the “something isn’t right” feeling. The car pulled directly in front my truck and parked. I hurried and locked all my doors (they are all manual of course, not automatic locks for this girl), and as I did so two young men got out of the car in front of mine and began walking towards my car. They began talking to me and said they wanted to “hang out” and asked me to get out of my car. I politely said no and they were making me feel uncomfortable since I didn’t know them. They were obviously drunk by the slurs of their voices and began to get angry with me. They began yanking on my door handle, hitting my window, and screaming at me to get out of the car. I began screaming back, and reached for my gun…it wasn’t there. I come from a very small town so I had to make a quick decision. Either call the cops, who could take 10 minutes to get to me or call my boyfriend who would take less than 5. I called my boyfriend. The men were still screaming, hitting my window, and yanking at my door when he answered my call. It took him about 2 seconds to realize something was wrong. He just said “I’m on my way, hang on, I love you!” He was at my house in literally 2 minutes and I thanked God because I was not sure how much longer my window was going to withstand their hits. My boyfriend yelled at them to get away from me and they changed their anger towards him asking “what he was going to do to stop them?” He gave them one more warning. They began walking towards him aggressively and that’s when my boyfriend pulled his gun. “Leave.”  is all he said. They got in their car and left. It was the most horrifying experience of my life even though it was very short lived. I was never so thankful for a gun than I was that night. My mind sometimes drifts to what would have happened had they got into my truck before he arrived, and I know it wouldn’t have been good. Those men didn’t have any weapons on them, but that didn’t make them any less terrifying or dangerous. A gun saved my life that night, and now I never leave home without one.

Anonymous