Up From Pacifism
by Clayton Cramer
It was July, 1984. My wife, daughter, and I, had just moved from a peaceful,
largely rural county north of San Francisco, to Orange County, near Los
Angeles. Within hours of arriving, I found myself holding a handgun under my
jacket; a short distance away, a drunk with a very large knife was
threatening to kill someone, and I was trying to decide whether or not to
draw the gun, and shoot the drunk. It was one of the two most frightening
events of my adult life. How did I get into this situation?
In my late teens, I had decided that I was a pacifist. Clearly, the only
people that had bad things happen to them were drug addicts, people that
hung around with drug addicts, and those who had the misfortune to be
related to drug addicts. Therefore, the risks of violent injury or death
were nonexistent for me. Who would want to hurt me? To the extent that I had
any opinion about gun control at all, it was straightforward and clear-cut
-- what rational person could oppose gun control laws? The Second Amendment?
That was about the National Guard -- how could someone think that there was
an individual right to own a gun? Why would anyone but a criminal need one?
Certainly, my parents had demonstrated that there was no need for a gun in
our house -- even at the heights of the Watts Riots in 1965, it was not
considered.
Mine was a convenient pacifism, however, like many others of my generation.
When I saw a man with a baseball bat threatening a teenager one night in
Santa Monica, California, I had no qualms about calling the police -- who
were prepared to use state-sanctioned violence for a noble cause. As long as
I wasn't directly involved with the use of violence, my hands were clean.
The man with the baseball bat was in the right, as it turned out, and the
police department had three cruisers on the scene three minutes and fifteen
seconds after I called them -- impressive performance, by anyone's measure.
But as with most things, the passing years gave me increased experience that
damaged my simplistic textbook ideology. A friend was robbed at gun point.
Fortunately, he suffered no injuries. Handing over his wallet solved the
threat, but still...
Things got worse. A couple I know had just come home, when three thugs broke
down their screen door, tied up the husband, beat him up, raped the wife
(while forcing the husband to watch), and stole everything they owned, right
down to their wedding pictures. The assailants were never caught. Over the
next few years, I watched this couple, trying desperately to hold their
marriage together as each battled the demons of this traumatic event.
Fortunately, the time came when they could put it behind them.
Another couple was awakened by three strangers who had forced entry into
their home. While the husband compliantly went to another room to give them
valuables, two of the thugs attempted to rape the wife. The husband fought
back, and was stabbed seven times. He lost two pints of blood, and came very
close to dying. He was self-employed, uninsured, and the medical bills put
him $30,000 in debt.
I ran into a friend from high school, a couple of years after graduation.
Her mouth was wired, and it severely impaired her speech -- but she was able
to tell me what happened. Two men had robbed her, after beating her so hard
that her jaw was broken. Shortly thereafter, my own apartment was
burglarized, and I realized that even in a high security building, I wasn't
safe. Along with these close friends, a dozen or more acquaintances and
friends of friends were victims of rape and murder. Many of the rape victims
were haunted by the fear of it happening again, and who could say that it
wouldn't?
Then I met my wife Rhonda. Like me, her friends and acquaintances included
many victims. Some fit into my comforting, "Stay away from drug addicts and
criminals, and you'll be safe" paradigm. But most did not. Two roofers, high
on heroin, broke into a house, intent on burglary. A high school
acquaintance of Rhonda's walked in on the burglars -- and discovered that
they had already raped and murdered his little sister. Then the burglars
removed his head with a roofing hammer. Like me, my wife had many
acquaintances and friends who had been raped.
The final event that broke my easy confidence in pacifism as a personal
philosophy was seeing a map of crimes over the previous three months in our
neighborhood. I discovered more than a dozen rapes had been reported within
four blocks of our apartment in Santa Monica, a "nice" part of Los Angeles
-- and that the three minute police response time to the man with the bat
was an extraordinary stroke of luck. If I called them for my protection,
would I be so lucky? A friend called the Los Angeles Police Department to
report a domestic disturbance one Saturday night -- and he waited tens of
minutes before anyone could ascertain how severe the crime was that he was
reporting. If trouble came to the apartment my wife and I lived in, we might
well be on our own. Brave words about "not lowering myself to the use of
violence" evaporated when I thought about what had happened to my friends;
there were things worse than death -- like being beaten to death with a
hammer.
My wife wasn't similarly deluded; we trained and obtained licenses to carry
tear gas. As it became obvious that tear gas was a weapon of only limited
effectiveness, we realized the need for something a little more certain.
Further, we also came to realize that the refusal to use force reflected an
essentially selfish aspect to the "convenient pacifism" to which I had
pledged myself: rapists, murderers, and the other savages that roamed the
streets of Los Angeles, seldom confined themselves to single victims.
Refusing to take direct action in self-defense would guarantee not only our
own suffering, but that of the next victim. Self-defense against these
monsters is not a selfish act; it is an act that benefits civilized society
as a whole. I have reason to suspect that the three savages who raped the
first couple I mentioned in this article, may have also been the same trio
that attacked the second couple I have mentioned, two years later, within
two miles of the first attack.
After many weeks of discussion, prayer, and studying the Scriptures, we made
a dramatic decision. I went out and bought a gun. For a writing class, I had
learned everything that I could about military small arms, so I was starting
from a stronger knowledge base than the average city boy. Our first gun was
a Colt Government Model, .45 ACP.
