This is a topic that comes up frequently and I thought maybe I could address it from a different perspective and instead of asking if I should tell people talk about why I don’t.

In the past 6 months or so there have been two threads started by people that decided to start conversations about guns with people they didn’t know and neither conversation ended well.

In one the OP starts a conversation with a salesman in his office who clearly doesn’t know a whole lot about guns and at some point in the conversation the salesman asks him “Are you carrying a gun now?” (Because gee no one saw that coming) and when the OP doesn’t say “No” fast enough the salesman correctly concludes that the OP is carrying a gun.

In the second the OP starts talking guns with some half drunk person he met in a bar and tells this random stranger that he is armed( yeah, because that couldn’t go wrong). The random stranger then proceeds to start a fight and ask the OP if he can borrow his gun to settle the score (Again, did not see that coming).

People I don’t know well don’t need to know the details of my life; there just isn’t any reason for it. My experience has been that the less most people know about me the better off I am. As for friends I’ve mentioned previously that I’ve had some really bad experiences that were directly related to telling a “friend” who really wasn’t a gun guy that I had a permit. He then proceeded to share my business with a bunch of people I don’t know.

If I can keep that kind of hassle out of my life by simply keeping my mouth shut I’m all for it.

There are very few people I’ll talk guns with in the real world, most of the time if I want to talk guns I come here. I don’t give strangers any reason to assume I might be armed. I don’t start conversations about guns at work and if people around me do I don’t participate.

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Retired Career Security Guard