Ever had to put your hand on your gun "for real"?...

Status
Not open for further replies.
I have never had to pull a gun outside the home, although I have had to shoot in combat on a couple of occasions, and I did pull my bedside gun once. Therein lies a good story.

So, for some time I lived at a house my good friend owned. I often fall asleep with the light on because I read myself to sleep every night, a fact that my friend was aware of. He was also aware that I kept a bedside gun, loaded, at all times. Anyhoo, one night he had went out to celebrate a personal achievement and gotten a little toasted. Not drunk, but enough where he got a ride home. Anyway, since I had not heard news of his achievement (he had just gotten accepted into fire academy), when he walked up the stairs (at 2 in the AM) he saw my light was still on and thought I was awake. He was going to pull a prank and burst into the room, but my door was locked, as it always is. Instead of knocking or beating on the door, he opted instead to lightly jiggle the door handle. Friends, I am a heavy sleeper, but that shot me right out of bed. I grabbed my pistol, advanced to the door in my underoos, and luckily had the sense to not take my gun off safe. I yanked open the door at a low draw, only to see my smiling buddy standing there. After yelling at him for a while, he realized that he had scared the hell out of me, and that pretty much ended the evenings discourse.

Lesson learned? Know your target, and take all variables into account. I sort of suspected that it was a friend, as opposed to a foe, and thus was as safe as I could be while still recognizing that it may not have been a friend. I don't think I handled the situation perfectly, but I did handle it to the best of my abilities, and no one got hurt. My friend also learned that knocking is a better option!
 
Three times

all on the job as an LEO. I do white-collar crime investigations so it's not like I'm chasing street-level dopers or anything. Most of the time, my work is pretty serene. When I used to work narcotics, it was standard to draw during arrests or search warrants. The four times I mentioned weren't during either; I actually thought I was going to have to shoot someone those three times.

One time I was on surveillance and an uninvolved party took issue with my presence. He gathered up some homies and approached my vehicle. The alpha dog made few threatening remarks and kept grabbing at something under his shirt. I had my pistol trained on him from under my jacket and told him the cigarette dangling from his mouth would never get a chance to kill him if his hand was anything but empty when he pulled it from under his shirt. "Genius" got the idea that something wasn't right and he and his buds left.

The other two times were both on freakin' Halloween:fire: . The first time, I was a rookie, had just graduated the academy. I had gotten home from my shift and some bozo ran up to me and pulled what looked like a nickel-plated revolver. He wore a bandana on his face and shouted "your money or your life!" I ignored the fact that his opening line appeared to be a little hokey and moved behind my truck for cover while drawing my pistol. I was split second from shooting the guy when I noticed the orange plastic on the tip of the barrel of his "revolver." He had the danged barrel sticking down in his pants and I didn't notice it until he pulled it all the way out. His buddies were down the street giggling over his antics and, with the truck between me and the "robber" nobody ever saw the Sig in my hand. They were just a bunch of college kids out trick-or-treating with this idiot dressed up as a robber. I was pretty shaken up and just holstered my weapon and told the kid he was an idiot. I was in Texas at the time where feds have arrest authority for state felonies. I should have arrested him for forcible robbery and let the judge sort it out.

The next time was yet ANOTHER case of hallowee idiocy. I as leaving an agency storage facillity at a warehouse location when a local business owner (who knew that we were feds) runs up screaming for help, saying for us to shoot this woman. Some woman with a mug-shot hair-do wearing a hospital gown comes running up, babbles something about Satan, and pulls a chef's knife out of her gown. My partner and I started backing up, I was reminding myself to shoot her at each hip joint to stop her (don't shoot knife-wielding assailants in the chest - they keep a'commin) when the business owner started laughing. The psycho woman was his stupid secratary dressed up like a mental patient for Halloween.:cuss:
 
I had just pulled into a grocery store parking lot on a nice sunny day last summer. I got out of my truck and suddenly a 35-ish, grubby looking guy sped up to me on a little electric scooter.

I shouted "Don't come any closer." as I moved my hand to where my pistol resides. He stopped about ten feet from me and I backed up enough to put a comfortable distance between us. "What do you want?"

Dirtbag replied "My scooter's battery is dead and I live a mile away. Can I get a ride in your truck?"

I wanted to say "You sped up on me awfully fast for having a dead battery in your scooter. You're an able bodied man, it's a nice day, and that scooter can't weigh more than 40 pounds. You can easily hike it. Have a nice day."

Istead I simply said "I can't help you." and went into the store as planned. I never exposed or drew my pistol.

Other than that incident, I've had relatively close calls where I was glad to be armed, but I've never had to draw.
 
I took a wrong turn in Memphis one night. I laid my .45 in my lap until I got back to the street I was supposed to be on. Fortunately, I didn't even see anything suspicious.
 
