Carry Your Gun

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Polite Society] Carry Your Gun!

Dec 27, 2004

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but here it is, anyway.

Carry Your Gun
I have been teaching firearms use for 29 years now, the last eight years full time. I have trained around 1,000 military personnel, a few hundred police officers, and thousands of private citizens. In 2005, Rangemaster
will graduate the 20,000th basic course student, plus I have taught another 1,000 students in road classes all over the United States.

A lot of my military and police students have been involved in shootings over the years, as that is in the nature of their jobs. When considering only the private citizen students, however, I know of almost forty who have been
involved in shoot-outs with criminals. The students have won in every single case I am aware of. I may not know about every instance when a student defends himself, but I?m sure I know about most of them. Usually, one of the first things a student does after a confrontation is report back to the school that trained him.

To the best of my knowledge, I have had two private citizen students who were killed by armed criminals after their training, in separate incidents. Both had one thing in common- they were not armed when they were killed.

For whatever reason, both decided NOT to carry a gun on the fateful day, and both paid with their lives. I don?t care how highly trained you are, a one-sided gunfight is a good way to lose if the other side is the one that?s
armed. One thing you will NEVER get to decide is which days you will need your gun.

Someone else makes that decision, and you will only be informed at the last minute. That?s OK, as long as you have your gear.

Tom Givens,
www.rangemaster.com