How did the act of carrying a weapon every day affect you?

There's a part of every gun guy that wants to carry a gun because you get to be with your gun all the time. I know that sounds weird, but not if you like guns, you like handling them. Most of the time you don't get to. You take them out of the safe once or twice a year.

It was also a good way to camouflage myself. I don't look like a gun guy, I don't sound like a gun guy -- I sound like just the opposite and I look like just the opposite. They can see me coming a mile away. But if I'm wearing a gun, I'm one of them.

At one point in your trip, you switched from open carry to concealed carry. What was that like?

In some ways I really liked it. It's physically uncomfortable, it's heavy and it digs into you, and you have to be very conscious of your clothing to make sure you're not displaying it, because you really don't want anyone knowing you're carrying it. But it kept me vigilant. You really have your shit together when you're carrying a gun. You never forget you're wearing it. Maybe cops who've been wearing a gun for 30 years forget they're wearing it, but I certainly never did, and I wore it for about 18 months.

It also made me really calm. When you're wearing a gun, you do not get upset if someone takes your parking space, or if someone cuts you in line. You have this quite noble sense of being the sheepdog, being the protector. And I liked that.

But then you start wondering -- what is my responsibility here? It's really complicated. Say you're in a shopping mall and somebody starts shooting. What do you do? If you run away, are you like a doctor who doesn't respond when someone starts choking in a restaurant? If you're wearing a gun, do you have an obligation to run towards the sound of the guns?

Did your experience bring you any closer to understanding what war veterans might experience when they return home to a non-combat zone?

No, I just can't imagine it. I've written a lot about vets, and they tell me it takes a long time when you come home to stop scanning the tree line. That's often how they put it. You take your kids to the park and you're scanning the tree line. I have a tremendous amount of admiration for veterans who are going through that. It's amazing that more of them aren't affected.

We have a real problem here because veterans often come from cultures where they really enjoy owning guns. A veteran who comes home with PTSD and reports for treatment could lose his gun rights, and they know that. So they don't want to report for treatment. They think they're never going to be able to own a gun if they see a shrink.

Do you think we should allow citizens to be armed in places like schools and movie theaters?

After the Aurora movie theater happened, the New York Times and others sneered at the idea that an armed citizen would have made a difference. They said, "Then there would have been two people shooting in the theater, which would've been worse." I'm thinking, "What could possibly be worse?"