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We used to call them Good Samaritans or Conscientious Citizens.
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I certainly like these terms much better. Saying you are a "first responder" to explain carrying a gun sounds like you are just proclaiming yourself as some sort of unaffiliated Guardian Angel (of the somewhat notorious group with a history of staged publicity rescues and members getting arrested for essentially vigilante actions and other illegal infractions) or an unaffiliated, unsupervised, unrequested, volunteer security guard (ala George Zimmerman). If you are not a first responder by happenstance, then it sounds like you are proclaiming yourself on duty and/or on patrol, like professional first responders.
Vanya brings up a good point. Do folks like the soccer moms share the same view? Chances are, no. In fact, many definitely are fearful of self proclaimed hero types. They don't want every nut with a gun coming out of the woodwork to help them, but that is what self proclaimed volunteer armed first responders would sound like to them.
"First responder" does sound considerably better than the whole "sheep dog" nonsense, however, but such attempts at publicly proclaimed self actualization or justification seem completely unnecessary and will undoubtedly be scary to many.