“You buy a gun thinking this may happen someday, but I don’t think that it ever will. And then it happens.” If we had a nickel for every time someone said that after a defensive gun use, we’ve have an awful lot of nickels. Those were the words of Tulsa homeowner Gavin Bogle after having to use that gun be’d bought to to defend himself and his family against a man who’d just kicked in the front door of his home Monday morning.
As newson6.com reports . . .
Bogle tells News On 6 that this is something he has prepared for, but never thought would actually happen. He saw the suspect, Alvin Basham, peeking in his windows, so he grabbed his gun. By the time he got downstairs, he says Basham had kicked in the door, and the two men were face to face in Bogle’s living room.
“When I shot, he like stumbled backwards into the door and tried to pull it shut and then ran that way,” said Bogle.
It’s funny how the sound of gunfire directed their way — and taking a bullet — tends to make home invaders reconsider their plans. As you can imagine facing down and shooting a home invader can be disconcerting.
Bogle says he is pretty shaken up, but says he did what he had to do to protect his family. He says he was upstairs playing video games just before midnight Sunday night when he got an alert from his surveillance cameras. He says he saw a man peeking in his windows, so Bogle grabbed his gun, went downstairs and heard someone kicking in the door.
“When he kicked the door down, I was already halfway down my stairs,” said Bogle. …
“I gave him a verbal command, and he just stared at me like it didn’t matter, then he started reaching for things, and that is when I did what I did,” said Bogle.
The home invader in this case, Alvin Basham, took a round to the chest from Bogle before running off into the night. When police finally caught up with him, he was…surly.
Tulsa Police later found Basham down the road, bleeding, and said he was immediately confrontational with officers. They used pepper balls and a K9, but say Basham punched the K9, bit an officer, scratched another officer and spat in another officer’s face before they got him in custody.
Again, handgun stopping power is greatly exaggerated in the media (and you wonder why so many people choose to go with a shotgun as their primary home defense tool). Still, it was enough chase Basham off.
Whatever gun you may choose as part of your home defense plan, the key is to have one. And to know how to use it. And to have the mindset that will make successfully defending yourself possible if and (God forbid) when it’s necessary.
Getting a gun for defense thinking it will never happen is not a plan. Overall there is a 63% chance it will happen at least once in a person lifetime, and hopefully you will be in the 37% it does not happen to and if that works out then good. But never ever think it will never happen because you never know which part you are in – the 63% or the 37% – because its the bad guys that get to choose or not choose. So when you get a gun for defense, your plan should be to be prepared for when it does happen and not thinking it will never happen.
Where/what is the source for the 63% chance figure? Next question, a 63% chance of what could happen?
Methinks the usual response to that thought is to observe that having a gun is only part of a defensive strategy.
If one thinks that one needs a firearm for home or personal defense, one has, prima facie, (at least subconsciously) determined that a threat is possible.
We may *hope* and *pray* that we never have to use it, but must be prepared; mentally, psychologically, physically, and with regular practice able to use it.
That is not to say that, should that event occur, that one is immune to the psychological and physiological after-effects.