What were you doing.....when?

[LASur5r]

What were you doing when you became determined that you were the type of person who was willing to defend your life (and the ones that you love)?

I was in college, when I read of an elderly woman in that town who was hit in the head with a hammer. She was comatose for about a month and she never recovered.
About a week later I was sleeping in my sleeping bag on the side of the bed in the one bedroom apartment that three of us college/blue collar workers rented. We all worked on different shifts so we rarely were home at the same time.
I heard rustling noises at our chest of drawers during the day about noon, I thought it was one of my roomies, so I just half sat up to see which one it was, when I saw that that shape did not match either of my two roommates.
I yelled! He yelled!
It turned out to be the apartment manager.
I jumped on the bed to land next to the perp, grabbed a handful of shirt and threatened him.
He said he was there to fix the leaky faucet. I asked him to empty his[pockets)swiftly.
Gee! Funny how there were some of my friend's jewelry there.
I chased him out of the apartment because we knew where he lived.
The next day, I purchased my first Beretta semi-auto in 1965.
When I got to the dry river bed outside of town to try it out, I knew I did the right thing.

[Joe Demko]

I've had that attitude as long as I can remember. My dad and other relatives were cops, so I grew up with the idea that one defends others against the bad guys.

[Art Eatman]

Seems like I've had that attitude forever.

Art

[ctdonath]

'twas a long and gradual process. Growing up in a self-sufficiency minded suburban-escapee family, a few seeds of the self-defense mindset were sown. During college, a friend pointed me to rec.guns newsgroup, which quickly made me aware that the RKBA (a no-brainer) was on its way out. There I kept hearing the name Ayoob. Along the way I decided that "assault weapons" would be banned, and bought an AR-15. Then came a pistol permit & Ruger Mk.II. Then at a gun show I learned that Ayoob would teach two days of "Judicious Use of Deadly Force" nearby, and figured I'd go - that's when the eyes opened. Holy $#@! - realized how ignorant I was, and learned a LOT in 16 hours. 250+ hours under Ayoob and Cooper later, here I am.

There wasn't a face-to-face-with-crime moment. There was the realization that it's probably just a matter of time.

[racegunner]

Wow...an interesting question.
Not until now have I thought about it. I was always raised like that. My father always had a gun. My earliest memory (7 years old) of that sort of thing was a series of break-ins in my neighborhood while the residents were home! One night I was awakened by my parents rumbling around; mom calling police on rotary phone and dad checking things out with the old Taurus .38spl in his white underwear in the back yard. Since I've grown up, I bought him a Glock 19 as the old Taurus is "fusy". Now that I think of it I don't own white underwear as it really stuck with me how easy it is to see at night. Maybe later I will post my findings on tactical advantages of dark underwear...lol.

[animal]

Willing to defend myself and those I don't know: I was a teenager and looking down the sights of a pistol at a man who had been beating his girlfriend in my driveway (he had actually started beating her while driving his car and she preferred jumping out of a moving vehicle to being beaten). Until that time I didn't know if I had it in me to pull the trigger to protect myself against someone I didn't know. Funny thing, It turned out that NOT squeezing off a round was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I held him until the cops got there and they took him away.

Willing to protect those I love : 6 yrs old, unarmed, totally ineffectual, mother was beaten severely, I ended up "knocked out" with a dislocated hip and a few nasty bruises.

[Correia]

I've always had it. I grew up in the country, we had guns everywhere. My Dad taught us correctly I guess.

[Mike in VA]

I was brought up not to fight over stupid stuff (ego-related BS), but never had a problem with legitimate self-defense. It wasn't until a couple years ago that I realized I needed better tools (i.e. over 50, out of shape, bad knee & ankle), when a couple of meatballs tried to push their way not my house one afternoon. Went out and bought a SIG 228, rediscovered the joys of shooting, got my CWP. Also got politicized in the process. M2

[M1911]

I was raised anti-gun. I KNEW that assault weapons were WAY TOO POWERFUL for the average person to own. When I went back to grad school at Stanford, a couple things changed my mind. First, the school was in the throws of the political correctness nonsense. Being an ornery cuss, it really ****** me off, and helped me question some of my assumptions. Second, while studiously avoiding working on my research, I stumbled into talk.politics.guns. I waded into the arguments on the gun control side, and got reasoned responses from folks like Henry Schaeffer and Clayton Cramer. With a 10 million volumn library at my disposal, I was able to research some of the claims and counterclaims. It was clear that one side had the facts on their side and the other didn't.

I got married shortly after I left grad school. I don't remember any cataclysmic event that caused me to be more defensive minded. I think it was more of a gradual realization that I was now responsible for protecting my wife, and at 5' 9", 155 lbs, I was woefully unable to do so without a firearm.

M1911

[JWR]

11 years old, house broken into while me & brother at school, dad at work, mom just happened to be in town running errands. She had not planned on leaving. The only loaded gun the house was a Ruger Bearcat, (which at that age we only touched under supervision of Dad) and the "what if" questions started. I got my first handgun (Para P13) less than a month after the 21st birthday, and it has stayed in the nightstand ever since.
The police are there to write the report and catch the BG's. I am still truly amazed at the number of people who believe that:
#1 The police will protect you
#2 If guns are outlawed, there will be no more gun violence

It's amazing to my country-raised mind