Carry Everywhere, my lesson was non-lethal, yours may not be.

Today driving to pick up my little brother, stuck in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. The guy in front of me halts, which I realize in retrospect was a brake check. In the moment I just assumed it was a part of DC rush hour traffic and paid no mind to it. A few minutes later he pulls off and starts yelling at me and flips me off, I initially return the gesture then just closed my window and sat there until he gave up and drove off. We both take off, but one of his passengers starts leaning out the window and starts yelling at me (I don't know what, my windows were closed and we were moving). I called 911 at that point to report the bad driving and get stuck on hold while county 911 transfers me to VA state police. Finally, about 1/2 a mile later we both come to a stop, but then I see his reverse lights come on. I immediately check my 6, but I'm boxed in because rush hour, so the inevitable happens and he rams me. At this point VA State Police picks up (right on cue) and I give vehicle description and pulled over. He took off. But in that moment it raced through my mind "what if this got violent?"Given my initial "it's just a quick errand" thoughts I wasn't carrying, and the only weapons I had in the car were a knife and an unloaded, cased up rifle that just happened to be in the car. If it had escalated and he had stopped to confront me I highly doubt I would have been able to defend myself against multiple assailants who themselves may have been armed. I consider myself lucky that he decided to drive off (he got stopped just later because of my report to VSP though).In retrospect I now realize that I got very tunnel-vision. I should have immediately tried to change lanes or take an exit, especially considering I was for all intents and purposes unarmed. But from now on I'm going to be strapped 100% of the time when it's legal because the next time something like this happens I don't want to feel the fear of reaching towards my holster and realizing there's nothing there... via /r/CCW https://ift.tt/2YzwA20