Once

Last week, 9:30pm, EMPTY parking lot outside of Publix. Me and my wife are putting stuff we just bought in the trunk of my car. In the corner of my eye I see two *really scatchy* looking doods walking slowly toward us. Now, the time slows down... on a dead empty parking lot they are walking toward us! Alarm goes off in my head. I keep on unloading the stuff from the cart and watch them at the same time. At about 15 feet distance, I walk around the car, face them with my left shoulder, and put my hand under my shirt on my 4'oclock CCW gun. They come even closer. No words are spoken. They stop, look at us, on guy says "what's up dood". I say nothing. They look at me. They start walking again slowly, looking inside our car. Then walk away toward a liquer store. We get into the car and drive home. They never saw the gun, but I'm guesing they sort of figured where my hand was.

Really wierd situation, and I still don't know what to make of it, untill last night that is... I was having some drinks with my neighbour, and he tells me few nights ago someone got jumped by two guys in our neighborhood. Could it be them? Did I NOT get mugged because I CCW? I'll never know.
 
The few people who show up at my house after dark without calling have been met with a cocked and locked 1911 drawn and pointed at the ground in my right hand, finger off the trigger of course.

Only time I had to draw and fire was to scare off either a feral dog or coyote, I was in the woods on a moonless night and the batteries in my Surefire died. Might sound childish but hearing noises when you can't see a thing is a bad, bad feeling, and if that's what a SD situation feels like, I hope to never experience one. Hesitate to call it instinctive, but I drew my .357 that night without even having to think about it. Whatever it was took off running.

Real dramatic stories, I know. I proabably enjoy reading your posts more than you do mine.
 
Only once.

While helping my wife unload groceries from the car a pack of javelina came up behind us. I drew on the closest one (maybe 5 - 7 feet away) while my wife scrambled up onto the hood of the car. Fortunately I didn't have to fire as yelling and stomping at them eventually drove them off.
 
I was alone in bed in a camper in a Natl Forest gameland, where I was going to hunt early the next morning. I heard two guys snooping around my truck, and saw them looking in it with a flashlight. One walked around to the back of the camper, so he could peer in the only window without a curtain. He looked in with his light, saw me, said, "He's in there" and left. He did not see my .45 in my lap, pointed at him through the window. I got up and watched them drive off. Later, I found out that it was the game warden.
 
a pack of javelina came up behind us
Click to expand...
Should have made like south park and shouted "look out honey it's coming right for us" shot it and had bacon for breakfast:evil:

That would scare the crap outta me if they were actinng agressive.
 
My guess is that people who've had to go further than that generally won't want to discuss the situations, both for personal as well as legal reasons.
Click to expand...
Probably very true.

Only time I had to draw and fire was to scare off either a feral dog or coyote...hearing noises when you can't see a thing is a bad, bad feeling...
Click to expand...
I do some camping, so I know what you mean. I will be carrying when I head into the woods from now on.

I am new to carrying. I can think of a couple times, pre-CCW, when I would have been glad to have a gun with me. I am sure I would NOT have drawn, because my life was not yet at risk. I am happy that I have never been "confronted", as some of you have.
 
Several incidents

I was repoing cars at the time. I went to one house and knocked on the door. I explained to the car owner who I was and asked politely for the keys to the car that he had not paid on for 6 months. He hesitated and I saw him look over in the corner at a shotgun. He kept looking at it several times. I put my hand under my jacket and softly said "not a good idea". He told me that he would give me the car if I would give him a chance to get his personal property out first. I said OK and met him outside. He pulled the car into the garage, closed the door and said good bye. All that I could do was laugh. PS.a week later I spotted the car at an all night grocery store . I had had a set of keys made. As I left the lot, I blew the horn and waved....:D
 
Back around '84, a friend and I were driving back to Fort Knox from Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. Somewhere along I-44, a guy tried to run us off the road. He had second thoughts after he saw the loaded HK93 I was pointing at him through the windshield. There's a non-zero chance that he was [since executed] serial child molestor, carjacker and killer Alton Coleman.
 
Does drawing and shooting porcupines and rattlesnakes count? ;) :p

I have answered the door a couple times with my hand on the grip of my sidearm, but it turned out to be okay.

