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This is an excellent question that people really need to know more about.When we solve a problem, after a while, we tend to forget what solved the problem and go back to what we used to do that caused the thing to go over the cliff in the first place.That was the 2008 mortgage and financial crisis, as it forgot the lessons of the Great Depression.History up to the Great DepressionIn the 1920’s, when the economy was booming and it seemed like the party would never stop, banks lent out a ton of money on credit, with the presumption that all that money would be paid back and that there was sufficient collateral to cover it.Except, there wasn’t.One of the biggest assets that people might own that a bank could recover is real property. As Will Rogers once noted: “Buy land. They ain’t makin’ any more of the stuff.” Real property was something that pretty much always appreciated in value.Prior to the early 1900’s, most people didn’t own their own homes. Most people rented. Many lived in tenements and apartments in cities, or lived as tenants on farms in rural areas. Land speculators often bought what was left of the government land grants as the frontier closed.But, in the 1920’s, that began to change as banks felt more confident in lending credit for new construction. There were significant speculation bubbles. People bought property and built homes on future credit that wasn’t based on anything but hope.And as the stock market ticked ever higher and higher, banks bet on it. With the deposit money of their customers.And then the Stock Market Crash of 1929 hit.Banks that were significantly overleveraged and undercapitalized were hit hard. Many just failed, and those who had their deposits at banks that became insolvent just lost everything. There was no deposit insurance. If your bank went under, you were screwed out of your entire savings.And if you lost your job, that meant you also lost any means of continuing to pay back that home loan.Additionally, there were suddenly vast quantities of new construction for sale… that nobody could afford any longer. That drove down property values everywhere.Suddenly, your property that was worth $10,000 last year might now only be worth $5,000. But you might still owe $8,000 - what we call “underwater.” If you default or declare bankruptcy, the bank loses. And you’re out on the street.And then, what could the bank do with the house? How could they sell it? Nobody was buying. So, the bank suddenly has a ton of illiquid assets.More foreclosures in a neighborhood continues to lower the property values further, and the destructive cycle just ends up repeating itself.The Hoover administration tried economic protectionism. At the administration’s pushing, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, which imposed schedules of high tariffs on over twenty thousand types of imported goods, to protect American business, by golly.It backfired spectacularly and greatly exacerbated the worsening Depression.Weather conditions didn’t help. A severe drought ravaged the Midwest and Great Plains starting in 1930. Farmers had been using what in retrospect were poor farming practices, tearing down line fences and forest windbreaks and not planting cover crops for winters. The thin layer of good topsoil in the Great Plains turned to dust and became an ecological nightmare.Farms started going under as crops failed. The Smoot-Hawley tariffs only made things worse.Additionally, the money supply dried up. The banks that survived, like J.P. Morgan Chase, just turned off the credit spigot to stay afloat. They stopped lending. Why? Again: illiquid assets. The banks were holding on to all these properties and other assets that they couldn’t sell. And people didn’t trust the banks because so many had lost everything depositing their savings there. Because the banks couldn’t sell anything they had, and nobody would give them any cash, they didn’t have any money to give out.Part of the problem was the gold standard. Under the Federal Reserve Act, at least 40% of the money in circulation had to be backed by gold reserves held by the federal government. So, there was no modern tool of being able to print more money to help increase liquidity.On top of that, gold became more expensive. Mortgages often had clauses that allowed banks to demand repayment in gold because of the gold standard. By 1932, that resulted in a disparity in payment between the dollar and the value of gold that meant that if a debtor was forced to repay in gold, it could cost him as much as $1.69 for every dollar he owed. This led to more bankruptcies and foreclosures still.Because of the tariffs, the lack of money supply, the collapse of agriculture, and lack of consumer spending, rampant deflation initially set in. This made exported American goods increasingly more expensive for overseas importers, even where other nations had not instituted retaliatory tariffs of their own. Manufacturing began to collapse. The steel