I've been thinking about this off and on.....(."on" being after yet another shooting..) In another life I was required to carry 24 hrs a day..except at home...Never really gave me much comfort and was truly a PITA..and if you needed to pull that rascal...you better have some tin flashed right along with it...The only time I really no kidding pulled it was at night ..of course....and had the hammer coming back ...and the front sight swimming between the eyes of...a good guy...The only other real close one ..I had a riot gun...and just the muzzle up against a noggin got the proper attention..dude spread eagled his own self with nary a twitch...never pumped a round in. The last time I "carried" was in the box and I never bothered to load that old .38 revolver for safety reasons...As kids...all of our dad's were WW-II vets....they maybe had a deer rifle or a shotgun or the ever cool Samurai sword..My old man was in heavy combat..the wife's great uncle started in Normandy to VE day....The last thing they wanted or needed was some battle rifle ....A 30-30 for deer and a 12 bore...possibly a souvenir pistol...Now what do we have...A 6 yo shooting a hole in his teacher....a platoon sized herd of well armed "rangers" who ..I dunno...lacked motivation to move on one bopper with an Armalite. I'm convinced that this whole gun nonsense is driven by television watched by impressionable viewers who are essentially clueless...I once reached into the pocket of an upstanding citizen and pulled out a snubby revolver...good thing I wasn't a mugger..Which leads me to a last point...An armed citizen introduces a deadly weapon into a situation that is many times weapon free. Exactly what happened to a compadre and his partner...Chasing an unarmed dirt bag with pistols drawn...dirt bag got ahold of one of the pistols..both fatalities...
