Boston was a “Come to Jesus moment” for many

Last week, we published a poll showing that half of all non-gun owning households contacted expressed a desire to own a gun should an armed lunatic be on the loose in their neighborhoods/communities.

HALF, Eddie.  Half!

That’s a lot of non-gun owners who are undoubtedly reconsidering changing their status from helpless potential victim to empowered homeowner.

And then, Vince Koers forwarded this article to me while a number of our GSL contributors were away teaching 40 individuals the art of the defensive handgun at Darnall’s in Bloomington this weekend.

Here’s the Cliff’s Notes of her piece, which no doubt will be played out tens of thousands of times, if not more, just in Massachusetts alone in the coming days and weeks.

(Pajamas Media) – In the wee hours of Friday morning, April 19th, I evolved on guns.

First, a confession: I’ve never owned a gun. I never wanted one in my home and, like a lot of moms, I wanted to raise non-violent children and thought keeping guns out of our home was one way to do that. When my kids were young, I didn’t want them to play with toy guns — in fact, I was rather insistent about it. Eventually, I realized that little boys will make guns out of just about anything — bananas, sticks, the dog’s paw, their fingers — nothing is safe from their imaginative minds. So I compromised and allowed squirt guns and non-gun-looking Nerf guns, but nothing that resembled a “real” gun.

(blah blah blah snipped)

I searched my heart and realized that in the heat of the moment of an attack, I wasn’t sure what I would do with a gun in my hand. I knew that could be more dangerous than being unarmed; it wasn’t worth the risk.

But all that changed early Friday morning.

(more blah blah snipped)

At one point, someone tweeted this:

I’m halfway across the country but if someone knocked on my door right now I’d pee my pants.

A moment of levity during a very serious, very scary night.

It was the moment I evolved on guns — the moment my support for the 2nd Amendment went from abstract to concrete.

(She must be getting paid by the word… blah blah blah snipped)

In the middle of that night listening to the Boston police scanner, I evolved.

I realized right then that if I were holed up in my house while a cold-blooded terrorist roamed my neighborhood, I wouldn’t want to be a sitting duck with only a deadbolt lock between me and an armed intruder. There are not enough police and they cannot come to my rescue quickly enough. They carry guns to protect themselves, not me. I knew at that instant if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev showed up at my door while I was “sheltered-in-place” and aimed a gun at my head and only one of us would live, I could pull the trigger.

I’m shopping for guns this week. I’ve been told a 12-gauge shotgun is a good choice for home protection, but I’m open to suggestions.