Almost had to draw for the first time tonight.

I'm in my mid 20s and have had my CCW for 7 months. This is the first time since I've been carrying that I have felt like there was a situation that would require me to draw.I'll try and keep this short.I got hungry at around 10pm and decided to get some food and walk around to get some exercise. If you've ever been to downtown Denver, you know there's one street that has all the good cheap food and bars. There also happens to be a large presence of drug dealers in the area.I was walking around for a while trying to decide where I wanted to eat and notice this black guy in a blue hood and blue shoes who is talking shit to random people that pass him. I decided to stay away from him and walked around the block again. I finally decide where want to get food and get it to-go.I leave the store and decide to head home. I turn the corner and see the blue hood guy, a middle age black man and a younger guy with face tattoos. The guy with face tattoos is holding some girl (who I assume he knows) in a light headlock and said "if anyone says anything to me, I'll shoot em". I ignore that because she's kinda laughing about it and not struggling, but my awareness went from yellow to orange.Then the middle age black guy says to me "you good?" (which means "wanna buy some drugs").I told him "yep. I'm good, no thanks".He takes a step closer and quickly responds with "aight well we see you walking around so we know you're looking for something".I take a step back and say "nah dude I'm just walking, what you want"He says "money", I respond with "nope".He takes another step closer and says "I ain't asking. You disrespected me".My conflict awareness meter goes from orange to red. I immediately am thinking that he is going to try to rob me so I quickly take a big step back and put my hand on my weapon in my waistband. (He can't see my hand nor my weapon because I'm wearing a jacket). I say "you aint getting shit from me".His demeanor changed quickly and he stops making eye contact and looks at the ground. So I start to walk off. As I'm leaving, passing the blue hood and face tatt guy, he tries to save face and says "you best walk the other way". I just say "yeah ok buddy". I make sure the blue hood and face tatt guy aren't making eye contact or looking at me to determine they aren't threats, and I walk to my car about 20 feet away (while making sure they aren't looking at me nor following).That is the end of the interaction.Some takeaways from this:I normally don't keep one in the chamber, but I'm glad I did this time.I remained surprisingly calm and firm. My voice didn't crack, I wasn't shaking and was aware of possible threats and ready to defend myself.Bad people with bad intentions are more afraid of regular people with firearms than cops.I know there might be people that are going to respond with "well you shouldn't get food on that street" or "you should have ignored him" but I refuse to let these drug dealers destroy my city and try to intimidate good people. via /r/CCW https://ift.tt/39Jv7s5