I am a Law Enforcement officer and get asked all the time if I carry my sidearm off-duty or not and if I do how often? My answer to people is yes and almost always. I say I almost always off-duty carry because there are certain situations where carrying a firearm would not be appropriate. These situations would include anything that puts you in a state where your judgment may be impaired. The following is just my two cents.
It is my opinion that officers are never “off-duty”. When a person takes their oath they do not swear to “protect the citizens of their community for a certain numbers of hours on a particular day”. As a trainer in my agency this is a battle I have fought with others many times. The following are some of the responses I have been given when I pose the above question to fellow officers: “I’m not getting paid for it so I’m not doing it”, “This is a paycheck, when I leave for the day I leave everything here”, or “It’s too hard to conceal” and my answer to them is to find another job. We as Law Enforcement have been given the task of protecting our communities from ever growing violence in society, a task we freely accepted by taking our oath’s. The first Department I worked for made it mandatory for officers to carry their weapon off-duty, the only excused days were if the officer was sick or they were on vacation and this was a large metropolitan department; in my opinion every department should have this policy. We are given the training to employ our weapons in an effective manner to stop a threat and we owe it to the people we serve to be able to do that whether “on duty” or not.
Civilian Concealed Carry holders have made the decision to be armed and it is a decision that should not have been taken lightly. If you are one of the people that got a Concealed Carry License just because you could and do not train with your weapon, do yourself and society a favor and lock up your gun and never touch it; you will ultimately only hurt some innocent person and put the ones you love through a legal nightmare. The others that have taken the step to get the training and pursue additional training in order to better prepare themselves, I applaud you. Armed citizens have made the choice not to be victims to the ever increasing predatory nature of criminals in our society. The decision to carry your weapon should not be made whether it is convenient to do so or not, I don’t recall suspects asking people if it was a “convenient” time for them to be a victim. If you are licensed to carry a weapon, and appropriately trained to do it, then please do; you may be all that stands between an armed assailant and a massacre.
It is far better to have and not need than to need and not have. Again, this is just my opinion. Train hard, train often, and stay safe.
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