What I know now.
When I lived in what local cops and media called “the most gang infested block in the San Fernando Valley” I hated guns. The criminals had them. I did not. We literally dodged bullets there.
I wasn’t only dodging bullets. I was ducking and running and screaming to get away from a pair of fists in my own apartment.
I got lucky one day. He tried to strangle me with a phone cord and left me for dead. Little did he know that he’d only momentarily cut off the oxygen to my brain, causing a collapse, but I played dead. He wasn’t very bright, luckily enough. As soon as he left, I called the police.
He was arrested and released within 24 hours. I was issued a restraining order. Somehow that didn’t seem to get through to him. I noticed this one morning in front of my mother’s home as he tried to force me into the trunk of his car in broad daylight.
If he had got me into that trunk I’d be in the ground eight years now. Leave it to his brain capacity….the police station was around the corner and one of the cops stopped to see precisely what was going on there. He’s served some time and he’s out. I didn’t bother with a new order in my new state. I carry now.
He and I were the same height, similar build. But he was much, much stronger than me. Men are built that way, it is a scientifically inarguable fact. In both cases, being strangled and being forced into a trunk, I was struggling but easily overpowered. Luck got me out of that. I will never gamble with my life again, not like that. Martial arts or aerobic kickboxing are not enough. Pepper spray, please…..
A dear friend of mine lost her best friend about the same time I fought for my life. She was a high school senior unlucky enough to be forced into a trunk in broad daylight with no passing cop. They found most of her body, and recently I think her hands, but her head is still missing.Her boyfriend did this to her.
This isn’t a joke. It happened several years ago in northern Washington. The joke is people like GunControl Inc telling me there has to be a better way. No, we shouldn’t have to live in a world where we need to arm ourselves. But we do. Ask someone who by sheer dumb luck survived without one. Because you can’t ask the woman I mentioned above. I was lucky, very lucky once, but I know that I cannot leave it up to luck, the other option is extinction.