This week’s entangled fight occurred just a few weeks ago outside a small city in Virginia.
A man broke into a home after midnight, and attacked a man and wife. He stabbed the woman to death and was stabbing the man, who continued to fight throughout the house for an extended time, until they broke into the front yard, and the homeowner was able to get to his car and retrieve a gun from the vehicle and shot the murderer to death.
So what are the takeaways?
First, I don’t want to hear anyone say “I would have shot him before it went entangled”. No you would not because you don’t sleep with your gun on your hip, and even if you did, being woken up in the middle of the night to find someone stabbing your wife of 30 years to death in your bed would blow the brain circuits for a few moments. The bad guy would be on you long before you got your gun into play. There is no sub second draw in your bed when you are sound asleep.
Secondly, not only does this incident serve as yet one more shining example of how private citizens face grappling with weapon situations all the time, it also gives the lie to those who love to try to say that physical fitness has no role in self-defense. How much did an extended fight like this, that started with a massive shocked adrenaline dump of seeing your wife being stabbed to death, in your own bed, from a deep sleep, and then fighting a younger guy for minutes as you move through your house? Do you think he thought “hey, that was easy. I don’t even feel that”? Do you have to be in decent shape to survive a life or death struggle? Of course not, but has anyone ever said after “My heart and lungs didn’t even register what happened”? So ridiculous to dismiss health and vitality in a self-preservation context.