About SD Carry

As a young boy in Texas, I grew up with guns. They were basic tools, much like my grandfather's mitre box or pipe wrench, there to perform specific tasks when called upon. I was taught gun safety by virtually every male adult in my family. I spent eight years in the US Navy operating and maintaing various guns from .30 caliber to 5" rifles.

After a few years as a moderator on a popular gun forum, I learned that there is much disinformation, prejudice and plain ignorance about guns posted constantly on the internet.

This blog is dedicated to sharing worthwhile information about the increasing acceptance and practice of legal concealed carry in our country. There is much mis-information and wild opinion about this topic among its practitioners and the public in general. The moral, social and legal responsibilities of concealed carry are immense and must be understood and practiced by all who legally carry a gun.

There is also a vast amount of practical and useful information about carrying and the weapons themselves and I hope to be able to share some of that here. Your comments are welcome, but will be moderated by me before appearing on this blog.

Stay safe.

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Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Sometimes It Takes A Gun

We live in a small town, a village really, of about 900 people, which grows to three times that number in the summers when the part-timers come back to enjoy the mountains. Today, early December, life is quieter and often remains so for hours. We don’t worry overly much about shootings here, except perhaps for someone getting in a little target practice just outside town, or maybe scaring off a bear in the back yard at night. But that doesn’t mean we are complacent. Colorado Springs is only an hour and a half up the road.
As you already know a Christian fanatic, fueled by images of “baby parts” which were such a big part of Fiorina’s campaign rhetoric (not to get into the fact that the story was completely fabricated, a blatant, and as it turned out, dangerous, lie.) killed innocent people at a Planned Parenthood office there. This was another religiously motivated mass murder, followed shortly thereafter by another religiously motivated mass murder in San Bernardino, planned and executed by a couple with obvious jihadist connections. The fundamental difference was that one was a Christian motivated mass murder and the other was a Moslem motivated mass murder.
What has all of this to do with violence in our small village? It’s put everyone on edge. I’d say the anti-gun folks are stressing and the pro-gun folks are increasingly wary and many of them go about armed. A friend was talking with a Sheriff recently who said that he and his deputies just expect anyone they deal with around here to be armed. To him, this was a good thing. He, and many others believe that we need to be able to defend ourselves and fight back when necessary.
However, it will not have escaped your notice that the press and media have exploded once again with “gun control” issues after the San Bernardino shootings. Someone said that doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result each time was a definition of crazy. Possibly so. Certainly a definition of ineffectiveness. I’d like to explore this a bit.
People who claim to be anti-gun are lying. They aren't really anti guns. They want the police or military to show up with guns when they are called upon to confront violence and evil. Most would almost certainly be glad if, in a dangerous situation like being subject to the attentions of a deranged gunman or gunwoman, you or I showed up with a gun and fought back. A few of them might be glad if they found a gun and were able to fight back themselves. Most anti-gun people would not know what to do with it, but still… Anti-gun people aren’t protesting against the people with guns who came to protect them. They are generally pleased when murderers get shot in the commission of their crimes or soon thereafter.
So, if guns themselves are not actually evil things, just tools created to perform specified tasks, and the evil or bad things done with guns are really the fault of those who wield them, then what is the problem? 
The problem could be that anti-gun people just don’t want to get shot and have gotten into their heads that if no one had a gun, they could not be shot. Never mind that someone bigger, stronger, more trained, more vicious than themselves could just beat them to death or worse, and that by not having a gun, they would be in no position to stop that. That would be OK because there would be no “gun violence”, which is a nonsensical and stupid term to begin with. Let’s try “hammer violence”, “bat violence”, “knife violence”, “fist violence”, “screwdriver violence”, “table lamp violence”, “garrote violence”, “bottle violence”, etc. It’s just violence which can take many forms but needs a bad actor to make it happen. Take away the gun, the knife, the screwdriver and the bad actor remains.
I suspect the anti-gun people have fundamentally not accepted the fact that we are all mortal. Sure, they know this intellectually, but seemingly not personally and emotionally. We are all on the river to death but our actual last port of call is unknown. I don’t think they believe that they will live forever but their actions indicate that if they do the right things, take the right attitudes, eliminate as many dangerous items and situations, they will live a lot longer.  While many pro-gun people may also be of the same mind regarding our actual end on the earth, I would conjecture that they are more concerned with how their life is lived and what it means than the details and date of their leaving of it. 
As I get closer to the eightieth year in my life, I have come to believe that there are no “safe places”, there are no hedges or guarantees and that the quality of one’s life is more important than the duration of it. It is important to love and be loved, be a moral and kind person, and to actively stand up and oppose idiocy and evil whenever they are encountered.
It is a sad comment on our times when ordinary citizens must consider going armed in order to fight such evil if it should appear. But, sometimes it takes a gun.

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