Michael Hegel

City critics often wonder why a sixty-six-year-old American grandfather keeps a .357 Magnum revolver inside his home. On July 29, 2012, a gunman in Early, Texas, murdered two neighbors and ambushed the first responding police officer. Early Police Sergeant Steven Means was pinned down behind his patrol cruiser while the killer hid behind a tree and hammered the car with an assault rifle. Because the gunman had high cover behind the trunk and was spraying semi-automatic rifle fire straight into the cruiser, Sergeant Means had zero angle to flank him without being killed. Watching from his trailer doorway one hundred and fifty feet away, sixty-six-year-old neighbor Vic Stacy saw the young officer running out of time. "He's fixin' to kill that boy," Stacy said to himself. Hitting a partially hidden rifleman at fifty yards with a short-barreled revolver is a shot even police marksmen consider nearly impossible under fire. Stacy stepped into his doorway, braced his .357 Magnum revolver with both hands, and squeezed the trigger. He struck the gunman in the thigh from one hundred and fifty feet away, knocking the killer off balance and drawing his fire just long enough for Sergeant Means to land the fatal rifle shots and survive. In Texas, a good neighbor does not film a pinned policeman with his phone. He steadies his hands.