published on August 01, 2024 in Informative Details

Opinion | I had a midnight intruder. And Im glad I had a gun at home.

Fredrick Kunkle is a former staff writer for The Post.

I never sleep with a gun under my pillow. But one night not long ago, I wished I had.

In late April, I was asleep in my house in the District — my spouse was on a business trip — when I opened my eyes and saw an intruder coming to the top of the stairs outside the bedroom. It was about 2:35 a.m. He passed the bedroom door and headed down the hallway.

“Hey!” I yelled. “What the hell are you doing!”

This startled the guy, who seemed disoriented, maybe drunk or high. I saw my toolbox and thought about grabbing something — a hammer, a screwdriver, anything — for self-defense, but in the same instant I also thought that might escalate things.

But I felt I needed to put him on the defensive and gain control of the situation and kept shouting at him to get out.

“How?” the man asked.

“Just go out the front door!” I shouted, while trying to see whether he had a weapon.

To my amazement, he became belligerent, cursing and saying, “Front door? Who do you think you are?” or some such as he went down the stairs.

I called 911. While a dispatcher assured me police were on their way, I heard the guy rummaging in the kitchen — whether to find an exit or arm himself with a knife, I had no idea.

I hung up and stood at the top of the stairs, listening. I couldn’t be sure the man had left. And it occurred to me that he might not be alone.

So I decided to get my gun.

It’s a .357 magnum Smith & Wesson revolver, which I kept trigger-locked and unloaded in a case in a walk-in closet. I retrieved the key hidden nearby but then struggled to find the trigger lock’s pinhole opening without eyeglasses. My nerves were jangling, too, as I huddled against a shirt rack, straining to hear whether anyone was still in the house and wondering where the cops were. After I fumbled with the key some more, I finally turned on a light and unlocked the gun.

I loaded the revolver, grabbed a flashlight and moved quietly toward the stairs. I left the house dark to give myself an advantage but turned on the flashlight so I could see. I was also thinking about the legality of what I was doing. Yes, I had registered my firearms with the D.C. police department after moving from Maryland to the District’s Adams Morgan neighborhood, but there was still a nagging doubt in my mind: Was everything in order? What would happen if, for example, I had unknowingly allowed the registration to lapse?

I started down the stairs, holding the handgun at my side and shining the flashlight ahead. I felt calm, even a bit ridiculous, as I had on past occasions after arming myself for false alarms, because it seemed as though the guy had left.

But I also felt comfortable with firearms, having grown up in rural western Pennsylvania, immersed in a culture of hunting and guns. I learned to shoot when I was 8 years old. The first firearm I owned was a .22-caliber Marlin lever-action rifle my grandfather gave me when I was 12 and old enough to hunt.

I bought the revolver — the only firearm I’ve ever purchased, as the others had been gifts or hand-me-downs — after the Sandy Hook school shooting. I knew gun laws would be tightened, making it more difficult to obtain one. The possibility I might use a handgun in self-defense seemed like an afterthought.

At the bottom of the stairs, I shone the flashlight around the entry hall, into the dining room, toward the kitchen. Suddenly, as I stepped off the stairs, I realized the guy, who appeared to be in his 20s or 30s, was hiding in the living room, pressed against a doorway.

I aimed the flashlight at his face and started yelling. “I told you to get the f--- out of here!” I shouted, again as loud and as threatening as I could.

He crossed the living room, sat on the sofa and started mouthing off again, saying, “What’s with you, man?”

I never showed him that I was carrying a firearm, which hung at my side, or warned him that I had a gun. I never once threatened to shoot him. The revolver wasn’t even cocked.

In that moment, I kept thinking how much I did not want to shoot anyone. But I also decided that if he came toward me or made some threatening gesture, I would fire.

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I moved back to the stairway and crouched on a step where I could observe what was happening below. He left the sofa and headed deeper into the house. Again, I resolved that if he came up the steps, I would drop him. But then he turned around and left, leaving the front door wide open.

Still armed, I shut the front door and looked around, trying to figure out how he had come in. No other doors were open, no windows broken. I realized I must have left the door unlocked by accident — which would be unusual because security is not something we’re casual about. If anything, we’ve become more careful because of the District’s recent crime surge.

At last, I saw a police cruiser’s flashing lights outside. I put the revolver on a shelf — I didn’t want to greet police officers with a gun, for obvious reasons — and went out to meet them.

Only then did I feel a jolt of adrenaline. During the encounter with the intruder, I had felt clearheaded and relatively calm as I thought about what I would or would not do as the situation unfolded.

