AURORA, Color.- In a segment spotlighting first-time gun owners, National Public Radio Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon asked a mother who recently purchased a gun in response to crime around her apartment why she doesn’t simply call the police.
Simon interviewed 33-year-old Misheika Gaddis, a single, working mother who resides in Aurora, Colorado, in a segment that aired on the August 6th Weekend Edition Saturday broadcast. Gaddis told Simon purchased a 9mm pistol six months ago to protect her home where she lives with her eight-year-old son. She added that her second child is on the way.
“So there was a couple of nights where I’d come home, and there would be people in the hallway, like, really close to my door, Gaddis told Simon. “And the way my apartment building is set up is if you don’t know anybody up there, you shouldn’t be upstairs. There were a couple of nights I felt like I probably needed some protection or probably should have let somebody know I was going in late. But I didn’t think about it until there were people standing way too close to my door.”
Gaddis said she and her son hear gunshots nearly every night, some closer than others. She told Simon that she would reach for the gun if someone were trying to kick in her door or if she heard a bell on the back of her door when she wasn’t expecting anyone.
Simon then asked Gaddis why she didn’t just call the police.
“Honestly, I’ve had incidents where I’ve called them and I don’t feel like they got there in enough time,” Gaddis told Simon. “Or – like, even the call with the emergency responders, it’s like, well, what’s your name? Where are you at? What’s your phone number? What’s the emergency? It’s a long process. So by the time the police get to you, if you get all that information out to them, it’ll be too late.”
The NPR segment was designed to spotlight one of the five-and-a-half million Americans who bought guns for the first time last year. NPR cited an industry report indicating that African Americans are the fastest growing group of gun owners.
“I don’t have a record. I have no criminal history or anything,” Gaddis said. “So I think the best thing for me is to exercise my Second Amendment rights and be a gun owner.”
The interviewer went on with one final question: “There are people who will hear our conversation who will be very moved by what you have to say but still wish you hadn’t chosen to get a gun and doubt that you’ve done the right thing. I wonder if you have an answer for that?”
And did she ever! Gaddis calmly replied,
“Everyone’s decisions of their life are based on what they’ve gone through. I’ve been through enough hurt and chaos to feel like this is the best decision for myself and my family. Would you rather be the victim of something or the person that came to the defense, you know? So this was the best decision that I could have made.”
OUR TAKE
We find it very interesting that Simon asked Gaddis why she did not simply call the police. Especially since the cause du jour only a couple of years ago for leftists, like the ones who make up a majority of the NPR listening audience, was to defund the police.
Suppose Gaddis did call the police. What kind of law enforcement officers would respond to her call? Would they be the kind of upstanding law enforcement personnel everyone likes to think of when they say “Back the Blue?” Or would they be the cowardly, self-preservation-minded officers we saw earlier this year in Uvalde, Texas?
It is a sad state of affairs when we honestly say we don’t know.
That’s one of the many reasons gun owners FIGHT so hard to preserve and defend the Second Amendment: it contains our God-given right to self-defense! We can also take comfort that more responsible, law-abiding citizens are taking advantage of it and purchasing firearms to defend themselves, their property, and those they hold dear.
Photo Courtesy of NPR
