Two Tales of How a Concealed Handgun Protected My Wife and Me

[SIGFan43]

Tale #1

About 1980, my wife and I bought a 3-year-old rural brick house on 3.5 acres of land 8.5 miles West of Cabot, Arkansas. We wanted a place away from the hustle and bustle of Little Rock, a place where we could enjoy looking at the stars at night, but within shopping distance of Cabot and Sherwood. We also had been burglarized at a rural rent house near Little Rock, were tired of paying rent, and we wanted a place a little more remote farther away from town where she could have a vegetable garden.

About a year after we moved to this house, I hired a neighbor’s friend to build a 25-yard shooting range in a wooded area midway between our brick well house and the main house, about 60 feet from the side of our house. He used his bulldozer to make a flat unobstructed range, using the dirt to build a ten-foot high berm for a backstop, in addition to the natural hill behind it.

I had four neighbors slightly farther than yelling distance. My favorite neighbors were a father and son. The son was a U.S. Marine reservist and armorer. His dad was a Marine sniper in the Vietnam War. So, anytime I started shooting on Saturday or Sunday, one or both of them would just walk over with their guns and ammo, we would stay out at the range for hours.

Enter my wife. She didn’t own any guns at the time, and had never fired a handgun before. She was concerned about spending the night alone at that house while I was on the road 3-4 nights a week, so I taught her to shoot my guns, especially the handguns. She particularly liked my HK-P7 9mm with night sights, so we bought her one just like mine, to keep in her nightstand. I found out later that she actually put it under my pillow when I was out of town overnight. After training her to shoot, I insisted she practice at least once a month. However, we eventually settled on once a year, and I will tell you why. After the first year of owning her new handgun, I told her to get it and bring it out to the range for her annual practice. Reluctantly, she agreed (busy doing school lesson plans, you see). When she got to the range, I set up a soft drink can on the ground about 10 yards down the range. She aimed carefully while standing up in front of the bench, using a Weaver stance like I taught her, squeezed the trigger, and the coke can went 20 feet into the air. She turned around (gun still pointing downrange), looked at me with a smile, and said, “Can I go back inside now?” Not wanting to push my luck, I said, “Leave the gun here. I’ll clean it and put it back in your nightstand when I get done shooting.”

A few short years later, she was worried about gaining weight (she was 5’7” and weighed about 125 pounds), so she began to walk a lot. If she walked 200 yards to the front gate, and turned right, she could follow a road parallel to ours for three miles to where it ended at a state highway; she then would turn around and walk back home. Six miles was her daily walk in the evenings, almost every day, rain or shine.

Now comes the interesting part of this story. My wife began to feel a little unsafe when she walked, due to a German Shepherd that harassed her down the road. She also wanted a way to defend herself from bad people when she was out there alone. She didn’t want to carry her HK-P7, because she might forget to put it back in the nightstand. I let her shoot my stainless steel S&W Model 60, a .38 Special 5-shot revolver. She could hit a paper plate target consistently with it up to about 20 feet. I bought her a fanny pack with a hidden holster pouch. The pouch also had three other zippered pockets, one of which she used to carry her pepper spray for unruly dogs. After she practiced drawing the gun from the hidden pocket, she decided to take it with her on her daily walks. One afternoon, I was minding my own business in my workshop, when she came home from her evening walk. She poked her head inside the screen door of my shop, and said, “Some weird guys stopped me on the road around the first curve.” I said, “What? What did they want?” She said, “I was walking on the right hand shoulder when I saw this old rusty pickup coming up behind me. There were three guys in the seat, they stopped near me, and I just continued to walk. I stopped and turned around about ten feet away when they yelled something at me. The guy in the passenger side asked me where some road was in the area, and when I told him, he said, “We can’t hear you. Can you come closer?” Then I told him, “You heard me just fine.” She often spoke to me in the same impatient tone, by the way. “Then I opened the top zipper on my fanny pack and placed my hand on the grip of the gun, but I never showed the gun or pulled it out. I just kept my hand there, and stepped back onto the shoulder of the road as they cursed at me and sped off down the road.”

