Went to the craft show at the mall with my family this morning. My 4yo daughter wanted to walk to the other end where the little rides are. Ok fine. Left the wife and and took her down there.

As we approach I mark two indigents sitting on the benches close by for observation. No biggie. They look harmless enough.

I park myself on a bench while watching both my daughter and the two homeless. In comes a full on tweaker screaming that he’s a meth addict, etc. Homeless try to calm him down. Dude seems to be coming off a high.

One mom grabs her kiddo and scurries away. Tweaker turns and begins to approach me.

I must have stood up with a look of death on my face when he was about 25ft away because even in his drug addled state he recognized the look, raised his hands, stopped and asked to use my phone. (Ya right). He got a curt, “you need to move along right now” reply. —-All of this occurred over about 3 seconds

I moved between him and my daughter while ensuring my XDS45 was ready to clear, got her off the ride and into the little art store, whose employee was on the phone with KPD while clutching bear spray in her other hand. (At least she had something).  

Security got there and calmed the tweaker down and KPD showed up a few minutes later and escorted him out.  

Takeaways:

-Glad I’ve dealt with this in Minneapolis before we moved out here.

-Police response was fast, but not fast enough (never is)

-It’s WAY different when your family is with you.

-Store clerk was on the ball, mostly.

-Carry everywhere, even in a smaller town.

Even small town Montana is like that anymore.

It's just the world we live in now.

This dude was on the aggressive end of the druggie spectrum. Wild movements, crazy eyes, all that stuff.

Nothing I haven’t seen before in the city, just never with my little girl with me.

I thought you were cool, until I read XDS45.

I’m not a brand whore but don’t care for glocks because of how they shoot. Just can’t do the grip angle or something. I have and will carry several handguns. Springfield, S&W mainly. Occasionally a Kimber CDP II Pro when I’m feeling high class.  

I shoot this XDS well and have had nary a hiccup in ~2000 rounds. It’s a tool. Don’t care how it looks, just care that it goes bang and it does, every time.

Just fucking with you.

Someone gets nutso around my family, and I won't hesitate to do the needful. Sounds like you had it well under control.

Meth heads are in Bush Alaska so that tells you how bad it is now.

I was at a park in Spokane WA with my first born baby and had a meth super star pull a similar stunt. Except my Mr. SPECIAL meth-head was talking about being pissed at people and chopping them up into little pieces and burying them.

Same thing though. Guy starts making a bee-line for us and I square up with him give him the look of death and he suddenly careens off in a new direction. Full on ready to shoot that fuck in the face. Oh well, who wants the trouble right?

Having my daughter around actually made me more cautious…almost willing to pull back even. Probably some parental thing that tries to maintain innocence. It was strange enough that I noticed it, but it wouldn’t stop me if the situation warranted.  

The art lady seemed a bit nervous and piteous of the tweaker at the same time.

My wife sees them every morning at the StarFucks next to the mall, where she gets coffee and sits down to work on her computer. They let them come in to warm up and charge their phones. She carries her Micro9 in her computer bag now!