That’s what I wrote on Cornered Cat’s Facebook page yesterday. One of the people who saw that post complained that it might discourage people from trying to defend themselves at all. “All things have to start somewhere,” she wrote. “Reading that comment may now put a lot of people off from even starting to be able to defend themselves.”

My response to her on FB probably sounded short and abrupt (the venue does not exactly lend itself to long, thoughtful replies…) but I did understand and sympathize with what she was saying. The funny thing is, that same idea is one I’ve often struggled as I’ve worked to find my voice and my place in this community. So even though I ultimately disagree with her answer, I join her in admiring the question. How can an ethical person tell others that it is foolish to carry a gun without good training, when we know that saying so will cause some people not to carry a gun at all? It would be one thing if we knew that everyone who saw those words would be motivated to do the work, instead of put off by the idea that work may be involved. But we don’t know that. We know that some people will simply give up when we tell them it will take effort to get where they need to go. So how dare we take that risk?

I’m going to explain my answer to this dilemma by telling you a story. It’s really someone else’s story, not mine. But it might show you where I’m coming from a little better, so I’m going to tell you about a woman I met when I took my first class from Massad Ayoob nearly a dozen years ago.

Back then, Ayoob’s core class was called LFI-1, but it has since evolved into MAG-40. Ayoob takes his students through an incredibly tough, eye-opening journey during the 40 hours they spend with him. He forces them to confront the legal, ethical, and social ramifications of using deadly force, and provides answers to many questions that most of his students have never realized they should have asked themselves before picking up a defensive firearm. Many students find their first exposure to Ayoob’s course material both mind-blowing and emotionally grueling, as this woman did. In fact, she found her first trip through the class so upsetting that she went home, took her little snubby revolver out of her purse, and put it away in her safe. “I carried it a lot. Not every day, but a lot,” she told me, “and I had never, ever thought about what it would mean to use it!”

That’s not the end of the story.

The woman left her snubby in the safe for nearly two months, while she worked through some of the questions Ayoob’s class had raised in her head. She talked with her pastor and with her family members. She did some real soul-searching about that deadly weapon she owned. She did not just think hard about whether to carry the gun. She even wondered if she should get rid of all the guns in her home. It’s safe to say that she was really upset and really teetered on the edge of giving up entirely.

But that’s not the end of the story, either.

After working through all her questions, this woman did not put her old snubby back into her purse. Instead, she went shopping for a gun she could use better and would practice with more faithfully. She ended up with a mid-sized pistol that held more rounds than her snubby, and she also bought a good on-body holster. She made the commitment to carry that gun on her body every day, everywhere it was legal. She decided to learn as much as she reasonably could about defensive firearm use, and she set a schedule so she would practice regularly. In other words, after she faced her doubts and her fears, she had a much stronger commitment to doing whatever it takes to get home safely to her family and friends—and she was much, much better prepared to do so from a place of knowledge and skill.

Maybe that sounds like a poor trade off to you. Was that risk, the risk that she might never pick up the gun again, really worth it? What kind of an instructor would do that to a student? Isn’t it a trainer’s job to improve their students’ confidence, not to destroy it?

Well, yes. All that is true. But it still sounds right to me. Because by the end of the summer, that woman ended up in a much safer and better place than she had been in the early spring. It took time, and work, and emotional risk. It wasn’t easy. She had to travel through some ugly and scary territory. But when she got there, the journey was worth it to her.

Confronting students and potential students with reality is always dangerous, especially when it’s so easy for them to retreat to a fantasy. Fantasy is everywhere. The idea that we can easily keep ourselves safe without any work? That’s a fantasy, but it’s a fantasy that sells very, very well. Just take a look at some of the ridiculous “self defense” gadgets on the market and you’ll see what I mean. Fantasy sells.

Let’s bring all that together and wrap this thing up. The truth is, I’ve come to realize that my adult students are adults. As adults, they will always make their own choices and face their own challenges and come to their own decisions about how to meet those challenges. Ultimately, I am not responsible for their choices. I am not responsible for the decisions other people make with the information I supply. But as a defensive firearms trainer, I am absolutely obligated to give them good, honest information that works in the real world. That’s a heavy obligation all on its own.

