The idea of 24 years sounds like an awfully long time. This day, 24 years ago, seems almost like yesterday to me. Especially in the wake of what happened to Charlie Kirk yesterday.
I was home from work. I’d been having a series of migraines and took a week off to deal with that. I woke up and turned on the TV, only to see one of the towers of the World Trade Center burning.
My wife was out with my then-infant son. He was two months old that day and had a checkup, so she was unaware of anything happening. I wasn’t. I saw the second plane hit. I saw the reports of what happened at the Pentagon and of a plane crash in Pennsylvania.
My nation was under attack, and no one had a clue what was next.
All of these reports kept staggering in, adding to the horror we all felt, and I honestly didn’t know if or when it was going to stop. My nation was under attack, and I, not that long out of the Navy, was powerless to do anything. Would the attacks come to our front doors?
I was powerless.
At the time, I didn’t own a single firearm. I had nothing with which to defend my home.
I wasn’t anti-gun. I just hadn’t bothered to get one. Guns were expensive, and I had a young family and wasn’t exactly making the big bucks. There were always other things to buy.
It was clear, at that moment, that needed to change.
No, it turned out that there wasn’t another wave coming on that fateful day. Four planes were all there was, though that was more than enough.
In the coming days and weeks, America changed for a time. We were a nation more or less united. We had an enemy, someone to focus our ire on other than one another. We went to war, then stayed there. An entire generation grew up in the shadow of conflict. First in Afghanistan, then Iraq. Millions put on the uniform and served. Thousands never came home. Tens of thousands came home battered and broken in some way.
But many of us became aware that the bad guys could hit us at home, and that those brave men and women couldn’t be a complete and total shield for the United States.
We’d have to step up.
I carry a gun these days, not just for pedestrian crime from violent Americans or illegal immigrants, but because the Jihadists who hated us then hate us now. I refuse to feel that kind of powerless in the face of such evil ever again.
Since that day, we’ve seen other terrorist attacks on American soil. The nature of radical Islam hasn’t changed, nor has its desire to bring down the freest nation on Earth, the one they call “The Great Satan.” They just haven’t accomplished anything on that scale since that day.
Now, they attack on a more personal level, and should that happen, I refuse to just be a victim.
I might die, but I’ll die fighting, trying to protect others and the nation I love so dearly.
Without our gun rights, I’d be left with harsh language and skills with weapons generally too archaic to take seriously, even as terrorist networks arm their future martyrs across borders without regard for local laws.
Luckily, I do have them, so rather than challenge them to a fight with longswords or spears, I can just shoot them as God and Sam Colt intended.
Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.
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