In the late 1970s, I was in downtown Long Beach. I lived in Long Beach at the time, but the downtown district was pretty seedy at that time. A couple of years later, they were imploding old buildings one after another, in some kind of urban renewal thing, so I don't know what downtown Long Beach is like now. Anyhow, I was downtown with my son, who was about twelve or thirteen at the time, and a shabby looking guy pulled a handgun out of his jacket as he was walking up to us. As you might imagine, I thought I was going to be robbed or worse, and people aren't allowed to defend themselves in California unless they're rich. It turned out that he was trying to sell me the gun, which he had probably stolen from somewhere. I told him no thanks, and he put it back in his jacket, and that was it.
In my 69 years, have never had this happen to me. Never had any kind of weapon pulled on me. Is it that I've simply never lived, or been in an area, where that kind of thing would happen? However, we do have a former St. Louis Police Detective that lives in our complex. Him and I have talked and he was sort of shocked that I was so interested in his old "encounter" stories and my old EMS stories. He was encountered, in a public parking lot, by a man that he had arrested and got bailed out. He told me they were facing each other, like an Old West gunfight, and the guy told him that he had a gun in his pocket and was going to use it. The former detective told him, "my gun is ready as well, and before you even get your gun out and pull the trigger, I'll have a bullet in you." The guy turned around and left.
The "smoking gun" is just a figure of speech. Black gunpowders haven't been around since the development of Smokeless Powder over 120 years ago, right after the Spanish-American War of 1898. The Cuban guerillas could see where American forces were deployed in the jungles by the clouds of white smoke from US rifle barrels, from the same black powder used in the Civil War. Hal
When I was seventeen or so, and hitchhiking back from California to Michigan, I got a ride from a guy who seemed sane at first. Then, he started ranting about his wife and told me he was on his way home to kill her. Then he pulled a handgun up from alongside the seat, to show me that he had it, I guess. I didn't know what to do. I ignored the thing about killing his wife and asked what kind of a gun it was. I don't remember, but he told me. Then I pretended to sleep for a while and asked him to drop me off somewhere in New Mexico. Since I had already told him I was going to Michigan, I didn't know how to handle that but he didn't ask. He just dropped me off where I asked him to. I went to a restaurant to be sure he was gone, then hitched another ride.
For another year or so. I spent about a year and a half hitchhiking around the country, with a few work breaks to gather funds.