industry followed.And the Depression spiraled out of control.When Roosevelt took over from Hoover in 1932, the nation was becoming increasingly desperate.The New DealRoosevelt ran on a radical new idea that he called “The New Deal.” The premise was that the government would intervene in the economy and prop it up through deficit spending and government borrowing. The New Deal would create government programs to put people back to work and get people back to farming and building things, and that eventually, once people got back on their feet, the government could take those supports out.Various New Deal reforms were leveled at the financial sector to try to get the credit flowing again.One reform was put on the banks directly: the Glass-Steagall Act. One of the problems with the banking crisis was that banks could gamble with depositor’s money. The Glass-Steagall Act separated investment banks from commercial banks. Investment banks are gamblers. These deal with stock and bonds and venture capital and hedge funds and Wall Street. Commercial banks are the Savings and Loan where you put your nest egg. The Glass Steagall Act put a firewall between the two. The idea was that Wall Street could melt to the ground and Main Street wouldn’t go with it.Keep this in mind. It will be important later.Another was to protect depositors. Commercial banks would be required to pay into a new Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation: the FDIC, which would make sure that depositors would get paid back if the bank collapsed. That encouraged people to trust banks again. People would deposit their money, and banks could use that money to start giving out loans again.A third was to help reduce the risk of default on certain types of loans through surety agreements. Sureties had been around forever: they’re a promise to pay a debt if the original debtor defaults.The Federal government aimed these programs at home loans in particular, to try to reduce the homelessness problem. And so, in 1938 with the National Housing Act, the government formed the Federal National Mortgage Association, or FNMA. FNMA, or “Fannie Mae,” would buy the mortgages from the banks, who would continue to “service” the mortgages. From the perspective of the consumer, it looked just like their ordinary transaction: get a loan from the bank, pay the bank. The bank kept some money for “service fees,” and the Feds took over the loan, and importantly: the risk of default. This created a secondary market for mortgages for the first time in history.But Fannie would only buy that mortgage if it met certain criteria, such as debt to income ratios, term of the loan, and more. If banks wanted to make other loans, that was fine, but Fannie wouldn’t buy them.And the program basically worked. Banks started lending again. Credit slowly started to thaw out. Banks started getting more liquidity in their balance sheets. People started being able to buy homes again.After World War II, the housing market took off again, fueled in part by the GI Bill and a push for suburbanization and the creation of easily duplicated, cheap ranch houses on a standardized template.But in the background still driving things along was always Fannie Mae and the prime 30 year fixed-rate mortgage, which had become as much a part of the standardized American experience as baseball. Housing prices rose steadily home ownership became a stable part of the American economy. Virtually every person in the country could see a viable path to owning their own home.By the 1960’s, FNMA owned more than 90% of the residential mortgages in the United States and individual home ownership had risen to the highest levels ever recorded. This led to the greatest expansion of the middle class in history.So, of course, like all wildly successful government programs, we had to fix it.PrivatizationIn 1954, FNMA was semi-privatized into a public-private hybrid where the government owned the preferred stock (with better voting rights within the corporation,) and the public held the common stock (which gave dividends, but inferior voting rights).And in 1968, Fannie Mae was privatized entirely, with a small slice of it (known as Ginnie Mae) carved off to maintain Federal Housing Authority loans, Veterans Administration loans, and Farmer’s Home Administration mortgage insurance. Because Fannie Mae had a near monopoly on the secondary mortgage market, the government created the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation to compete with it: Freddie Mac.By 1981, Fannie and Freddie were doing well as private companies, and Fannie came up with a great idea that had been done in limited settings: pass-through mortgage derivatives. They would bundle up various mortgages and sell them as a type of bond to investors. Investors loved the idea. The housing market had been extremely stable for nearly fifty years and offered a modest, but highly reliable return. And so the commercial home loan mortgage backed security was born.Keep this in mind. It will be