And another reason would be I guess he thinks if I own a pistol I will get a cowboy mentality or that I'm a big shot Beacuse I have a pistol.
Maybe you could ask him to come on the forum and read about some of our experiences.
I started OCing at 21, which may be a few years' more mature than 18, but not much. The first thing I discovered, as does basically any OCer who fundamentally wants to be responsible, is that it's a
burden. It might make you feel "empowered" in the grander sense of knowing you're able to respond to many kinds of danger (and it's less disconcerting if you accidentally take a wrong turn into a bad neighborhood), but it gives you the exact opposite feeling in the immediate sense. In the
right now having a gun gives you an immense sense of responsibility; that the slightest slip-up on your part could not only land you in jail so fast your head would spin, but it might even get people
killed. Rather than making you feel empowered to "go in guns blazing", it makes you contemplative of the immense power you wield. It inspires restraint, if anything,
For instance, I've had a dude get pissed at me before after I was forced to "cut him off" due to heavy traffic and a narrow window. Guy followed me into a parking lot (actually, went around another entrance and came flying at me from the front in his giant red pickup, before pulling alongside my driver door). He got out of his truck and proceeded to yell at me, berate me, and attempt to physically intimidate me. He even kicked my car at one point (no damage so I didn't get legal about it).
The whole time I was sitting in my driver's seat, amusedly watching him go ballistic. Did I feel like some tough guy who could get up in his face in return and win a genital measuring contest? Nope. The pistol left me with nothing more than an underlying awareness that
if this gentleman were to threaten my life, I could stop the threat in a heartbeat. But until that happened, I had precisely nothing to worry about and no reason to do anything but let him vent.
Truth is, the old me (before I carried) would probably have started yelling back at him, and potentially escalated the situation. As it happened, the only thing I said -- in an assertive but calm command voice -- was (after he kicked my car), "sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step away from my vehicle". Believe it or not, he promptly did just that. I let him yell some more, but he soon petered out, got back in his car, and drove off.
Of course, my life wasn't threatened, and it's not my intent to suggest this was a serious self-defense scenario. Quite the contrary; my point is that, if the pistol made me feel "empowered", it was the empowerment to sit back and watch, to not engage, without feeling like I was doing anything but precisely the correct thing.