1991 as a Denny's restaurant manager. Kicked a guy out Friday night (2:30am Saturday). Said he would be back. Lucky enough to get to close the next night. Ran into him in the vestibule, he pulls a knife, I pull a pistol, he pees his pants, submits, and the security guy freaks out. Officer who responded said I should have shot him. We were 10 feet apart.

1995 as a deputy we (three total) responded to a 911 hang-up call. Turn into the driveway in time to see a lady use a pet carrier to bean her significant other in the head. One of the latches catches him, and he starts to bleed. Head wounds really bleed. He runs to his house, she runs to her car. Two of us catch/slam her into the car, and take her down. Cuff & stuff her into the back of a car, look on the front seat of her car, and there is an old Colt .32 pocket automatic. Nice. We head to the house, knock on the door and all I see is a Ruger SP101 .357 magnum coming out of the opening door, we all step back and draw, and he realizes it is LE, not her, and he drops the weapon. They were drunk. He was less so.

1996 I was elk hunting with my uncle. We come up on a car blocking the logging road. My uncle hops out, goes to the driver's side door, and the driver starts yelling incoherently. I hop out, go to the back of the car, draw, keeping pistol behind my leg, as my uncle opens the car door. The guy was in distress. Turns out he was in diabetic shock, reholster after determining he wasn't a threat, get him squared away, get aid called, and made sure he was in good hands. I was LEO at the time, but in a different county, and off the clock.

2012 I was wrapping up cleaning out a foreclosed building in Aberdeen. We had signs saying keep out at all entrances, and during the whole project we still had transients, drunks, and Big Red, the infamous Aberdeen hooker barge in. Myself and two others started open carrying after day one of this, and once they saw we were armed, that pretty much slowed down the "visits". Final night about 8pm I'm loading up my tools going in and out, and I'm as far back in as you can get in this old casino, and I turn around and one of the drunks is coming at me. I draw my streamlight and blind him, draw my pistol keep it at my side, and proceed to yell at the guy and "verbal judo" him out of the building. He was running by the time he got to the door. Never touched him, never pointed at him.

Never had any legal repercussions from any of these actions. Carried a pistol since I was 21, and I'm 47 now. Friend of mine have been held hostage in robberies in their banks, and ambushed at home taken hostage and driven to their bank branch while their family's held hostage at home. I'm not paranoid. I'm prepared.