Couple of incidents/ reasons to have a gun

[Timber Wolf]

What follows are just a couple of personal incidents that, although they eventually tuned out benign enough, highlight the need and “comfort” of having a gun available. We live on a cul-de-sac that is the first street off the highway and in fact are the only people living on the whole street. It is pretty quiet most of the time and is generally a really nice place to live.

Last fall I was in the backyard working on something while my wife and 5-year old daughter were out front with the garage door up. My wife was sitting in a chair doing some chore where she could watch our daughter ride her scooter on the driveway. A little rice burner of some fashion comes rolling down the street slowly, turns around in the cul-de-sac and comes back to stop in front of our driveway. The car had dark tinted windows so you could not see anything inside and nobody gets out, like they are sitting there sizing up the situation.

I came around the house to see the car (suspiciously) sitting there so I ease over to the F150 and retrieve my current “truck gun” (S&W 457 loaded with Hydrashocks) and tuck it into my waistband under my shirt. While I am busy arming myself my daughter starts to walk out toward the car to see what is going on! My wife and I both call for her to stop and come back and as she does a guy gets out of the drivers (opposite us) side and steps to the front of the car and states he is looking for work and wants to know about the house being built next door. I say it is mine and I don’t need any help right now. He says OK and gets back in the car and drives off.

Happy ending. So, he could have been legit and did not want to get out of the car with just a woman and child out front and when he saw me he was comfortable to get out and talk. Or, it could have been a car-load of trouble (who knows if anyone else was in the car) and he was covering himself by telling a story when he saw me. We will never know but my wife did admit she what I was doing and was glad I was armed. As I told her latter, you don’t get to pick when trouble might happen and better safe then sorry about having a gun.

Fast forward to last Saturday night. I always exersize my rights under my concealed carry permit and slip a heater in my pocket when going out on the road with the wife and kid. I have the 457 in my truck of course but when traveling in the mini-van I like to have a smaller piece on me in case we stop for gas, food, a rest stop, etc. So, I have my P32 with a spare mag in a pocket holster in my right front jeans pocket. We had gone about an hour west to drop off the kid at the grandparents for a couple of days and decided to stop for groceries on the way home.

We do so around 7:30 PM in a pretty deserted parking lot and a very few people in the store. When we parked my wife pulled through to point out and there was not another car anywhere close. When we come out there is a really beat Toyota Corolla sitting eight feet behind the wife’s van kind of half hanging out in the drive aisle. Two young immigrants (Mexicans) are circling the Toyota and checking it out. The car had dark tinted side windows and you could not see anything inside (just like the car in the story above). They move off toward their car as we approach and I tell my wife to unlock the van (remotely) and get in. While this is going on I loosen the P32 from the holster and get a grip on it in my pocket. As I go past the Toyota I can see nobody is inside but as I am loading the groceries a dude comes out of the store and opens the car to get some cigarettes. The Mexicans approach and from the discussion it turns out one of them once owned the car. Happy ending with no drama. I am still happy I had a gun with me.

So, two times fairly recently I was happy I was armed even though nothing took place. The incidents are still enough to drive home the fact that you may not get to pick if/when you need a gun so best to practice having one handy.