Bang! You're Dead!

As things get more difficult, economically or otherwise, firearms tend to become more important. If you have not given much thought to them, now is a good time to begin to educate and prepare yourself so that you can make good decisions when the time comes to do so.

Here are some very basic things to get you started.


On one hand you don’t want to get shot.

On the other, in extremis, there are few options as effective at fending off an otherwise certain fate as a firearm in the hand of an intended victim.

Lastly (the other, other hand), they can be handy tools for hunting, pest control, etc.

A few words about the first two-


Don’t get shot

For starters, be aware of, avoid and mitigate dangerous environments, situations and people.

Reading the book, The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker, is a great way to begin developing an awareness of some behaviors that some criminals use to trick their victims into increased vulnerability to violent attacks.


FERFAL lives in a more dangerous environment (Argentina) than most of us do at present, and writes about his thoughts and experiences, with a focus on staying safe. His blog is here-

http://www.ferfal.blogspot.com/

If you dig around on the net, you can find a bunch of his other writings that predate this blog.


Using a firearm for self defense

The pistol is the basic firearm for self defense. The National Rifle Association, or NRA, has been teaching safe and responsible firearm ownership and usage skills for well over 100 years. They have a respected and time-tested curriculum that their instructors use to teach people in person. Go to-

http://www.nrahq.org/education/training/basictraining.asp

-and sign up for the following NRA Basic Firearm Training Courses (instruction hours in parenthesis). Taking all of these can usually be done on several weekends over a few months, at a cost of a few hundred dollars. If you don’t own a firearm for a class that requires one, you can ask about borrowing or renting one. If you don’t own one, it would probably not be a bad idea to postpone purchasing one until you get some experience under your belt.

Home Firearm Safety (4 hours)
Basic Pistol (10 hours)
Personal Protection In The Home (8 hours)
Personal Protection Outside The Home (14 hours)

Now get started.