I took the responsibility of gun ownership very seriously. At the local
library, I read through all the sections of the California Penal Code that
regulated the carrying of guns, then the case law in which the courts had
interpreted those statutes. I was surprised to find that it was illegal to
carry concealed or openly without a permit, and even more surprised to find
that, at least where I lived, it was effectively impossible to get a permit
to carry concealed. Finally, the greatest surprise of all: California
Military & Veterans Code sec.120 through sec.123 defined me as a member of
the "unorganized militia." Wait a minute! The "militia" was the National
Guard, and I couldn't recall signing up! Had I been misled about the Second
Amendment?
While now I knew what the laws were, I hadn't thought through my willingness
to use a gun in much depth. I can remember telling people at the time, "A
gun is not a talisman; mere possession won't do you much good," and,
"There's no point in owning a gun if you aren't going to practice with it."
But in fact, my practice was all target shooting; real-world scenarios
seldom crossed my mind.
We moved north, to semirural Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, where
people left the car keys in the ignition; if you lost your wallet or purse,
it would be returned to you, with all the money in it; where many people
only locked their houses if they were going to be away overnight. (Yes, this
was in the early 1980s, not the 1950s.)
Then, in 1984, we moved to Orange County, just south of Los Angeles. Our
first night we stayed in a motel in Costa Mesa. My wife heard some yelling;
I walked across the street to find out whether this was simply boisterous
teenagers, or a real problem. Across the way was a two-story apartment
building. A man in his 20s, obviously intoxicated, was dragging a woman of
similar age down the stairs, while she screamed and struggled to free
herself from his grasp. I ran back to the motel room, and my wife and I
called the police, to report a kidnapping in progress.
And then we waited. And waited. After about five minutes, the struggle was
still underway; she would work herself loose, run back up the stairs, and
then he would grab her again, and pull her back down the stairs. His
strength was clearly far superior to hers; his drunkenness made it roughly
an even match -- but I could not discount the possibility that he would
eventually succeed. I put the Colt inside my belt, put on my coat, and
walked back across the street. (This was not a violation of California law;
our Penal Code specifically allows carry of a loaded firearm where the
police have been summoned, and have not yet arrived.) [1]
For the first time while armed, I felt fear in my guts, like an icy hand,
squeezing my stomach. The hair on my neck stood up; I felt a slight nausea,
and an apprehension that circumstances might force me to make a very
unpleasant decision: whether or not to shoot, and likely kill another human
being. The advocates of restrictive gun control make the claim that
sometimes, the finger doesn't pull the trigger, but the trigger pulls the
finger -- that the emotions of the moment, in combination with a gun in the
hand, encourages the use of deadly force. My experience that night in Costa
Mesa was quite the opposite -- the awful realization of the power that
rested between my Levi's and my hip, terrified me. I sought a way to avoid
exercising that power -- and fortunately, I did not have to draw that gun.
At no point had the drunk crossed the line where I felt that I had to use
deadly force. He had committed kidnapping when he dragged the woman out of
her apartment, and tried to take her away. The drunk had committed assault
with a deadly weapon when, armed with a hunting knife, he threatened a young
man who had come to the woman's rescue. Either of these felonies, had he
refused to stop, would have justified deadly force under California law [2]
-- and if the bloodthirsty, trigger-happy image that our opponents raise was
an accurate description of the average gun owner, I should have shot the
drunk.
Eventually, fortunately, the drunk began to sober up, realized that the
police would eventually get there, and he left. Forty-five minutes after I
called, Costa Mesa Police Department showed up. Helicopters were sent out,
and later that evening, a police car brought a man in handcuffs to be
identified by the victim.
I learned a number of valuable lessons from this experience. First, it is
not enough to buy a gun, and have an intellectual knowledge of the laws on
the use of deadly force. You must also think over carefully, before the
fact, under what conditions you are prepared to use deadly force. For most
people, those circumstances are likely to more restrictive than what the
laws of your state allow. If a burglar breaks into your home at night, are
you prepared to shoot him as soon as you positively identify him? After he
has refused to leave? When you are unsure if he is armed or not? These are
both questions of the laws of your state, and your own moral judgment. Are
you prepared to risk getting badly hurt, perhaps permanently disabled, to
avoid killing a burglar who may not be armed? The time to think these
matters through isn't when adrenaline is pumping, and you are making
split-second decisions.
Second, you must engage in realistic training exercises. As a result of this
experience, I started to spend the extra money to fire at human silhouette
targets -- I'm not at all worried about being attacked by a bullseye in my
home. You must also imagine the fear that you will experience under the
stress of an actual life and death crisis. My wife, for example, trains for
the most worrisome and stressful situation she can imagine -- an intruder
who attempts to take our children out of the home.
Third, we must be prepared to take responsibility for our decisions. If that
drunk had followed through on his threat with the knife, I'm not sure that I
was then ready to draw and shoot. While there would have been no legal
consequences for failing to shoot, my sense of guilt would have been
enormous. We must be responsible for our decisions -- good or bad, in both
the legal sense, and the moral sense.
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Clayton E. Cramer is a software engineer with a telecommunications
manufacturer in Northern California. His first book, By The Dim And Flaring
Lamps: The Civil War Diary of Samuel McIlvaine, was published in 1990.
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1. Cal. Penal Code sec. 12031(j) (1982).
2. Cal. Penal Code sec.198 (1982).
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