Fantasy sells, but uncomfortable truths save lives.

You successfully raised a bunch of boys. Did you let them play Super Hero and Cops ‘n Robbers with play guns or the mythical ‘finger gun o’ death’? … Does a responsible parent allow young children to play games where the antagonist has to be killed?

That’s the question a friend asked me awhile back, sparked by the story of two 6-year-olds who were suspended from school for pointing at each other with their fingers during a game of cops and robbers during recess. Or maybe by the story of the little guy who got kicked out of school for throwing an invisible grenade at an imaginary box full of evil, so he could save the world. My friend asked a good question about these stories, one that really strikes to the heart of the matter. Does a responsible parent allow her children to play such games?

We know that question is the heart of the issue, because the intelligent adults running our public schools cannot possibly be worried that someone will take the little boy’s invisible grenade seriously. They aren’t afraid the imaginary explosive will somehow blow up the school, or that a little guy with a finger gun might kill someone by pointing at them. That’s not what this is about. Instead, the school authorities are worried about the childrens’ imaginations. Specifically, they want to stamp out the idea that violence solves some problems that can be solved no other way. So they have to start young and enforce hard. No heroic play-acting allowed.

As Rory Miller has said, the only thing that protects good people from evil violence is good people who are more skilled at violence. That’s a truth that’s very firmly ingrained in human nature, especially in little-boy nature. That’s why six-year-olds picture themselves saving the world. That’s why children like to play at good guys against the bad guys, cops ‘n robbers, cowboys ‘n Indians. ¹ It may not be politically correct, but little kids do love to fight imaginary bad guys. It’s woven right through the warp and the woof of their nature.

As a mom, I always wanted my boys to visualize themselves as heroes, as growing up to become the kind of men who would do whatever it takes to protect themselves and the people around them from evil. I wanted them to become the kind of people who would stand up for what is good, even in the face of physical danger. ² I wanted them to think of themselves as the kind of people who would protect the innocent from evil and the weak from violence.

When some scumbag tried to pull a little girl into a car near the homeschool co-op in our small town, my boys were all under ten years old. They heard the story at the Primer, and came home to ask me what that was about.

After I heard the story, I sat my kids down and told them, “There’s a bad guy and he wants to do bad things to kids. What do you think the kids should do about that? Should they obey him, because he’s a grownup?” By the time we were done talking, every one of my kids could answer that question with a loud, “NO!!” They already knew they did not have to obey a grownup who told them to do something they knew was wrong, but we reinforced it and gave it more context. They’d already learned how to twist out of a wrist grab at those ages, but we practiced it a little in that context. They already knew how to yell, but we practiced yelling in that context.

One of the across-the-street neighbor kids came over later that same week. The boys were in the yard showing him how the wrist grab escape worked. The kid was seven years old, and after my boys had given him the skinny, he came charging into the house to argue with me. “You don’t run away from a bad guy,” this little guy told me indignantly. “You fight him!!”

If I were a school teacher, I’d have had to argue with his premise. That’s the party line; no fighting allowed, because violence never solves anything. But instead I agreed with him, because he was right. It is right to fight evil. So I said, “Yes. We fight bad guys. But we fight them in a smart way, so they won’t win and we will. That’s why we get away and call the police, because they will fight the bad guy better than we can. The police will bring guns and they will bring all their friends who have guns to fight the bad guy. We win when we fight smart like that!”

If we don’t allow our little boys and young men to visualize themselves as heroes, who will grow up to be the next generation of the good men with guns, the ones that good people call when twisting out of the wrist grab isn’t enough?

In the gun world, a squib is a bullet that fails to exit the barrel when the round is fired. It gets stuck in the barrel and never becomes the projectile that you expected it to become when you pressed the trigger.

When a squib happens, you will usually hear a very strange sound. It’s not the BANG! sound you expect from a typical shot. It does not make the  pew, pew, pew sound a politician might expect, either. Rather, it makes a kind of phthpht noise, or a quiet pop sound – somewhat muffled and weird-sounding. You will also feel an unexpectedly gentle recoil, or no recoil at all.

