Terrible Analogies

This past Saturday night I found myself playing an old school PS1 game (Vagrant Story).  Nemesis was curled up by my side, twitching in her sleep.  I was so engrossed with playing my dungeon crawler that I wasn’t paying attention to the clock.

At one in the morning I heard was I thought was an earthquake.  I felt a strange bass-like sound, and heard something shake.  Nemesis quickly shot up, growled like only a cat can, hunched down, and started crawling towards the front door.

That when I heard the BOOM again, and this time I saw my front door shake.  ”What the heck?” I said.

I walked over to the door and peeked though the peephole.  What I saw was two guy on my patio.

The first thing I thought was, “Shit…this is really happening.”

The second thing I thought was, “Get the gun.”

I ran upstairs, loaded the shotgun with four target loads, then ran back down to the front door.  Looking through the peephole I could see that the two strangers were still there, leaning over and wobbly.  Possibly drunk.

I watched one of the guys slowly approach my door once again.  Just as he was reaching out for it I unlocked it and swung it up.

“What the FUCK are you doing here?!” I barked, sliding the action of my shotgun, chambering a round with a satisfying *CHUNCK-CHUNCK!* that can only come from a pump action, while keeping the muzzle pointed in a safe direction.

Suddenly, silence.

You could hear nothing except for the low growling of Nemesis on the staircase behind me (good cat…she never ran away).

After a pregnant pause I ordered, “Get the fuck out of here!  Go!  Now!” (Apparently, in times of stress, the word “fuck” freely flows from my mouth.  The more you know…)

The guy closest to my door raised his hands.  Both started backing away, eyes wide and unblinking.  As they backed up I kicked my door closed and locked it.  I looked out once again through the peephole, and they were gone.

I often wondered how I would react in that type of situation.  In the worst possible moment, what would I do?  Oddly enough, in the moment, I found that I wasn’t scared.  Not a bit.  I spoke clearly in a voice my military drill instructor would have been proud of, and was ready to retreat behind my gun.  Not knowing who these people were or what they were up to, I made it quite clear, and in no uncertain terms, that this was not the house they wanted to mess it.  That it wasn’t worth it.

From their body language as I observed them through the door, I’m almost certain that they were nothing more than drunk locals, lost and acting stupid.  But with somebody body slamming your front door at one in the morning, why take any chances? This was the first time that I’ve ever come so close to pointing a weapon in somebody’s direction, and it’s nothing I’m proud of.

Here’s hoping it’ll be the last time I’ll ever have to do something like that again.

…And that’s how I spent my Saturday evening.  How was your weekend?

This is how I feel about my final days of work at my current place of employment:

Heh….

This past weekend the brother-in-law took me to a remote location near the Mexican border (is that a fence or an aqueduct?) for some target practice. He brought his .308 and I brought along my new 12 gauge 20″ shotgun.

Having never fired a shotgun before I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Cautiously I loaded in a few rounds of .00 buckshot, donned my eye/ear protection, racked a round and squeezed the trigger.

The shotgun jerked back with a tremendous roar and hacked a hugh swath trough the targets that I had been aiming at, sweeping them away with a terrible force.

And the primitive side of me let loose with a sly, satisfying smile.

It was only after shooting this weapon did I realize that I had no idea how powerful a shotgun with the appropriate ammunition could be, and I now fully understand why skulking thieves run as soon as they hear the sound of a round being racked from the upstairs bedroom in the middle of the night.

Sure, we’ve all seen gunplay in the movies, but it’s impossible to appreciate the brutality of such weapons until you fire one for yourself. There’s simply no getting up after taking a round to the chest from a shotgun. There is no heroic gunplay. No staggering before returning fire, killing the baddie and saving the day. There is simply the target crumbling to the floor in a lifeless heap.

And to tell you the truth, it’s all a bit frightening. But I’d rather have the upper hand and the ability to protect my family if and when there came a time to do so.

Over the past couple of years I’ve been giving some serious thought about home protection. I’ve often thought about what would happen if somebody broke into my house in the middle of the night. Up to this point I’ve kept a Marine combat knife, a machete and a taser gun next to my bed, but really don’t relish the thought of hand-to-hand combat with an intruder at three in the morning.

And so, with much thought and deliberation, the wife and I have decided to purchase a gun for home protection. The gun we chose is a Mossberg 500 “Persuader” pump-action shotgun with pistol grip.

The way I figure it, any intruder will know the distinctive sound of a round being racked, and with a shout of “I’m armed!” the unwanted bastard will scurry out of the hole he crawled in through as fast as possible.

Purchasing a gun wasn’t the easiest decision for Karin to make, and I truly understand her hesitation, but my mindset is if the worst were ever to happen, that I’d have the proper tools to protect my family. I’ve seen enough disaster (and zombie) movies to understand the need for defensive firepower.

I’ve heard talk about using a nuclear explosion to seal the oil leak that’s currently raging out of control in the Gulf Coast. For whatever reason I envisioned the military dropping some sort of guided nuclear warhead straight down on top of the well with Slim Pickins glued on top like he’s bucking a bronco, initiating the detonation upon contact with the ocean floor.

Little did I know that such an operation would be much more tactical and precise that my overactive imagination gave it credit for.

Very interesting, and it looks so darn simple to accomplish.  I’m hoping that it doesn’t come down to this, but from this side of the world it’s looking more and more like a feasible solution to a problem that’s getting worse by the day.  I’m sure we have a spare nuclear warhead somewhere in our vast arsenal that we could spare to put a halt the ecological disaster of our lifetime.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll be throwing Dr. Strangelove into the DVD player right about now…