Recently the news told of a man on the phone shouting to his wife, “Shoot him,” as an intruder broke into the crawl space where she was hiding with her children.

She did, and probably saved their lives. That reminded me of a personal horror story.

I attended Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Newport, Rhode Island, in July 1963. Despite a warning about the housing problem in Newport I took Jackie and two small sons there.

After a desperate search I was about to send them back to California when we found a place on the isthmus between Newport and Fall River, Massachusetts. It resembled the house in the movie “Psycho” and was isolated because a hurricane had destroyed the homes around it.  

However, I wasn’t too worried because the elderly couple who rented it to us lived on the floor above. Below was a spooky basement where they stored antiques for their shop in Boston.

On reporting to OCS I learned two dreadful things: I couldn’t leave the base for six weeks and no phone calls were allowed.

At night I broke the law; the pay phone cord was long enough to reach into the head (restroom to you landlubbers) so I called Jackie and learned two more horrible things: First, the owners had moved out leaving her isolated and, second, Jackie spent most of the night driving around Newport because she was terrified to stay in that remote house alone with the children. Meanwhile I was confined to OCS.

During one nightly phone call she said, “Just a minute; I hear a noise downstairs.” I spent the longest minutes of my life shouting, “Hang up, Jackie; call the police.” I craved a gun for her and training to use it. Then she returned and said, “I guess it was the wind.” On my first liberty I found another house for them.

As you might guess from this, I’m against any gun control that would confiscate a gun from that lady in the crawl space and leave her at the mercy of the intruder. Do we really think someone willing to invade her house all the way to a crawl space where she’s hiding with her children cares about gun control?

Food for thought: Never in history, until recently, have young men engaged in mass murder with any weapons, including guns. Shouldn’t Washington wonder why – instead of fooling around with ignorant gun control laws that have proven not to work with criminals?

Randy Ridgel lives in Kelseyville, Calif.