I carried a steel 1911 for a long time. Usually with a P32 for backup. At that time, I was in and out of a lot of sketchy industrial areas, usually surrounded by ghetto. Parking in sketchy truck stops, etc. At one point, I even swapped out my spare mags for a second Gov't Model, to even the load. Then I got a different job, which had me in New Jersey, NYC, and Quebec fairly often. It started to look like my bigger risk factor was getting busted with a gun, rather than needing one, so I started leaving the hardware at home.
Pretty soon, I wasn't carrying at home, either, as once you're desensitized to being disarmed in Brooklyn, it feels a little silly to gear up for the cornfields.
It wasn't until I got married, and had a somewhat greater sense of having something to protect, that I started carrying again. It was just the P32, though, as I'd lost some of the youthful exuberance that had made carrying all that iron possible. I always had a case of the "carry guilts," though, thinking what Col Cooper and the rest would say. But my threat matrix seemed to justify it. My customers are all pretty decent these days, and even the truck stops have cleaned up a good deal since the bad ol' days.
Recently, (not long before the Dayton business, ironically,) I started to feel somewhat uneasy about the "state of society." Between the loons on the left, the white power whackadoodles, and all the rest, there's a non-zero chance of winding up in the middle of something nasty, especially since I drive through Dayton and Cincinnati twice a day.
I'm back up to a Combat Commander, now. Though watching the news very much, one starts to think having the whole 82nd Airborne in one's pocket might be more the mark. Everything's a compromise.
