The Safety Dance

So, the table we got at the gun show butted up against several others that were unused because their usual tenant, a medical supplies vendor, had gotten hurt in a wreck and couldn't make the show. The morning of the second day, we spread out a little, moving some holsters over to the empty table behind us to keep that end of the aisle from looking deserted.

Among the stuff I had over there was a Safariland Glock 17/22/31 paddle holster, on the diagram below in position "H":

Mike and I were sitting in the chairs marked "M" and "T", facing in the directions indicated. Mike was talking to someone on his end of the table when I hear a voice behind me asking "What's this holster fit? Glock?"

I glanced over my shoulder and nodded at the person asking the question, a uniformed police officer; not an IMPD guy, some other local department. "Yep, it's for full-size Glocks."

He nodded thoughtfully while turning it over in his hands, "How much?"

"I dunno... Twenty bucks sound cool?"

He mulled that over for a second as I turned away to see what was going on down Mike's way when, out of the corner of my eye, I see the cop unholster his sidearm. I got a real good look at the muzzle in my peripheral vision, and also took extremely good note of the fact that, even if his lack of muzzle discipline was appalling, at least his trigger finger was in register against the frame. Thank heavens.

I stood up in as casual and non-startling a manner as possible as he stuffed the gun into the holster, sliding his off-hand down until it was cradling the muzzle end of the Safariland rig. Then he nodded, pulled his heater out and stuffed it back into his duty rig and reached for his wallet.

I would venture that a solid plurality, if not a majority, of negligent discharges at gun shows happen when some special snowflake decides they have to test the fit of their loaded sidearm in a holster. If such had happened here, I wouldn't have been able to tell y'all about it because they'd have been cleaning my brains off the next row over and hopefully the .40 slug wouldn't have gone through anybody else on its way to embedding itself in the back wall of the corn dog stand three aisles away.

I don't want the last fleeting thought going through my mind to have been "Boy, you sure are the only one qualified enough..."

Folks, I don't care if you flout the show rules and don't unload your concealed carry piece and have it zip tied at the door; that's none of my business. But if you're gonna carry a loaded gat around the show, it needs to stay in the $&#@^$ing holster, &^%^ it!

Don't pull it out to show your friends, and don't give me that "I had to pull it out to check the holster fit!" because we're in a giant room where there are hundreds of guns for sale just like yours, and we can use one of them instead.

Stop touching it. And especially stop touching it while it's pointed at my head.