My long-time buddy Scott and I were out in Bear Valley, at a place you can barely reach without four-wheel drive. We had set up at our usual spot, and were pretty tired, having run up and down a hill nearby, purposely trying to wind ourselves. Now we were taking a break, basically just mulling over the meaning of life in the middle of nowhere, out in the open with oaks and chaparral around the clearing we occupied.

There was shooting from a distance up the hill. Target shooting was allowed in Bear Valley, so hearing gunfire was not unexpected, but this sounded weird.

And dirt was spouting up all around us. Little angry tuffs of ground leaping.

In my youth, before I was held up twice at gunpoint while manning the counter at the obligatory convenience store while working my way through college, I was an outspoken gun control advocate. All that talk about the Second Amendment and all those quotes from Founding Fathers, they were out there, but I certainly didn’t listen to them. I had this idea that we, that is, The Government of the People, would freeze the sale of guns, and let all those old men that were on the tube talking about their right to ‘keep and bear arms’, let them keep their guns. They weren’t the criminals shooting the place up, anyway. They seemed like nice old codgers. Sooner or later they would die off, and sure, some of the guns would be inherited, licensed, regulated, but in time, even those guns would be gathered up and, if not destroyed, put at ranges where the curious could rent them and shoot, under trained supervision and security, of course. I remember, after the first robbery, standing outside with the deputy sheriffs, and them urging me not to see this as a need to arm myself, that the presence of guns merely caused more violence. I think back on it now, and I remember them watching my face, as if looking to see how I was taking it. I assured them that I would never get a gun. I believed in the police.

The look of incredulity on those deputies' faces was staggering. I'd realize, years later, that they were obliged to say what they had said. No one was supposed to be so stupid as to actually buy that crap.

But I was a True Believer.

The thing about being robbed that I still remember, feel, was the humiliation. I didn’t lose any money, my boss did, and I felt bad about that, but the thought that someone, the robber, held my life in such low value as to say he was willing to kill me for thirty-two dollars and some rolls of quarters, was more degrading than I could truly grasp.

After all, Love was, is, the answer. Harmony and understanding, sympathy, empathy and trust, all encapsulated in the simple word, ‘Love’. Let peace guide the planet, love steer the stars. What I had to do was live that, and. If need be, suffer for it. When you feel like you've been mistreated, open your heart, and let Love shine on in. The Law was the instrument, the courts, tools to leaven those that didn’t grasp the blessings of Harmony, and the Police, after all, could be ‘Peace officers’. None of this was perfect, but Love was, and is, the answer.

Still, the fact that Love was not in the heart of the robber that stuck a gun in my face (“I don’t wanna killyoubutIwill”) was a personal, intimate mortification. He was caught, and we all went to court.

They dropped my case. I really couldn’t identify him. He had a wig or something on his head, and I’d been half asleep when he walked in. He’d held up a dozen other stores, though, and they nailed him on a couple of those. He got three years, cut to one, but I never heard from the guy again.

My buddy Scott decked me, threw me and himself under some creosote that was six feet tall.

I swear I thought I heard someone at a distance laugh.

“We’re being shot at!” I bellowed.

“No shit Sherlock!” Scott bellowed back, and believe me, this is a big deal. Scott doesn’t use foul language.

The second guy who held me up, I never saw a gun. He was so loaded, I had to ask him to repeat himself three times before I could understand what the man was saying. What he was saying was, "there's a bullet in your head."

I felt dizzy, and once again, humiliated, naked and exposed as he stared death-like bleary eyes into mine. It took a while, but he finally made it clear to empty the cash register into a paper bag and hand it over.

They caught the guy down the street, maybe fifteen minutes after he’d held me up. His Harley had run out of gas. That’s why he’d pulled up in the first place, to get gas, and when I wouldn’t sell it to him, I had so dis-respected him, he held me up to teach me a lesson.

Mind you, I would have sold him gas. We just didn’t have gas pumps, as in, the guy on the Harley had pulled up to a 7-11 that didn’t have a gas station attached to it, and demanded gas.

I had gotten much better at this robbery thing. I was dialing the cops as the robber mounted his hog. The cops went through their routine, and I have to wander if its standard operating procedure to make the victim feel like a criminal. Though they talked in circles for some time, they ultimately, in both cases, asked me if I was indeed in on the crime, if this all wasn’t a ruse. The guy walked in, I handed over the cash, and never mind I called them so quick they scored this guy down the road a bit, what was my cut in the scam?  

The robbers humiliated me, the cops humiliated me. I know the deputies were just doing their job. It was beginning to dawn on me, though, that I was just another victim to them, a statistic, maybe even an irritation.

The deputy district attorney didn’t look much older than me, but he bubbled with enthusiasm and optimism. The biker had admitted he did it, but still pled Not Guilty. I took the stand, and I answered the questions, I didn’t let the defense attorney rattle me. I Had My Day In Court. I was The Victim.

I finished testifying and the judge smacked his gavel.

“Dismissed.”

