Providence resident Rob Farago was profiled in Sunday’s Washington Post:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Heading toward a Starbucks on the pricey side of town, Rob Farago is packing. The Glock 30SF lives on his right hip, holstered under his jacket, with 10 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. Backup ammo is in another pocket.

Farago didn’t used to be a gun guy. He was a car guy. He had a popular blog called the Truth About Cars. He sold it in 2009 and searched for a new consumer topic, landing on guns.

He bought his first gun a week before the debut of TheTruthAboutGuns.com. He took a firearms class. He filled out the paperwork and went through the background check to get a permit to carry a gun. He now owns 18 guns.

“Once you put a gun on, you gain situational awareness,” he says. After he bought his first gun, he says, “I felt grown up. It was like a coming-of-age thing. I felt like an adult.”

Last summer, Farago secured a pistol permit [pdf] from Attorney General Peter Kilmartin’s office and did a multiday open-carry experiment, which he described as his “personal journey into RI gun rights.” You can read it here: day one, day two, day four, day five.

“I’m not a weirdo with a gun,” Farago wrote at one point. “I’m a non-violent, law-abiding American who believes deeply and completely that U.S. citizens have a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. I am a single father protecting his daughter. Both her life and her right to defend herself with a firearm when she assumes that responsibility for herself.”