Useless & looking for trouble: The BiL would have a handgun in his carry-on luggage & his car. No permit. He was a pilot for US Air. He had an inferiority complex & needed to feel powerful.

Useful: The sister ( all 4′ 10″) is a lawyer specializing in family law. Since her cases are divorces & child custody, clients can be emotionally unstable. She has a license for concealed carry. She regularly practices on a gun range.

However, with all that said, it still creeps my husband and I out at how much this concealed carry stuff appears to be a adolescent fetish thing with him and his fellow volunteers. It goes way past rational thought and plugs right into the lizard brain. fapfapfap is a perfect description.

gave good advice (don’t do like I did – don’t carry until you’ve been to the range and know your weapon).

It’s not exactly good advice if he can’t be bothered to follow it himself.

(note to liberals: handguns only serve one purpose–killing human beings).

I truly hope one of these asshats who thinks it’s just fine to carry a gun with only one purpose around meets someone else who thinks the same and they each think the other is a liberal.

And, finally: while the population of Palm Springs is overwhelmingly Republican, 30 percent of the votes were D in 2008 and the district has voted narrowly for both Boxer & Pelosi for senate. So, please, the blanket implication that “they’re all Republicans, so of course they kill each other” is just too simplistic.

I think you mean Boxer and Feinstein. