These badges were/are not intended that way.

by Otony, Monday, May 16, 2016, 20:24 (3051 days ago) @ woody
edited by Otony, Monday, May 16, 2016, 22:16

Back when I first started hanging around with this group in 1999, the subject came up of a badge meant to convey our participation with the site, which at that time meant JimTaylor and John Taffin. We were a pretty close knit group In those days.

Since so many of us are Christians (with a few of our Jewish brethren as well), it was proposed that the badges have a crucifix or a Star of David. And since so many of us serve at church, the whole idea of Pistol Packing Preachers was developed, more or less concurrent with John's term, Perfect Packing Pistol (often rendered back then as PPPP, that is to say, Preacher's Perfect Packing Pistol).

At that point, I volunteered to look into the cost of having badges made up. The original suggestion was a badge similar to the old western star in a circle, with the star replaced by a cross. As it turned out, the one company I was able to interest in making something up for us was going to charge us a fairly high amount due to the cost of the dies for striking the shape. 17 years ago, a hundred bucks per badge meant a significant bit more than it does today, so interest died out.

As it happens, I was recently pricing some LE items online for a friend who just joined the local sheriff's department. One of the sites I found had an option to design badges using stock shapes and seals. It was child's play to run up those images, and then post them here, but it was never meant to be used as a Concealed Carry Badge. That is a significantly horrific idea, frankly. Rather, these were intended to display our brotherhood.

I guess you had to have been there to remember what these were supposed to have meant to us back then.

Otony