As research has shown time and again, gun ownership reduces violent crime and saves innocent lives.   

Here are three excellent examples of guns saving lives:
1.   In May, a man entered a restaurant in Oklahoma and shot a mother and her daughter.  The bad guy was then shot and killed by an armed citizen.  We don't know why the shooter attacked or what the circumstances were when he was stopped by the armed citizen.  However, the most important detail of this story is that the two victims were expected to survive but the criminal did not.   

2.  Then, in June, Jordan Corter attempted to rape his friend's Mom during a sleepover.  He woke up her in the middle of the night and pushed her onto the bed.  This young man realized she wasn't an easy victim though when she pointed her gun at his head!  Thankfully, this confrontation ended with no shots fired.

3.  The most unbelievable story to me was of the carjacker shot and killed at Walmart in June in Washington state.  Tim Day went on a rampage attempting to steal several cars at gunpoint and firing shots inside of a Walmart.  Two armed citizens responded to the gunfire and finally put an end to the rampage by killing him.  Similar to the Taco Bell attempted robbery, I blogged about a while ago, the bad guy found himself outnumbered by good guys with guns!  I think these guys handled the situation perfectly.  David George, a paramedic and a pastor, put himself between his family and the the bad guy.  When he saw Mr. Day shoot (and paralyze) Mr. Fievez while trying to steal his car, he realized it was time to act.  I'm thankful these armed citizen put themselves in harm's way to stop an evil man from inflicting more terror and to save innocent lives.

#GunsSaveLives 
#MoreGunsLessCrime
#RVAtrain
#RVAready

I was shocked to see the viral video of the FBI agent who accidentally shot someone while dancing in a Denver night club.  This guys has moves but loses his gun while doing a back flip.  Then, he accidentally fires a shot while quickly grabbing the pistol off of the floor.  Thankfully, no one was killed by his shot.

Observations:
1. When carrying a gun, you should always be aware its presence.  This should obviously prevent you from attempting back flips or doing a ninja warrior course.  If you need to do acrobatics while carrying, you should get a level 2 retention holster.
2. This would have been a non-event if the officer had exercised trigger finger discipline.  The second rule of safe gun handling is to "ALWAYS Keep Your Finger Off of the Trigger Until Ready to Shoot."  A gun will only shoot if the trigger is pressed.  This was a stressful situation and the agent wanted to quickly cover-up his mistake.  Unfortunately, he grabbed the gun by the trigger instead of correctly picking it up with his finger off of the trigger.  
​3. I notice that the agent picked up the gun with his left hand but then holsters his gun with his right.  He appears to be a right handed shooter but used his left hand to grab the gun since it was on his left side.  One good take-away for all of us is to practice safe gun handling with our non-dominant hand.   

In my last entry, I wrote about a Maryland high school shooting that was stopped thanks to the bravery of a School Resource Officer who confronted the shooter.    This occurred right after the Parkland shooting and hardly received any media coverage.  

The same scenario happened again last month.  We all heard about the horrific shooting in Santa Fe, TX  where a 17 year old young man killed ten people and injured ten others at a high school.  Did you hear there was also a school shooting in Illinois last month?   I'm not surprised if you didn't - I had to find coverage via the British network BBC!   

I'm so tired of mass shootings and attempted mass shootings.  The excerpt below is how they should all end:

"Neither the officer nor any students were hurt in Wednesday morning's confrontation at Dixon High School.  The suspect was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries."

I'm so thankful that Mark Dallas was at Dixon High School that day and was brave enough to protect the lives of all the innocent people there.  Guns save lives.  

Did you hear about the school shooting in Maryland last week?  I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't - it didn't make the same splash with the news media that the one in Parkland, FL on Valentine's Day did.  Why wasn't it as widely reported?

This shooting doesn't fit the narrative of the anti-gun crowd because an armed School Resource Officer (SRO) stopped the shooter in less than minute.   As I mentioned in my previous post about the Parkland shooting, gun control doesn't stop mass shootings.   The bullets stopped flying when the shooter was confronted by a gun pointing at him.  We aren't sure if he killed himself or if the SRO shot him.  Its clear though that he was looking for easy victims and wasn't expecting a trained and violent response.

Why didn't gun control stop this crime?  Maryland has some of the toughest gun laws in the country.  The shooter was only  17 - he was not legally allowed to purchase or own the handgun he used.  Bad guys will always have guns or other weapons to cause carnage.  ​

After such a cold winter, I'm glad that warm weather is finally returning to Central Virginia.  I'm excited to get outside to my range and do some shooting.  Shooting is my favorite hobby.  I like to practice and sharpen my skills in many different disciplines with different firearms.  Of course, it is more than a hobby since I also have learned the skills (that I will hopefully never need) to defend my life and the lives of those important to me.  If you'd like to take the next step to learn shooting as a hobby or to learn to use a firearm for self-defense (or both!), this is the perfect time.   

Contact me to schedule your course.  

I've written before about the risk of shooting guns in the air to celebrate.  Those bullets will all fall back to earth and could hurt someone or something.  When we talk about the rules of safe gun handling during our courses, we always reinforce that a gun should always be pointed in a safe direction - one that can stop a bullet without damaging anyone or anything.  Unfortunately, there are many incidents every year of gun owners break that rule and negligently shooting their guns in the air.  

I didn't realize that this was a common occurrence in RVA too until I saw this Richmond Times Dispatch article .  The Richmond Police took 181 calls about celebratory gunfire on New Years Eve and New Years Day 2018 and got 11 reports of property damage. (including the window and frame shown above).   I'm thankful that no one was killed or injured.  I work in Downtown Richmond and I really like the whole downtown area.  However, based on this, I recommend staying away from Downtown on New Years Eve and New Years Day!

Contact me if you'd like to learn to safety own and operate a gun.

Does your church or place of worship have a plan for the physical security of its members?   We just added a new course for Church Security Teams that involves case study of high profile church shootings and some discussion of what can be learned from them.  Then, the course moves to the shooting range, covers the basic topics of self-defense with a handgun and finishes with a timed competency exam.  Learn more about this course here.