I looked up stunned at his honor. I was still sitting on the witness stand. The judge, looking down at me, had a leer on his face so dripping with contempt that, to this day, it is burned into my soul.

"You can't hold this man responsible for his actions. He was under the influence of drugs."

That judge did what two guys with guns couldn't do. He taught me that, despite what I'd internalized all my life, the sincere love in my heart, the people in charge, the Powers That Be, held my existence in utter contempt, and that there was no real difference between the courts and the thugs. They both raped my soul. That judge didn’t have to do what he did, even if he cut the guy loose, he didn’t have to let me know how little he thought of my life. He chose to, just like the guys that told me they’d kill me.

It took me years to accept it, to shake off my deeply felt convictions in that non-violent, peace-at-any-price philosophy. I finally had to accept this reality: I was wrong. If I actually believed that, as an individual, I had the right to exist, with or without the permission of thieves and predators and those who have declared themselves my betters, I was the only one who did. Law enforcement might academically want to 'protect and serve', but when it comes right down to it, the only one who feels this way emotionally about me and mine, is me. If you know American Law, you know the police are not obliged to extend that 'protect and serve' motto to the individual. With a little thought, I'm glad. I am responsible, and you are responsible, to protect yourself. That responsibility is the right of self-defense. It is not a privilege granted by the state. The Constitution enumerates this need as a right, and is something granted by God.

The crest-fallen deputy DA would tell me later that he had overheard the defendant, the guy who had told me there was a bullet in my head, “Hell, I was only kidding.”

 Let Love guide the way, and when, not but, when someone threatens you with deadly force, have the tools and skills at your disposal to kill them first. Love your neighbor as yourself. Think about it. Jesus assumes you love yourself. Indeed you must love yourself before you can love others. Letting yourself be killed or humiliated is immoral. Isn’t the victim just as guilty as the killer, if the victim doesn’t fight for their lives? My past willingness to suffer for Love only exacerbated the power of Hate.

Mental preparation, resolve, awareness of your surroundings, imagining the possible, muscle memory.

A gun and skills you learn, train for, does not make you Rambo, it makes you Shepherd instead of sheep.

Scott and I had gotten to the point where we basically could shoot a single ragged hole in the bullseye with six shots, rarely a flyer. But that’s not how real life-and-death shootings occur. You’re surprised by your assailant, and you don’t find your sights, you don’t hold your breath and squeeze. It’s all rushed and usually between three feet and three yards.

One of us would run up the hill as fast as he could, and the other would move the targets around so the returning runner wouldn’t know where the targets were until he stood in front of them. We had decided that running up the hill with a gun wasn’t as safe as we wanted it, we left our guns on the bench in front of the target. Get back to the bench, chest heaving, heft your gun and as the other one yelled out instructions, (“Double tap to the chest, head shot”), you fired as quick as you could. Since I had a revolver, we limited this drill to six shots. I had two speed loaders, though, one loaded with the practice rounds we’d worked up, and one with 125 grain hollow points. We hadn’t done this drill before, and we weren’t very good to start with. Plenty of times the targets, a few mere yards away, only got nicked. With practice, though, we were getting really good, pointing the barrel like a finger at the center of mass.

So when the bullets started raining down on us, our guns were sitting, unloaded, cylinder opened, slide locked back, on the bench, fifteen yards away from us, the scabbards on our hips empty.

The shooting stopped. I thought I heard more laughing. Scott came up to his hands and knees.

“I’m going after them.”

He leapt up and ran to the bench, scooped his Hi-Power 9mm and just kept going, slapping a magazine in the well as he ran to the right of the shallow little valley we were in.

I rolled up, ran just as fast as I could, grabbed my revolver and broke left, not successfully loading the hollow points into their cylinders until I reached what I hoped was cover.

I raised my weapon and looked over the barrel to where I thought the shots came from. I didn’t see anyone up there, but I sensed Scott leapfrogging forward, take a defensive position, and then it was my turn, running out into the open, him covering me until I found safe haven to cover his advance.

Hand guns would be ineffectual at the distance we were facing. They had been shooting at us with rifles.

Past Scott’s truck, past a Jeep that was parked up against the remains of a long-fallen barbed wire fence. This was no longer a clearing, but a trail that led further on. Oak trees were forward and to the right, a trail from the oaks went up the hill to the left where the shots had come from.

We crept forward.

Maybe a hundred yards from where we were set up, underneath those Oaks, there was a tent, and a young woman with a baby in her arms leaned out of its entrance.

“Someone was shooting into our camp!”

You can remote camp in the Cleveland National Forest with a permit. Still, if we’d known they were there, we probably would have gone further up Bear Valley. They weren’t downrange, but the noise of our shooting certainly undermined their camping.

“They were shooting at us, too,” Scott said.

“My husband went up to talk to them!”

“Your husband is up this way?” She nodded.

I marveled at the quiet child.

We started up the hill with determined strides. Before we had covered thirty yards, a tall lean man with a beard was coming down. He saw us and his face turned gray.

“Did’ja see them?” Scott asked.

The man skipped a step, but then pressed on towards us.

“Everything is going to be okay.”

