A journalist confessed he was “glad” to have a gun after waking up to an intruder in his Washington, D.C. home late one evening.
“Here’s the thing: I keep coming back to that moment when I stood less than six feet from that man, holding the loaded revolver at my side, not knowing what he might do. I was struck by how much I did not want to use my firearm that night unless there was no other choice. But I’m glad I had a choice,” recounted former longtime Washington Post journalist Fredrick Kunkle in his Monday opinion piece.
Kunkle described how he was startled awake one night last April by a man wandering around inside his house. The intruder became belligerent after Kunkle yelled at him to leave.
After calling 911, Kunkle heard the man rummaging through his kitchen and decided to get his gun in case the intruder was looking for a weapon or had accomplices.
“In that moment, I kept thinking how much I did not want to shoot anyone. But I also decided that if he came toward me or made some threatening gesture, I would fire,” he wrote.
Kunkle said he went downstairs to see if the man was gone and found him in the living room. He yelled at the man again to leave but did not brandish his weapon. He waited on the stairs with his gun for the police to arrive, deciding he would shoot if the man drew near. Thankfully, he wandered out of the house sometime later without incident, shortly before the police arrived.
The reporter explained how he was comfortable around firearms, despite living in a city hostile to gun rights, because he grew up “immersed in a culture of hunting and guns” in rural Pennsylvania.
“I bought the revolver — the only firearm I’ve ever purchased, as the others had been gifts or hand-me-downs — after the Sandy Hook school shooting. I knew gun laws would be tightened, making it more difficult to obtain one. The possibility I might use a handgun in self-defense seemed like an afterthought,” he wrote.
— Kristine Parks in Gun-Owning Journalist Recounts Frightening Encounter With Intruder in DC Home: ‘I’m Glad’ I Was Armed
19 Responses
Well how about that. A white liberal discovers they really do need a gun after all.
I am glad he had one, and that he did not need to find out if the local DA in Washington DC would be kind and compassionate to him.
With the way society is collapsing around us, a lot of people on the left are buying guns and realizing that they’re not the problem. A lot of these people are like me, life long democrats who think the party is abandoning them by becoming the party of endless war, open borders, anti free speech, attacking their political opponents (no matter how repulsive they are) with the courts, and pushing the nonsense that men are women and women are men if they say they are.
I’m an avid 2a supporter who thinks government has no place in people’s personal lives, but I’m also very pro choice and support women’s rights which are currently under attack by men in dresses, so I guess I don’t fit into either party anymore. And I’m not alone. The insane far right and the insane far left have taken over the national conversation, and a lot of us in the center are arming up just in case these half-wits on both sides make it necessary to defend ourselves.
I hope someone with a brain who isn’t in their 80’s can step forward and pull us out of this downward spiral, but when those people show up, they are systematically destroyed in the corporate media (see RFK). Where we go from here as a nation is up in the air, and people are starting to realize they need to be prepared for whatever comes.
“…pro choice…women’s rights…”
This usually refers to the topic of abortion, and it’s notable that the human child being killed during the process isn’t being offered any say in the “choice”. It’s also notable that the argument in support of gun rights is typically the reason of defense of human life. So it’s rather incongruent for a person to say they support their right to defend themselves for the purpose of protecting life (their own), but not support the most innocent and defenseless to protect their lives.
Let me as you a hypothetical question. Imagine Abortion is illegal. Now, imagine you have a daughter who goes off to college. One day she’s walking home, and a van pulls up beside her. 5 gang bangers jump out and grab her before she knows what’s happening. They drive her to a secluded spot and gang rape her for hours before beating her half to death and leaving her by the side of the road. Someone finds her and takes her to the hospital. She goes through weeks of treatment, completely traumatized. Then they discover that she’s pregnant. Abortion is illegal, so she has no choice, but the idea of giving birth to her rapists baby is more than she can handle. So, she finds a doctor willing to meet her at her house or in some hotel somewhere and perform the procedure (because you know making abortion illegal will not stop abortions, only make them unsafe). She goes through with it, has the abortion, but because she had it done on a hotel bed or her kitchen table, she develops an infection and has to go to the hospital. The doctors know what happened, and they’re required by law to report it, so your daughter is arrested for murder. My question is, how long should your daughter go to prison?
My pro-choice father once brought a similar scenario into the conversation when I was younger. He asked me, “If your mother was to be raped, would you wish for her to carry the baby if she became pregnant as a result?” I always remembered that conversation, because he remained focused on what he saw as a would-be inconvenience to both him and my mother for the next two decades, and I saw the situation as him willingly choosing to kill an innocent human being who would be my baby brother or sister. I also told him it let me know he would have been comfortable killing *me* if I were the little baby in my mother’s womb.
True story… Long ago, one of my cousins adopted a beautiful little baby boy who was the unwanted result of a rape. Fortunately, the biological mother (and victim of that horrific crime, I do certainly acknowledge her difficult position) chose to carry the baby to term and offer him up for adoption. Today, that baby is a teenager, alive and well. And when he one day marries and has children of his own (who will have children of *their* own), he will preside over a future family reunion full of people who would never have been born…if he himself had been killed in the womb.
@Jason in NE
It’s interesting that you’re following the same model used to justify abortion 50 years ago. It is both disingenuous and based on ignorance. I’ll explain why.
