I used to carry, and I stopped at least one robbery and defused two bad sitreps by* not *firing my gun.
I, too, have a license to carry a concealed handgun (or multiple handguns, as the Texas CHL does not limit you to one.) FYI, my everyday carry gun is a Walther P99 in .40 S&W. I have never had to draw or fire in any situation, nor have I had to use the “I am armed” statement. I know the odds are that I will never, ever need the weapon, and that it will likely be an extra few pounds on my belt for nothing. But, knowing it is there, and knowing that it gives me some measure of self-protection, is enough.
There are all kinds of stories, and in all likelihood, many more than a million defensive uses of a firearm in the U.S. per year. Offhand, I can think of a couple of local (that turned national) stories where a CHL saved a life or lives. The Tyler, TX courthouse shooting immediately jumps to mind–unfortunately the hero with a CHL ended up dying in the process, but he did save lives. Contrast that with the Luby’s shooting in Killeen, TX, before we instituted our carry law (and, in fact, prompted it.) IIRC, overall crime in Texas is down since '95, and while correlation does not imply causation, I do think the armed citizenry has a lot to do with that.
Why do I carry? I suppose the old cliche on the gun boards rings true: I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
Isn’t that the definition of “just in case”? If the need arose every day, the reason would be “because I’d be a fool not to.”
FWIW, I own but don’t carry.
I carry all time, usually open carry (OC).
Have never had to draw my weapon. Hope I’ll never have to.
I carry (concealed). I used to open carry in Arizona when I was in college. I have fired on an animal:
Was hiking up in Prescott Nat’l Forest one weekend, when I came around a gully “wall” and into a pack of 8 or 9 wild javelina (more like razorback sized). I startled them, they startled me, and one or two of the ‘alpha males’ started snorting and creeping towards me. Dumbass that I was, I ended up backed up to the “wall” with the pack in front of me. I had snakeshot loaded, so I drew and peppered the two leaders, who promptly fled along with the rest of the pack. I know–anticlimactic.
I continue to carry, primarily because I believe in strength in numbers. I know I’m a reasonable man, and that if the right (privilege, or guarantee, what have you) is not exercised, it will most likely be legislated out. While I pray and hope I’m never in a firefight situation, I still know that what I do can help the other reasonable guy or gal have the capacity/ability to defend themselves. So if that means exercising my rights, then so be it–I’ll carry so you at least have the option if you want to.
Tripler
I still carry when I go into the woods. A sidearm, and bear spray.
Never shot another human, hope never to do so.
Have shot literally hundreds of animals, the vast majority being gophers when I was a teenager living on a farm.
Own a CCW, never carry except on the job (I work armed security), and on rare occasions when I drive long distances for days at a time.
Have had a gun in my hand five times in my old house to stop someone from breaking in while I was there. Have had a gun in my hand once in an isolated wayside rest at 6am on a Sunday morning to stop myself from being mugged. Never fired it, never even pointed it at anyone.
Had a gun in my hand on at least three occasions while working armored, again never pointed it at anyone, mostly to let the bad guy know that I was prepared to shoot him when the mere presence of the gun didn’t deter him from making a move.
One of the things you can’t really provide statistics for is how many crimes the presence of a gun deters. They didn’t happen, most of them you never know about, so you can’t say “it detered N crimes”. But it happens all the time. The first day on my present job, three young males walked in the door, took one look at me, turned around and departed. Just yesterday, an older male walked in the door, paused upon seeing me, looked down at my gun and made an immediate exit. The same day, we had two young males in the store during closing. One of the clerks foolishly started counting out his till right in front of the two, one of whom wrapped a small towel around the knuckles of his left fist, sat there with two clenched fists and started to get ‘the look’. When I walked over and placed myself right behind the counter, the towel came off and his demeanor changed.
I know once as an Armed Courier, the gun didn’t deter the idiot, but the security camera in the county jail elevator did. (Yup, the guy was just being released from the county jail and was getting ready to jump me in the elevator when I pointed at the camera, smiled and asked how far he thought he’d get. What a dumbass!)
One of the things I found in working Armored was the extreme number of rounds of ammunition that the gung-ho types carried “just in case”. I only carried the rounds in my gun (15), and my partner only carried 12 for his revolver. When one of the wannabees started giving me shit, I walked over to a guy who was coming up on his 40th (!) anniversary with the company and asked (in front of all these idiots) when the last time was that someone fired their weapon in the line of duty. He allowed that someone had to shoot a dog about 8 years previously. When I asked when the last time was that someone shot another human, he couldn’t remember, and guessed that it may have happened in the 70’s.
There are criminal-minded subcultures that glorify violence and devalue human life in almost every human culture. These are the people who kill each other and unfortunate innocents. The paradox that is unseen by the people in these cultures is that they join their gangs* to belong and have a sense of family (in other words, to raise their self-worth), but the culture itself teaches that no life has any real value. In the end, you can’t value yourself if you’re taught that life is cheap.
- I’m not talking about American gangs, but every subculture like this, from the various mafia (Italian, Russian, Chinese) to the third world gangs and “rebels”, to entire political movements (See: Communism, Fascism).
Sure you can, if you’re taught that everyone else’s life is cheap, but yours and those of your fellow gang members is as valuable as gold. This kind of thinking inflates people’s egos to monstrous proportions. This is the same kind of gang culture that is obsessed with the idea of “respect” even though their concept of respect is basically motivated by fear and nothing else.
If I knew how to link directly to a single LiveJournal post, I’d like to the one that I just now completed, where I talk about the nature of Insanity.
So I’ll just quote two paragraphs, one of which I’ve discussed on this board at least once before;
"Insanity can also be a coping method for powerlessness. I said before that I believed that Insanity was the result of the difference between what we want the world to be, and what it really is; between who we really are and who we want to believe that we are. Between Subjective Reality and Objective Reality. Insanity is a coping method for the mind, to attempt to bridge the vast gulf that can separate those two things and force them to be the same. Of course, it doesn’t work, but we come to believe that they are, that we are correct, and it is everyone else who is in error. I can’t be wrong about so many things, it has to be them!
Insanity allows us to hide and conceal the truth from ourselves, by building false and faulty internal logical constructs to explain why we are correct and everyone else isn’t. It allows us to pursue our goals and desires, to gratify our needs free of guilt and consequences, by explaining away outside norms of behavior and general cause and effect as not being pertinent or applicable to our situation."
The paradox of Insanity here is that you build that construct that says that no one elses life has any value, but somehow yours does. You may buy it, but deep down, your brain doesn’t. It groks that there’s a separation of ideas at work.
Probably why so many of these people end up committing suicide.
What it appears to lead to is the idea that you demonstrate the value of your life by acting in ways that decrease your survivability and actually minimize the value of your life. “I’ll show the world I’m worth something” by acting in ways that get you killed or locked away. (Which incidentally, is the same kind of thinking in the heads of people like the Finnish kid who shot up his school, or the asshole who shoots up his workplace. It’s a desperate attempt to claim Power and prove self-worth based on a non-rational response to feelings of powerlessness.)