I asked her what was the color of the truck, and she said, “Rust-colored truck.” “Did you get a license number or make and model of the truck? Could you describe the guys?” She said, “You should be a detective. You ask too many questions I can’t answer. I don’t know what kind or color of truck it was, and the guys were just country-looking rednecks, and they cursed at me. I guess they figured out I might have my hand on a gun.”

I was just thankful that she had the intellect and skill to just keep walking away from the stopped truck, and had her gun ready to use if need be. Those three guys didn’t realize who they were messing with. I think she would have shot the guys if they opened the door and got out and threatened to grab her.

Tale #2

When I got my first Arkansas Concealed Handgun License, I began carrying a handgun all the time when I wasn’t working at my job. I mostly carried my HK-P7 pistol, but later traded it for a different handgun.

In 2005, I was carrying a Springfield Armory Micro Compact .45 Auto pistol in an Askins Avenger belt holster, but usually didn’t carry if I couldn’t cover it with a jacket. About November, my wife and I decided to try to eat lunch at Outback Steakhouse in Sherwood. I think it was on a Sunday, because when we arrived, the parking lot was empty, so we walked to the front door to see what the hours of operation were. They were opening later than we thought. We were about thirty minutes too early, so we decided to go somewhere else instead. When we got back to the car, I opened the passenger door to let my wife get in, but her door was still open when I turned to walk behind the car. That’s when I noticed a young kid about 18 years old briskly walking across the empty parking lot toward my car. Because of his general appearance, and the vacant parking lot, I was on alert. My wife still had her door open. There were no other people near us. I stopped to look directly at him, and when he appeared to be walking directly toward me from about 20 feet away, I raised my left arm at a 45 degree angle, palm facing him, and yelled “Stop!” He stopped, and I asked him, “Can I help you?” He said that he left his car on I-40 near Lonoke because he ran out of gas, and needed a couple of dollars for gas. My lightning-fast mind told me that Lonoke is over 20 miles east of us on I-40, and there’s no way he walked that far for $2.00. However, I felt that if I did have a couple of bucks to give him, I would. I wasn’t sure I had that kind of small bills in my wallet, so I said, “Let me see if I have $2.00.” At the time, I carried my wallet in my right rear hip pocket, and as I reached for the wallet, a breeze caught my light windbreaker jacket and exposed the pistol briefly on my right hip. All of a sudden, the kid’s eyes got bigger, and he raised his hand to wave, and yelled, “Hey, that’s okay. I’ll find someone else.” With that, he turned and walked away in the direction from which he came.

My wife saw and heard the entire incident, and told me, “You know that kid was going to rob us, don’t you?” I told her I think when he briefly noticed my pistol, he changed his mind about us completely. To use someone else’s words, “I think he remembered all at once that he had urgent business in another county.” Today, I would never get close enough to a stranger like that to give him some money. I know that was a mistake to even check to see if I had small bills, but on that day at that time, my handgun was briefly exposed, possibly preventing a robbery.

The point of these true stories is that, more and more, there may be incidents like this. It is better to have a gun and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it.

[drjoker]

Remember to preserve these freedoms and vote.

[joe817]

Great story XdFan43! Thanks for sharing! You did well as your situational awareness in both cases was high, and spot on.

[ELB]

Interesting, thanks for posting.

Neither of these stories made the press of course, and the Brady/Bloomberg bunch will never acknowledge that this kind of thing goes on, despite Lott and others documenting it does happen (gun self-defense w/o shots or other incident) thousands of times each year.

[LosAlce]

Thank you for sharing! Stay vigilant

[Jusme]

Great narrative on the reasons we carry. These are the things I have tried to impress upon my wife, in that just because you have gone somewhere before with no issues, doesn't mean things can't change and you find yourself needing the gun you thought you could leave at home. Mrs. Jusme plans to take her LTC class this fall, and has become much better at SA when we are out.

[crazy2medic]

Good post! Situational awareness and a defensive arm! I have similar tales but I don't want to hijack your post

[jadoti]

What are the odds story #2 happened right before some anti-gun lib got robbed by a guy asking for gas money?

[vjallen75]

Thanks for sharing, great situations where situational awareness took place. Best to be safe than sorry.

It is better to have a gun and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it.

I always used to tell this to my wife, she now wants to carry and always makes sure I have mine.