Closest I ever came to drawing on a "tulegs" was a couple of felons on our doorstep, to whom my daughter had stupidly opened the door. :( I had to tell them to leave several times before they finally did. :fire: What I should have done was call 911 the instant that they didn't leave after I told them to leave. Would have done no real good of course, except to record everything following that moment. I was rattled by the whole affair and we had a very unpleasant family discussion after that :rolleyes:
 
i worked a graveyard shift at a gas station right next to 2 onramps for 3-1/2 years. once a guy came in drunk,i knew him and who i had banned from the store previously for shoplifting, and when i told him to leave he shoved me to the ground. i told him i have to call the cops if he stays and he said if i pick up the phone he was gonna kill me. so i walked back behind the counter and drew on him and picked up the phone. i told him he could leave now and i wouldnt call. he says 'eff you' so i dialed. he ran outside to the window near me and starts begging me not to call cause hes on probation and i tell him i just cant hang up on 911 operator. i hit the electric locks on the door and i told the guy if he ran away now i might not see which direction he ran. he chose to try to get back inside cause he was mad at me now. he picks up the trashcan and starts throwing it at the windows and the can bounces off the bullet resistant glass and hits my car. im on the phone explaining whats happening to the 911 operator and i tell the operator that if he gets thru the glass and into the building im going to shoot him.

he decided to run away about 20 seconds before the cops got there. that was 2am or so. they got him. he made bail and retuned to threaten me at 645am telling me there would be trouble if i pressed charges. i hadnt pressed charges, he was arrested for drunk in public. the cops gave me the option of having him arested for lots of other things. vandalism, assault, trespassing, and somthing else i forget what. i said as long as he went away and didnt bother me any more i didnt care what they charged him with so we all agreed to give him drunk in public. the cops said i could add the other stuff later if i wanted.

the funny part is that because of what happened that night and one other night he had a few weeks later involving the cops, he got clean and stopped drugs and booze. he became a decent guy and became a good friend of mine.
 
Had a couple of either burgular alarm goes off at 2am or the dogs go nuts over something in the yard happen. When the alarm went off I got 911 on the cordless while I checked out the inside of the apt with a 9mm HG in hand. Don't know if it was anything, didn't see any signs of forced entry, and a deputy showed up and checked out the property in 2-3 minutes. Two years later after I'd moved out, a woman was murdered in the same apartments by a guy who broke in at 2am, robbed her, and strangled her, so maybe it was something, maybe nothing. I sure felt more comforted having a pistol by the bedside though the one or two times in 15 years when I've had to check out something wrong (the other times were a neighbor's dog getting loose and going through our yard. Called # on dog's collar and dog returned safely to family, happy ending :) Again, had the pistol locked and loaded with safety off (hammer down), and didn't point it anywhere but the ground, but I was awfully glad to have been able to just reach in the bedside stand and load and make ready in a couple of seconds.

Only other time was actually a CCW situation, I was in my car trying to return books to the library late Friday afternoon before the 2004 election. Stupid me forgot the library was being used for early voting, and there was a mob of 300+ people trying to early vote, plus a sea of their parked cars blocking the neighborhood all over the place. By the way, the library's next to a low-rent nasty neighborhood with bars on all the windows, and the library sits on the only street in or out. Result is a gridlocked nightmare I got caught up in, and some of the people around were getting road-raged between the gridlock and maybe also the nasty political namecalling etc going on in the crowd. When I saw the first angry motorist jump out of his car and go after the driver of another car, I thought "oh crap, I'm watching a riot start". The mood was ugly. Again, I was glad to have a piece in the car with me (CCW this time, not being at home), and the crowd got ugly enough I actually pulled the stored pistol out, loaded it and racked the slide, just in case (kept it out of sight. At the time, I used to leave it unloaded in the console with one or two loaded mags in the console with it). Took me over an hour to get my car turned around and move the less than 100 yards to escape that situation. Again, didn't quite get up to feeling threatened enough by a particular person to point it at anyone, but I was VERY glad to have it with me in the car.
 
I drew on a man once. Some years ago I was camping with my wife and first son. (He was a toddler and the only child we had at the time.) We were the only ones at a car camping area, many miles from any houses or towns, and in the middle of the night a man came out of the woods and approached our tent. He was acting really creepy and obviously up to no good, so I lit him up with a 3D maglight and drew on him. He left, then we packed up and left. Even though it was legal to have a gun in your tent while camping and to use it to protect your family, I didn't call the cops. I didn't feel there was enough to justify it at the time.

Two weeks later, in the same area, a man kidnapped and raped two teenage girls after tying up their boyfriends. Two or three days after that, the police caught up with him while he was driving around in the boonies with the girls tied up in the trunk of his car, and he died in the ensuing shootout. I believe it was the same guy, and to this day I wonder if I could have prevented those rapes by calling the cops after my run-in with him.
 
Being an illinois resident I don't get to carry all that often. The only 2 times I wished I had a gun on me have been out of the state. I wouldn't have touched a gun in either instance and in one of them I didn't even put everything together until after it was over. Not very exciting I know.
 
