A lot of times, many of us feel safer just by having a gun on our persons. Some folks feel immune to crime when they carry. I get the feeling. The idea that you have the tool needed to meet whatever threat we might encounter.

However, being armed doesn’t make you immune to anything. Not really. It only makes you armed.

Just because you have a gun doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do anything with it. Just ask this South Carolina man about that.

Two gunmen robbed another man of his firearm early Wednesday morning in the parking lot of Roosevelt Gardens Apartments on Representative Circle, according to an incident report.

An Orangeburg man reported that he went to retrieve his 9 mm black and blue Taurus pistol from his car just before 1:30 a.m.

Two males approached the man, with both of them pointing pistols at him.

The man placed his own pistol in his pocket and one of the gunmen removed it when he searched the man, according to the report.

Well, that went swimmingly for the armed citizen, now didn’t it?

In fairness, they had the drop on him. He had his weapon in his pocket, they had theirs out and pointing at him. Drawing his weapon was probably not a good idea.

Granted, if he had, they may have taken off–criminals often do when faced with armed citizens–they may also have just shot him out of hand and left him bleeding in the parking long.

Much as I hate to say it, he made the right move.

I want to say if he’d been carrying somewhere else on his body, he might have kept his gun, but with him being searched, I don’t know that to be true. That would depend on how thoroughly they searched. For example, if they just checked his pockets, he’d have been fine.

However, for these two, finding a gun wasn’t enough for them. They then demanded money from the victim who apparently didn’t have any on him.

As the suspects left, a sheriff’s deputy saw the vehicle and noted that the two occupants wore ski masks and wrote down the license plate number. At that point, he didn’t know a crime had occurred, so he didn’t initiate a stop. Granted, two people wearing ski masks in August in the Deep South should probably be probable cause in and of itself, but it wasn’t.

With luck, the victim will get his weapon returned to him and the two criminals will spend some quality time in one of the state’s fine and secure residential facilities.

They may even get to wear a pair of snazzy matching bracelets with a cute little chain connecting them.

Just remember, folks, being armed doesn’t mean squat without the other tools available. Situational awareness, for example, might have allowed this victim to see his attackers and be able to bring his gun to bear. He might have even been able to avoid the encounter entirely. Who knows?

What we do know, though, is that having a gun isn’t magic. It’s not a talisman that simply wards off evil by its mere existence. You have to make smart decisions, too.