First Scare

[dburke87]

Kind of lengthy, bear with me.
EDIT: Very lengthy.

So I'm still in college, in a fraternity, and am still going out to bars and what not on a regular basis. Having gotten my CHL over a year and a half ago though I've learned to tune it down a lot and I react differently in situations where I would have otherwise done something stupid two years ago. I had my first real scare, or better yet my first TWO scares all within two hours of each other a couple of nights ago.

It's around 12:00am on a Saturday, or I guess Sunday morning now, and my friends and I had decided to go to a local bar for a bit. I don't plan on drinking this night, I'm just tagging along, so I do bring my pistol, not into the bar of course. It's getting close to 2:00am, and the bartender calls out last call, and because I owed my pledgebrother some money i had started my tab up for him. Sure enough it's close to $50 when he was only supposed to order two or three beers. I asked the bartender who all ordered these drinks he ends up pointing out my friend, and yes my friend was very drunk so he denied it. He starts arguing with the bartender, at which point I just paid the tab, and told the bartender not to worry about it. If anything the argument should be between my friend and myself, and not in the bar setting.

Needless to say, I took car of the bartender, tipped as I should, and stopped their argument. It's now past 2:00am so we all head outside before we drive off. I'm with upwards of twelve of my fraternity brothers, and there's another two DD's among us, who are actually sober enough to think. Well anyways, as we are walking out into the parking lot a group of maybe eight to ten guys, all early 20's I'd guess, follow us out. Apparently these kids overhear this 'argument,' and get the idea that we had actually skipped out on our tabs, and screwed over the bartender. They called themselves 'regulars' there, and because of that they took it upon themselves to make it right; their plan to make it right of course is start an argument, most likely looking for a fight.

This is nothing new for college, and just two years ago I would have acted completely opposite as I did. More than half of my group is screaming back and forth with several of these guys, who are wielding pool cues by the way, while myself and two others are trying to appease these guys , and at the same time get the rest of our group inside the cars and home. It almost works. I had explained to the other group that the bartenders were taken care of and there's no need to argue. But then both sides continue to instigate the argument. No punches had been thrown, no one was shoved, no one was even within ten feet of another person. At this point I'm really not too worried, things are dying down, and then BAM this one guy comes back from his car with a pistol. First thing he does is approach our group, then rack the slide, maybe to show us it was real I guess. He starts aiming his gun at different targets, including myself.

This next part seemed like it lasted maybe 10 seconds when of course it was maybe two minutes. I sneak off to my car to grab my pistol, I holster it, hide it under my shirt, and then walk back to the group of my friends, except I walk off to the side a little so I'm not too close to any group. I put an engine block between myself and the guy wielding a pistol. If you're thinking, "why the hell did he not get out of there right then," well maybe I was stupid, but none of my drunk friends had left, and I HAD to get them out of there. Now I did not draw my weapon, nor did I plan on it unless I absolutely had to, I guess if the guy had actually started firing. I had one of the other sober guys call the police, while I told my friends to turn around and walk away NOW, meanwhile the guy with the gun is making threats and wildly aiming his gun across our group. Finally the armed guy randomly turned and walked away to his car and left. I round up the last of us, and get out of there real quick. After I drop them off, one of the sober ones stays with me as I had now called up the police to file a report and they wanted me to wait at the parking lot where it happened. I park off in an adjacent parking lot and shutoff my lights, and proceed to wait.

Thirty minutes later, no police yet. I'm sitting in my car as I notice this lady running out of the bar yelling with a guy following pretty fast, yelling back at her. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but the woman did not want that man around that was apparent. Sure enough the lady gets to her car and begins fumbling with her key just as the man reaches her. He grabs hold of her hair, slams her against her car, and then begins making motions as if he is going to rape this woman; he doesn't. I will leave it all the details for obvious reasons. This is happening around 20-30 feet in front of my car in plain sight of me. Thoughts start racing through my head, AGAIN, and I feel I need to take action. I tell my friend to once again call the police, as I step out of my car, pistol holstered, and stand in between my seat and my open door. I yelled something along the lines of "get away from her, leave her along," I don't fully remember. He looks up in shock at me; I guess he thought no one was around. He lets go of her and begins pacing towards my car, as I'm yelling at him to not approach my vehicle, and to turn around and leave. He comes all the way up to my hood, opposite side of my door though, says "he'll beat my butt." I told him my friend was on the phone with the police, and he needs to just leave now. He does finally. In the meantime the woman had sped off in her own car.