Only once. When I was stationed on board USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN CVN-72 @ N.A.S. Alameda CA. my wife and I lived in a apt. in town. In our apt. complex there had been a series of brake in's and sexual asualt's of women. The police believed it was someone who lived in or around the complex and was keeping track of when the sailors had duty, because all of the attacks were of sailors wifes or girl friends when they were on duty and almost all of the people that lived there were in the Navy. I was comeing home from duty one day @ 07:00 and annie and I useualy pass each other on the stairs because she would be on her way to work. Well, this day we did'ent. When I went to put my key in the door it just pushed open with out me turning or even geting it into the lock. As the door opens I notice a man's work jacket on the floor. To my right is my refrigerator that I keep my cocked and locked COLT Officers .45 ACP. on top of under yesterdays newspaper. I slide my hand under the newapaper and my COLT was still there. My heart starts to pound and all I can think about is "where is annie." The door to the back bedroom is closed and I here a man's voice mumbel something in the bathroom, I slowly walk to the bathroom door, turn and point my gun at the guy's head and yell for annie. As I focus on the guy I recognize him, it's my LANDLOARD!!! I say " what the f*** are you doing in my apt. and where is annie" he said " your toillet was running and I was fixing it and I don't know where annie is." I told him " NEVER enter MY apt. when I'm not home, if I need you I will call you." Two weeks later they cought the guy on the 2nd.floor. He lived in the building and was not a sailor. I'm just glad every thing turned out O.K.
 
Last edited:
yes. on coons, skunks, possums, the occasional door to door salespeople and lost drivers.

didnt mean to scare the door to door sales people and lost drivers. i was walking out my door to go shoot in my back yard when they were walking up to my door. so basicly i got to the door with gun(s) on me. pistol is in holster.

i live on a farm and have lots of space for my own shooting range.
 
Just about to run out of gas, so I whip into the next exit. Late, about midnight outside of Nashville. Stop at the first gas station I see. My wife is from there and says we need to go further, to get gas. I, being stubborn and unafraid of anything, also knowing we are not going very much further, decide to get gas NOW! Pump, and head inside. Guy takes my money through the slot in the BP glass. Looks at me real strange. I walk out into the parking lot and there is nobody there, so I head around the side to the bathrooms, walk out and there are 3 BIG guys standing there just outside the door waiting for me. Guy in the middle is obviously the boss, smiles at me and says that this is the wrong part of town for white folks to be at night. Usually I am not real quick, but I ask him, why he thinks I am alone. He looks around kind of confused and says, the he don't see nobody else with me. I smile back at him and pat my holster which is under my jacket. The look on his face changes real quick and he and the other 2 both back up real quick. I was really to close to them to have gotten it out, had they jumped me, but I was running it over in my mind the whole time I was standing in front of them about what I was going to do. Looking back on it, I don't think they WERE going to do anything, probably just mess with me, but at the time I was pretty scared, and learned my lesson about coming out of a blind door w/o being prepared.
 
Twice for real, a few other false alarms. Once in the hallway of a notoriously bad apartment complex in Little Rock (had to be there for work), followed by one BG who sat & watched me getting my stuff out of my truck (so was already on higher alert), halfway down 2 more enter the other end & come toward me. No talking to each other, just staring right at me the whole way. When they got about 20 yds away slid my hand to my Kahr P40 concealed under my scrubs without flashing it. The two immediately moved to the opposite side of the hallway & gave me very friendly nods. Passed them(had to) & they joined the guy behind me & went the opposite way. Second was in car w/then girlfriend now wife. Longer story. She got us out of it with her heads-up driving.
 
Banging, pounding,

I used to manage a resort and motel, now before anyone laughs this was about forty miles north of the U.S./Mexico border. We did have a lot of North/South traffic. Usually we closed the office at Eleven. However you could ring the Managers (me) from the back (the managers house) at all hours. One night I woke to a banging/pounding on my door. It was one of our local Sherriff's deputy's. He had followed a suspicous vehicle all the way from the border and hey were parked out behind one of our rooms.

Since I was coming out of a dead sleep I didn't know it was Bill so I opened the door gun drawn (3am how do you answer the door?).

I took Bill to the room, asked everyone to come out and he was able to arrest the individuals involved and they surrendered without incident.

For someone who loves his guns and tries to be "MANLY," I was glad I was "ready" for everything that happened, but I also am glad nothing came of it... I didn't need to have to change my pants :eek: and too much excitement can cause that.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

M
  • Locked
So...just when is it acceptable to pull your gun?
2 3
Replies
62
Views
3K
XD Fan
X
A
  • Locked
Do you ever leave your guns in the car?
2 3 4 5
Replies
116
Views
4K
PlayboyPenguin
P
T
  • Locked
Closest you've ever come to drawing your CCW?
Replies
10
Views
901
The Nip
T
T
  • Locked
You actually had to use your gun
2 3
Replies
51
Views
4K
hdwhit
H
H
  • Locked
  • Poll
concealed carry "did you draw your weapon" poll
2
Replies
39
Views
2K
FranklyTodd
F
Back
Top