An armed society is a polite society...

As a kid, I was always taught to be polite, because it's easier to win friends and influence people (to steal a good quote) that way. One thing I remember though, was that being armed and being polite seemed to go hand in hand. My father always taught me to be nice in traffic, because you never knew when that guy you decided to flip the bird to, was going to pull out a gun and turn your driving affair into a shooting affair.

I remember an event that happened to me about two years ago at the BBOD. A customer had purchased a gun safe and taken it home, upon getting it home, they were unable to get the safe open, using the combination provided by the manufacturer. A manager, not my immediate boss, decided the prudent (read: STUPID) thing to do was to send an employee down to the customer's house and make sure the safe didn't open like the customer said it didn't, before we returned a $1000 gun safe and exchanged it. Somehow, I got drafted for this duty and was sent on my merry way to the customer's house. (In retrospect and perhaps the best advice I can provide from this experience is if you get stuck in this position, tell your boss to stick it).

When I arrived at the customer's house, the customer, a young gentleman in his late 20s was absolutely irrate! He was simply furious at me, while I inspected the safe and confirmed that indeed, the combination was not correct and I set about trying to correct the problem. The gentleman was just absolutely furious right up until one distinct and very memorable point in time. He was looking at me cursing when he simply stopped in the middle of his sentence and asked a question, "Is that a Thunder Ranch pin on your hat?" "Why yes, yes it is. I just received it last week, when I finished my Defensive Revolver course with them." "Oh..." And suddenly, the gentleman's tone changed as he realized he might have been cursing, screaming, and generally degrading a guy who had just spent three days with a premier firearms instructo, throwing enough lead down range to require a small mining operation to extract it from the berm. Suddenly, the whole experience changed, the customer was polite to me, respectful, courtesy, and realizing perhaps that I was doing my best to take care of him, he was grateful.

An armed society is a polite society. Remember guys that store clerk/auto mechanic/paper boy you're insulting, maybe he's packing a loaded .357 while your hurling insults at him. He is polite to you, both by being nice and smiling and doing his best, and for not pulling his smoke wagon out and giving you a few extra holes to run your mouth from.

Armed, polite. We shouldn't have to live in a world where being armed is a requirement for courtesy and kindness, but it would behoove us to remember that some folks are packing heat and we should just be nice to everyone, so we don't worry about who is who.

-Rob