Brother I am so with you on this issue. I am not sure whether Boss really want these kind of threads or not because, there is always a passion on both sides of this issue, and I get it because I am impassioned about as anyone. Please folks if you are going to enter into this discussion, do it intelligently and leave all the school yard issues of name calling and stupidity out of it. Or as they say think before you speak!
This is MHO on the subject of conceal carry!
As a conceal carry holder you have got to do the thinking! Because once you make that decision to draw that weapon you putting into motion a complete chain of events. Is this the best time for me to draw my weapon. Is there some one in my line of fire, will I draw return fire and are the people with and around me safe if I do? And that is just a few things you will have to consider!
You begin to have to think as a law enforcement officer does and yet you will have no one to back up your actions. If you have to shoot you will be the one facing whether or not it was a justified shoot!
Therefore the best thing anyone who has carry permit can do is to go to training. There are schools that offer courses where you are put into scenario's (with a non-functioning gun) to see how you will react. Then once trained not only in the proper way of doing things, they will put you in a live fire situation, with pop-up bad guys and good guys. It is up to you to decided whether to shoot or not! It is the same kind of training that police get!
If you can't like me afford those kind of courses then the next best thing is to try and train your mind and yourself for any given situation. You have to have the ability to think on your feet in a given situation. Once that adrenaline caused by the situation kicks in, you have got to be able to think and if you feel you may not be able to, then it is probably better to stay out of that situation.
It has long been know by law enforcement that once the adrenaline kicks in you may have tunnel vision. In other words you are so locked in that you only see one thing in your mind, the bad guy. There have been cases studied where law enforcement officers shot at a bad guy and even though they saw them, their mind totally blocked out what was in his line of fire, they has been cases where they swore they had only made two shots and there were several casings on the ground. There have been cases where the officer had ordered the suspect down and they completely forgot that they had said it! That adrenaline rush is a powerful thing but, with proper thought and training it can virtually be over come.
I am not saying you always are going to have to kill someone but anytime you draw that weapon it becomes a real possibility! One of the first things I was taught as a child when it came to gun safety was, "never point a gun at anything you didn't want to kill". Because once you point a gun at someone or something, whether you think it is loaded or not loaded, killing it becomes a real possibility!
And the next thing you can do to help your confidence is too practice, practice, practice! The better you are at hitting what you are aiming at with that carry weapon the better the chance of things going the way you want them too when you have to draw it!
IMHO conceal carry is something that can be very beneficial but it comes with responsibilities that don't come lightly, just like gun ownership in general!