The police arrive moments later, all in all two hours after first being called saying we had a guy armed with a pistol wildly aiming it at people. I tell them what happened in both events, they took my information, I gave them the license plate number of the guy who pulled the gun, and a good description of him, etc.. It turns out my information was correct and I'm going down tomorrow to the station to pick him out of a lineup of pictures, where he'll then be charged with several things.

I don't know if I handled things right or terribly wrong, but I do know that no one got hurt, the lady is fine, and I never drew my weapon. Maybe it's hanging out with this group of kids that got me into this situation in the first place, and I've got a lot to think about on who I go out with, but I'm just happy I got them all home safely and everything turned out the best it could have. Bring on the comments.

[KRM45]

Interesting story. Fort Worth PD must have been very busy to take 2 hours to respond to a man with a gun call.

I would likely have shot the guy pointing a gun at me and my friends. It seems all worked out well.

Good job preventing the assault.

Remember nothing good happens at 2:00am.

[dburke87]

A quick addition: My friend was still on the phone with the police as the guy with the gun walked away and drove off, and we gave a license plate number and description of the vehicle over the phone also. So the police knew that he had ultimately left and no one was injured. I also did see ten police cars drive through and around that area over the next hour so maybe they were looking for the vehicle, I don't know. It was an excessively long wait for police to actually come to the scene though considering the situation.

[Oldgringo]

Inasmuch as one must be 21 to have a Texas CHL, can we assume that you were the elder in this group of funseekers?

[boomerang]

This is nothing new for college, and just two years ago I would have acted completely opposite as I did. More than half of my group is screaming back and forth with several of these guys, who are wielding pool cues by the way,

I hope this was reported to the police too. A club (pool cue) is a deadly weapon and threatening people with a deadly weapon is threatening people with a deadly weapon.

[buffalo_speedway_tx]

That was a lot to go through in 1 night. My opinion is that you did a good job of handling this. I base this on the fact that you & your friends made it home safe. Also, you did not incur any major legal hassles/expenses by drawing or using your weapon.

[boomerang]

Inasmuch as one must be 21 to have a Texas CHL, can we assume that you were the elder in this group of funseekers?

The drinking age is also 21. Coincidence?

ignoring the fact military can get a CHL at 18

[dburke87]

I'm 22, others were all 21-23.

[Oldgringo]

Never mind , I guess I just forgot, over the past 40+ years, how much fun being a 21-23 year college student could be.

[The Annoyed Man]

All things considered, I think you handled things pretty well - and I think you nailed it on the head when you suggested that maybe you need to rethink whom you choose to hang around with. Some people just don't know how to grow up. On the other hand, it sounds like you've moved on and matured. Maybe you should be looking for friends who share your more mature attitude. There is more to life than getting hammered on a regular basis.

[joe817]

All things considered, I think you handled things pretty well - and I think you nailed it on the head when you suggested that maybe you need to rethink whom you choose to hang around with. Some people just don't know how to grow up. On the other hand, it sounds like you've moved on and matured. Maybe you should be looking for friends who share your more mature attitude. There is more to life than getting hammered on a regular basis.

totally.

[11BInfantry]

By no means am I saying you did anything wrong. I think you handled the situation extremely well considering the circumstances. But had it been me and my friends I'm thinking I would have shot the guy waving a gun around. Its definitely a tough call, but what do you do when he shoots one of your friends? It would be something to regret knowing that you could have stopped it. I am glad everything turned out ok. Good judgment.

[KD5NRH]

Sounds like you might want to invest in a camera for these things. I keep a small digital video camera in the car. Nothing fancy, but enough to help out with certain details. I've been thinking about this one next time it turns up on one of the deal-a-day sites for under $50.

[TheArmedFarmer]

Maybe you should be looking for friends who share your more mature attitude. There is more to life than getting hammered on a regular basis.

You mentioned they were fraternity brothers, though, and I realize that these relationships are probably very important to you. If it were me, I'd start skipping the bar scenes as much as possible but maintain the relationships. It won't take them long to catch up with your maturity.

[Keith B]

Glad things worked out and you did well in the situations. The whole thing to think about is to not put yourself into the scenarios where those type of situations can occur. Which brings me back to my old saying 'Nothing good ever happens after midnight.' Tough to do when you want to hang with your frat brothers and they are out late. However, it was your buddies drunken argument that riled the others up, right or wrong. Avoidance is better than reaction if at all possible.