I started carrying when they first started to issue CCW permits in New Mexico a few years ago. Before that I had a car gun, which has always been legal here. I figured it's nuts not to carry with all the violent and crazy people in the world.

Lived in DC.

I did carry occasionally before that.

Not completely Norm,
The malfunction I had with the 1911' was entirely user induced. In no way shape or form, was it the fault of the gun. I still carry 1911's at times. But now, they have ambi thumb safeties and they're NOT carried in the cab of a truck?
Living proof yet again, any gun is as dumb as it's operator! As to shooting as he high tailed? I figured if I'd already missed him when he was 25 feet away and coming towards me, I wasn't about to improve my score as he fled?

I had wanted to for some time, but was extremely tied up financially trying to pay off my house. About two years ago there was a string of unrelated killings/shootings in nearby Grand Rapids. It was something like a shooting a day for four or five days straight. Every time the TV was on it seemed like there was another shooting. My community has also had it's share of gang problems as well as an influx of people from other industrialized communities in Michigan that have rusted to a near halt. It was time, I got to work at it, and found that it's really turned into a fun and fascinating pasttime. If I never have to shoot that's all it will ever be. Sooner or later I'm sure one of us here will, unfortunately, have to shoot and that's why I feel that the time here is so valuable. The information we share here, combined with our training, may very well help someone on this forum defeat the bad guys. I was also involved in two very serious street fights as a teen in the 1980s, so I have no illusions about the possibility of violence entering my life. It doesn't happen when you expect it. I've had one friend murdered, two friends shot in attempted murders, and another friendly aquaintence/National Guard buddy die of a gunshot wound under suspicious circumstances. Both of my paternal great grandfathers were shot at in attempted murders. People who think it can't happen to them are fools. I cannot understand the rationale of men who go about in an increasingly violent society in a neutered (unarmed) state. It ain't manly. It is natural for men to be armed. It is what allowed us to achieve mastery over wild animals and other dangerous humans in the first place. I don't carry guns everyday because I think something will happen that day that will require their use. Probably it won't. I carry them because just once in my life, just once, I may run into the wrong person. If I do, I refuse to be outgunned or undergunned if at all possible. I intend to win!!!!!! If all good men and women would pack, violent felons would be doomed and would be almost extinct in our society. Ultimately, I started carrying because it's the right thing to do.

As soon as Ohio adopted our ccw laws.

My first gun in 1979 was a .22 revolver and to carry it you had to have a permit
So I initially wanted it for Target & Hunting

I was not FROM the city in MA I was living in and I could tell
the Detective was about to just send me on my way in that "May Issue" state

But I asked him if I could sit a minute, as I had just walked up two flights of stairs
with two artificial legs and I was a bit sore.
I said I just wanted to be able you use the gun for sports and recreation as I as limited in most other sports...

He gave me a look of frustration and said
"OK, Come back in two weeks to pick up your permit"

When it was up for renewal I was living back in my home town & the Sgt asked what's it for
I said "All Lawful Purposes" which he promptly typed on the form

Then he looked at the old permit which said only for "Target and Hunting"
I think he started to say something about me not giving him the whole truth
but then he said "Well OK I have it typed in already" and so I got the permit for all lawful Purposes which I had until I moved

When I moved south 5 years ago I didn't bring my guns or bother getting a Carry Permit
but this past year I retrieved my 3914 and now have my FL CCW

I live in a state recreation area between two large cities, imagine a park of several hundred acres, complete with lakes, streams, wild game,trails and lightly used gravel roads . I walk the trails or mountain bike and swim in the lakes for exercise, usually alone. Once I was jumped by five nice young miscreants on a lonely stretch of dirt road. They were in a van, the third time around I knew there was going to be trouble. I was lucky the only damage I received was from a long-neck beer bottle to my right scapula, no more bow shooting for me. I applied at my local county but all they issued me was a "hunting and target" permit, according to them I didn't NEED to carry a gun for self defense! All I had to do was CALL them when I felt "threatened" . The response time out here varies from about an hour to the NEXT DAY! Okay, I'll play by their rules, so I just started carrying open holster and made sure I always had a hunting license with me, which is All that's really required in Michigan , when I went for my walks. I was stopped a couple of times by the State boys and once by the DNR, but as long as I was not carrying in a car I was legal and they "let me off". Later an acquaintance of mine was jumped and stabbed by some crazy man while he was walking out to his tree stand to go bowhunting, just one-half mile between our houses.I reapplied for a general ccw, but again was denied, again they said I didn't NEED to carry for protection, but they were good enough to include "Fishing" on my Target and Hunting Permit. Later still a friend of mine was gunned down in a party store, in Detroit ,execution style. I decided at that time that I would carry no matter what. However, Michigan had changed it's law, any-one who qualified could get a general CCW even if you weren't a member of the good-ole boy network. I feel much safer now, at least I know if the defecation hits the impeller I at least have a fighting chance, especially if there is more than one assailant. I carry ALWAYS!