important later.The Savings and Loan CrisisBy the early 1980’s, the economy had been stable for 30 years (more or less,) and thanks to the Glass-Steagall Act, commercial banks were doing okay even with the “stagflation” of the 1970’s. Home prices continued to rise about on par with wage growth.But one type of commercial banks, the Savings and Loan banks, wanted to do better than okay. S&L’s were the kind of bank in It’s a Wonderful Life. S&L’s were specifically singled out in federal legislation, like credit unions, for a single purpose: to promote and facilitate home ownership, small businesses, car loans, that sort of stuff.A business-friendly Congress agreed. They passed two laws in 1980 (signed by Jimmy Carter) and 1982 (Signed by Ronald Reagan) that allowed banks to offer a variety of new savings and lending options, including the Adjustable Rate Mortgage, and dramatically reduced the oversight of these banks.Adjustable rate mortgages work by locking in a fixed rate for a short term, and then after that initial term, the mortgage rate would re-adjust every additional term after that. If the prime interest rates set by the Federal Reserve stayed high, lenders would get hammered.But S&L’s had a fix in mind for consumers: just keep refinancing your home every time the first term is up. Home prices would just always continue to rise, right? They could collect closing costs every couple of years, and consumers remained essentially chained to them in debt with a steady stream of revenue that would always be secured if something happened. It was perfect.Keep these types of mortgages in mind. It will be important later.By the mid-1980’s, the lack of oversight allowed S&L’s to start making riskier and riskier decisions, offering certificates of deposit with wild interest rates, as much as eight to ten percent. They were exempted from FDIC oversight, while still keeping deposits federally insured (what could go wrong there, right?)And then the Federal Reserve, in an effort to reduce inflation, raised short-term interest rates, which sent ripple effects through these S&L’s, who had been made very vulnerable to that particular issue through these bad decisions, lack of appropriate capitalization, and overpromising depositors.By 1992, almost a third of savings and loan banks nationwide had collapsed.This crisis led to the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), which put back some of the same oversights that had been taken off because people wanted to make more money, particularly better capitalization rules (which were tied to risk,) increased deposit insurance premiums and brought back some FDIC oversight, and reduced these banks’ portfolio caps in non-residential mortgages.Keep this in mind. It will be important later.The Repeal of Glass-SteagallRemember how back in the 30’s, in the midst of the Great Depression, we instituted that firewall between investment banks and commercial banks?Again, it worked so well, we had to fix it.Starting in the 1960’s, the federal regulators began to start to allow commercial banks to get back into the securities game again. The list was limited, and was supposed to stay in relatively safe stuff.This accelerated under Reagan’s policy of deregulation, and continued under Clinton in the 1990’s. By 1999, Bill Clinton declared that Glass-Steagall no longer served any meaningful purpose, and most people had declared it dead well before that. The law was officially repealed in 1999 with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.Immediately, investment and commercial banks start merging again. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Citibank, all of these investment banks start buying out the commercial banks or merging.And there’s a culture difference between those.Remember: investment banks are gamblers. These are the Wall Street guys. They’re risk takers. They’re hedge fund managers. These are your Gordon Gekko type guys. Commercial banks are Main Street guys. They’re generally conservative, George Bailey types.And the investment banker culture won out over the course of the 2000’s. George Bailey starts snorting coke and putting on Ray Bans with a blazer and jeans.Sub-Prime, NINJA, and ARM LoansIn the early 1990’s, affordable housing started to become a greater and greater issue. George H.W. Bush signed legislation in late 1992 amending Fannie and Freddie’s charters to push them to make loans to people with lesser means than the traditional prime criteria. The Clinton Administration continued pushing Fannie and Freddie to accept more low and moderate income earners.That meant taking on riskier loans.The Clinton administration put rules in place in 2000 to curb predatory lending practices, and rules that disallowed those risky loans from counting towards their low-income targets.The Bush administration took those predatory lending rules off in 2004, and allowed those risky, “sub-prime” mortgages to count towards the low-income targets set by Housing and Urban Development.Remember those ARM