I Train To Kill

BUT, I am not a trained killer.

I have never killed anything in my life other than a fly or wasp and the occasional ant.   In fact, I had never thought about killing anything until I got my gun.

I had carved out a pretty nice pretend world inside my own mind.  One where I was safe and bad things like being attacked in a grocery store parking lot, would not happen to me.  Even after that brush with danger and the purchasing of my gun, I still spent a great deal of my time rationalizing.

I live in a safe neighborhood...

I don't hang out in seedy places...

I am aware of what is going on around me...

God is watching out and protecting me...

And while I still believe all of those things reduce my chances of being selected as a target, that mind set would not help me should the unfortunate situation arise, and I was selected.

When I taught college, I would tell my students that they need to get out and use what they had learned and most of them would say, "no I am not ready, I don't know enough." to which I would say, "If you wait until your ready, you never will be".  The learning comes from the doing.  If I want to be prepared, I must go and do.

In order to prepare for the fight, I have to think about the fight.  I have to prepare my mind of what could happen, so I can plan and train for what I would do in each of those different scenarios.

I spend the majority of my time working on not being in a bad situation in the first place.  As, John, the gun guy says, "Avoid stupid"  Don't go to place that are not safe, do not hang out with people who make poor choices, don't cause trouble, if something doesn't feel right, LEAVE, know what is happening around you, lock your doors, don't tell people where you are going or what you doing, etc.  That part is easy.  I was already doing that.

Without exception everything I have read, everyone I have talked to, all the experts who share their knowledge say, "The mind is the weapon, the gun is the tool".  If the mind is not ready, then the tool is useless and guess what...changing a life time of thinking takes time and training.

Had, I had my gun with me in the parking lot that day, I probably would have got myself killed.  I was not prepared to deal with a bad guy.  I had conditioned my mind to believe that folks just aren't that bad and that thinking would have caused me to hesitate, to pause, to believe I might not be in as much danger as I was in.

If you read my post "Who Am I" then you already know my mind was not even close to being ready to defend my life.  If you don't believe me just ask any of the 13 people that were at the training course with me.  I am the only one who screamed when a paper target came charging at me. A guy in his 60's, 2 young girls in their early teens, 2 guys with weapons that were a bit temperamental and I was the only one who screamed.

I knew it was paper and I knew there were 2 guys controlling the thing and yet, when it was my turn and the thing came rushing at me, I jumped out of the way and screamed.

Fortunately, this was at the end of the 2 day training, so I also drew my weapon and shot the bad guy.

I have a long way to go.  I have much to learn and much to practice, but I am no longer deceiving myself. 

It is my daily prayer that I will never ever find myself in a situation where I need to use my gun in defense of self or others.  I have no desire to be a hero or to test my skills in a real life situation.  However, the only thing worse than being in a situation where I would be forced to defend myself or my family, is to be in that situation and not to be able to defend myself or my family.