Folks,
Let me give you some background. First of all I didn’t start carrying a gun because I was “scared” or “paranoid” or thought I was John Wayne. I started carrying a gun after I had been quite literally chased out of someone’s yard and off of their rural property and several miles down the road via car by a man with a large hatchet and a crazy look in his eye. All of this happened while I was in a car group made up of women and children and myself working a not so remote portion of our very remote territory. I had driven up his roughly mile long driveway, where there were no KEEP OUT or NO TRESSPASSING signs posted and I approached his door as if it were any other, I even had a 9 year old male child with me. This guy answered his door and instantly told me to get the F off of his property, I apologized for bothering hi and we started back to the car. He this picked up a large hatchet and said he could kill us all for trespassing and no one would care… we started moving faster. We got in the car and started leaving when I noticed he was getting into his truck with the hatchet in hand. He then followed us all the way to the main public road and then chased us back to the highway honking and screaming at us while waving his hatchet around in the cab.
I can tell you that there is no worse feeling in the world than thinking someone has the fury and the tools to kill you and having him tell you he has the motivation as well… and not being able to do a damn thing about it. I couldn’t call the police because there was no cell service and if I did manage to get a message out it would have at least 20 minutes for a deputy to arrive … IF he just happened to be in the city limits of the nearest little town. If that guy had wanted to nudge off of the road on his driveway and hatchet us all to death then make candy dishes out of our skulls, there was NOTHING I could have done to stop him. I certainly didn’t have large angles show up and keep him at bay.
After I got home that night I cleaned my gun and bought an ankle holster. I have with very few exceptions never left the house without it ever since. I didn’t go out in service again for several months, I didn’t make a big deal about it. I knew I couldn’t carry a gun on my ankle in service for fear of someone seeing it while I was getting in and out of cars…
Finally I figured out one of my guns fit perfectly in that little pocket. I practiced getting it out and shooting quickly just in case and I can tell you that I can go from holding it at my side to having it out and shooting inside of about 5 seconds. I can be on the move and saving my own life before most of you could dial 911 and have an operator answer the phone. After that I was back to the preaching work lol
A few years before that happened a friend and I were out in service on a rural Indian reservation we went into an older neighborhood that was used as public housing, it was basically about 25 homes randomly dropped out in the middle of nowhere it’s like the suburb of a town not big enough to have suburbs. It was also ground zero for the reservations meth problem. There were tweakers and homeless and drunks who inhabited these houses, most of them single men who ALSO had criminal backgrounds they all seemed to be drawn to this place…
Anyway, no territory is too dangerous… so off we went. We would park our car then work two doors then move it so that it was always close for a quick escape. We came up to a door and got up on the porch before we saw the pit bull/lab/German Sheppard/hound of hell mix dog asleep on the far side of it. He barked and instantly there were 2-3 of his friends showing up from around the neighborhood. We backed back to the car swinging our book bags at them when we tried getting in the car one came up and nailed my friend’s leg, he ended up with 6 stitches and torn pants. Being young single guys living on our own and without real jobs he had no insurance so he got stuck with medical bills and ruined pants. Would I have hesitated to shoot those 4 dogs instead of letting my friend get nailed like that? Yes I would.
So yea, I carry a gun and I carried a gun out in service.