An Ohio woman who is licensed to carry a gun but had only recently
started carrying one for protection put it to good use earlier this week.

Dinah Burns was out walking her dog, Gracie, on a path near an
elementary school in Lancaster on Monday when two men approached her
with a baseball bat and threatened to abduct her.

“Two gentlemen came out of the woods, one holding a baseball bat, and
said ‘You’re coming with us,’” Burns told WBNS, adding that Gracie was
little help in deterring the men.

Thankfully, Burns had something else for protection.

“I said, ‘Well, what do you want?,’ and as I was saying that I reached
in to my pocket and slipped my gun out, slipped the safety off as I
pulled it out,” Burns said.

“As I was doing that the other gentleman came toward me and raised the
baseball bat. And, I pointed the gun at them and said, ‘I have this and
I’m not afraid to use it.’”

The men backed off and left, Burns told the news station.

“I think if they’d gotten any closer, I probably would have fired,” she
said, citing her concealed carry training which taught her “to get out
of a situation, back out, get out of it as much as you can without
having to discharge your firearm.”

“[I'm] very thankful that it turned out the way it did, and hope it
doesn’t happen again, but I will be prepared,” Burns said.

Ohio, which began issuing concealed carry permits in 2004, has
experienced a massive surge of new concealed carry permit requests.
According to an article from the Columbus Dispatch earlier this year,
96,972 new permits were issued in 2013 — a 50 percent increase from
2012. Permit renewals quadrupled over the same time span to 48,370.