It’s disingenuous because it’s the 1.5% argument. Pro-abortionists love to argue the 1.5% abortion case. (1% rape, 0.5% incest.) Does that mean they are against the other 98.5% of abortions? Of course not. You see very pro-abortion people making the 1.5% argument all of the time. They do that because they know it’s difficult to justify killing an innocent, defenseless baby, so they try to present what they see as an uncomfortable and personal situation.
“…how long should your daughter go to prison?”
Now we’re getting into some of the ignorance. People involved in the pro-life movement understand that many mothers are victims of our culture and propaganda. Yes, many of them are victims themselves. Therefore, they aren’t the ones who get criminally punished. It’s the doctors. Look at modern state laws since Roe v Wade was overturned. The doctors will be in trouble, not the mothers. Your kill shot question is completely inapplicable.
The second typical pro-abortion argument you’re making is that “back alley” abortions are super dangerous. Dr. Bernard Nathanson admitted to vastly inflating (lying about) the number of women being killed by illegal abortions, as in 40x the amount. That was back in the early 70s. Do you think medical care has progressed at all since then? Who is Dr. Bernard Nathanson? He helped to push the abortion movement in the US. He knew that abortion killed a human being, so he framed the debate around choice. He and a public relations firm came up with “My body, My choice” to focus on the woman instead of the unborn child. He even quoted false polling numbers to the media who obediently and unquestioningly repeated the lies because they fit the narrative. Why use false data? That’s how you end up changing the culture. “Oh look. Most people think this way. Maybe it’s not so bad after all.”
One of his justifications for abortion was that women would get an illegal abortion if it wasn’t available legally. This completely ignores the fact that demand would dramatically rise after something was made legal. Then factor in the culture changing which removes some of the stigma around abortion. That’s what happened. The abortion industry exploded $$$.
How do we know this, and other things about Dr. Nathanson, and the strategies (like the Catholic strategy) employed by the abortion industry? Some time around killing 75,000 babies, he developed a conscious. He watched an abortion through an early ultrasound. Then he became an advocate for life.
Edit: *conscience
Come on, Dan. Edit function please.
do you also support free birth control for all?
how about we leave the government out of it and let people decide what to do in the privacy of their own home (or doctor office.) just like guns! it’s not inconsistent at-it’s about keeping the government out of places it doesn’t belong.
A government of the people, by the people, and for the people most certainly does have an interest in preventing murder. Calling it women’s healthcare is repeating Leftist propaganda.
@fppf
“abortion is nasty business”
Why are you calling it “nasty business?” It’s only a medical procedure to remove an unwanted growth of cells. Is having a mole removed “nasty business?” Are women traumatized after getting a mole removed? You’re stuck in the early 90s abortion mindset. You didn’t get the memo that the talking points have changed. Remember in ’92 when Bill Clinton said abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare?” Whoa, hold on. Stop the press! Rare? Why should “women’s healthcare” be “rare?” That’s because people understood that you were ending a life. That’s why they had to change the discussion. They had to ditch the rare part. That’s why they eventually evolved into “shouting” their abortion. Be proud of it! It’s either a good thing, or it’s a bad thing. They weren’t about to let people believe that it’s a bad thing, or a necessary evil, or “nasty business.” Because then people might begin to question the ethics of the procedure, like the doctor I mentioned above who eventually admitted that it was wrong. Then the culture would change. Then society would change. As the Puppet says, “It’s a big F’n deal.”
As far as objective science goes, the baby is alive. It isn’t something that is even debatable. The debate only revolves around whether we’re legally allowed to end that life. When you end someone’s life, you are killing them. That’s an objective fact. Words have meaning. We often don’t think of it as murder because our culture has taught us that this behavior is to be tolerated. Not only that, but it is “necessary.” It is “healthcare.” It is a “woman’s right.” In other news, propaganda still works. Food for thought, fppf.
@fppf,
True, Guv needs to be rolled back and minimized. But Dude beat me to it and provided a good response already.
I understand your view on this; abortion is nasty business. but will have to respectfully disagree that it’s murder. that said we both know we won’t reach consensus on this one so i’ll just say i’m happy we all agree about the fundamental right to self defense outside the womb.
My comment above should be here, replying to fppf.
Edit function, Dan. Please
@fppf,
I appreciate your civil reply, as some comment threads in forums can become downright acrimonious. Thank you.
But yes, we do disagree on the sanctity of innocent human life.
“I hope someone with a brain who isn’t in their 80’s…”
Jason, I’m not sure if you’re a covert propagandist or if you’re just highly susceptible to the Left’s propaganda. Saying Joe Biden has a problem because of his age is propaganda designed to hide the fact that he is in a state of severe mental decline. Notice how the polls aren’t, “Do you think Biden is cognitively impaired?” No, it’s more like, “Do you think Biden is too old?” Then, when people say he’s too old, they pivot to the fact that he’s barely older than Trump. See how that works? I always wondered how many people are fooled by that propaganda.
The original opinion piece by Kunkle is a more interesting read.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/04/intruder-gun-self-defense/
The comment section was closed at nearly 3700. I wonder how much longer he’ll have a job there.
Many democrats don’t want to deprive people of handguns to guard against home intrusion. We just want owners to have some training and don’t believe there’s any need for individual citizens to have ready access to M 16 rifles without a background check