A Reddit user said he had to bring a gun out twice, and both times happened while he was still in his car.
The first time, according to his comment in the thread, he was working as an IT systems engineer and often had to do network maintenance after hours. One night he was leaving one of those brick utility-style buildings where cable and internet companies keep circuit connections. He said it was around 1:30 in the morning when he got back to his car. The lot was dark, and behind it were woods where, in his words, druggies would go. He was sitting in the parked car when someone came up and tried to open his door. Not a knock on the glass, not a person waving for help, but someone actually trying the handle while he was sitting there in the dark. He said that was enough for him to draw. The person looked in, saw what he had in his hand, and left. He did not describe a long argument or any attempt by the stranger to keep pushing once the gun was visible. It ended right there.
The second time happened in a very different place but felt bad just as fast. He wrote that he was on his way to work and stopped at a McDonald’s across the street from public housing. He was in the drive-thru, sitting at the window, when a man walked up to the driver’s side, put both hands on the door, and leaned into the window area. The commenter said he saw him coming and had enough warning to get the pistol into his lap before the man got right there. From the way he told it, the stranger was close enough and committed enough that this was not some harmless panhandler standing a few feet away asking for change. He had both hands on the door and was leaning right in at the driver’s side.
He said the reaction was immediate once the man looked inside and saw the gun in his lap. He took off. No shots fired. No physical struggle. No drawn-out confrontation with the staff or police. The whole thing turned on that one moment when the stranger leaned in expecting one kind of encounter and instead found a man already holding a pistol and watching him.
The Reddit user later gave a little more context on both places. He said the first incident happened after one of those late-night service calls at a utility-type building with woods behind the lot. The second happened during a morning stop at a McDonald’s directly across from public housing. He did not tell either story like some action-movie moment where he got to play hero. Both were ugly little vehicle encounters where he was sitting down, caught in a confined space, and had to react to a stranger suddenly trying to get too close to the driver’s side before he had much room to think.
So the story he told was really two stories back to back. In the first, after leaving work around 1:30 a.m., someone came up in a dark lot and tried his car door. In the second, at a McDonald’s drive-thru, a stranger walked up, planted both hands on the driver’s door, and leaned into the window. Both times, the gun came out while he was still seated in the car, and both times the stranger backed off the moment he saw it.
What do you think — if somebody suddenly tried your door in a dark parking lot or leaned into your window at a drive-thru, would you trust yourself to react as fast as he did from the driver’s seat?
Original Reddit post: Have you ever drawn your CC?
