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jmra wrote:

Keith B wrote:

Purplehood wrote:

Keith B wrote:

Purplehood wrote:I am glad you were satisfied with your encounter.

My personal reaction would have been to have not turned my weapon over to him for inspection. "Thank you Sir, but I would rather comply with Texas law and keep my weapon concealed".

While I understand your not wanting to turn it over, if he was a Federal Officer on Federal Land, Texas laws go out the window. No matter, you still must comply with the request of the officer if they choose to disarm you.

My statement was predicated purely on this,

"Oh, no not at all. Do you mind if I see it?". At this point he was asking if I minded. I then would have responded as I show above as I took it to be a purely conversational request. If he then rephrased his question to become a demand from a Peace Officer, I would comply. I am quite reluctant to remove my weapon from its holster outside my residence.

OK, see your point. I don't disagree on that one.

I would have been very agreeable to any request seeing that he already had them for a camp fire during a burn ban - not a cheap ticket.

Which was honestly my concern....there were literally 30 families or so in surrounding areas with fires so I didn't worry initially about the fire (nor was I aware but i know ignorance is no excuse, blah blah blah), but since he took issue with the size of my fire my mind went to ahhh great no I will have the be taking care of a FEDERAL ticket.

OldCurlyWolf wrote:I am well aware of Sam Houston National Forest and Sam Houston State Park, I never heard of Sam Houston National Park.

Just checked with the National Park Service. No Sam Houston National Park. You must have been in the Forest.
Not really being picky but your description of where you were piqued my curiosity.

Im from DFW, what do I know? Either way it was federal land...

Jumping Frog wrote:

kalipsocs wrote:"Oh, no not at all. Do you mind if I see it?"

. . . . . . Anyway, about midway through he asked if he could store my gun in the glove box of my GFs truck and I said sure.....
To date, the second best LEO contact ever and he was nothing but courteous, polite, and, most importantly, treated us like people and not "suspects".

I get irritated whenever I hear of law-abiding CHL's getting disarmed by a LEO, and I also wonder how people can describe that as a "good" encounter.

\\

Because A.) He was professional B.) He treated us like citizens and not "suspects" C.) He was within his rights to do so. Now If he wanted to confiscate my weapon, that might be a different story...

Where to start....well I went to Austin to make a trade with an Austinite of my Yugo Underfolder for some silver bullion. My GF lives there and suckered me into going along with her to do the "Warrior Dash" in Conroe and spend the night before camping in Sam Houston park. OK, sounds like fun. She is very outdoorsy, but also a bit absent minded so we ended up at the campsite at dark....with no headlamps....and no hatchet...among many other missing handy camping equipment she forgot. Luckily, the site we picked had a smoldering stump and decent sized log still burning. So we proceeded to get the low hanging fruit of breakable limps and such. Anyway, she find 3, 3 ft. pieces of termite riddled wood so I toss them on to keep this fire going. As luck would have it, a federal officer cruised by our whole section and on his way back decided to stop and have a word.


From what I recall, the officer asked if we started the fire and told him about the initial stump. He said that having a fire was fine but there was a burn ban in effect and that we need to keep it manageable (of course, he came up right as those logs really started to get going). I said I wasn't aware of the burn ban but we will keep it manageable. He continued telling us about some incidences of campers recently not putting out their fires and causing some small forest fires and asked about water for putting it out which, luckily, we had about 4 gallons of so I reassured him that the site would be in better condition than what we found it in. Then the question..."do y'all have any firearms with you tonight?"

Yes, sir. I have my CHL.

"Where is your firearm it located?"

Right front pocket. Is there an issue?

"Oh, no not at all. Do you mind if I see it?"

No problem. Do you want me to retrieve it?

"Yes, thats fine."

I handed him my KelTec P3AT muzzle down in the Nemesis holster. He partially withdrew it and goes "Ahhhh a KelTec! Do you have any problems with reliability with yours?" Just made me smile because I knew right then this was an officer who knows that many of us CHLers know and appreciate our guns! For about the next 10 minutes we had shop talk on hardware and told me about his P3AT being problematic so he shelved it and carries a Glock 27 as a backup now . Told him that if he cared to go through the trouble KelTec might be willing to do a "fluff and buff" but at the very least correct whatever was causing his jam. He also mentioned that the FBI was sending him to sniper school and details about that....and then I wondered why a park ranger, even federal, needs to go to sniper school??? Anyway, about midway through he asked if he could store my gun in the glove box of my GFs truck and I said sure. He informed us he was going to run our IDs and just to give him a moment so we went back to grilling hot dogs. He came back, said everything checked out (to no surprise) and then gave us the location of some other primitive camping sites and some interesting back story on them. To date, the second best LEO contact ever and he was nothing but courteous, polite, and, most importantly, treated us like people and not "suspects". He even gave us his card in case we needed any additional details and wrote down the name of the other camp site for us. He bid us a good night, and after that it was all hot dogs and smores from there!

The Warrior Dash was way more brutal than that encounter!