If you hear that sound on the range, you should stop shooting immediately to find out what’s wrong. Examine your gun to be sure there’s nothing stuck in the barrel. That’s important, because a bullet that’s stuck in the barrel can cause serious problems if you try to shoot the gun without clearing the stuck bullet out of the way first. Sometimes pressing the trigger again can cause serious, permanent damage to your firearm (think “bulged barrel”), and it can even cause an injury to you or others if the barrel breaks completely open from the pressure of the next shot.

However (and this is important!), if you ever hear that weird-sounding phthpht or pop sound in real life, when you are defending yourself from a violent criminal, you should keep shooting. Why? Two reasons.

First, because the danger of getting injured from the squib stuck in the barrel is very small compared to the danger that made you start shooting in the first place. In those circumstances, you don’t care about the damage to your gun; you’re just trying to save your own life. You may be able to “shoot the squib out of the way.” This is most emphatically not recommended for a calm day on the range, but when your life is on the line it does not matter if you damage your gun when you try it.

Second and more important, you keep shooting because auditory exclusion is one consistent feature that survivors of criminal encounters recall. What’s auditory exclusion? That’s when things don’t sound the way we expect them to sound. Some sounds are muffled, while others are exaggerated. One law enforcement officer recalls having another person fire a full-power, 12-gauge shotgun about three feet from his right ear during a violent event. But the officer never realized that his friend had fired the shotgun. He never heard it. The stress of the situation had affected his hearing.

Another person tells the story of hearing a weird, muffled pop coming out of her gun as she defended herself from a rapist. There wasn’t anything wrong with her gun, which we know because every round she fired struck the rapist. The shots just sounded weird to her because the physiological and psychological effects of defending her life in a high-stress situation had affected her mind’s ability to process the sounds she heard. She heard a pop where she expected a BANG! – but there was nothing wrong with her gun. She needed to ignore the weird sound and keep shooting to save her own life.

[Edited to insert a link to a relevant picture at Tamara's View from the Porch blog.]

First, there’s the process of getting the knowledge you need about the legal aspects of owning, carrying, and using a deadly weapon. None of this stuff is intuitive. The rules for owning and carrying guns are different in different jurisdictions, and those rules change all too often. The rules for using the gun to protect yourself tend to be more stable, but that does not make them either simple or intuitive. Getting a good, basic handle on those legal questions takes some effort and some skull sweat. (Incidentally, if you’re not a reader, an excellent place to start your learning process is with the seven DVDs that come free with an ACLDN membership. These DVDs discuss the basic rules of the road for using firearms in self-defense, along with providing clear, compelling discussions of the legal and social aftereffects of using deadly force to protect yourself and your loved ones.)

Then there’s the emotional hard work of sorting out your own beliefs about killing. When do you think it is right to kill another living, breathing, feeling, thinking human being? When is it absolutely wrong? Those are the easy questions. Here’s the hard one: Am I myself able to pull the trigger if that is what it takes to survive? Under what circumstances am I willing to do that? Am I willing to do it if it is a young person, such as a drug-addicted teenager who has lived next door to me since he or she was a small child? Am I willing to do it if it is someone I once cared about, such as a violent ex-boyfriend or ex-husband? Am I absolutely sure I want to go down that road? Am I able to face those choices without flinching or freezing?

After dealing with the legal and emotional/ethical questions, we come to the social issues. What will my mother say about my decision to carry a firearm, if she finds out? How will my friends react, if they find out? Am I willing to deal with the social fallout if my children’s friends’ parents learn that we own and use guns? Thinking through those questions may seem trivial to some people, but many of us have a very difficult time coming to grips with those social concerns.

Then there’s the question of criminal behavior and psychology. Criminals attack their victims in some predictable ways, but it’s emotionally draining to learn about how violent crime happens so we’re better able to avoid it. We do it anyway, because that knowledge helps us stay safe. We need to know how assailants choose their victims. We must study how violent attacks happen and learn how survivors have defended themselves. Along with that, we must begin training ourselves to notice the things going on around us so we can learn how to avoid dangerous situations before they develop. That’s hard work, too.

