I've only been pulled over twice since getting my CHL, and both were to issue fix-it tickets rather than for a traffic violation. In both cases, I said nothing about my gun until asked about it after I had handed the officer both my TDL and CHL. In the first case, he asked me through the window where the gun was (I told him), and he said "tell you what, you don't show me yours, and I won't show you mine", and that's where he lost interest and went back to his squad car with both my IDs to write up the ticket. In the second case, the officer took one look at my CHL, said "I don't need this" and handed it back to me and walked back to his car with my TDL to write up the ticket.Glockster wrote:The above is good stuff, although I do hope that I never have the need to use it.The Annoyed Man wrote:
In answer to the general question....... While I would prefer to not be disarmed by an officer, I also think that not cooperating with the disarming - even if it is an unreasonable request - is a setup for a situation as potentially dangerous as poor gun-handling by the cop. If the police handle the encounter badly, a post-encounter letter to their supervisors is the best way to deal with it. If the cop was unsafe in disarming you, your letter to the chief could say something along the lines of:....even though I would have rather not been disarmed, I was prepared to cooperate completely. However, the manner in which I was disarmed by your officer was extremely unsafe for the both of us, because he/she demonstrated a dangerous lack of familiarity with the kind of firearm I was carrying. That would seem to indicate that perhaps your department should spend more time on firearms safety training. Considered purely from a matter of safety, not just for the officer but for me as well, perhaps it would have been better if the officer had allowed me to remove the entire holster and belt from my person, or had done it for me, rather than to draw the gun from its holster, thereby creating an unsafe condition. Better yet, might it have been safer yet to simply leave the gun where it was, properly holstered on my hip, with the trigger covered? I understand the desire to maintain officer safety, but the way my disarming was handled, it created an unsafe condition for both of us.
It does bring up a question for me - and I'm asking it from the perspective of having NO experience with things like traffic stops. I am in that sense perhaps at a bit of a disadvantage in that I have never been ticketed, and never even been pulled over. So my question is about your above saying in any letter that you would have preferred to not have been disarmed. Would that have been something you would have told to the officer as well?
I'm familiar with those who have advocated saying that you tell the officer that they are not willing to voluntarily disarm but that if the officer chooses to do so against their wishes you won't resist. I myself feel that the "hand the officer the DL and CHL, inform that you're carrying, and then ask how the officer wishes to proceed" is much less likely to escalate the situation. So, at what point would you (but not directing this at only you specifically) tell the officer that you'd prefer to not disarmed?
IF TOLD that the officer wants to disarm me, I would comply 100% and keep my mouth shut. My observations of human nature indicate that he/she doesn't care what my rights are at that point, and my insistence would only escalate the situation.