I've waited acouple days to share this story to avoid writing some ignorant shit. Now that my thoughts are clear I want to share with you guys something that happened to me a few days ago and I had to draw my weapon (NOT a pistol luckily).

Oh and btw, I'm trying to communicate the story as best i can, you can only get a glimpse of what happened, and your hindsight bias won't help. I would appreciate constructive feedback on where you think I could have done things differently, but don't for one second tell me that my actions were completely irrational. I avoided conflict completely so its a win as is, and this stuff NEVER happens to me, this will probably be one of the very few times i have to draw on someone.

Background on my area (you can skip over this but should give you a perspective)

I live in a college city in Iowa City. Unfortunately the area is turning into a big suburb for Chicago residents. Half of them are rich kids, the other half are in psuedo-criminal rehabilitation programs like Section 8 if you know what that is. In the past year or so I have seen the college town turn into a place where snobs and "gangsters" join to get wasted and harass normal decent citizens. Now keep in mind, I just turned 23 Im not some stuck up older guy nor am I some schizo dad-didn't love me guy.

I used to go to bars as a kid (it was legal or 18 year olds to be in bars 5 years ago) and if you saw 1 police officer you that was a rare thing. Now they PATROL our streets like gangs at night. Its quite amazing. They even call the state patrol to add numbers to their squads patrolling the bar area downtown (which in Iowa City is large). I understand why they are doing this -- stupid rich kids are getting wasted and ghetto guys are just downtown being hostile for no reason as well.

Iowa City's CCW laws changed for the better luckily as of 2010 so its been an okay place to live and go to school as before 2010 it wasn't that bad.


What happened? Drawing the weapon part!!!!

I was just coming back from going out. I don't like going downtown much because of what I mentioned in the background. But in any case, I had my brother, his fiancee, a buddy of mine, and two other (HOT) girls with us (yeah I'm a playa...jk lol)

Going home, a very drunk 300 lbs man grabs my brothers fiancee. She can handle herself, she jerked her arm away and kept walking beside my brother. For some reason, he took her jerking her arm away as a sign that she liked him. He goes on to literally charge my brother's gf, my bro doesn't notice, but I do being behind all of the group. I politely as I could, put my arm across his chest and tell him "hey, back off man, thats my brothers fiancee, she said no!"

He starts getting erratic. Screaming and becoming hostile. The weapon I had on me was an expandable police baton as the bar area is a no gun zone, but my ccw license is good for other weapons. (btw I didn't drink)

He wants to fight, he is doing all of the regular stuff you would expect. He starts coming near us and I expand my baton with my other hand out holding up the sign "STOP" he does immediately backing up and getting scared...

He sends two lame ass white boys who were very tall to follow after us. Honestly, if he would have done anything himself, he would have gotten his ass beat and eventually arrested by all the people watching. There were alot of older people yelling back at the guy when he came near us.

The white guys elluded the crowd though, I knew that I was going to have to use my weapon on the guys if I didn't do something. I'm trying to be a cop so avoiding using my ccw weapons is top priority. I believe in 95% of these situations can be diffused in non-hostile manners even when they seem to be spiraling out of control. I put my weapon back for the moment as they were far away from us.

I took note that having alot of people watching helps. We get to a cross walk before the guys get close to us. I SLOWLY walk out in front of slow moving traffic forcing them to stop. My group crosses, and the white boys pussy out. They are smart in their retreat because we outnumbered them and out"gunned" them in this case (some of my friends had smaller things like a kubotan and a pepper gun.

What can you draw from my experiences?

1) Before you use a weapon in self defense, make sure other people know or can see clearly whats going on. Having people watching INCREASES your chances of avoiding trouble and rallying support. I don't recommend walking in front of traffic like I did but if its between something like that and sitting in a prison cell for beating some guys up, you have to make that call.

Even if you have to shout out "Hey these guys are harassing us" or whatever, do it. I didn't but if thats what it takes do it.

2) Drawing a weapon itself can sometimes stop a incident, sometimes it can create one

You hear alot in the ccw community "if you draw your weapon, use it." I agree mostly, but sometimes you have to be situational in your approach. In my case, my baton clearly frightened the guy enough to back away. At the same time, it could have elicited a response (like him pulling a gun or knife back on me). You have to make the call whether or not to draw.

Before I used my weapon BTW people KNEW who was in the wrong and who was in the right, make sure that if you do draw you don't turn into the bad guy.

I will say had I not drawn we would have ended up in a fist battle, so take that for what its worth

3) Carry, everywhere

This goes without saying, but I was going to go armed lesser then just a baton. I'm glad I brought it along and I want to emphasize to others that carrying something is better then nothing.


Overall, this really wasn't that big of a deal, simply a bunch of drunk asses with small dicks upset that they didn't bring any girls home. I believe tho that it is a man's responsibility to protect the company he is with and I did that effectively. Be careful out there guys! Avoid conflict at all cost and you live to tell the story. But at the same time, when its time to step up, then do so!