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Like many, I was raised around firearms. My dad was Ohio Highway Patrol. My uncle a champion competition shooter from the Army's pistol team. As I grew I was allowed to carry and shoot a .410 in the woods and was given a rifle (.22) at eight. All I had to do was get permission and let dad know where I was going, grab a box and go, the bad thing was my parents had divorced so I only was with him during Summer and some holidays. Safety had been hammered into my head since I was old enough to ask, "What's that?".

I lived with dad from 8th grade through to my high school years when we spent a month every summer at a cabin in the backwoods of KY shooting and romping through the woods along the ridge. Carrying on the hip was expected.

I went to the Army from high school and began cross training in some pretty exotic hardware as well as hand to hand techniques. I came out anti-social, not really caring about what happened to me and a tad mean. I was quick and would not hesitate to defend myself so this was the period I did not carry or see the need. I did carry on duty as a patrol officer for a security company while in college.

I became a Christian, married and started carrying while traveling and I insisted we keep one in each vehicle. My wife managed a distribution center in a not so nice part of town and I bought her a model 36 and taught her how to use it, she carried at work everyday. I went to work in a bad part of town for a large city and had to take guns away from several people as well as grapple with others, waiting on police to arrive. As I got older, fatter and slower the need to carry was becoming readily apparent. When CHL first was introduced I jumped on it and have been close to 24/7 ever since.

It was interesting, when I bought my wife's model 36, dad called it a "sneaky gun". When he retired to Florida, he got his CHL (Only had to produce copy of DD-214) and carried for several years before he died.

No conversion really...and I've shared too much. But there you are.