Why do you carry concealed? This is a good reason, and a better reason to practice your shooting…
On Friday, 5 July 2013 I found out how important it is to have a “Standard” to your carry of a concealed firearm and just as important, maybe more, than the type of firearm that you carry, to practice with it and become thoroughly comfortable with it. I have been carrying for 35 years and a shooter for over 45 years.
That Friday, my wife had gone into town (we have a small farm of 120 acres), UPS just dropped off a package and I went back into the Laundry room to continue my work in there. A few minutes later I hear a truck pull into my circular drive and then someone loudly knocking on my door. I thought it was the UPS man again that he may have another package that he forgot to drop off. As I come out of the hallway into the Dining area I see my back door being held open by a stranger who is startled by my appearance and he is in the process of raising his right hand, and I notice a pistol in his hand. Right then my right hand went to my Kholster, and I am drawing and I kick my legs out to my left, he fires his pistol and my CZ83 is 1/10th of second later shooting over the oak dining table, then two more fired from under the table through the doorway, but nothing is there, he has turned and is exiting the deck.
Now, I am 63 years old, 6’4″ 290lbs. and my back was broken in 8 places in a serious farm accident 5 years before, so my getting up off of the hardwood floor is a little slower than it used to be, but 10 seconds later I am out the back door and I’m looking for other ‘helpers’ he may have brought with him, but he has exited my dirt driveway in a cloud of dust tearing out down the paved highway to my left (east) and I see that it is an older ’80’s Series Chevrolet P/U with a step-side bed, damage to the left rear fender and big white letters saying Chevrolet and then disappears in the roadside bushes that block my view.
Now the shakes start, the WTF’s and analysis of what you did. I thought I could have hit him, but I don’t see any blood spatters, drops, nothing. I go back in and call the Sheriff’s Office and tell them some crazy intruder had just tried to shoot me in my own home. They tell me to stay near the phone. I call my wife on my cell phone and tell her what has happened, she drops (literally) what she is doing at the Library and races home, 12.5 miles in 8 minutes and 4 minutes before the Sheriff and two deputies arrive. While they are getting my statement and looking the area over, my wife notices that my T-Shirt had a bullet hole in the left sleeve.
Had I delayed one 1/10th of a second longer in dropping to the floor, my left bicep would have had a bullet through it, or my left lung… The Sheriff finds the bullet hole in the window frame (and now my wall has a 4″x6″ square cut out of the sheet rock and the window frame removed.) The 9mm bullet (FMJ) went through the side edge of the 2×6 Jack Stud and stopped at the 1/2″ Wall sheathing, no deformation of the bullet at all. My first shot went over the kitchen table through the package that UPS had just delivered and using lasers it should have hit the big walnut tree in my yard, but could not be located. The other two, one found to have gone through the aluminum frame of the table on the deck and into the walnut tree; the third shot through a plastic bucket of dog food and into the tree.
Had I not been dressed to go into town after doing a few last minute chores, and have my EDC pistol on me, I would probably be dead, and had I not been practicing on our private range with a couple of the club members and the Sheriff (yes he is a friend) I would not have had the reactive skill to draw, drop and fire all at once. Thank God I took that extra time to practice… I believe that it literally saved my life.