[SIGFan43]

What are the odds story #2 happened right before some anti-gun lib got robbed by a guy asking for gas money?

A couple of years ago, I had a lady friend in her 90s who had five $1 bills in her hand while about to gas up her car, when a young man approached, and asked her for some gas money. Being a kind soul, she handed him two $1 bills, and he grabbed the other bills and ran away. She asked me to never tell any of our other friends about this, but I did tell it over and over without mentioning her name. She reported it to the clerk inside the gas station, and he told her that happens all the time there. The station is close to Interstate 20 at Lindale, Texas, which would allow a bad guy quick access to I-20. I really hate people who rob senior citizens.

[bblhd672]

Great examples of why citizens should not have their 2nd Amendment rights infringed.

Thanks for sharing.

[The Annoyed Man]

I wish I had a lightning fast mind.

[Javier730]

I wish I had a lightning fast mind.

[Wallace Dunn]

Tale #1

About 1980, my wife and I bought a 3-year-old rural brick house on 3.5 acres of land 8.5 miles West of Cabot, Arkansas. We wanted a place away from the hustle and bustle of Little Rock, a place where we could enjoy looking at the stars at night, but within shopping distance of Cabot and Sherwood. We also had been burglarized at a rural rent house near Little Rock, were tired of paying rent, and we wanted a place a little more remote farther away from town where she could have a vegetable garden.

About a year after we moved to this house, I hired a neighbor’s friend to build a 25-yard shooting range in a wooded area midway between our brick well house and the main house, about 60 feet from the side of our house. He used his bulldozer to make a flat unobstructed range, using the dirt to build a ten-foot high berm for a backstop, in addition to the natural hill behind it.

I had four neighbors slightly farther than yelling distance. My favorite neighbors were a father and son. The son was a U.S. Marine reservist and armorer. His dad was a Marine sniper in the Vietnam War. So, anytime I started shooting on Saturday or Sunday, one or both of them would just walk over with their guns and ammo, we would stay out at the range for hours.

Enter my wife. She didn’t own any guns at the time, and had never fired a handgun before. She was concerned about spending the night alone at that house while I was on the road 3-4 nights a week, so I taught her to shoot my guns, especially the handguns. She particularly liked my HK-P7 9mm with night sights, so we bought her one just like mine, to keep in her nightstand. I found out later that she actually put it under my pillow when I was out of town overnight. After training her to shoot, I insisted she practice at least once a month. However, we eventually settled on once a year, and I will tell you why. After the first year of owning her new handgun, I told her to get it and bring it out to the range for her annual practice. Reluctantly, she agreed (busy doing school lesson plans, you see). When she got to the range, I set up a soft drink can on the ground about 10 yards down the range. She aimed carefully while standing up in front of the bench, using a Weaver stance like I taught her, squeezed the trigger, and the coke can went 20 feet into the air. She turned around (gun still pointing downrange), looked at me with a smile, and said, “Can I go back inside now?” Not wanting to push my luck, I said, “Leave the gun here. I’ll clean it and put it back in your nightstand when I get done shooting.”

A few short years later, she was worried about gaining weight (she was 5’7” and weighed about 125 pounds), so she began to walk a lot. If she walked 200 yards to the front gate, and turned right, she could follow a road parallel to ours for three miles to where it ended at a state highway; she then would turn around and walk back home. Six miles was her daily walk in the evenings, almost every day, rain or shine.

Now comes the interesting part of this story. My wife began to feel a little unsafe when she walked, due to a German Shepherd that harassed her down the road. She also wanted a way to defend herself from bad people when she was out there alone. She didn’t want to carry her HK-P7, because she might forget to put it back in the nightstand. I let her shoot my stainless steel S&W Model 60, a .38 Special 5-shot revolver. She could hit a paper plate target consistently with it up to about 20 feet. I bought her a fanny pack with a hidden holster pouch. The pouch also had three other zippered pockets, one of which she used to carry her pepper spray for unruly dogs. After she practiced drawing the gun from the hidden pocket, she decided to take it with her on her daily walks. One afternoon, I was minding my own business in my workshop, when she came home from her evening walk. She poked her head inside the screen door of my shop, and said, “Some weird guys stopped me on the road around the first curve.” I said, “What? What did they want?” She said, “I was walking on the right hand shoulder when I saw this old rusty pickup coming up behind me. There were three guys in the seat, they stopped near me, and I just continued to walk. I stopped and turned around about ten feet away when they yelled something at me. The guy in the passenger side asked me where some road was in the area, and when I told him, he said, “We can’t hear you. Can you come closer?” Then I told him, “You heard me just fine.” She often spoke to me in the same impatient tone, by the way. “Then I opened the top zipper on my fanny pack and placed my hand on the grip of the gun, but I never showed the gun or pulled it out. I just kept my hand there, and stepped back onto the shoulder of the road as they cursed at me and sped off down the road.”

