“I Leave It In The Car”

 

  We’ve probably all heard someone say this about carrying a gun. I’ve heard this countless times from folks that are gun owners and concealed carry permit holders. I think for the most part it is a holdover from the days when concealed carry permits were almost non-existent, or at best, extremely difficult to obtain and left to the politics of the local Sheriff. Though there are a few States that still don’t have a “shall issue” licensing system for concealed carry; most States do. The lone exception with no concealed carry allowed (something most of us agree is completely un-Constitutional) is Illinois, but we are making ground there. Hopefully within the next year we will see some form of concealed carry there as well.  Do you know someone that has a concealed carry permit but routinely says “I leave it in the car”? What is your response upon hearing a gun owner say this? I hear excuses all the time, ranging from “I’m just going in to the restaurant for lunch” to “It’s just not comfortable to carry all the time” and a wide array of similar statements. My response is that we, the law abiding citizens, are not the ones that decide when and where a bad guy decides to strike. That decision is the bad guy’s alone. They decide for us when and where they will attack. There were people that were “just going into the restaurant to eat lunch” at Luby’s in Killeen, TX and that McDonald’s in Southern California when the bad guy decided when and where he’d strike. Folks “just going to the movie” or folks going about their lives in a peaceful, productive manner when bad guys decide for us when and where they will attack.

 

                               “Who Could Possibly Hate Me?”

  Most of us feel this way. Sure, there may be people that don’t like us personally, but who would hate us enough to attack us. We are just going to work, paying our taxes and trying to get through life as peaceably as we can. Most of us don’t go out of our way to draw the ire of people; but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. We could be driving and accidently move into a lane without checking your blind spot and give an unstable person road rage. I was just reading an article about that in the Kingsport Times News last week (see link below). The “offended” road rage individual went into a rage trying to run a couple of folks off the road and trying to cause a wreck, all the while screaming obscenities  and waving a handgun at them. Then there was the horrible story of a Jewish student at Michigan State last month who was walking home, on campus, when he was approached by two guys who asked him if he was a Jew. Replying that he was, he was savagely beaten, knocked unconscious, suffered a broken jaw and had his mouth stapled shut (see link below). “Who could possibly hate me”? The sad answer is that there are plenty of people that will hate even the best among us. Hate doesn’t need to know you to hate you. In fact, it is easier for a person to hate us knowing very little about us. They will hate you for what you believe or don’t believe. They will hate us for our religion or lack of religion.  They will hate us for whatever our race may be. Bad guys can hate you for what you have and for what you don’t have in equal amounts. The bad guys decide when and where they will attack. My hope is that each of us carry guns daily, everywhere, live long and peaceful lives and never need to use a gun in defense of our life or the lives of innocent others. As they say in the Army though, “Hope is not a method”. Carry everywhere you are legally able to carry. All the time. Help others to overcome the 1970’s mindset of “I leave it in the car”. Bad guys decide when and where to attack. Do not let them decide when and where we carry. That is a decision that is ours to make. Record numbers of folks are getting concealed carry permits, especially women. Carry for life. Violence is the one thing that bad guys don't expect in return. They, like wolves, will go after those that they perceive as weak and vulnerable. Violent actions by bad people are routinely stopped by violent actions of good people who are prepared to realize what they are seeing and prepared to return in kind.

Hooah.

 

http://www.timesnews.net/article/9051874/kingsport-man-charged-in-road-rage-incident

http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/08/28/michigan-state-student-brutally-beaten-in-anti-semitic-attack/