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I had several concurrent motivations. Certainly a concern for my personal safety as well as the safety of my wife and son were among them, although we had not had any specific incidents were a CHL might have made a difference.

The primary motivation was, "because I can." I had moved here from California in April of 2006, staying in a hotel room for a couple of months down in a less savory part of Dallas near where I worked before my family was able to join me after the end of the school year. (My son was winding up his sophomore year of high school, and it just wasn't a good time to move him yet.) Anyway, I had brought a 1911 with me to Texas, and although I didn't carry it, I certainly kept it handy in my hotel room, and occasionally in my car. (IIRC, this was pre-MPA.) But in any case, I had just moved from a state where the firearms laws were increasingly restrictive and the political climate increasingly repressive, and arriving in Texas was like a huge breath of fresh air. In conversations with people I had begun getting to know, it was apparent that CHL, while not widely practiced, was generally well thought of, and I thought to myself, "Why not?"

So in the same way that immigrants to America who become citizens tend to vote in higher numbers and better appreciate their American freedoms than do complacent and apathetic citizens who were born here, I was most appreciative of how accepted the the 2nd Amendment was here in Texas, and I decided to pursue my CHL and carry a gun so that I could fully express my 2nd Amendment rights. Because I can.

The personal safety issues, while important to me, were secondary to that first one. That said, I also arrived here at a time in my life when my physical capacities were beginning to diminish at an increasing rate. I had undergone major back surgery in 2004, just two years before, and now my back was beginning to deteriorate again. Realizing that I was not likely to prevail in the event of a physical confrontation, carrying a gun made sense. And also, after we got here, my wife's parents moved here to be near us (she's an only child), which for very different reasons turned out to have been a blessing to us. But, I was now not only responsible for both my own and my wife and son's safety, but also for the safety a couple of octogenarians.

I took my CHL class in late December of 2007. At that time, applications were taking insane amounts of time to process. My own, which wasn't near as bad as many others, took 74 days, and I received my plastic in March. I've been carrying every day since. My current license expires in October of this year, so I'll be taking my first renewal class this year.