mortgages?Heh, heh. This is getting long, and you probably glossed over that, didn’t you? I told you it was going to be important.Banks started making riskier and riskier loans, often those ARM loans. They could meet their HUD targets and make tons of money. And again: the gravy train was endless, right? The housing market had not lost value for over fifty years, even in the recessions of the 70’s and 80’s.So, they put more people in houses. Bigger houses. More expensive houses. The economy was doing good. New construction was hot. Contractors couldn’t build the McMansions fast enough.Banks started a race to the bottom with these sub-prime loans, getting all the way to NINJA loans: No Income, No Job, No Assets required. You’re a homeless person selling Etsy products out of your car? You’re already prequalified on a quarter-million subdivision home with a quarter-acre. Congratulations.As long as you could afford the payments, you were in.De-regulationIn the early 2000’s, the Bush administration wanted to keep the economy going. There was a low-level recession from March 2001 to November 2001 following the dot-com crash. The administration lifted a number of securities and financial sector oversight rules. One of those rules was about capitalization.Remember that? I told you that was going to be important.Capitalization requirements are how much reserve cash a bank needs to keep on hand to prevent collapse if something happens, against their liability sheets. Remember: that’s how banks got in trouble before the Great Depression and again right before the Savings and Loan Crisis. They took on too many liabilities and didn’t have enough capital to actually pay it all out.The Bush administration relaxed the rules on required capitalization and what assets could count as capital. Some of those assets turned out not to be very useful.Collateralized Debt Obligations and the Mortgage Backed SecurityRemember, back in 1981, when Fannie starts issuing those mortgage backed securities, re-selling them as bonds with a low, but reliable interest rate?That gets more complicated after 2004–2005 with the increased use of a financial tool called the collateralized debt obligation. Basically, a CDO is just a promise to pay investors in a sequence based on the cash flow from something the CDO invests in. The rate of return was tied to how risky the CDO was.In the 70’s and 80’s, CDOs were pretty safe, mundane things. They were basically like index funds; they invested in a lot of stuff and did okay. But by the mid-2000’s, CDOs were becoming riskier and riskier, while providing more and more reward. CDOs bought up mortgages like crazy, because they had increasingly higher interest rates as the subprime mortgages started taking off.But people were nervous about investing solely in these high-risk CDOs. And so, investment banks that bought up those mortgage-backed securities started to bundle together some high-risk mortgages with some regular, low-risk mortgages and promising that they were safer.And then some investment banks started to lie about how many of those high-risk mortgages were in them. Why? Again: the housing market was super-stable and always going up. Those loans only looked high-risk on paper, right? I mean, those debtors could always just keep refinancing every couple of years.So banks bought up those assets and added them to their capitalization sheets.You see it, right? You see the problem here? Not yet?Keep this in mind. It will be important in just a minute.The CollapseI remember being in college in the early 2000’s, and asking the loan officer at our local bank how some of the people I knew were making maybe $10–12 an hour could afford these massive homes and boats and jet skis and campers. My parents were teachers; they weren’t doing bad, but we couldn’t afford all that and I knew they were doing better than some of those people. The loan officer shook his head and said, “They can’t. They can afford the payments.”Some of those people didn’t have furniture in their homes. If they had a party, they rented furniture for a couple days. I’m serious. That was a thing. Many of them were in deep, crippling credit card debt, paying off the balances of one with another, and justifying it with the idea that it would be okay when the next raise kicked in.It was a classic speculation bubble.Then in late 2006–2007, that bubble burst.The housing market became oversupplied. People stopped buying the new construction and the existing homes as much. And home values started to drop.And suddenly, because home values plateaued and then dropped, so too did the little bit of equity that many of these purchasers, in debt up to their eyeballs, had in their homes. Without more equity, they couldn’t refinance. And because they could’t refinance, those ARM loans or other loans kicked in, and the interest rates on them skyrocketed.And suddenly, they couldn’t make the payments anymore.And then they went into default on their mortgages.Followed by foreclosure.And often bankruptcy.It turned