Disposable Heart
Grandmaster
Had an argument (more of a discourse) with a co-worker (yeah, that's productive) about how he was gassing on and on about how student's carrying on campus could have stopped the Purdue shooting (refuse to call it a school shooting). I explained to him that a directed, aimed and otherwise fire and forget mindset of the killer would have not been deterred by someone carrying but also would not have allowed the carrier to shoot or detain the killer in time. I took some serious heat, despite me being pro-carry on campus.
Cobber:
There is an important lesson from the video: We may not be targeted, but let's say we're the first to be shot at. Doesn't matter if I'm carrying a Salient Arms RMR equipped G17 with 15 magazines strapped to my stomach competition style, in a surrender position, ready to engage. They got a bead, they have the initiative. Some people live in the "dream world" that having a gun will deflect anything, will prevent anything, and that engagements are the Galco ad portayals. I got into a knife fight during college. I got cut a bit. Shooting can very well be the same thing. The best we can do is stay out of a fight and training is important (situational awareness), but pure statistics is the most powerful (changes of being killed by gunfire are 1 in ???). But if things DO happen (and they are becoming more and more prevalent in a society awash with firearms from two panics and decades of inexpensive mass production, coupled with an unmanageable mental illness problem in the US), and they are getting worse, we need to understand that we can lose. We might have the best, the easiest to use weapons on the planet, and we can still lose in a fight if the attacker has initiative, if they are determined and if they have nothing to lose (and they often do).
I'm not going to say the video was revolutionary, it was insightful but in terms of our reaction to it as an industry and as a society of those willing to be armed. Remember when this first came out on news sites? Ever read the discussion comments at the bottom? They were the most chest thumping, "my handgun is a talisman, not a turkey" mindset drivel that one could imagine. "I would have put a .45 in the ****er's skull before he could have shot me!!" It's the Taurus Judge crowd rampaging about how they could stop the gunman with birdshot, holding their pistol in a perfect weaver stance, smoke drifting from the barrel, scantily clad woman cowering near their feet. I understand, we don't want to see a loss, in any form. But this video is a wake up call: It not only shows us what our competition (politically) feels, but also how we have failed. We have explained to people that self defense is as simple as pulling a gun on a knife wielding attacker who is 10 meters away and fuzzy looking in the ad, close up of course on the Kimber CDP and the Galco Avenger that it's residing in. It's not. We need to covey the image that despite our triumphs, the good guys CAN and DO lose. The white hats get shot in the belly and fall to the side in the western, just like the black hats. We can be shot, even killed just as easily as the attackers. It's a numbers game, it's a game of survival. But it's not a game that technology can win for us, as the firearms industry tried to shove down our throats, buy this ammo or this gun and "OWN THE NIGHT!!!1!!1!!". It's not Gran Tursimo, where if you somehow cheat the game to get a million bucks, that the raw horsepower of the Suzuki Escudo wins all races and makes up for lack of talent. It takes training.
I think of it as a "respect for the enemy" thing. I hate the attacker, I loathe their existence and want them destroyed if they threaten me or mine. But I will not conform to the idea that the world is 50/50, black and white, cut and dried. It's not win or lose, the "winner" is the one who is still ALIVE after the event has occurred. Depending on ME, not the tech on my hip. What makes ME have a higher number in the game of survivability? Training. But all that knowledge, countless years of dryfire and livefire practice and my experience in two muggings can be splattered on the passenger side of my car window during a car jacking just as easily as anything else. Think about the spin gun holders during the 50-early 80s. They had lead round nose, MAYBE hollowpoints or SWC, not super effective. They lived and died by their training and themselves as a person. We've drifted from that. Give 'em a laser, you don't have to be a good shooter with those! Idiocy. Here, buy a Taurus Judge, you don't even have to aim it, it's a shotgun! Foolishness at best. We offer options that should be force multipliers, not understanding that if the barebones basic training isn't there, they add squat.
