Night before last after having a drink with Mac I stopped at the gas station down the street from my house. They have a jack in the box in the station and I was in the mood for a jumbo jack. As I was waiting for my order to come out I heard the faintest voice behind me say "Hey, are you a cop?" I turned around to see three children sitting at a table (a very young boy, a girl and a young man). I simply said "no". The voice I heard before must have came from the youngest one, because he asked me "Why do you have a gun?" The oldest boy chimed in "It's for protection right?" and so I said "Yeah, it is for safety." The girl asked me how many bullets it had and then asked if it was loaded. I responded "Of course. It doesn't make much sense to have a gun for safety if it isn't loaded right?" She looked like something clicked in her head, like she was saying to herself "Yeah that makes sense". At this point my food was ready so I grabbed it from the counter and went back to the table. They asked about permits and whatnot and I told them that if you are 18 and can pass a background check then you can openly carry like I was doing, but if you wanted to conceal (I put my shirt over my gun for emphasis) you needed a permit for that. As I explained it to them I could tell that it didn't make much sense that in order to put your shirt over your gun you had to be older with a permit. The oldest one asked if I had ever had the cops called on me. I told them that yes, I had the cops called on me once. They got wide eyed and asked "So what happened?!?!" and I told them that since I wasn't doing anything illegal the cops left me alone. They seemed to be amazed by this. And of course the dreadful question came up...."What would you do if a guy came in here with a gun and tried to rob the place?" I told them "Honestly I don't know. Because if a guy came up to me with a gun and wanted my money, I would just give it to him." They all laughed and I said "No seriously. I can replace my ID and cancel my credit card. Money is just a thing, and a person's life isn't worth the 40 dollars I have in my pocket. Money is just a thing. That's like someone coming up to me with a gun and saying Give me your food. Of course I would give him my food." This seemed to be a real revelation to them. I asked all of them how old they were because I wanted to make sure they understood what I was talking about. They were 15, 14 and 12. I said "But if someone came up to you, or you, or you (I made an emphasis to actually point at each of them) with a gun to your head, I wouldn't think twice about shooting him. If he only wanted money that is one thing, but if he wanted to kill me or any of you I would shoot him in a heart beat." There were a couple other things that they asked that I can't remember, but I kept on asking if they had anymore questions. Once they ran out of questions I introduced myself and shook all of their hands and then left.
I'm sorry if my narrative seems garbled. I just wanted to type as much detail as I could remember in chronological order.
It was such an awesome experience to talk to these children. They had HONEST questions about why I carried, and no per-conceived notions about guns or people that carry them. I walked away feeling like I made an impact on their psyches that would last forever.
