“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.