A combination of business and personal reasons. I'd always had guns as an adult. What motivated me to carry them was that my work left me dealing with degenerates and also carrying large sums of cash from time to time. (It also spawned my habit, which persists to this day, of wearing armor and carrying more than one gun. Property management aka slum lording is a rough business.

I also had a habit of becoming involved with crazy/dangerous women. One of whom threatened me with a very large knife when I said that I didn't like broccoli. I really don't. She menaced me with a knife until I ate all of what she cooked for me. Good times... Good times...

Watching the news. Friends that carry. Reading on this and a few other forums.
But mostly, the sorry state of the world in general. Anyone remember leaving your doors (house and cars) unlocked all the time? Remember helping strangers and not being "aware of your surroundings"? Remember answering the door at night with no thought that the person on the other side might be dangerous? Remember walking to school and playing outside at night?
There's a whole lot of truth that "I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6".

quote:

She menaced me with a knife until I ate all of what she cooked for me. Good times... Good times...

Gator, did that go away after the first trimester?

Good Lord, Gator Farmer, I bet you're glad she didn't cook lima beans that day.

Dave

quote:

Originally posted by GatorFarmer:
A combination of business and personal reasons. I'd always had guns as an adult. What motivated me to carry them was that my work left me dealing with degenerates and also carrying large sums of cash from time to time. (It also spawned my habit, which persists to this day, of wearing armor and carrying more than one gun. Property management aka slum lording is a rough business.

I also had a habit of becoming involved with crazy/dangerous women. One of whom threatened me with a very large knife when I said that I didn't like broccoli. I really don't. She menaced me with a knife until I ate all of what she cooked for me. Good times... Good times...

I too was raised in the South, and always around guns. My uncle had a enormous gun collection. I carried in my car ever since I was a teenager. Never thought it odd or strange to carry on my person, but also never did it that much.

Then I got into competitive shooting big time, and wound up filling a safe up with lots of nice guns.

The thing that probably pushed me over the edge was realizing just how **STUPID** I would feel if I ever needed a gun and didn't have it on me.

I'm mean, really. Why spent I spend all that time training to shoot well, hours of drying firing, all that money spent filling up a safe with nice guns, only to get killed out on the street b/c I didn't carry one?

It was a no-brainer after that.

Over the years that same logic has also lead me to carry anywhere and every time I possibly can. After all, I would feel really stupid to have spent years carrying a CCW piece, only to get killed the one time I decided to leave it at home because I "probably wouldn't need it."

Armed robbery at my former business.

I got my first carry permit in 2001, when I finally realized that I couldn't handle any young "toughs", that might give me trouble, on my daily walks, fishing, hunting, or bike rides, in town or out in the local woods.

Being older, and retired because of a disability, (bad rotator cuff) made me "see the light"! I couldn't do much if approached by some "punks".

Now I carry an old M-36, and just yesterday, it provided comfort, as I walked up behind a young guy, wearin "gangsta" clothes, acting in a suspicious way. (Seemed very nervous, and kept looking behind him at me, as I approached.)
He probably just wanted to "light up" some pot, in the lonely area that we were in.

But.....it gives me "an edge" just incase the unthinkable should happen. I've been in "situations", while bank fishing the river, that made me very uncomfortable. Luckily, I've never had to draw my gun. Bob

Florida Inmate Admits He Killed 8 In Pa.
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― After decades, he has confessed to being a serial killer, and his murder spree spread through the Pittsburgh area to eastern Ohio, and all the way to Florida.

Edward Surratt, a former Beaver County truck driver, is already serving life in a Florida prison. Now, 30 years after the killings, Surratt has confessed to six more murders including two teenagers from Allegheny County.

In the fall and winter of 1977 and 1978, Surratt put the Pittsburgh area into a panic with his crimes he has now confessed to committing. He would break into a home, kill the husband, sexually assault the wife, and then kill her.

His victims included Joseph and Catherine Weinman, of Marshall Township, as well as 17 others in states stretching from Pennsylvania to Ohio to Florida.

In 1977, Rita Feeny's 17-year old son, John, was murdered when he went to meet his girlfriend. The following day, he was found in his family's van in a remote area of Findlay Township shot to death. The body of his 16-year-old girlfriend, Ranee Gregor, was never found.

"It's very hard. It brings everything back," Feeney says. "I can cry at the drop of a hat."

Feeny and Gregor were two of the 19 victims of Surrat, who is now serving multiple life sentences in Florida.

"It was obvious there was a pattern, which is the modus operandi of a serial killer," says Dr. Cyril Wecht, former Allegheny County Coroner.

So far, Surratt, a former Aliquippa truck driver, has confessed to six murders in the Pittsburgh area and Ohio. But police are planning another visit to the Florida State Prison hoping Surratt will confess to other unsolved killings.

But, Feeny says the nightmare of her son's death will never end.

"I have mentioned it to some of my acquaintances and members of the church and some of them have said he should get a bed of nails," she says.

Police say Surratt's confessions are not because of any consumed conscience. He wants to be transferred to a prison in South Carolina where he believes conditions are better, and where he also killed a man with a baseball bat.