Why I decided to buy my first handgun and why I will never be pro gun control.

My CZ-75 PO7.

This is going to be a bit different then my other posts on here considering this is more of a personal topic then a public one. As you may have noticed many of the posts on this blog have a clear pro-gun bias. I admit it, I am openly a gun rights supporter. Have been all of my adult life, and even when I was a teenager I was outspoken supporter of the 2nd amendment. Whenever we had a persuasive writing or speaking assignment my default topic was gun rights and opposition to gun control. Given how much the world has changed since I graduated in 2001, I often wonder if I was a student today and argued that gun control is bad, would they just call the cops on me?

I grew up around guns. My mom never liked them but my Dad had a few old hunting rifles that he kept in the house. I never had any problems with them and I owned a couple of BB and pellet guns as soon as I was old enough and responsible enough to handle one. I never saw guns as a threat. People were the threat. I had gotten into a few fights when I was a kid and more then a couple of times I was the victim of truly random violence. And not once did anyone ever throw a punch to defend me. I learned long ago that personal defense is something you can't rely on anyone else for. Sure you might get lucky and a cop or a good Samaritan could help you but more often then not you and your family are on your own. I don't see my views ever changing on that and every anti-gun argument I hear bounces off the fact that when it comes down to it, it's up to you to defend yourself. The best way to do that is with a gun. 

Now that the background is out of the way, I will walk you through the first handgun I ever purchased. My handgun isn't the first gun I ever owned, but it is the first one I have ever purchased. My dad gave me his Lee Enfield rifle and a beat up .22 rifle when I got old enough and when my uncle died tragically, he left me his Remington 700. None of them were all that good for self defense. The Enfield and the R-700 were good for deer hunting or perhaps staging an insurrection but they were not really good for home defense. For a long time though I that was enough. But then things changed.

My old neighborhood used to be pretty nice. Lots of families and friendly neighbors. Things started to change around 2012. I started to see the cops drive by more often and you could tell that people had stopped caring about their property. There had always been a few bad apples in the neighborhood, but now the bad ones outnumbered the good ones. I didn't really fear for my safety until I noticed that someone was dealing drugs down the street. No matter what your opinion of drug use is, it's not something you want to see in your neighborhood. The guy was taking a huge risk of getting ripped off since it was obvious what he was doing and he wasn't taking any steps to protect himself. The last thing I needed was an armed robbery or murder to go down in my neighborhood with no way to protect myself because an idiot drug dealer was too stupid to be discrete. The last straw was when he, for whatever reason, decided that dealing drugs on my sidewalk, right next to my car, was a good idea. Here I was in one of the safest cities in America dealing with the criminal element right on my doorstep. At this point I realized that my rifles weren't going to cut it as defensive weapons. I finally had enough money to buy a handgun so I went to the store, filled out my paperwork and after the waiting period I picked up my CZ-75.

The second factor in purchasing a handgun was political rather then pragmatic. I'll admit to it, I'm part of the bandwagon crowd that ended up purchasing a firearm after the push for gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting. Part of the reason I picked the CZ-75 is because this model has a 16 round magazine (the other main reason is that it fit my hand like a glove in a way that the other guns I tried did not). 15 rounds was the upper limit the gun control activists were pushing for, while some were trying to go as low as 10 or even 7. When people tried to say "you don't need that many bullets" I said, "screw you, I am buying it anyways". I was morally opposed to gun control and in addition to contacting my representatives, writing on the internet and telling everyone I knew that i though gun control was wrong, I wanted to put my money where my mouth is and show that just because you own a scary black hand gun with scary black high capacity baby killing assault clips (aka standard magazines) it doesn't mean you are a criminal.   

And I was content at first to just let the handgun be a political statement. I didn't have too much of a choice, 9mm was very rare in those days and it took me a long time before I was even able to find range ammo, let alone hollow points. For a long time I had an empty handgun. This came back to bite me in the ass in the only time I have ever had to use a firearm in self defense. I was sitting at home watching a movie around 2:30 in the morning (i work nights and it was my day off) when I heard some yelling. This wasn't too unusual, the neighborhood was bad, but this time it was different.

What really scared me and prompted me to take action was that these voices were coming from my backyard. And I was sitting there with a completely empty CZ-75. I grabbed my Lee Enfield with its pitiful 5 round magazine and ran into the back room overlooking the back yard. What I saw back there firmly solidified my view that magazine limits are legitimately dangerous and a threat to public safety. I had five rounds in my magazine and no spare ones. Outside I saw between six and eight people, all of them dangerous looking. Had they decided to fight I would have been done for. Even assuming 100% accuracy on my part there were more of them then bullets in my gun. Fortunately, the sight of a angry man with a loaded rifle in one hand and a cell phone dialing 911 in the other was enough to scare the people away. Too this day I don't know if they were planning a home invasion or were just a bunch of rowdy drunks trespassing on my land looking for trouble but either way I know that my rifle is what scared them off. And the best part was that nobody was hurt.

I learned a couple of things that night. First is that the mere sight of a gun may well be enough to deter crime. Sure I was at a disadvantage if they had decided to fight or do whatever it was they were planning on doing, but there was no way for them to know that. All they knew is that I had a gun and that fighting me was a bad idea. Second, there isn't much in this world more useless then having an unloaded handgun when you really need that 16 round capacity. It was a terrible feeling that I am determined to never have again. Finally, I learned that it was obviously time to move. I started to save up money and within a year I had moved to a better place (having all my pipes freeze during the winter and having to live without water for awhile was a huge factor as well, but even before that happened I was determined to move). I now live in a much safer place with little to no crime. But i still have my guns. Because you never know what happens. And if there is one thing I believe it is this. We are responsible for our own safety.