A few hours ago, my mom called and asked me if i could come by and see why her quad wouldn’t start. Absolutely…it mothers day for goodness sake. Gatherd up some tools, and headed over. She lives a little bit out of town, has neighbors we’ve known for many years and the properties are spaced out a little. Getting my tools out of the truck and decided to remove my concealed weapon and place it in the center console, locked the truck, and carried the tools to the quad. I mean, who wants to roll around on the ground while wrenching with a pistol jabbing your side, right? My moms 20 yds away pulling weeds and I’m acting like i know how to fix a quad when i heard a faint voice talking just on the other side of the driveway. No one has ever come down the hillside on that side of her property before. Didnt have an aggressive tone, but i couldnt make out what he was trying to say to my mom. So i immediately began heading over, got close enough to hear him say, " What happened to the road hear that used to go to my property"?. And at that moment he came into view, an older man who happened to be carrying a large revolver on his hip. Instantly i assesed that my firearm is in my locked truck about 30 yds in the opposite direction. My mom usually carries concealed…but she is currently pulling weeds in sweat pants, who does that by the way? So her firearm is in the house. Him and i talked for about 20 min and he understood that the city had removed the road for drainage easement over ten years ago and cut off his access. He had not been to his property in over 15…he was never aggressive, just confused. But the whole time i was angry at my poor decision. Its worth saying…even if i was armed, the conversation would’ve gone exactly the same with the same outcome, but i also know that if it hadn’t, my poor decision could’ve cost the lives of me and my mom. And knowing i just did that angers me, cause i thought i knew better.
I’m glad it worked out well, @Gary-A. I’ve done something similar, but it was more that I had to in the wonderful state of IL.
My son was looking for a 1972 Datsun 240/280 or something along those lines to restore. He found one on Craigslist just over the IL border and asked me to go with him. I carried and sat in the car while he was meeting the guy. We were at said guys house and after assuming guy was home alone, I stored my gun and got out of the car.
Guy was not home alone and friend came out from behind the opposite side of car my son was looking at. The hood was up, so I hadn’t seen him come out of the house.
These were big guys and I backed off two steps to keep them both in my line of sight. The car was overpriced and needed too much work. My son seeing how I had moved, picked up on my discomfort and declined saying he really wanted some different version, but thanks for letting us look. We left without incident.
We decided he didn’t need to look at any more cars in IL. Ended up buying one in Madison. I carried when he looked at that one too.
I believe that most people who carry a concealed weapon could actually help protect the public more than not to protect the public.