When I think about times when I may need to use my firearm, the “point the gun in your face give me all you got” scenario always gives me the most pause. Clearly, if stick up kid Jackson already has the gun in your face, it’s too late to go all Quick Draw McGraw on the guy.
But say you do see stick up kid Jackson coming up on you beforehand, and the hair is standing up on the back of your neck, and you're singing the very best Stop In The Name of Love you can muster … and the guy keeps coming. What do you do? And when do you do it?
Keep in mind this isn't who wants to be a millionaire. You don't get to call Rob Pincus and ask if you should put that $30 box of Corbons in his chest. You could draw down, but you risk looking like the over aggressor if he’s just taking a walk.
And then, if you let him get too close, and he in fact has a gun, knife or whatever inanimate object he decided to attack with, it’s now too late to do anything about it.
Just the other day I was in my truck, waiting at the light behind another car, when a guy comes flying around the corner with his hands behind his back, making what looked like a B-line for my driver’s side door. The whole time I’m thinking, “What is this guy about to do?” I’m in my vehicle and I am carrying, but at this point I literally have to wait until the last moment to see what his true intentions are before I can make a move.
A big part of the problem is that there are so many variables that can't be accounted for. Are you with someone you need to protect, are you alone, can you run, are you stuck, do you have 2 seconds or 10 to make a decision – it's all up in the air. At this point it’s really easy to belabor the idea that situational awareness is the answer.
But that doesn’t account for the fact that dropping your guard from time to time is a fact of life.
I mean, I do the usual: I sit facing the door, stay off of my phone when walking to my car, and avoid blatantly bad areas when I can, but I hate that even doing all of that, in that one moment when I relax a bit and drop my guard, I could find myself in a bad situation.
The bottom line is, I detest the fact that the anti-gun crowd continues to try to create laws that make the already complex situation of being a concealed carrier even more complex with laws they don’t even understand.
I, along with every other concealed carrier, value life and feel like many people who don’t carry underestimate and don’t respect the complexities that come with carrying a gun and the level of responsibility we take on – until they’re faced with a situation where they only have one option: hope for the best.
Colion Noir is an NRA News Commentator and the host of NOIR on NRA Freestyle.
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