One I Missed...From Farmer Frank...

...on motels, no less...something I have a passing knowledge of. I use a modified version of Frank's system...primary gun in a shoe on my side of the bed, 2nd gun under the covers. A quick Walt Rauch story...I had a quickie trip to the D.C. area, one day so carry-on luggage. E.G., no gun, no knives. So my travel agent finds me a 3-star name brand hotel outside of Alexandria, the only room available on apparently the entire East Coast. It is late and I am dead tired when I make it to the motel, where the Indian gentlemen taking the credit card is behind an inch of plexiglass surrounded by transexual hookers shouting for their room-by-the-hour keys. Ah, crap, I think, but I am very tired. I get my key among shouts of, "We see you later, white meat!"

So I call Walt and say I am very tired, on my way to the only empty hotel room in the world, unarmed and surrounded by miscreants.

"Convenience store nearby?" he asked.

"Roger that," I say.

"Drive to the store and buy a giant size can of Easy-Off Oven Cleaner. Works better than pepper spray. Aim for the eyes."

So I did, and with a chair, the chest of drawers and my meager luggage stacked against the door, I slept like a baby. Here's Frank's blogpost:

MOTELS AND GUNS...

This is a subject that to the best of my knowledge few have written about, talked about or much less even taught in any kind of an armed self-defense course. What do you do with a firearm in a motel room? How safe are you in a 'rental sleeping room' and where is the best place to keep your blaster while you are totally in Condition White and 'proned-out' to boot?

Walt Rauch and I have discussed this at length over many years and I seriously don't want to steal his thunder on this issue because he came up with a method that I feel is pretty darn good and it should be his to explain. Not mine. However every method or means employing firearms always has good points and negative ones, so I will explain a method I came to on my own that works well in conjunction with Walt's. None of these ideas are the end-all, be-all on this subject. Just think of them as good starting points because so few have discussed this aspect of personal security in the popular gun press, or if they have....I was asleep in the back row and missed it.

All my adult life I have been a frequent traveler. And being the person I am, unless I was going off-shore, I was armed, sometimes heavily. Yet motels and hotels by definition are places where in all likelihood the bed you're getting ready to sleep in has been occupied by hundreds, if not thousands of souls prior to your dead-ass appearance. In the age of soft metal door keys, that fact alone always left me uneasy and lessen my belief in my personal security for the oncoming evening.

There's lots more, and all worth reading...