This weekend after we finished out our Saturday shifts. A bunch of us loaded up our cars and headed down to our favorite range in the tri-state area, Impact Shooting Center. This place is almost like a second home to some of us. It’s a 3D range that allows you to draw from a holster, move and shoot and run drills to help you obtain a greater proficiency.
Lots of our guys take shooting and training pretty seriously. There’s this underlying voice in your head that tells you “if you’re gonna carry a gun every day and hold your life and others in your hand, you should be proficient with it”. One of my worst-case scenarios when carrying a firearm is having to use it. On top of that, it would be even worse if I had to use it and hurt somebody I didn’t intend to.
I think that if you’re going to take on that responsibility of carrying a firearm, you should take on the responsibility of being as skilled as possible with it. I see and hear all the time of gun owners who think they are “trained to carry a gun” because they took their CCW class. Almost anybody that has taken that class will tell you it’s not very good training if any at all. That depends greatly on who and where you take the class. Tons of CCW guys will buy their gun, take the class then shoot 1 time a year to make sure it still works. They don’t have a bunch of rounds through them, they are probably dry as a bone, the ammo hasn’t been cycled or anything at all like that. I would like to say that it’s probably a small number compared to the whole, but I believe it’s larger than I would like to admit.
I would recommend to all of you that if you felt like I just described you and your gun in the paragraph above, please go out and shoot. Please go out and get some training. Even medical training would be great as well. Right now with ammo being expensive and scarce, you might not want to shoot a bunch. So make the little bit of shooting you can afford to do, important. Practice drawing from the holster at home. Tuck your shirt in and practice drawing from concealment. Spend that little bit of extra on making sure you’re as prepared as you can be if the time ever comes.
Stay safe out there. Be prepared. Train hard and train often.