Too Much or Too Little Training

By Betty Shonts

In a recent article, I admitted that concealed carry permitholders are human beings, and allowed for the possibility that in a rare scenario one could possibly screw up by diving headfirst into a third party scenario without all the facts.

Permitholders rarely screw up. But never mind - no matter what I say, what unbiased researched facts I have in my hands, and how many news stories I can pile up of good shoots by armed citizens, we will always be baby-killing, vigilante, inbred, redneck, racist thugs to anti-gunners. Antis don't reason because they're too buried neck-deep in touchy-feely emotions, sound bites from Michael Moore and Sarah Brady, and projecting their own violent and incompenant tendencies on the rest of us. They don't trust themselves with guns and don't think they can handle a situation rationally, so they think we can't. It's called projection.

Antis say we shouldn't carry guns because we're not trained as well as police officers. The truth is the glaring majority of permitholders I know train on a regular basis, and some even go to training schools to take advanced tactical courses. On the other hand, tell an anti that many of us go to tactical training schools to participate in classes, sometimes shooting alongside military and law enforcement personnel, and they'll screaming bloody murder, something about us learning how to be killers or wannabe cops.

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They train on a more regular basis than most police officers, and that's not a slam to our law enforcement community - cops can be limited by budget, which limits their ammo, which limits their training time. Many police officers aren't even firearm enthusiasts and may not even bother to practice outside of whatever is mandated, but many of us are firearm enthusiasts, so we're commonly found honing our skills at the range not only because it's necessary to upkeep life-saving skills, but because we like to for recreation.

Antis put us down by stating police officers are better trained and therefore safer with guns. Of course they're better trained in many areas, but we're apples and oranges. Officers go to the problem, but problems come to us. We have a duty to retreat (varying by state); a cop has to deal with the situation on front of him. We're not cops, we don't deal with the neighborhood's problems and we don't go out looking for it.

In order to confront the anti's issue of firearms safety, I have to mention police officers do commit negligent discharges and punch holes through furniture, innocent people or themselves. I won't delve further into that subject - we've seen the news stories of officer-related NDs, and counterpointing the anti's tout of law enforcement's firearms competance by discussing officer errors has the unfortunate side effect of appearing that we're trying to put down cops, and that's not what we're trying to achieve.

We know the seriousness of what we're undertaking by going armed, we know we don't wear badges, and we know we're on our own when the lawsuits fly. Therefore many of us train the best we can so our bullets don't stray.

An anti who claimed to be ex-military once told me he was completely aghast that we'd learn to shoot 3-D, human-like, moving targets while dashing for cover. Apparently your attacker will look just like a B-27 target and will be standing perfectly still at 10 yards. Or I must be watching too much TV, because you know bad things never happen to good people. And they mostly come out at night. Mostly.

And there you have it. We will always have "too much or too little training." Nothing is ever good enough for an anti. An anti's purpose is not to rationalize with you or understand you, but to wipe out all firearms and the most effective means of defending yourself, completely and utterly off the face of the planet. According to them, I'm either too stupid and undertrained to carry a gun (and this I'll just shoot my foot off or murder an innocent person), or else I'm an overtrained freaky cop wannabe playing Rambo, waiting for ninjas to jump out the bushes.

Betty Shonts lives in Tennessee and enjoys shooting for self-defense, hunting and recreation. She is a graphic designer and the Art Director for S.W.A.T. Magazine.