into a vicious cycle. Once one or two neighbors end up losing their homes in foreclosure, it affects the property values of everyone else around those properties like a contagion. Healthier borrowers started to become impacted as property values declined and now they couldn’t refinance.In 2007, lenders foreclosed on 79% more homes than in 2006: 1.3 million foreclosures. In 2008, this skyrocketed another 81% still: 2.3 million. By August of 2008, nearly one in ten mortgages nationally were in default and foreclosure proceedings. By one year later, this had risen to over 14% nationally.The RecessionRemember, the financial sector had heavily invested in all of those housing market securities. They thought they were safe. They thought that the housing market would never go anywhere but up. They built their whole foundation on it.And they had relied on those securities to meet their capitalization requirements.Securities that suddenly turned out to be nearly worthless.Huge banks ran out of liquid cash almost immediately. This is what happened to Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and more. They were suddenly holding on to billions upon billions of dollars of assets that were either worthless, or completely frozen. They couldn’t sell the bits of stuff that was even worth anything.And because their assets weren’t liquid, they didn’t have money to lend anymore.And that lack of credit is what grinds the economy to a halt.That impacted every sector of business in the United States. Which impacted every sector of business in the world. And that meant that businesses started having to lay people off because they couldn’t get the money to keep paying them.And then because those people lost their jobs, they started to default on their mortgages. Which rippled through the CDO market again.This was why it was so critical for the Federal Reserve to buy those toxic assets and provide the banks with liquid cash in their place. They had to get the credit flowing again to re-start the gears of the economy. Without it, we almost certainly would have seen a full repeat of the Great Depression.And that brings us to today.That’s the abbreviated, oversimplified explanation. It’s more complicated than this, and there’s other factors that contributed, but that’s kind of the main story in basic terms. That’s roughly how 10 million homes went into foreclosure.And we still haven’t fully recovered. Over twice as many people rent as opposed to own. Less than one-third of people who have lost a home in foreclosure in the last decade will be able to repurchase another again. Roughly 2/3ds of those people who lost their homes have so damaged their credit that they will never qualify again. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions more, were so emotionally traumatized by the experience that they simply refuse to go through it again.And that number of renters to owners is substantially higher for my generation, the Millenials, who have never seen any substantial portion of the post-2008 recovery. We still haven’t made up the wages that would allow us to save enough to purchase, even setting aside the massive increase in student debt we carry.75% of my generation wants to own a home. Less than 35% do.And, in case reading this wasn’t chilling enough for you, the present administration has been lifting some of the exact rules and regulations that were put into place after the 2008 collapse that were lifted in 2004 that were put in place after the 1980’s collapse after those were lifted. Because it worked so well the first two times.Mostly Standard Addendum and Disclaimer: read this before you comment.I welcome rational, reasoned debate on the merits with reliable, credible sources.But coming on here and calling me names, pissing and moaning about how biased I am, et cetera and BNBR violation and so forth, will result in a swift one-way frogmarch out the airlock. Doing the same to others will result in the same treatment.Essentially, act like an adult and don’t be a dick about it.Look, this is pretty oversimplified. Ph.D. theses have been written about this. I’m trying to make it at least remotely accessible to those with the patience to read it. Don’t be pedantic about it, please?Getting cute with me about my commenting rules and how my answer doesn’t follow my rules and blah, blah, whine, blah is getting old. Stay on topic or you’ll get to watch the debate from the outside.Same with whining about these rules and something something free speech and censorship.If you want to argue and you’re not sure how to not be a dick about it, just post a picture of a cute baby animal instead, all right? Your displeasure and disagreement will be duly noted. Pinkie swear.If you have to consider whether or not you’re over the line, the answer is most likely yes. I’ll just delete your comment and probably block you, and frankly, I won’t lose a minute of sleep over it.Debate responsibly.