All of that pales when we think about the sheer physical effort it takes to master the use of a firearm. Again, anyone can pick up a gun and yank the trigger, with the bullet flying who-knows-where. But acquiring the skill to handle the firearm with confidence, understand how it works, understand how to keep it working even if something goes wrong and it doesn’t go bang when we press the trigger – that’s hard. Getting to the point where we can handle the gun with the same casual confidence we feel in the driver’s seat of a car, with the same almost-unconscious ability to manipulate the machine’s controls while thinking about other, more important, things – that’s hard. Learning to hit the target reliably every time, regardless of time or stress constraints – that’s hard. Learning to draw the gun with smooth efficiency, building the good safe habits that will see you through a tough time – that’s hard. Learning how to use cover or concealment while shooting, learning how to move while shooting, learning how to reliably hit your target even if it’s dark, even if you don’t have much time, even if your vision is compromised because your glasses got knocked off – that’s hard.

After we’ve learned those physical skills, we need to maintain them. That’s also hard. Finding the time to practice isn’t easy, and finding a place to practice some of the most important skills can be very challenging indeed. Standing on the range for hours while we develop the skills under the tutoring of a qualified instructor is hard enough, but having the personal discipline to force ourselves to practice the un-fun stuff as much as we practice the fun stuff when there’s no one standing there encouraging us to try it anyway – that’s hard.

Sometimes I talk to people who feel stupid because they don’t understand all of this intuitively, or because they can’t just pick up a gun and use it as effectively as the magical people do on TV, or because they have to struggle to master fundamental gun handling skills. If you’re in that boat, please let me give you a ray of hope here: you’re normal. It’s actually normal to find this stuff hard work. It does not mean there’s something wrong with you. It simply means you are doing the work it takes to learn something challenging.

We do that work because it’s worth it. Being prepared to defend ourselves is worth it. Being able to protect the people we love? Worth it! Having the confidence that makes would-be Trouble take one look at you and head the other direction – totally worth it.  Life is precious, and your life is worth defending.

Over the past few years, I’ve grown to really appreciate the strong women who have come into my life. From my mentor Gila Hayes, I’ve learned to pay attention to the human details that matter. From my friends and assistants Diane Walls and Jennie VanTuyl, I’ve learned to respect the differences between people, and especially the different paths people take on their way to living an armed lifestyle. From women who have organized the classes that I teach — people such as Annette Evans, Jenna Meeks, Karen Berghauser and others — I’ve learned to communicate early and often with people I care about. From students, I’ve learned the value of positive feedback and constructive criticism. From friends and contacts throughout the industry — women such as Lisa Looper, Kitty Richards, Julianna Crowder, and many others — I’ve learned that women can do amazing things when they set their minds to it and don’t let anything stand in their way. These women are an inspiration!

This past weekend in Nebraska, I found myself watching the students with a sense of awe as they improved their skills and gained confidence. It’s an amazing privilege to be trusted to help women grow in such a personal area of their lives, and I feel profound respect that my students have trusted me to help them grow in that way.

Being a defensive handgun instructor isn’t always easy. There are challenges with travel: two weeks in a row this month, I spent an unexpected night in Minneapolis when flights were delayed. There are challenges with weather: it’s often unexpectedly cold, or unexpectedly hot, or unexpectedly wet and rainy. There are challenges with ranges and facilities, conflicting schedules, and the endless balancing act between time and energy that every small business owner feels. Those things can be tough, but they don’t matter — not compared to the deep joy of watching a student gain confidence and competence, improving both her skill and her comfort level with the firearm.

An interviewer asked me this week, “Have you ever had a student call to say she’d defended herself with a firearm after taking your class?” I suppose most instructors privately hope to get a call like that, but I really don’t. The idea that drives me forward isn’t that. It’s the email from a woman who tells me that she learned to be more aware and more alert in my class, so she’s better able to avoid potential victimhood. It’s the one who tells me she used something I taught to stay out of danger, or to get away from trouble before it started. It’s the crime that never happened because the intended victim … wasn’t. It’s the call from a woman who says she’s gained the confidence to jump in and do other things she’s been afraid to do — to face her fears and grow. It’s watching women become competent gun handlers and good shots, and seeing that increased confidence spill over into other areas of their lives. Those are the things that motivate me.

That’s why I do what I do, and that’s what keeps me going. Every woman has a birthright of being strong, confident, and prepared to protect herself and the people she cares about — and I love helping people claim that birthright for themselves.