I asked her what was the color of the truck, and she said, “Rust-colored truck.” “Did you get a license number or make and model of the truck? Could you describe the guys?” She said, “You should be a detective. You ask too many questions I can’t answer. I don’t know what kind or color of truck it was, and the guys were just country-looking rednecks, and they cursed at me. I guess they figured out I might have my hand on a gun.”

I was just thankful that she had the intellect and skill to just keep walking away from the stopped truck, and had her gun ready to use if need be. Those three guys didn’t realize who they were messing with. I think she would have shot the guys if they opened the door and got out and threatened to grab her.

Tale #2

When I got my first Arkansas Concealed Handgun License, I began carrying a handgun all the time when I wasn’t working at my job. I mostly carried my HK-P7 pistol, but later traded it for a different handgun.

In 2005, I was carrying a Springfield Armory Micro Compact .45 Auto pistol in an Askins Avenger belt holster, but usually didn’t carry if I couldn’t cover it with a jacket. About November, my wife and I decided to try to eat lunch at Outback Steakhouse in Sherwood. I think it was on a Sunday, because when we arrived, the parking lot was empty, so we walked to the front door to see what the hours of operation were. They were opening later than we thought. We were about thirty minutes too early, so we decided to go somewhere else instead. When we got back to the car, I opened the passenger door to let my wife get in, but her door was still open when I turned to walk behind the car. That’s when I noticed a young kid about 18 years old briskly walking across the empty parking lot toward my car. Because of his general appearance, and the vacant parking lot, I was on alert. My wife still had her door open. There were no other people near us. I stopped to look directly at him, and when he appeared to be walking directly toward me from about 20 feet away, I raised my left arm at a 45 degree angle, palm facing him, and yelled “Stop!” He stopped, and I asked him, “Can I help you?” He said that he left his car on I-40 near Lonoke because he ran out of gas, and needed a couple of dollars for gas. My lightning-fast mind told me that Lonoke is over 20 miles east of us on I-40, and there’s no way he walked that far for $2.00. However, I felt that if I did have a couple of bucks to give him, I would. I wasn’t sure I had that kind of small bills in my wallet, so I said, “Let me see if I have $2.00.” At the time, I carried my wallet in my right rear hip pocket, and as I reached for the wallet, a breeze caught my light windbreaker jacket and exposed the pistol briefly on my right hip. All of a sudden, the kid’s eyes got bigger, and he raised his hand to wave, and yelled, “Hey, that’s okay. I’ll find someone else.” With that, he turned and walked away in the direction from which he came.

My wife saw and heard the entire incident, and told me, “You know that kid was going to rob us, don’t you?” I told her I think when he briefly noticed my pistol, he changed his mind about us completely. To use someone else’s words, “I think he remembered all at once that he had urgent business in another county.” Today, I would never get close enough to a stranger like that to give him some money. I know that was a mistake to even check to see if I had small bills, but on that day at that time, my handgun was briefly exposed, possibly preventing a robbery.

The point of these true stories is that, more and more, there may be incidents like this. It is better to have a gun and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it.

I post true stories every day on my Facebook page. Stories like yours happen EVERY DAY in this country. Most are never reported to the police. You might like my page. https://www.facebook.com/ArmedCitizensFightBack/

[SIGFan43]

Wallace, I appreciate your comment, but I can't really navigate your Facebook page, because I canceled my account there years ago due to privacy concerns. I do appreciate that you are publicizing true cases of when guns are used in self-defense.