David DePape's (alleged until he's proven guilty) attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul was a classic violent home invasion that consisted of forcible entry followed by a physical assault on somebody inside the house.  Paul Pelosi was fortunately able to call 911, but police needed eight minutes to respond, which underscores the adage that, when seconds count, police are only minutes away.

This does not mean the police did not do their jobs, but when I last checked, no police department has been able to recruit officers from the planet Krypton who can fly (without a helicopter) to a crime scene in seconds, and DC Comics' Jay Garrick (the Flash) also is a fictional character.  A violent felon can do enormous damage in well under a minute, which included in this case battering Mr. Pelosi with a hammer and breaking his skull.  He also allegedly planned to break Nancy Pelosi's knees so she would have to be wheeled into Congress.  The fact that the home invader battered a senior citizen, whose bones and body are more vulnerable than those of a younger person, makes the crime even worse.

Now suppose instead that Mr. Pelosi had had a firearm at hand.  My own inclination would be to not then confront the intruder, despite California's Castle Doctrine, but rather to wait for the police.  There is no reason to risk one's safety by going downstairs for an encounter with somebody who has already committed a home invasion.  The instant the intruder entered his bedroom, though, a controlled pair of shots to the aggressor's thoracic cavity followed by another to his head if he was still advancing (see failure to stop) would have avoided further trouble.  The purpose of the head shot is not to take the law into your own hands by executing the felon, but rather to stop somebody who is still coming because he is wearing body armor or is so hopped up on drugs that he doesn't even notice that he has taken two rounds to his center of mass.  You cannot continue to shoot somebody who is clearly no longer a threat.

On the other hand, Moro guerrilla Panglima Hassan allegedly kept coming after being struck by thirty-two rounds of .30-40 Krag-Jørgensen rifle ammunition and went down only by a head shot from a sergeant's revolver.  This, boys and girls, is why citizens and police officers need high-capacity magazines.  If thirty-two rounds of rifle ammunition will not always stop a determined attacker, why does anybody think ten rounds of nine-millimeter pistol ammunition will always do the job?  Forty-five caliber ball will, on the other hand, usually stop an aggressor with a single hit, but not everybody can handle the automatic Colt pistol and its relatives; the grip is simply too large for people with small hands.

I would have far preferred to see Paul Pelosi in the Armed Citizen feature of November's American Rifleman instead of a violent crime victim.  There is no excuse for what happened to him, nor is there any excuse for what the assailant allegedly planned to do to his wife, and the perpetrator will hopefully be a senior citizen himself by the time he gets out of prison.  This does not, however, fix Mr. Pelosi's skull.  A firearm is often the only tool that enables a senior citizen to fight off a younger and also deranged assailant.

Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way.  The author is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to "cancel culture" for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.

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