packing and unpacking heat

I haven't been paying much attention to presidential politics, so I missed the exchange a few days ago between a reporter and Rick Perry. The reporter asked him whether he was currently "packing heat," and his response was "I never comment on whether I'm carrying a handgun or not. That's why it's called 'concealed.'"

Actually, that's a pretty clever fast response, but I think a simple 'no' would have been reassuring. I mean, presumably he does travel accompanied by armed guards – it is America, after all – but more to the practical point, if he did have a concealed weapon, under what circumstances could he use it to effectively protect himself or anybody else? In the middle of a crowd of well-wishers and cops.

I stopped carrying a weapon years ago because I got shot. I told this story in the old GEnie days, but it bears repeating.

I was renting a rundown old motel room outside of Ormond Beach, Florida, to use as an office. It was in a bad part of Daytona Beach (which had some truly bad parts), and every day I bicycled there in the dark of the morning, around 4 ayem. I had a lovely old manual typewriter in the office, and carried the novel manuscript back and forth in a big leather bag slung across my body. I also carried a large-frame .22 Magnum revolver in the bag.

In the months I followed this routine, I only twice saw a person on the way; both times he was obviously drunk and presumably harmless.

One afternoon I was out shopping, unarmed, on the same bike, and some berserk yoyo shot me from the passenger side of a passing car. Point-blank in the butt. The bullet went in about four inches, but didn't do much harm. A few inches over and it could have struck my spine or colon.

Anyhow, I stopped the bike and watched the miscreant pull away. The driver made a left turn and screeched off accelerating. I didn't get a glimpse of the license plate. I was busy ascertaining the extent of my injuries.

Fortunately I was close to home, and so was in the hospital in a few minutes. The bullet was too deep to extract, and it's still there. But after a day or so I could sit down again, and there were no long-term consequences.

But of course it did occur to me to wonder what would have happened if it had been a few hours earlier, and I had my handy Magnum. Well, it wouldn't have prevented the guy from shooting me. By the time I'd gotten the weapon out, the car would be turning, and if I kept my cool and got a good sight picture I might have killed the driver, which could have sent the car out of control into a playground. Or I might have missed, and the round or rounds would have gone into the low-income wooden nursing home on the other side of the street.

There was no actually good outcome.

Turning the question around, into a geometry the NRA doesn't care for – under what conditions might I have used my possession of the weapon to prevent violence?

None, actually. Maybe if I were carrying it in my hand, or exposed in a holster, the guy would have thought twice before shooting me. Or maybe he would've tried a head shot, so I couldn't shoot back.

Further extrapolating, under what set of conditions would carrying a concealed weapon increase my probability of survival, against an armed lunatic? He's always going to get the first shot. Maybe the second and third.

Maybe if this were the old west . . . but it's not. In 68 years of active life, traveling all over the place, I've had exactly one encounter with an armed criminal. He won, but I survived. (And of course there never was an actual "old West" like the movies. In many ways it was just a lower-technology version of today. Except, it's amusing to note, my own weapon – a single-action Colt like the one that tamed the West . . . . )

Anyhow, I stopped carrying a gun. People stopped shooting me, too.

Joe