Why I Carry

Sometimes people ask me why I carry a gun. Unlike some, I have not had the traumatic experience that serves as a trigger, pun not intended, for concealed carry. So here is my story: why I carry, and how I reached the decision.

I never really thought about carrying a handgun; my grandfather did once upon a time ago, when he worked at the race track, and my grandparents and parents shot but carry just didn't really run in the family. Growing up I learned to shoot BB guns by the age of five or six, I don't remember not knowing how to use them, but again, larger guns just weren't in the house. I'm the youngest grandchild and by the time I was old enough to learn a heavier caliber, Granddad had lost his vision and never got to teach me. I didn't think about it at all for years and years. I took the BB guns out and popped soda cans every now and again but not more than that.

One summer I took a Women on Target class at the local range and I was completely hooked. . . on rifles. I was simply enamored with my CZ452 in .22lr and silhouette shoots. Rifles, long rifles, in particular, were the end all be all for me.

Eventually, I decided to buy a handgun, a little Ruger Bearcat, to excercise my constitutional right maybe, but mostly because the Bearcat was a cute little revolver. I loved it. I still do. It's fun to shoot, easy to clean, and it looks like it marched straight out of a B-grade western. I still never really thought abut carrying it.

About that time, I met my knight. For the first time in my life, I started to think about what would happen if I weren't around. 

It's not that my knight couldn't protect me. Truth be told, he'd be better at it than almost anyone else I've met. Thing is, he's a knight, and he's often off protecting other people. You see, he deployed to Afghanistan the same year I moved to a more urban area for my work. During that first year, there was an armed mugging in the parking lot, mere minutes after I had departed for the day from that self same lot.

Perhaps that should have woken me up itself. But it wasn't until my knight came back a few months later that I started to think about my life being worth something. My knight had gone overseas to protect all of the freedom and safety I enjoyed here. He clearly thought I was worth protecting, with his life if need be. Why should I be any less willing to protect myself?

I shouldn't, was the decision I reached. I won't let him down by risking taking away one of the things he already fought to defend. 

So I carry. Not because I don't believe in knights in shining armor, but because those knights carry for me. I carry so their efforts aren't wasted. And I carry for my knight, because sometimes he needs me just as much as I need him.