Our mainstream media, discarding any semblance of impartiality since Trump won the 2016 election, and the Democratic Party have certainly tried to place the blame of this lunatic pipe bomber on Trump.But let's not forget that when the Republican baseball field shooter was identified as a Bernie Sanders supporter, no one (Republican or mainstream media) even remotely blamed this on Sanders. Alleged gunman James Hodgkinson volunteered on Bernie Sanders' campaignTake a closer look at this bomber guy.As Ben Shapiro pointed out on his radio show, if you have a single political bumper sticker on your car, you support a political candidate. If you have two, you probably support a political party.But when you have a huge number of stickers covering your car, you’ve fallen off the cliff of normal and are essentially announcing that you’re crazy.We should all be worried about the political climate right now. It does inspire more fringe people to act in crazy ways. But there is a difference between inspiration and incitement. And it’s also important to recognize that one of the ways you can heat up a political climate is by blaming one side alone for that political climate.Let’s take at face value the Left’s argument that Crazy Guy was inspired by Trump’s hatred for the media, and his constantly overheated rhetoric. Based on the evidence, it’s also true that Crazy Guy was inspired by the media’s hatred for Trump, and their constantly overheated rhetoric. Just because Crazy Guy was crazy doesn’t mean the media have acted responsibly for the past several years, just as Crazy Guy’s craziness doesn’t mean Trump has. It turns out that it’s bad when President Trump targets and lies, and it is also bad when Leftists target and lie.Reactionary idiocy on all sides is more likely to heat up the climate, cudgeling people into either evidence-free "FALSE FLAG!" insanity or evidence-free "TRUMP IS HITLER!" insanity. If you wish to reduce the temperature of our political climate, everybody has to stop blowing hot air.4 Thoughts On The Attempted Mail Bomber, And Why Everything Is Garbage Right NowIn 2002, this guy threatened to bomb his power company because he felt his electric bill was too high as part of his rather long rap sheet. Cesar Sayoc was a stripper, a club manager, a dry cleaner and, cops say, a mail bomberJohn Stewart said something very appropriate about not pushing political speech too far:There's a difference between disagreeing with people, like newscasters on Fox News that I think are incorrect in their analysis of the days events, and people that threaten to kill you for putting a cartoon image of Mohammad in a bear suit [which is what "South Park" did]. And that's a line that we too often forget.And it's very easy to dehumanize -- and I will say in this room, I would imagine [Glenn] Beck and [Sarah] Palin are easier punching bags -- and we think of it as, 'Oh, my God, I'm so scared if they take over.' . . . And you know what, we will be fine. . . . I think we always have to remember that people can be opponents, but not enemies. And there are enemies in the world.We just need the news media to help us delineate. And I think that's where the failing is, that the culture of corruption in the media doesn't allow us to delineate between enemies and opponents.What was all this about? John Stewart was commenting to something Obama said to Hispanics on the campaign trail in 2010, when his poll numbers cratered just before the midterm “shellacking”:If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s gonna be harder and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.Obama to Latinos: "Punish" Your "Enemies" in the Voting BoothWaters scares Democrats with call for all-out war on TrumpEric Holder: When Republicans go low, 'we kick them'Where were the mainstream media and Democratic Party members asking for less divisive rhetoric when ricin, a poison without antidote was sent to Trump, Secretary of Defense Mattis, the Joint Chief of Staff Richardson, and Director of the CIA Haspel. Ricin Suspected in Mail Sent to Trump and Pentagon OfficialsThis happened earlier in October. Didn’t hear about it? Did anyone blame Democratic Party rhetoric?There was no hand wringing when the target was Trump and members of his administration. There was no wall-to-wall coverage by the mainstream press. Democratic leaders did not ask people to calm down.

