TexasCHLforum.com

Mornin', everyone.

Thought I'd share a story from the la-la land known as graduate school. It's amusing, and might just have a lesson in it somewhere.

Note: The story appears to start toward a PG-13 or worse ending, but I promise, it was nothing like that- just keep reading.

A few weeks ago, I took one of my fellow students to lunch. She and I could not have been more opposite politically, but we got along anyway, so figured it would be fun to kill some time by sharing a meal.

Over lunch, the topic of weapons comes up, during which she expresses a strong anti-gun sentiment, citing the usual excrement of guns cause more problems, they're evil, they're bad, blah blah blah, to which I just let her vent, enjoy my meal, and wait for the conversation to continue. I figure it's easier than disrupting what, until then, had been a lovely afternoon.

She was getting ready to leave the US to do an internship for women's empowerment in Pakistan, and I just happened to have a book on the Pakistani involvement in kicking the Russians out of Afghanistan during the Cold War, which I offered to loan her for the flight. She agreed, and after finishing our meal, she suggested that we go back to my place to pick up the book and have some coffee. Ok, great. We walk back to my apartment, I get a dirty look from the landlady (I live here with the missus-presumptive, so I can understand what she was thinking when I arrived with another woman at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Not a wise choice, in retrospect.) We came upstairs, walked into the apartment, and I get her the book, which happens to have a weapon on the cover. She flips through it and I wander into the bedroom with the intention of removing my weapon, as we're going to go to campus for some ice cream. Being a self-declared "sexually liberated woman", or for whatever reason, she follows me into my bedroom.

I started to expect that her intentions may be less than honorable, if you take my meaning, and so I mention her views on guns seemed a little...illogical. This gets the expected tirade about how she's never been around guns and she's been just fine and there's no way an intelligent person would carry because they're too busy doing other, more useful things so the only people that carry are redencks and the poor.

Now, I have to admit, that last bit made me mad. As far as legal defenses go, though, I was in the clear. In my home, I believe it's no longer brandishing.

So, I ask her if she's ever known someone with a permit, and she says no, they don't move in the same circles she does- and why am I still wearing my coat?

I shrug, smile, and take off my coat....to reveal a Glock 17 and 2 spare mags.
The look on her face was absolutely priceless.

After she recovered from the shock, she wanted to know if she could touch it, as she's never seen a weapon up close before. I cleared the PPK I keep in the safe by my nightstand, and we were off to the races.

Long story short, She wants to go out and learn how to shoot when she gets back from Pakistan, as soon as she realized that weapons were only as good or bad as the people using them.

Note: I made 2 mistakes in this encounter. First, I probably should have gotten out of the bedroom as soon as she got in there, to maintain a certain 'safe distance'. Second, I admit I lost my temper about the anti-gun tirade, leading to my removing of my cover garment.

Bright side- I got lucky. She's told several mutual friends we had a great time, and the landlady saw us come up and then come back down 10 minutes later, talking and laughing and everything lovely.

Hope this is as funny to someone on the board as it was in retrospect to me.