Don’t Home Carry
When TTAG posted my Halloween pumpkin carving photos some readers got their BVDs in a twist because I was armed in the snaps. I’ve been bombarded with questions regarding my mental health, parenting choices and drinking habits – all because I home carry. I actually don’t home carry . . . I carry. Period.
I wake up, I get my XD off my nightstand, I chamber a round, and I put the gun in my holster. Then I get dressed. The gun comes off at night when I go to bed. I take it out of the holster, remove the round from the chamber (as I have discussed before, I have two children, and I have reasons for unloading the gun) and put it on my nightstand.
Other than a shower midday – when the gun is placed on top of the medicine cabinet in my bathroom – I don’t remove it. I just don’t. If I’m staying home that day, I don’t make an effort to conceal my gun at all, but I still “wear” it.
I don’t remove my gun to go anywhere unless I have to be in a courthouse – where I’ve only been a few times for jury duty. I also disarmed before my my stay in the hospital last May as well, but I was in a lot of pain and my left eye was swollen shut. And . . . that’s it. If a business bans guns I simply don’t go there.
Some people have to remove their gun for work. Some only carry when they think their risk is high. Some prefer to disarm when they get home. It’s not for me to tell people how to live. But this much I know: it’s better to have a gun and not need it than need it and not have it. No matter where you happen to be when, God forbid, the need arises.