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Finally Took The Plunge Today

officerjdc

Regular Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2006
Messages
109
Location
Liberty County, GA, ,
imported post

I decided this morning that today would be the day I would OC into public places for the first time when I went to Midway to do some shopping.

I was going to start by going into the Heritage Bank branch office , but they were closed today.

From there I went to the Dollar General store right down the road. No one seemed to notice the 4" XD9 on my hip.

I didn't find what I was looking for at Dollar General so my next stop was the IGA Foodliner grocery store next door. I didn't have any problems there either. If the young lady whorang meup saw my pistol it didn't bother her at all. She was friendly and smiling the whole time I was in front of her register.

My last stop was the gas station on the corner right across from the post office. One young man who looked to be about high school age turned his head toward me, looked down and saw my pistol, and quickly looked away as I was walking up to the door. Once I was inside the store I was greeted by a man who used to work the gates with us. He asked me if the yellow T-shirt and tan BDU pants I was wearing were a new uniform for the gates since I had a pistol on. I responded that no, I was off today andcarrying my own pistol on my pistol license. When I got to the front of the line the clerk seemed a little nervous as I handed her my credit card and asked her to charge me $20 and set the pump to stop at that amount, but we finished the transaction and I went back outside to pump my gas. I talked to my former coworker some more as we both pumped gas, and then we both drove away.

I'd say today was a success in my effort to get myself accustomed to OC. Only the two people at the gas station reacted negatively at all to me with a weapon visible, and neither of them freaked out and went running and screaming away from me in terror. I didn't have anyone confront me or threaten to call the police on me either.

I plan to continue trying to work up the courage to start doing this in Hinesville. I'll probably run into more opposition there than I did in Midway today.
 

officerjdc

Regular Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2006
Messages
109
Location
Liberty County, GA, ,
imported post

Now I have more to add to the story. I called the Wal-Mart in Hinesville to see if they had received any more of their store brand tea today since I got the last one they had yesterday, and they said they had plenty of it on hand. I went to Hinesville to buy some of that and decided to push my luck even further by OCing there too. I went to the Heritage Bank branch in there to get some cash first. The teller seemed nervous because of my weapon, but I got the cash and went to get the tea. No one looked at me funny orsaid a word to me about being armed. I went to the dairy area, put five gallons of tea in my cart, and swung by to grab a loaf of bread on my way to check out. I used the self checkout lane, paid for my merchandise, and left with no problems. Once again, no one screamed and ran away from me in panic, and no one threatened to call the police on me either.
 

Dutch Uncle

Campaign Veteran
Joined
May 11, 2006
Messages
1,715
Location
Virginia, USA
imported post

[align=left]I'll bet one of the main reasons people don't start OC'ing is the fear that others will"freak out" and cause a scene. Perhaps one of the major influences of this website is to dispel that fear. The overwhelming number of posts show that OC is most often no big deal. There are dramatic threads about bad interactions, but that's because such stories are interesting and thousands of stories saying "I OC'd today and nothing happened" gets pretty boring. If we ran a poll on the percentage of good and bad OC experiences, the majority of us would say we've never had a major negative incident (except Danbus, of course).
[/align]
 

I always carry

Regular Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2010
Messages
40
Location
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA
imported post

I'll say the first time was pretty exciting for me too. Felt extremely empowering and very good though. But, once I broke my cherry, that was it. From then on, any fears simply drifted away. Now I almost forget it's there on my side - sort of- yeah right ;)
 
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