Many well-meaning people believe that banning guns would make us safer, but my bleeding heart goes out to people like 11-year-old Alyssa Gutierrez, who used one of her family’s guns to defend herself and her family’s house when three armed burglars attempted to break in while young Alyssa was home alone.
Without a gun to protect herself, Alyssa, who was taught how to fire it just days before her home was attacked, would have been a helpless victim, not a proud and empowered defender of home and self. Those are actually Alyssa’s words, who told a local news channel: “I felt proud of myself.”
And Alyssa should. Having never been attacked like this, I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be home alone while three armed men try to break in to my house, and while it hasn’t been so many years since I was 11 years old, it has been long enough that I certainly can’t imagine what it would be like to face such a terrifying situation at such a young age. (At the age of 11, I was still afraid of the dark, aliens, dogs, ghosts, and the Easter Bunny… not even kidding.)
But Alyssa didn’t let the fear, nor the danger faze her. While she says her heart was pounding, her mind was poised and decisive– the kind of confidence and poise that comes with knowing you have the means to defend yourself. When three armed burglars burst through the door from the outside, one of them brandishing a rifle, Alyssa immediately ran to her parent’s room to get her mother’s gun. Loaded and ready, Alyssa turned to confront the three armed men, who spooked and ran away.
