A Reddit user said the second time he had to bring a gun into play started after he had gone out to get some food. According to his comment in the thread, he had already finished getting the food and was back in his car. He wrote that he had noticed a homeless-looking guy wandering around in the back of his mind, but at first it did not register as anything immediate. He got into the vehicle, locked the door, and started the car like normal. Then the man suddenly came running up.
He said the stranger began banging on the window and demanding money. It was not a guy standing a few feet away with a sign, and it was not some quiet request through the glass. The man was right there at the car, beating on the window and yelling at him to roll it down. The commenter said the guy kept insisting he needed money for shoes, which only made the whole thing feel more off because he was so aggressive and close while saying it.
The driver did not roll the window down. Instead, he pulled his Kel-Tec P-11 9mm from the console and held it by his right knee, keeping it hidden behind his thigh and leg. From the way he told it, he did not bring it up into open view and did not threaten the man out loud with it. He kept it low and ready while dealing with the pounding and yelling from inside the locked car.
He wrote that he pointed behind the man and raised his voice, telling him to step away from the car. The stranger kept yelling anyway, still saying he needed money for shoes and still telling him to roll down the window. The commenter said he never verbally threatened him, but he believed the message got across from his expression and the way he handled himself. Eventually the man backed off and disappeared around the corner of the building, about 200 feet away.
After that, the driver did not just leave it there and hope the next person walking in would figure it out for themselves. He said he went back inside the restaurant and warned the management that there was a belligerent man outside accosting people and demanding money. According to him, the staff called the police and let customers know what was going on. Then he finally left. He described the whole experience as an unnecessary, threatening waste of time that turned a simple food run into something else entirely.
He told that story as one of several reasons he had kept firearms close over the years, both in the car and at home. In the same comment, he talked about other times he had heard someone in the yard late at night, been awakened by his wife saying she heard something outside, or been followed in road-rage situations. But this incident with the man at the car was one of the two times he specifically described bringing the gun out where it could matter right away.
So the story he told was this: he got food, went back to his car, locked the doors, and started the engine. A homeless-looking man suddenly came running up, banged on the window, and demanded money while telling him to roll the window down. The driver quietly pulled a Kel-Tec P-11 from the console and kept it hidden by his right knee while ordering the man away from the car. The stranger finally backed off and disappeared around the building, and the driver went back inside to warn the restaurant staff before leaving.
What do you think — if somebody ran up to your locked car, started pounding on the window, and demanded money through the glass, would you keep the gun hidden like he did, or bring it up where the message was unmistakable?
Original Reddit post: What’s the story of when you had to draw your weapon?
