x-posted here at the suggestion of somebody in the /r/guns comments.Let me preface this by saying that I live in a really safe place. Low crime rate, generally higher income/rent, not even close to the "bad part of town," and literally on the better side of the tracks. Given this, and the fact that my building is brand new (not even a year old) with very good security, I always knew that the odds of me needing a gun defensively at home were low.But apparently shit happens.I was sitting at my desk around 8 PM browsing the gunnit new queue and planning my December '17 Alaska expedition when I got a knock at my door, which is definitely weird for that time of night. I got up and looked through the peep hole to see a woman in tears with (presumably) her daughter who looked to be about 6 years old, so I opened the door to see what was up.The first words out of her mouth were "Can you please call the police?" That's always a reassuring thing for somebody to say, so I asked her what was going on before I did anything else. Apparently she was my down the hall neighbor, and in her attempt to leave her meth-using (how can he afford rent in this building?!) boyfriend, he'd beaten the crap out of her and taken/broken her phone. Everything seemed to add up, and at the very least these two seemed to be genuinely in trouble, so I told them both to come in and closed the door to call 911. I had always thought the anti-kick-in features I installed on my door may just have been to help me sleep better at night, but I was sure glad to have them then.The little girl wasn't crying and didn't have any obvious injuries, but the mother was red-faced, hyperventilating, and distraught, so I asked her if she was hurt or needed first aid and she said no, just bruised. I grabbed my phone and called 911 for her since she would have been very hard for the dispatcher to understand, and I relayed the details of what was going on, where we were, and everybody's condition. It's at this point that I find out about her meth-using boyfriend's location: he's running around the building looking for her and might be armed, but she's not sure.So that's lovely.Dispatch tells me what I already knew: our building has secure doors on the first floor and the police need someone with a fob to let them in, so they can't meet us at my apartment. That meant I had to escort these two down to them, which was not the most savory concept with her boyfriend potentially high on meth, potentially armed, and definitely violent. I picked the door with the shortest path from me to the ground floor with a route going away from where Methie was last seen, and told dispatch I'd meet officers there in two minutes.At this point I considered my options regarding defensive firearms. I always have my XDM 9 on me at home, and to abridge a potentially flame-war-inducing decision process, I decided that was the best choice. It holds 20 rounds of HST 147 gr. +P, and running into a bystander (or even a cop) who may have been in the building while OCing an AR seemed like it would cause more problems than it would solve. I changed into some proper pants, put on good shoes, put an extra mag in my pocket, checked the peephole to make sure nobody was waiting outside my door for us, and took them down to the first floor where we met the responding officers. I decided to keep my gun holstered the entire time for the same reasons I decided not to carry my AR.The police didn't need anything from me, so I went back upstairs, triple-checked the locks, and listened to them search her apartment for meth (at her behest) and do other police-y things for maybe an hour.Thankfully I didn't "need" my gun during this affair. However, a comment the woman made to me when I put on my good pants and gun belt was interesting. She asked "Whether I had a uh...open...carry...per...license," which isn't something you need in Arizona. By fact that you have a pulse you can legally put a gun down your pants. Given the situation though, I told her "Sure, I have all the licenses. It's what I do." I have never seen somebody so relieved in my entire life. She turned to her little girl and said "Wow...we sure came to the right place."What's the point of this post? Shit happens when you least expect it, even at home, even in your high rent apartment building with good security in a good neighborhood, and not always in the classic "home invasion" scenario all of us have mentally rehearsed, or at least considered, with regard to defensive firearm use. I had never even considered the possibility that something like this might happen, and thankfully I didn't need to unholster my gun. You can be damned sure I, and the woman I was escorting (her daughter was probably too young to know or care either way), was glad I had it though. I feel somewhat less insane about spending $100 reinforcing my door, too. via /r/CCW http://ift.tt/2bnsrne
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