It seems the late President Ronald Reagan was concealed carrying before concealed carry was cool – and he did so throughout his time as President.
It’s not like President Reagan was new to guns, having stopped a robbery using a .45 caliber handgun in 1933 – while uttering the line “leave her alone or I’ll shoot you right between the shoulders!”
During a tour of the Secret Service headquarters, Brad Metzler saw a replica of the rifle Lee Harvey Oswald used to shoot President John F. Kennedy, the pistol fired at President Gerald R. Ford, and the limo door that was on the vehicle Reagan was walking toward in 1981 when John Hinckley Jr., attempted to assassinate him.
“It was an eerie keepsake for sure,” Meltzer wrote in the New York Daily News. “But not nearly as eerie as the next detail they told me. We were talking about Reagan and that day he was shot. Then one of the agents offered this secret: When Reagan was president, he carried his own gun. I couldn’t believe it.”
In the book “In the President’s Secret Service,” a former agent told the story of seeing Reagan wearing a pistol at his ranch in California. The President told the agent it was “just in case you guys can’t do the job, I can help out.”
It has also been revealed that Reagan told an agent he carried a gun in his briefcase on his first trip to the Soviet Union in 1988.
“Whatever you think of Reagan, you have to admit he had a black belt in badassery,” Metzler wrote.
What do you think about Reagan now? Did his cool-meter just go up in your mind? Share this story on social media and add your comments below.
