bradvanhorn
Member
I have pulled my personal gun once. My military issue weapon (past and present) has been used more than once.
My lone "civilian" incident occurred not long after I'd returned from Desert Shield/Storm. I was stationed in Norfolk, and in those days we used to go to Virginia Beach on the weekends to cruise the strip on our motorcycles. I used to carry a Glock 22 concealed under my jacket, mostly because I wanted to, not because I'd ever had any trouble. For some reason, in the early 90s Virginia Beach was being plagued by groups of thugs (mostly teenagers) who would come out about midnight. They would roam around in groups of 15 to 20 or so, and they'd wait until they could corner some poor guy out of sight, then beat the crap out of him. It was so bad the police were posted on just about every other street corner along the strip, but it wasn't stopping it. So anyway, me and a buddy are down at the strip around midnight on a Friday, and we wanted to get out of traffic, so we pulled into a parking lot to hang out for a little while. This particular lot belonged to the Post Office, and due to a chain link fence, there was only one way in and one way out. We'd been sitting for a little while chatting and waving at the girls, when I noticed a large group of "thugs" coming down the sidewalk to our left. We'd managed to pick a spot away from the police, so these guys must have thought they'd found a couple easy targets. I'm 6' tall, and at the time I was built pretty well (300lb bench), as many young Marines are, but my buddy was a bit smaller. As the young thugs start getting closer, they start making derogatory comments about us and our motorcycles, so far nothing but talk. Then a couple of them drift into the parking lot and start talking about how maybe they should kick our [butts] and take our bikes. I was quiet and polite, and suggested that perhaps they'd best move along. Well, that must've been the signal to strike, because then they really started to move in, and some more of their buddies started to come in as well. At that point I lifted my jacket, pulled my gun, left it pointing toward the ground, and said, "if you want trouble, you've just found it." I'll never forget those words, or the reaction: everyone came to a complete stop, no moving, no talking, nothing. After a couple seconds they picked their chins off the ground, put their eyeballs back in their sockets, and they quickly backed up to the street. Once they were back in the comfort of the group, they started challenging me to do something. Fortunately that lasted all of about a second, and then they started moving on down the sidewalk again. Once we had a clear path, we fired up the bikes and got back to base as quickly as possible. Afterwards we chose never to hang out late at night at the beach, and even in the earlier hours we chose to stay with the crowd. Frankly I wasn't scared of them for a second, but I was afraid I'd get in trouble with the Marine Corps for shooting them. My buddy suggested telling the police, but I didn't want to explain the gun, and I didn't want the Marine Corps to ever know anything about it. [Surprisingly, we had a very, very anti-gun Battalion Commander, so that was most of why I feared retaliation by the Corps.]
My future solution to that one incident was to try and never put myself in a position where pulling my gun was the only option. That has continued to work to this day (so far at least).
My lone "civilian" incident occurred not long after I'd returned from Desert Shield/Storm. I was stationed in Norfolk, and in those days we used to go to Virginia Beach on the weekends to cruise the strip on our motorcycles. I used to carry a Glock 22 concealed under my jacket, mostly because I wanted to, not because I'd ever had any trouble. For some reason, in the early 90s Virginia Beach was being plagued by groups of thugs (mostly teenagers) who would come out about midnight. They would roam around in groups of 15 to 20 or so, and they'd wait until they could corner some poor guy out of sight, then beat the crap out of him. It was so bad the police were posted on just about every other street corner along the strip, but it wasn't stopping it. So anyway, me and a buddy are down at the strip around midnight on a Friday, and we wanted to get out of traffic, so we pulled into a parking lot to hang out for a little while. This particular lot belonged to the Post Office, and due to a chain link fence, there was only one way in and one way out. We'd been sitting for a little while chatting and waving at the girls, when I noticed a large group of "thugs" coming down the sidewalk to our left. We'd managed to pick a spot away from the police, so these guys must have thought they'd found a couple easy targets. I'm 6' tall, and at the time I was built pretty well (300lb bench), as many young Marines are, but my buddy was a bit smaller. As the young thugs start getting closer, they start making derogatory comments about us and our motorcycles, so far nothing but talk. Then a couple of them drift into the parking lot and start talking about how maybe they should kick our [butts] and take our bikes. I was quiet and polite, and suggested that perhaps they'd best move along. Well, that must've been the signal to strike, because then they really started to move in, and some more of their buddies started to come in as well. At that point I lifted my jacket, pulled my gun, left it pointing toward the ground, and said, "if you want trouble, you've just found it." I'll never forget those words, or the reaction: everyone came to a complete stop, no moving, no talking, nothing. After a couple seconds they picked their chins off the ground, put their eyeballs back in their sockets, and they quickly backed up to the street. Once they were back in the comfort of the group, they started challenging me to do something. Fortunately that lasted all of about a second, and then they started moving on down the sidewalk again. Once we had a clear path, we fired up the bikes and got back to base as quickly as possible. Afterwards we chose never to hang out late at night at the beach, and even in the earlier hours we chose to stay with the crowd. Frankly I wasn't scared of them for a second, but I was afraid I'd get in trouble with the Marine Corps for shooting them. My buddy suggested telling the police, but I didn't want to explain the gun, and I didn't want the Marine Corps to ever know anything about it. [Surprisingly, we had a very, very anti-gun Battalion Commander, so that was most of why I feared retaliation by the Corps.]
My future solution to that one incident was to try and never put myself in a position where pulling my gun was the only option. That has continued to work to this day (so far at least).
It looked to me like he had drawn a snubby and is pointing it at my friend under his suit. This was not a shall issue state. If he had a gun it was likely the only one in the restaurant.
