Only carrying a gun when you think there might be trouble is like only carrying a spare tire in your car trunk when you think you might have a flat. My solution to the problem of “…if I think it’s a place I might get in trouble” is to simply not go there. Not being a cop, paramedic, or other first responder, I have that luxury. Therefore, if I should ever actually need a self-defense gun for its intended purpose, that says to me I wound up in a situation I didn’t foresee and, in overwhelming probability, couldn’t have avoided. I don’t say that to understate the virtues of situational awareness and what I call “tactical avoidance skills.” Just saying the only possible solution to this problem is to always have the gun with me.
My attitude is I could carry this gun every day of my life, for the rest of my life, and if I never need it, what did that cost me? Absolutely nothing. But if I need it ONE time in all those decades and it’s not there, that absence could have profound, horrifying, possibly life-ending consequences for me, and other innocent people I might have been able to save had I only been armed.
When something like the San Bernadino shooting happens, people like me always think, “If only I could have been there.” It’s not that we want to kill people, it’s not that we fantasize about being steely-eyed dealers of death. It’s that we know, if only we had been there, with our skills and our guns, there is an excellent chance we could have saved some innocent lives.
Is there any guarantee I, or someone like me, could have saved lives in such a situation? It’s not a lock, by any means. Is having ONE, all false modesty aside, highly trained and skilled person there when things get grim infinitely better than having nothing there but unarmed, helpless potential murder victims? It is indeed.
Carry all the time it is!