Why You Need a Handgun Permit

     After twelve years of teaching handgun permit classes to several thousand students, I’ve heard just about every question one can imagine. We instructors like to say that there are no dumb questions. That’s not necessarily true. I’ve heard some dumb ones. Not from students, but mostly from people who have just found out what I do.  I guess the dumbest is, “Why would someone need to carry a gun?”  I used to ask the questioner if he had looked at the newspaper lately. Now I just relate the following story.

    This is the story of a young, stay at home, mother in her early thirties. She had two sons, ages five years and two years of age. This young mother was a permit holder and quite often carried a handgun with her during her daily tasks. She and her husband lived in a small town where crime was practically non-existent.

    One night in particular, she had found herself having to make a late night run to her in-laws house which was only a few miles away. Since her husband worked the night shift and would soon be leaving for work, she had to pack up the children in her new minivan to make the run. Having to get the bunch ready and loaded up, she decided not to bother running back into the house to get her gun. After all, she was only going a few miles and would only be gone twenty minutes.

     Heading out of town limits, she soon brushed away the concern she had about leaving her gun. It was a small community and she knew most everyone in it. Criminals were few and far between. Turning down a side road to cut a few tenths of a mile off of her round trip, she felt a rear tire go flat. This was a problem. She had never changed a tire before and wasn’t sure where to even find the spare in the new van. She pulled her cell phone out of her purse. There was one spot between her home and her destination where no signal was available. She was slap dab in the middle of it. She considered just riding on the rim to the top of the next hill where a signal might be available. In hindsight, this would have been the preferred way to handle this problem. Her concern was damaging the wheel on the new minivan. Instead, she decided to walk. She was not about to leave her children unattended in the wounded vehicle. She took the 2yr. old son up in her arms. The five year old held to her hand as they began their fateful journey.

     All went well until they reached the foot of the hill that meant possible rescue. She knew the man who lived in a house at the top of the hill. He was a gentle old soul that went to bed with the sun. He could be seen daily taking his early morning walk with his constant companion, a medium sized canine of dubious lineage (i.e. a mutt). The man was, no doubt, fast asleep. His dog wasn’t. This was a rural lane that didn’t see much traffic in the daylight hours, let alone at 10 P.M. and foot traffic was rarely ever seen. As soon as she heard the low growl coming from the tall weeds at the side of the road, she knew the tire was the least of her troubles now.

     The dog would do what any loyal dog would do. He would protect his master. The five year old was terrified by the guttural growl coming from the monster, visible only to his mind’s eye. He began to cry. Knowing that running might enervate the primal urge of the dog to give chase and attack, she tried to calm the boy and held tightly to his small tugging hand. Her list of options was small and there wasn’t a good one in the bunch.     She could set the two year old down and tell the elder to lead the younger back to the van while she fought the dog “hand to fang”, but what if she lost?. How long would the kids be out here alone?  What if they began to run and the quick dog bypassed her to go for the smaller, weaker prey? And she could never run with both kids in her arms. If she tried and the canine attacked, she might seriously injure one or both kids in the fall that would surely come. She could leave the five year old to fend for his self and at least save the younger one. No! Wild animals did that. People didn’t. She would never allow that to happen. Not for the first time during this short standoff (that already seemed to have lasted for hours) she thought, “if only I had my handgun”. Just firing into the ground near the unseen dog might cause him to high-tail it back to his home. The shot, or two, or three (an international signal for help), would surely awaken surrounding households and draw help……..

     Fortunately, this story is a work of fiction. Well, most of it anyway. The young mother was (and still is) my wife. The two sons are mine as well. This is a scenario I presented to my wife one night when she was about to make a round trip run to my parent’s house as I was leaving for work. I asked her if she had her gun. Her reply was “No, I’m just going to the farm and back. I don’t think I’ll run into a criminal on the way”. That’s when I presented her with this scenario and her list of available options. She went back into the house and donned her Don Hume paddle holster containing her Glock 19 and even buckled on a spare magazine pouch containing an extra 15 rounds of hollow-point insurance.

  

   Understand that this is what a handgun is; it’s insurance. We don’t buy insurance for something we know will happen. We buy it for things that are unexpected; for things that can’t be planned for. When some learn that we carry handguns they ask “expecting trouble?” I always advise them that a handgun is what one carries when one is not expecting trouble. If I were going somewhere I expected trouble, I wouldn’t go. And if I had to go, I’d carry a rifle and ten of my best friends with their rifles. Realize that trouble comes when we don’t expect it. That, my friend, is why you need a handgun permit and a handgun. Think about it!

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment,

Jamie Spaulding