Finally — A Good Book on Concealed-Carry.

When I was a kid, which was back in the last Stone Age (the 1950’s), the only people who were allowed to carry handguns were cops and a few guys employed as ‘armed’ security guards. If you wanted to do anything with a gun other than use it for hunting, or just fooling around, you upped for the military, because that’s where you could spend all day shooting guns.

The earliest home movie of me was taken by my father on my 6th birthday. I was standing in front of my grandfather’s little grocery store in Rockaway Beach, Queens wearing the birthday present I had just received, which was a cowboy hat and matching belt and holster containing a plastic revolver — a toy version of the gun carried by Roy Rogers in the movies and on TV.

In this 8mm color home movie, I was standing on the sidewalk, twirling the gun with a big smile on my face. This was what it meant to be self-armed in the 1950’s; in other words, acting out a complete fantasy which had absolutely nothing to do with the why, where or when of carrying a self-defense gun.

I have just finished reading Angela Stroud’s book, Good Guys With Guns, The Appeal and Consequences of Concealed Carry. In 35 interviews of Texas residents who took the course required in Texas in order to walk around with a gun, she discovered that much of the fantasy which I acted out with my Roy…