Once the cops arrived, though, my breathing became rapid and my hands trembled. I had difficulty recalling the exact sequence of events as I spoke with the two officers. It reminded me how often eyewitnesses and others in a stressful situation can contradict themselves or get things wrong.

Then the officers received word that nearby units had stopped someone on the street who fit the intruder’s description. They asked whether I could try to identify the person and, if he was the intruder, whether I would press charges for unlawful entry.

I still didn’t know what to make of what had just happened: Had an intoxicated guy entered our house by mistake? Or did he regularly sneak into people’s houses, perhaps feigning to have done so by mistake?

I told the officers that if it turned out the person they stopped was the intruder, and he had no criminal record or any connection to other calls in the neighborhood that night about possible break-ins, I would not press charges.

An officer drove me a few blocks to where the other police officers had stopped the suspect. Almost at once, I recognized him just from his build. When he turned to face us, I realized the description I had given police had been off in some details. But I had zero doubt: This was the guy who had come into my house.

The officers told me he had no criminal record. They assured me that even if I didn’t file charges, the police now had the guy’s information on record for the future. If he was caught prowling inside another house, they said, he would not be able to pretend that the intrusion was another mistake. I declined to press charges, and the officers drove me home. (Later, I obtained the police report and learned that the police made no formal record of the intruder’s ID that night.)

After the police dropped me off at home, I poured a glass of whiskey. I put the gun on the nightstand. It took me at least an hour to settle down and go back to bed. I awoke at least twice, thinking someone was coming up the stairs again.

If anything, I felt more creeped out the next day when I returned home from work to an empty house. I armed myself and looked everywhere, checking windows and doors to make sure no one was inside. I knew this was irrational behavior, that the odds were infinitesimal that the guy had taken a key or broken into the house again — but a shadow passing across the wall was enough make me do a double take.

The incident occurred right after two high-profile cases in which people had been shot because they had been perceived as intruders. On April 13, an 84-year-old White man shot a Black teenager who had mistakenly come to his door. The Kansas City, Mo., shooting, which left the teen critically injured, heightened racial tensions and sparked protests by those who said the homeowner had been given special treatment by police.

Two days later, a 20-year-old woman was fatally shot after she and her friends pulled into the wrong driveway trying to find a party in rural Upstate New York. The 65-year-old man who killed her fired from his front porch. This murder immediately became part of the emotional debate about American gun ownership.

More than one person has since told me that I had every right to shoot the intruder and that other homeowners would have done so after he refused to leave. Why didn’t I? In the end, he seemed to me to pose little or no threat.

My actions that night reflected some forethought. Whenever I had imagined such a scenario or when people asked my views on firearms and self-defense, I always said I would never kill anyone over a TV or valuables. If someone entered my home to steal stuff, I might confront them with my firearm and order them to leave, to take the TV or whatever and just go. But I also said that if the person threatened to harm to me or my family, I would not hesitate to use my firearm.

I was glad I had a gun that night — very glad, especially as homicides, carjackings and other violent crimes seemed to be spinning out of control in the District and other U.S. cities. Some blame law enforcement staffing shortages, others lenient policies on crime. In any case, other Americans have also been legally arming themselves for self-defense.

For years, the District forbade nearly all residents from owning handguns even in their homes. In 2008, the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller changed all that. The court ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to possess firearms for self-defense but also that the government may impose reasonable limits and regulations. Subsequent rulings have started expanding the right further, including the ability to carry firearms outside the home.

The impact of these rulings on gun ownership has been striking in this region alone. As recently as 2017, there were only 123 active concealed-carry permits in the District. Today, there are 17,647 active concealed-carry permits, a D.C. police spokesman said in an email. These are among the 29,518 firearms registered in the District, as required by law. Maryland’s and Virginia’s numbers are commensurate with D.C.’s. Yet Americans remain evenly split on whether gun ownership does more to increase or decrease safety, according to a June survey by the Pew Research Center.

Research into the use of firearms for self-defense also has been inconclusive. A study cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says defensive uses of firearms by victims are at least as common as uses by criminals, with estimates ranging from 500,000 to 3 million. Gun rights advocates argue that such findings suggest that the defensive use of firearms has been unappreciated and underreported, with some claiming that guns have been used more often in self-defense than in crimes. Those who support stricter gun laws strongly disagree, saying the most reliable available data show guns are used for self-defense in only a small number of cases relative to their use in crimes.

Here’s the thing: I keep coming back to that moment when I stood less than six feet from that man, holding the loaded revolver at my side, not knowing what he might do. I was struck by how much I did not want to use my firearm that night unless there was no other choice. But I’m glad I had a choice.

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