(Throwaway used for privacy)Idaho native here, I've lurked this subreddit for a little while and I genuinely love reading posts on here. I've carried for 2 years now, so naturally I relate to some of them, but I've never really had any problems while I've carried. whether it's open or concealed, I usually do it concealed but I'm open to the former as well. This would be the first time I've had an issue. First, I'll give you a bit of background to this little incident.There's a bookstore in my area that I like to go to with a friend of mine. He doesn't currently carry but he's considering doing so in the future and generally he's a carry-friendly dude. This whole thing happened last Thursday in that very same bookstore It was a nice day actually, nice and warm. I sometimes carry concealed in a jacket of mine, but this time I happened to be open carrying on my hip mainly because it's something I've been trying out.So basically I was open carrying at that point. I've carried in this store before, the employees and the manager know me and my friend since we go there a lot, they're very carry-friendly as well. Everything was like normal, we sat down my friend and I were talking about stuff in our lives. Not exactly sophisticated conversation or anything, just normal small talk. All this time the handgun never left my hip or anything like that.I consider myself a somewhat observant person and I kind of noticed in the middle of our conversation that there was a clean shaven guy wearing sunglasses and a hoodie. I kept seeing him circulating around our area and the perimeter of the store in general, kinda strange. I saw him get good looks at me a few times. I didn't pay it much attention and I just kept on what I was doing. The chair was oriented more towards my friend so I didn't have the best view unless I made an effort to turn my head behind me and such.Anyway, the sunglasses guy walked over to us on my right with a taller guy with long black hair and a stubble beside him and he said, "Excuse me, is that your firearm?"I replied with, "Yeah""Do you know that person there?" Sunglasses gestured to my friend"Yeah, I do""Is he armed?""No"Around this point the taller guy slowly began to make his way to behind the chair I was sitting in. I didn't know where this conversation was going so I was getting pretty nervous. I'm someone who gets anxious very easily and confrontation from strangers is kind of a trigger for me, part of the reason I was hesitant to OC before. Someone being out of my vision makes me even moreso nervous.Sunglasses continued, "Alright, well what's going to happen right now is that both you and your friend are going to stay still, hands on the arms of the chairs, inside voices, and you're going to do everything I say."Anxiety was soaring right here, major alarms started going off. I was starting to think this guy was trying to mug me or something although that didn't make sense why he would try to mug someone who he has just confirmed is armed and why he didn't seem to be carrying himself. I'm not ashamed to say I was scared as fuck. I tried to play it assertive though. I said the first deescalating phrase that popped into my head, in hindsight it doesn't make much sense."This conversation is making me uncomfortable"Around this point Longhair started strolling to the opposite side of my chair out of the corner of my eye to my left. Again, the casual and silent way this guy moved made me nervous as hell. I could tell my friend was getting visibly agitated, he was looking a bit pale. Neither of us are good at confrontation."Well, listen I'm going to make this simple we're the ones who aren't comfortable with you displaying yourself in this, you're passively breaching the peace and I'm going to disarm you for that reason alone."He went onto say that he was the member of a local organization. I won't say the name for privacy reasons since it'd reveal where I live, but I looked it up later and it's more or less a group that's like sovereign citizens, basically libertarian, "Don't tread on me" peeps but profoundly anti-gun.Anyway, I can't over emphasize how close I was to shitting my pants at this point, It is very lucky that I don't wear my heart on my sleeve that much, almost cut myself on how on edge I was. Still, actively tried to keep a brave face as much as I could. He said that he was going to disarm me now and that I shouldn't make any sort of movement. I turned to a line I've rehearsed a lot when I'm alone."I'm not interested in a confrontation, back away."After I said this Longhair took his arm and pounded the left arm of the chair I was sitting in out of nowhere and just returned to pacing, I'm assuming to rattle my cage, which it absolutely fucking did. My friend humped half a solid foot in the air and he was white as a ghost at this point. I spoke up at this point, my voice got kind of high pitched and cracked in a way I'm not proud of. My hand was on my holster at this point."Leave us alone!""You're going to get your hand off the! holster, now and you're going to be quiet" This guy's voice started off raised like mine but towards the end of his sentence he just sort of switched back to his, "indoors voice" unnerving as fuck.I was getting pissed off and scared shitless at the same time, horrible feeling btw. I got a bit louder."NO!"I was seriously considering drawing my weapon at this point because this is a SYG state and I seriously didn't know what was going to happen next, these two guys seemed to scream unpredictable and unbalancedThis was a quiet bookstore for naturally there were a couple browsing people who were starting to notice. To my right I saw a store employee who I knew pretty well start to speedwalk her way towards us as soon as I said, "NO!" like that.Longhair saw her coming as well and he started to lunge towards my holster-side and started to slowly reach for my gun. I yelled, "Get the fuck away from me!" and elbowed him away, which he did surprisingly quickly, thank god he did.This post is getting longer than I thought and I don't want to drag it out so I'll fast forward a bit now. Long story short, the two guys left of their own accord because the employee threatened to call the cops. In the end I wanted to get ahead of the issue and not let them twist it in any way so I filed an incident report and all that.It's by far one of the scariest experienced for me. If you have any feedback on anything I might have done wrong or things I should have done, feel free to tell me. I was acting largely on fear through a lot of it so it wouldn't surprise me if I did something wrong. Otherwise I just wanted to vent and share, thank you for listening. via /r/CCW https://ift.tt/2KMdYSM
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