I used to be extremely anti-gun. Guns scared the living crap out of me, and I always thought the logic was sound: if there were no guns, then no one could get hurt by guns. Foolproof, right?I had usually lived in relatively safe places (not always, but there was always someone of authority that I could turn to for help). It wasn't as if there were any real dire circumstances that I needed to account for.When I went to grad school, though, it was different.Vermilion, South Dakota, is a small town. It's where the University of South Dakota is, which is its primary economic contributor. As most graduate students can be, I was poor. I made $400/month with $240/mo rent, and my graduate assistantship stipulated that I wasn't able to take on any additional work (or else lose not just the stipend, but also my tuition and fees waivers).With only $160/mo to live on, which included utilities, food, and any 'luxuries,’ I couldn't even afford a bed. The landlord loaned me a couch, from which I took the pillows and put the fitted sheet on in order to make a 'mattress'. Everything I had was scrounged. I had two bowls, two plates, a coffee mug, two glasses, and two kitchen knives to cook with. My sole possession was my computer, which I needed for my grad studies.There is not much to do in South Dakota, especially at night - but drink. In a quarter-mile stretch on the Main Street, there were no fewer than 10 bars. My apartment was on the second floor on that Main Street, accessible by a non-descript door between two shops.It was not uncommon for drunks to wander up the stairs, realize there was no place to go, and then go away. They were loud, obnoxious, but harmless.Until one night.Three huge guys lumbered up the steps, loud, drunk and obnoxious like all the others. But this time, when they found out they couldn't go any further, they got angry. Extremely angry. They started banging on my door. Then they started charging the door. The door creaked, but held (1920s solid wood).I called the police. Told them there were three guys trying to break down my door. I had to whisper so as not to be heard. The dispatcher said that the police would be there shortly. Considering that I lived less than a mile from the police station, I expected them to be there at any moment.So I waited.The guys stopped trying to break down the door, and started banging on the walls. Then I heard something that chilled me to the bone."We know you're in there!" One of them shouted."You can't hide, mutherfucker!" Another one chimed in.I tiptoed into the kitchen and grabbed the only weapon I had - the long (10″) kitchen knife. I tried to stay quiet, in case they were bluffing, but the floor creaked."I knew it!" One of them shouted. "I can hear 'em in there!""Open up, asshole!" One of them shouted.Again the banging on the door. The door had two deadbolts (now I understood why), and they had both been set.I clutched the knife and held it in front of me, trying to figure out my options. The apartment was 'L' shaped, with no closets, no places to hide. I had no furniture, and they would be able to see me as soon as they stepped in the doors. There were lines of sight everywhere."Don't worry," one of them said in a sing-song. "We're not going to hurt you!" They all broke out in laughter.I looked to see what other kind of weapon I had. I knew they were going to take the computer, but only after they beat me to a pulp. Or worse.I became angry. Where were the cops? I had called them ages ago! I could see the bank clock across the street. It had been almost ten minutes.Another loud bang against the door. "Ow, mutherFUCKER!" Someone shouted. Apparently he had tried to break the door in with his shoulder.Should I threaten them? Should I say anything to let them know that the cops were coming? Would that even work?"Go away!" I shouted. "I've called the cops, and they're on their way.""Too late for you, asshole!" One of them shouted back, and the banging began anew with increased frequency - exactly what I was afraid of.Come on, come on… I was nearing panic. I went back to the phone again and called 911."Please state your emergency.""I just called about three guys trying to break into my apartment. Do you know when the cops will be here?""Sir, they are on their way and getting there as fast as they can."Bang!"Did you hear that? They're trying to break down the door!"Bang!"Yes sir, I can hear that. Can you get to a safe place?"I looked around the room, as if there was something in the big empty apartment that I had possibly overlooked."No," I said. "I'm trapped.""Okay, I will try and get an ETA from the officer on his way," she said. "Stay on the line, okay?""Okay," I said, and held the knife in one hand, and the phone in the other like a talisman.I looked out at the bank sign again. Five more minutes had passed.Bang!Please… Please…I heard something on the other end of the line, but it was drowned out by the shouting of the men outside my door and the repeated percussive sounds of them slamming against the door. They just would not give up.The dispatcher came back on the line. "Sir, are you still there?""Yes," I said. Here I was, 21 years old, a grown man, and fighting back tears. I did not know if there was another time in my life when I had felt so scared."The officer is trying to get there as fast as he can. He says he's about 5 to 7 minutes away."My heart sank. I wasn't going to make it that long."On three. Ready" I heard outside the door."One, two, THREE!" I heard them running across the short hallway towards the door. For the first time that night, I had a bit of luck. Too drunk to be coordinated, one of them stumbled and tripped, bringing all three of them down. They still hit the door, but one of them hit it with his