"Knowing that this was not a nice area of town, I brought along a firearm which I left in my book bag," said Barner, who is licensed under the Georgia Weapons Carry laws. "I was lucky that the room I was locked in had my book bag and had not been searched."
Two mistakes.
First, carrying because you're going someplace dangerous is a bad idea. Admitting it is worse. The last thing you want is a prosecutor convincing the jury that you were carrying because you expected a fight. If it's a bad area, don't go there. And carry always.
Second, don't carry off-body. If something happens, you don't want your gun in the other room. You won't always be lucky.
This reminds me of an incident from the early 80's in California that happened to one of the first attendees of my Arizona CCW class. He picked up some hitchhikers. One of them pulled a gun on him from the back seat, then they stopped and forced him into the trunk.
Later, he ended up having to kill two of the three in self defense.
For decades, he told the story about how lucky he was that they put him in the trunk *with his gun*, as though the gun had been in the trunk. After about the second renewal class, and some more questioning on my part, he admitted that he had been carrying the gun without a California permit, that it had been on his person, and that is how he had been put in the trunk *with the gun*.