We’ve all played rock-paper-scissors at one time or another. As a result, we all know that rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock. There’s a reason for each, even if some of them are a little silly.
In the real world, for example, a rock isn’t necessarily going to crush a pair of scissors.
But a machete-wielding man in Texas decided to cross the line and had to decide really quickly if his machete could beat a handgun.
A concerned homeowner in Texas took up arms and fended off a machete-wielding man who attempted to enter his home.
Darryl Stevens’ home surveillance camera captured the moment a machete-wielding intruder approached the family’s Liberty Hill home just north of Austin.
“At that moment, I obviously freaked out. I have two young children here in the house and just went into complete fight or flight mode,” Stevens told FOX 7.
Stevens’ gut reaction was to lock up his home and grab his 9mm handgun.
“I started running through the house. I locked every door as fast as possible, ran upstairs. Luckily, I had a firearm here, so I grabbed my 9mm, unlocked it, ran down as fast as possible,” Stevens said.
The suspect, later identified as 43-year-old Jerry Escamilla, managed to climb a fence and get to the upper deck of the family’s home.
He was greeted by Stevens’ handgun when he arrived.
“Told him he’s got to leave, or he’s going to lose his life, you know?” he said. “Luckily, after I did that, he dropped the machete.”
He chose wisely.
Now, let’s be real here, someone running around on your property without permission is bad enough. Put a machete in his hands and suddenly, things have entered the territory of horror movies. Set it all in a summer camp and you’ve got a long-running horror franchise.
So to call it scary is a mild understatement.
If you have a gun, though, things change. Jason and Michael Myers wouldn’t stand a chance against John Wick and we all know it.
In a far more realistic scenario, though, you have someone like this on your property and this isn’t some unstoppable killing machine. He’s some dude who, for whatever reason, showed up on your property with some kind of ill intent.
We don’t know what Escamilla had in mind, but that’s ultimately good in a lot of ways. It means he didn’t get a chance to do the worst possible thing he could have done.
Nothing he had in mind was good, and that’s why gun ownership is so important. You’re not going to talk someone out of whatever they have in mind in a case like this. The best-case scenario was a home invasion robbery, which would have traumatized the family for life. Stevens moved his family further away from Austin to be safer, so there was already fear there. Adding to it wouldn’t have benefitted them, that’s for sure.
And again, that’s the best-case scenario because machete-wielding people who climb up your wall to your balcony aren’t there to invite you over to their house for afternoon tea.
The worst-case scenario is the stuff of nightmares…or horror movies.
But having a gun made it so that all you have is a scary story and a bad guy in custody.
This won’t show up in a lot of the defensive gun use statistics some like to use because the bad guy wasn’t shot and killed, but that’s still a defensive gun use and the good guys are all unharmed. That’s a win.
