First Scare
Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 5:37 pm
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.
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.
, I guess I just forgot, over the past 40+ years, how much fun being a 21-23 year college student could be.
totally.