[masraum]

Originally Posted by pmax

This is all good ...

but someone just across the bay, in SF if I recall, got in trouble with the authorities and the local media, for using, just brandishing not actually firing a shot mind you, a gun to drive away an aggressor.

Brandishing is generally bad/frowned upon.

If you are in a situation where you think someone is about to kill/hurt you, and you pull your gun, and the bad guy sees your gun and runs away, that's great. BUT In that case, you should probably call the police and tell them something, "this guy was going to kill me, but I pulled my gun to shoot him and when I saw him run away, I put it up."

Because if the guy that you just chased off with your gun calls the police and says "I was talking to this dude and he drew his gun like he was going to shoot me. I was afraid he was going to kill me so I ran away." that's probably going to work out poorly for you or at the very least, be a huge pain in the rear.

You don't want to be part of a he said / someone else said argument about pulling a gun.