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Message: <blockquote data-quote="soberups" data-source="post: 980195" data-attributes="member: 14668">Thats because I dont NEED to carry a weapon with me at all times.I choose to carry a weapon with me when it is appropriate and practical for me to do so. There is a difference.Since you fear and hate guns, you automatically regard the act of carrying one as as FEAR based behavior when in reality it is nothing more than a reasonable precaution taken by any number of rational and level-headed people for any variety of reasons.You ASSUME that anyone who carries harbors some sort of macho fantasies about getting into a gunfight and shooting someone. You know what I do when I carry? I apologize to people when they bump into me. If someone cuts me off in traffic, or in line at the grocery store...I smile and let them. If someone insults me....I ignore it. I do these things because shooting someone is my worst nightmare and I will go to any lengths to prevent that from happening.You want to know what I have shot with my concealed handgun over the last 15 years that I have had a permit? Well, I have yet to ever draw it or point it at any human being...but I have shot 2 deer, one dog, and a cat that had been run over and left to die by cars and and were kicking around in agony with terminal injuries by the side of the road. Every one of those animals was fortunate that I happened to cross their paths with a weapon. Coddled suburbanites in gated communities such as yourself would not deign to get your hands dirty helping an animal in such a manner...you would merely drive past, or at best call 911 and wait for some mental defective like myself with an icky yucky gun to come along and take care of such nasty business for you. I know you hate guns, but whether you like it or not they come in handy sometimes.I'll tell you another story. My wife and I passed a guy once whose car had broken down in the middle of nowhere on our way home from the beach. It was after midnight, in an area with no cell reception. To make matters worse (for him) he was black, a rarity here in Oregon and a fact that pretty much guranteed that NOBODY in the rural, redneck part of the state that we were in was going to stop and pick him up. I am not in the habit of picking up hitchhikers myself, regardless of color or location, but I thought about it and realized (a) this poor guy had a real problem on his hands and (b) the risks of picking up an unknown hitchiker in the middle of nowhere were at least somewhat mitigated by the fact that I was ARMED. I talked with my wife and she agreed that we should help the guy, so we turned around and picked him up. I had my wife drive; he sat in the front seat; and I sat in the back seat directly behind him. He was a nice enough guy who was simply having car trouble, and we drove him up the road a few miles to a town where he could call a tow truck and arrange to get a room for the night. No big deal really, it was the right thing to do, but it was NOT a risk I would have been willing to take had I not been ARMED. That guy benefitted from the fact that I was carrying...and he didnt even know it.I live in a semi-rural area of an economically depressed state. There are parks and beaches and other places that my wife and I like to visit where there isnt any cell phone reception at all, or even if there is it might take the county sheriff 45 minutes to an hour to respond to a 911 call. We love to walk on the beach in the moonlight. Oregon is a beautiful place, but it also has a METH problem and you never know where or when you might run into a tweaker whose only desire is to feed his addiction by ripping you off. For me carrying a gun is a reasonable precaution for any number of legitimate reasons that someone like you who fears and hates guns simply cannot comprehend.Peace</blockquote>

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