Gun Control & RKBA
In reply to the discussion: I carried a gun today and no one was hurt by it. [View all]sir pball
(4,741 posts)Not that I'm disqualified, I've had licenses in three states, just that I'm not rich or famous enough to get one here in NYC.
Never felt "naked" or vulnerable either - while I do prefer to have the best tool for the job available when possible, just because I'm not allowed doesn't mean I consider myself defenseless by any means. I still have the most effective self-defense tool there is, situational awareness. My friends, some of whom live in the rattier parts of Brooklyn, are always saying things like "Stop looking around like that. You look like a tourist, you'll get mugged!" because my head is always on a swivel...not that I'm compulsively checking-six and analyzing everything in terms of potential threats/attacks/ambushes, but I am always taking in my surrounding environment and being simply AWARE of what's happening.
It's very much the same mindset when I'm walking through the woods hunting deer; if I haven't seen anything that I've identified as a target or threat, I'm not in any kind of "engagement" mode. Just conscious of everything that's going on; if I perceive something that needs an elevation of my mental state only then do I start to think "OK, this is a situation, time to do something." Mind you, the potential stimuli that will trigger an escalation are NOT the same when hunting vs. an SD situation; I am quite clearly NOT in the mentality of "hunting teh baddiez" by any means. It's a much higher and more affirmative bar, even if something does get my attention I'm going to try and passively avoid it before anything else.
All that, and I always have a pen or at least my keys on me; a few years of martial arts training makes both of those quite useful should the need arise.
To directly address the OP, when I do carry the only people who have ever known it are the ones who saw me put on the weapon; society as a whole was entirely unaffected because society as a whole was entirely unaware.