head. Score 2 for the heavy 1920s solid wood door.Unfortunately, it didn't knock them out, but rather just made them mad."This is your fault!" One of them shrieked at me. "You're DEAD!"Once again they started banging on the door, trying to get me to open up.My heart was beating so fast I thought that it would break my ribs. All I could do was look out the window at the bank across the street, and wait.Then, at long last, I saw a cop car pull up leisurely into the bank parking lot."You're DEAD!" The man shouted again, and this time all three of them bum-rushed the door. A sickening, loud CRACK resonated throughout the empty apartment. The door had had enough. I turned back to see the cop getting out of his car, in no hurry whatsoever.Now I was angry.I called 911."911. Please state -""THEY'RE BREAKING DOWN THE DOOR!""One moment, sir…"The police officer was taking his time, walking across the street as if he were going for coffee and donuts. I saw his head tilt to the side to his walkie-talkie receiver, and then break into a run.Another loud crash, and the top half of the front door caved. I was glad that I had moved from my original spot, because I would have been hit by the debris."Wakie, wakie!" One of them taunted.Then…"Freeze! On the ground!"I looked at the bank clock. It had been a full 20 minutes from the time I made the first 911 call.I half-expected these three guys to rush the cop, at which point it would have been all over for both of us. When I saw them, they were all over 6'5", massive men. To this day I still have no idea how the door (or the door hinges) held.I looked down at my paltry kitchen knife. If I had been lucky, perhaps I could have hurt one of them, maybe even stopped him, but there was no way I could have defended myself against all three attackers.I don't know what took the cop so long. Maybe he was on another call. Maybe he was chatting up the receptionist. All I know is that it took him 20 minutes to arrive and even when he did, it wasn't his highest priority. If he had been even one minute later, I would not be here to type this story out to you.The three guys were not armed, but each one outweighed me by over 100 pounds, and they would not have needed a gun to beat me to death with their fists and kicks. There is no other means by which a single, smaller person can defend their life against superior numbers and assailants in such close quarters, unfortunately, without a firearm. No pepper spray, no knife, no baseball bat (no way to swing it in such a confined space). Just not possible.I learned several things that night.One, the police are not going to save you from attackers. They are going to clean up the mess. I was simply lucky this one particular cop wasn't 30 seconds too late.Two, no one cares for your life more than you do. That's why you have the right to defend yourself.Three, never underestimate the effectiveness of a good door.Four, when it comes to protecting yourself and your loved ones, there is no such thing as "too much." You can never protect yourself "too much." There is no obligation on your part to make it any easier for someone else to hurt you.I reject anyone's position that states otherwise.Edit:I never expected that this answer would take off like it would. Apparently it resonates with a lot of people on both sides of the debate.However, I’m actually stunned at how many people have commented on how lucky I was that they didn’t have guns. How? How is that any better or worse than the outcome that would have happened? How is it somehow morally superior to be killed by something other than a gun? Whether you’re dead by three guys with guns or three guys who beat and kick you to death, the end result is the same. In fact, it could be argued that a quick death is preferable to a mauling.I’ll reiterate: the point here is that they didn’t need guns to kill. I, on the other hand, was completely without means to equalize the situation. Gun control would have hurt me, not them.Nevertheless, I appreciate all the people who have read, commented, and considered this anecdote as part of the debate.[Update 2019.10.02]This answer seems to have been getting a lot of attention recently. I’m grateful for those who continue to share it. I’m still stunned that there are those who will write in the comments that the three thugs who were trying to break down my door would be considered “victims” if they had actually been shot while trying to do so.Then this news article came across my desk today:https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article235670382.htmlThe intruder didn’t have a gun. He had a knife. He murdered the 15-year-old boy who is thought to have been protecting his younger sister. The intruder had broken into several homes that night before breaking into this one.To the people who would accuse me of using “unnecessary force” - had the opportunity had been there to protect myself with a firearm - the assumption that everything would have turned out “just fine” is simply inaccurate and inappropriate.