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Unfortunately, a lot of conflicts take place in your personal space, give or take a few feet. If you "feel" threatened and pull your weapon without any other provocation, then you have a few problems. At the least, you have just brandished. At the worst, you are going to get it taken away and used on you.

You have no duty to retreat in Texas, but your encounter does have to meet minimum criteria for you to use deadly force. This might be fear of deadly force being used against you, disabling force, or disparity of force. However, I would advise you to retreat. What I mean is that if you see this guy that gets your hackles up, cross the street, go into a store, reverse course...do something to separate yourself from him. Please understand that this paragraph is woefully incomplete. You need to learn what constitutes the use of deadly force in Texas. Read the statutes. See what Ayoob has to say on it. Read deeply.

Secondly, learn some form of close-in combat techniques that afford you the opportunity to stop an advance and to gain some distance between you. You need to have enough space to properly deploy your weapon, even if you are going to shoot from the hip. An added advantage is that you may be able to drop the BG and not need to use deadly force anymore...wouldn't that be better than trying to go to sleep that night knowing you killed someone? Not saying you should avoid using your weapon at all costs, simply saying use it only if you have to. That is why we got our CHL, to protect our loved ones, ourselves, and perhaps an innocent third party. Needless to say, a close-in encounter may leave you hurt, cut, bleeding...but that can be fixed as long as you can extricate yourself.

I am not going to suggest any specific products, and there are a bunch out there. I just received a set of DVDs that looks promising as it teaches you mainly those things that work well with gross motor skills. Most of your fine motor skills are going to go down the toilet as soon as your adrenaline dump takes place, blood is shunted to vital organs, and your heart rate hits 170+.

Anyway, just some thoughts. The idea of getting your CHL is not to pull it everytime you think someone looks hazardous, it is there for when they become hazardous.

RJ