He breezed by us, headed for his camp.

Scott and I looked at each other, suddenly deflated. We found ourselves following the man back down the hill.

“They were shooting at us too,” Scott volunteered to the back of the man, who did not acknowledge hearing us.

“How many are there?”

No answer.

After a few more attempts to talk to the man, Scott holstered his gun, and motioned back toward his truck.

We admonished ourselves for not having been prepared.

“Your rifle is right there, and neither one of us thought to grab it,” Scott pointed. “And I didn’t even bring a rifle. Never again.”

I picked up the M-1 carbine now and loaded it, and thought how this was closing the proverbial barn door after the fact. Still, I shouldered the weapon on its strap, a thirty round magazine and one up the spout. Absently I pulled it off again and made sure the safety was on.

The M-1 carbine could be considered the U.S. Army’s first assault rifle, although it wasn’t perceived as such at the time. By definition, an assault rifle is chambered for a round that is much smaller than a standard combat rifle round, but more powerful than a pistol round. The knock-down strength of a rifle round is sacrificed for a lighter, more compact weapon, a lighter kick, and the ability to carry more ammunition. It was originally semi-auto, with the idea that officers would carry it instead of their side arms, American officers are notorious for being caught in combat instead of just directing it. The carbine became very popular with paratroops that had to get in close on the enemy of World War Two and Korea. It even saw combat in Viet Nam, many favoring the .30 caliber bullet to the new Black Gun. I’d bought my civilian version at the local Big 5, and I really didn’t care for it. It didn’t like reloads, and the only thing that fed reliably through it was military-style ball ammo.

We loaded our gear, bench and target stands into Scott’s truck, but the adrenaline was still high, and we found ourselves standing on either side of the truck, sipping sodas, once again discussing the meaning of life.

And then there was shooting on the road.

Scott broke to the right, toward the road, and jumped into the creosote. I hugged the ground, and ran up the side of the hill we’d been shooting into, up to a creosote bush a quarter of the way to the top. I fell behind it, although it offered nothing but concealment. I looked down on the road.

Three kids, early twenties, were walking toward us on the road maybe a hundred feet from us. A blonde girl with a small cooler with a handle had a .22 rifle semi-auto in the other hand, that she was firing randomly into the wash they were crossing, the beleaguered campsite down-range, maybe a hundred yards past me. Two guys were ahead of her by a dozen yards, one with a lever-action rifle, the other with a pump-action shotgun.

Though these kids were still a distance away, I could clearly hear them speak as if they were on a megaphone. One kid turned to the other male and said; "Feel like a beer?" Other male answered, "We're out." The other kid replied, "Well, let's go down into this camp here and get us some more."

Blind fury built in me as the two guys turned off the road and walked into our spot. The one with the lever action took the lead.

They were going to do it. They had dared each other and psyched themselves up to rob the unarmed campers.

Why they camping here anyway? too good for a campground? Have it coming, stupid yuppies.

Hey, we were only kidding.

The thought of just hiding and ignoring was not an option. I had heard them say they were going to rob that camp, where I knew there were three unarmed people, including an infant. Common Sense, Common Decency demanded I act. Running to the police was not an option. We were cut off from our vehicle, and even then, it would’ve taken us at least half an hour to get off the hill into a town and a phone. And then, how long before the police could get back in here? The life-threatening situation was here and now.

With blood rushing through my ears like white water rapids, I put the lead kid with the lever action squarely in my sights.

He was past our truck, coming up on the Jeep that I assumed was the campers’ vehicle, headed for the fallen barbed wire fence.

If I waited any longer than after that fence, I would not have a clear shot.

If the kid looked up at me, I was going to shoot him. When he reached the fence, I would shoot him.

The lead kid was past the Jeep when he glanced up in my direction, but looked immediately down, stopped, and suddenly, this bizarre grin bloomed on his face. Then he did the damnedest thing. He started walking backwards.

He kept walking backwards, past the Jeep, past the truck.  He walked backwards until he ran into his buddy, who was staring at Scott in the creosote. Scott had not raised his weapon, but his head was a fraction over the top of the plant, his weapon out of sight.

Without much thought, my buddy and I had put the three assailants in a classic 'L' ambush.

"There's a guy on the hill with a machine gun."

“Huh?”

The kid with the lever action repeated himself to the male with the shotgun.

"There's a guy on the hill with a machine gun."

Now the second guy developed the same weird grin, and both of them walked backwards, back to the road, the girl nowhere to be seen, but appearing momentarily far down the road, headed out of there, followed quickly by the two men.

We waited a half hour before we headed out. If we came across them on the way down, or if we saw a vehicle, any vehicle, we would stop and make sure the kids weren’t waiting to come back up the hill. I kept the barrel of my carbine stuck out the window. There was no point in talking to the campers, the man refused to speak to us, and honestly, if they didn’t load up and get the hell out of there, it was on them.

We reached the entrance of Bear Valley, and there was no one there, as there had been no one along the road. Scott pried the M-1 out of my hands and unloaded it, secured it in its carrying case, and we went home.