I was pulled over by the Fort Worth Police. As I'm easing to the shoulder, John asks me "what about the gun?" I tell him to just be cool, keep his hands away from it, and don't make any sudden moves. "We're legal. We're travelling," I say. When the officer came up to the window, he asked if we had been drinking. He said I weaved a little back there. (Maybe I was messing with the radio or the heater or something. I don't know. Maybe I did weave.) I told him no. He asked to see my license and insurence. I already had my drivers' license in my hand before he came up. My insurence card was in a folder attached to the sunvisor. I reached up and got it and turned to hand it to him and looked into the barrel of his pistol.
He asked me why I had a gun. I told him I was travelling and was under the impression it was legal to carry when travelling. He asked me to please step out of the vehicle. I got out and we walked back to the trunk of the car where I was instructed to place my hands while he patted me down. I kept saying that I'm travelling and it's legal. he asked where I was going, where I was coming from, and all that sort of information - several times. He said it's ok, he was going to check my license and all that and if nothing came up, I could go.
There was construction along that stretch of I-20. When I pulled over, the passenger side of my car was very close to a concrete barricade. While this officer and I are talking, I'm completely oblivious to his partner and my room mate, six feet away from me. So this part is second-hand what he told me after the fact. She (the partner) had squeezed between my car and the barricade and pointed her pistol at John. She told him to put his hands up and then told him to get out of the car. He was wearing a seatbelt. The seatbelt latch was inches from my pistol. When he reached for the seatbelt, she told him to put his hands up, which he did. The she told him to get out of the car and he reached for the seatbelt again. She told him to put his hands up . . . and on and on. This might have been funny if we didn't have guns aimed at us. (And we did chuckle about it later.) He tells her, through the rolled up window, "I'm going to take my seatbelt off," and points down to it. And she said, "Ok, but if you do anything stupid, I'll blow your head off!"
(I did not actually hear this. This is what John told me she said. But I have no reason to doubt it.)So John gets out and there we both are with our hands on the trunk of my car. I remember seeing the female officer with my pistol. She had dropped the magazine and ejected the chambered round and was in the process of trying to force the extra round into the magazine. I told her, "That won't fit." And she gave me a look of complete incomprehension. The mag was full, it would not hold another round and this seemed to baffle her. Anyway, both officers go back to their car with my pistol and my DL and insurence card while John and I are standing out in the cold on the shoulder of I-20 with our hands on the trunk.
After a while, they come back, return my pistol and DL and insurence and tell me we're free to go. As I'm getting back in the car, I said that I thought the handgun could not be concealed to be legal under the travelling clause. His response was "Maybe it would be better if it was concealed - to avoid situations like this." That was it. We went home for Christmas.
--------------------------------------------------------
To make a long post longer, there was another situation, also involving John, less than two months before this.
We had just moved into an apartment in Garland. The bozo who lived there before us left the alarm set. When we moved in, the light was flashing, but no signal was going out because we had no phone. The apartment office couldn't turn it off, someone from the alarm company would have to do it. And they couldn't access it remotely because we had no phone. It was about a week before the phone company and alarm company could come by and connect us. They both came on the same day and just happened to be there at the same time.
I left John there with the technicians and I was going to the store. I step out of the apartment and start down the walk and there's a Garland Police Officer coming up the walk. He draws his pistol and points it at me.
I raised my hands and said, "You're here about the alarm, right?" (I had actually thought about this possibility before.) See, the alarm had been going off all week, but it wasn't really sending a signal anywhere until the phone was hooked up. When the telephone was connected, the monitoring station got the signal. They tried to call. No one answered because the phone guy was still messing with the phone. Police were dispatched. Nice to know the system works. I explained the deal to him, while I stood there with my hands in the air. I pointed out the telephone company van and the alarm company truck and said guys were inside working on it. He followed me in to verify this, spoke with the phone guy and the alarm guy and then left.
By the way, I had long bushy hair and probably looked like a hoodlum to the typical LEO at the time both of these events took place.
