A few years ago, while I was still a student, my fiance and I moved into a small apartment. One evening while I was sitting at my drafting table, a man (high on pcp) decided to break into my living room through the front door. A struggle ensued for a good 15 minutes that ended when I finally crushed his head. There was blood everwhere, including the pen work that I had been working on for the past 3 months. The police had been called during the beginning of the struggle by my fiance, and it had taken over an hour for them to respond.
When all of the cop stuff and paper work was over, I got to speak at length with a local detective. I was shocked when he gave a lengthy description on this mans previous record. You would not beleive how much time and money was spent on this one man. I was really shocked to learn of the regularity of this phenomenon. I asked him how such a thing was possible and he told me that when a person is accused of a crime, his previouse record is not brought up in court.
Later, I was recieving death threats from my assailants loving family. So much so, that my fiance decided it was best that we split up, which was for the best, after her entire family decided that I was a violent, poor, piece of crap.
I do not live there anymore, but I live alone, and I no longer trust poeple as much as I should (in a healthy way). I am currently of the opinion that I do not give a damn what happens to criminals as long as they are not among other people. Weather they are executed or worked to death, I don't care. I do know that the system for dealing with them is very flawed and way too expensive.
Before that incident, my personal philosophy was to never cause pain to anyone, but during a time like that, personal philosophy goes right out the window. There is something in us that overrides all of that, and we will do whatever it takes to survive. It supercedes all rational thought. I guess this makes more sense to me now when I think about the fact the everone of us is the direct descendant of a long line of those that survived, not those that lay down and die.
When I was a kid, I lived on a small ranch. Every summer people would dump their unwanted pets out in the country and drive away. Those pets were not equipped to suvive by hunting alone, so they would get into large packs and take on the easiest prey. This was usually livestock. I was the one designated to take care of them with my rifle. I never had any animosity towards those dogs, they could not help what they were forced into, but coexistance was not an option.
