Overreaction avoided. (Exercising the Right).

Shortly before 3 a.m. on October 27, 2002, two teenagers, ages 15 and 16, lingered outside a 7-Eleven in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. Both a store co-owner and a customer, Jim Smith, were immediately suspicious. "I don't like the looks of this' Smith, 39, recalled the co-owner saying to him.

The co-owner eventually went outside to see what the youths wanted, and was told by one, "We're just trying to get out of the rain." Unconvinced, he asserted, "I hope you aren't doing something stupid like planning to rob my store." They assured him, "Oh, no, we're cool."

Moments later, however, one of the teens entered the store and began looking around nervously. Smith, a truck driver, saw what he perceived to be a gun. During an interview with the Bucks County Courier Tunes the next day, he recalled: "I'm thinking to myself and my mind is racing. If it is a gun you don't want to overreact. You can get in trouble. I was torn. I wanted to be in control of the situation, but didn't want to overreact."

When he and the youngster were about eight feet from each other, Smith, who once worked as an armed guard at a bank, decided to draw his licensed .45-caliber handgun from a holster strapped to his side. "I had my gun pointed in the center of his chest," he told the Courier Times, "and said, 'Get your hands away from the gun. If you put your hands on the gun, you're going to get shot.' I came real close and took slack out of the trigger. He came very close to getting shot."

The youth claimed ...