Speaking with a retired police officer–a man raised by a preacher–about carrying in church, the retired officer commented that he just couldn’t do it. He just didn’t feel right with a firearm on in church.

In response, I asked him how he’d feel if his church was targetted for a mass shooting and he could have stopped it if only he’d been armed?

I don’t know that he started carrying in church after that or not. However, I maintain that if you’re someone who can carry and you don’t, you’ll regret it should something happen.

More importantly, your loved ones may well be the ones who regret it. That happened in the aftermath of Virginia Beach, after all.

That’s also the case with at least one of the victims in El Paso who wished his normally armed mother had been carrying.

A wounded El Paso shooting survivor told CNN anchor Chris Cuomo from his hospital bed that he wished his mother brought the gun she usually carried with them to Walmart on Saturday.

Christopher Grant said he recognized the sound of gunshots, “So I ran toward my mother to try to shield her and I’m like, mom — cause my mom, she’s a gun-wielding grandma. She carries a snub nose Smith & Wesson, .38 special with a built-in scope in it, everywhere she goes,” but she did not have it on her.

“An hour before we went to Walmart, she decides, ‘We’re just going to Walmart, I’m going to put it in my room.’ So when I went to her, no gun. And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, you got to be kidding me.’”

Grant ran off and saw the shooter in the Walmart parking lot and started to throw bottles at him to distract him. The shooter then started to fire his rifle at him, hitting Grant.

Now, let’s understand one very important thing. Gun or not, Grant is a freaking hero. He went after the bad guy with nothing but bottles. That takes guts.

The man has my respect.

However, had his mother had her gun, could he have done more? Who knows. Frankly, I suspect Grant will join the ranks of concealed carry after an incident like this, if for no other reason than to make sure he’s got a gun should he find himself in such a horrible circumstance as this.

Folks, at the end of the day, carry your guns. Even if it’s to Walmart. There is no safe place in this world. Safe spaces are an illusion, a lie we tell ourselves to believe that we can shut the evil in the world out and create a Utopia, even if only on the tiny patch of ground beneath our feet.

Yet I’ve seen shootings take place in pretty much every kind of place you care to name. Evil comes when and where it wants to. We don’t get to pick the time and the place, so carry your damn guns and stop making excuses for leaving it behind.