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 that it was only a BB gun. Police later confirmed that it was a pellet gun, but Smith recalled, "It looked real enough to me."

The teen began arguing with Smith and the store co-owner. "He just wouldn't listen," Smith remembers. "The co-owner and his father came over and grabbed the kid and the [pellet] gun hit the floor." The co-owner's father kicked it down an aisle, then the trio wrestled the youth to the ground while another customer called police.

The Courier Times recounted: "Meanwhile, the other juvenile still was standing outside. Smith didn't know if he was armed, so he went outside and pointed his gun at him and told him to lie down. The second teen also resisted, Smith said, but the police arrived then and took control of the situation."

The two chastened youngsters were taken to the Bucks County Juvenile Detention Center and charged with attempted robbery, criminal conspiracy, possession of an instrument of crime, and disorderly conduct. One was also charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, a marijuana smoking device.

Jim Smith has been licensed to carry a firearm since 1990. He told the Courier Times that he carries a gun "not only for his own protection, but also to protect others. He said he avoids drawing his weapon at all costs, but believed the storeowner was going to be robbed." He also cautions parents "to realize when they buy these pellet guns for kids that they look like real weapons," and that "a properly operating pellet gun can kill you."