If you haven’t listened to Sturgill Simpson on Joe Rogan’s podcast, you need to pause whatever you’re listening to and get on that.
He’s been on the show a handful of times, but the more recent episode from back in 2019 was a special one.
In addition to talking about his record, announcing his tour with Tyler Childers, and discussing his partnership with the Special Forces Foundation, Sturgill treated Joe’s listeners to a couple crazy stories, none crazier than the one about a guy that broke into Sturgill’s home TWICE in less than 36 hours and how Sturgill chose NOT to blow the guy’s head off when he had the opportunity.
He begins with the comforting realization that he’s not a psychopath, but long story short, a guy broke into Sturgill’s home in the middle of the night, was spooked by Sturgill’s “huge fucking dog” and ultimately ran away.
However, when the the same exact guy returned the a day later, this time in the morning, the story got even crazier.
“The next morning, it’s like 7:15 AM. The sun is shining, neighbors going to work and I hear the back door open again. I was like ‘what the fuck? The maid? Who would be here that early?’
I guess out of paranoia or whatever reason I grabbed the gun and just went to the top of the stairs to look. I still think it’s the maid and when I hit the top of stairs and looked down the staircase, it’s the same guy, same clothes just standing in my living room, rolling the cord up on my headphones.
So I started down the stairs on him very quietly and I got about halfway down by the time he turned and saw me. I was looking at his fucking head through a red dot like a video game. I’ll never forget that image of this guy, like probably thinking he’s about to die. The only thing I said to him was ‘what are we doing here man?’
I mean shit… can you picture that? Holding a man’s life in the palm of your hand. I can’t even imagine…
“And, I hit him with a strobe, which kind of like probably to his brain was he thought was the gun going off because he kind of seizured and then I saw the adrenaline spike.
He turned, went out the back door, and jumped clean off my fucking porch, never hit a single step, and ran at the back gate, he had latched it… so he hit that back gate on a dead run and just like blew it the hell, latches and wood splinters flying and then took off down the alley.”
So why didn’t he shoot him?
Here’s why:
“The next thing is there’s like 8 police officers in my living room, and all they wanted to see is my gun, and every single one of me asked why I didn’t shoot the guy, which I found very interesting.
I thought about it, and my wife and kids are not here, this guy doesn’t even know I’m here yet, I’m holding a fucking assault rifle and he is not a threat to me.
But if I put one through his dome, which I every legal right to do right now, there’s gonna be news vans on my lawn, this is going to be on your fucking Wikipedia page, all of that… but this guy’s is not a threat, and thankfully he chose to go out the door.
So when I said that, they just looked at me, and I said ‘he ran out the door in two seconds, what am I going to shoot him in the back and you put me in prison?’ They said ‘fuck man, twice in a week? You would’ve been fine, we’d figure something out.’”
INSANE.
Sturgill went on to explain how this kid wasn’t a junkie, he was just a young punk on hard times, he was desperate, and that he robbed a number of houses in the area.
But still, one of the more compelling parts of this entire story was Sturgill’s empathy and compassion for this kid’s life.
We need more people who think like that these days.