Now this is the reason why I carry

[Jusme]

alittlejoy1960, Welcome to the forum, and I can honestly say that your first post should probably be a sticky thread. With my new profession, I am constantly coming in contact with female gun owners, and first time gun buyers, and I always tell them to think about what they carry in their purse i.e keys,wallet with ID, cell phone etc. add a gun to the mix, and if that purse gets stolen, either from their shoulder, a chair in a restaurant, or a shopping cart, they have just given a gun to someone who has their address, keys to their house, and who will make the very logical conclusion, that the theft victim is now disarmed, and may have no way to call for help. I have even shown them how difficult it would be to get anything from their purse, if they have to play tug-of-war with a purse snatcher.
Being male, and having almost zero wardrobe considerations, compared to women, I can only imagine how much more difficult it is to "dress around a gun" for women, but I feel that it is imperative, if at all possible, for women to only opt for on body carry. Thank you for sharing your experience, and I'm glad that even only armed with SA, the situation turned out for the better.

Please continue to post, your insight, and perspective would be very helpful to other women, who are facing the same issues, as well as, nagging, albeit well meaning husbands.

[chasfm11]

I love this!
This is a great illustration of the quote: "Society is safer when criminals don't know who is armed."
The OP did not draw his weapon and did not have to.
The bad guys didn't know if he was carrying or not, but decided to act as if he was.

Had this been NYC or Chicago, the bad guys probably would have taken a chance that the man wasn't armed.
But this is Texas, and the chances are very good that the good guy would be armed.

I am in the camp that if the OP had been open carrying the pipe never would have been presented and they would have left without any verbal dialog. That is just MHO.

So am I.

I'm not so sure. I would offer as evidence the number of videos of police pointing guns a suspected criminals who continue to resist and act in strange ways. In some of those cases, there are multiple officers with guns drawn against a single suspect. In this case, it was 3 suspects against one defender. I do understand that sometimes the suspect in these circumstances is under the influence of some chemical substance - but not always.

I believe that some in our society have gotten unreasonably brazen in their actions, almost daring a deadly force response. They know that the person holding the weapon (including police officers) understands that the consequences of using that weapon might be severe. If a pointed weapon can be ignored, a holstered weapon can be ignored more so. I'm not suggesting that all criminals have developed a death wish, I'm merely countering the argument that the presence of a visible weapon is a universal deterrent. We understand the fallacy of those who continue to insist that the sound of a racking shotgun is a deterrent. I submit that, assuming that an OC firearm is even noticed, Its affect is not always going to be what we might hope for.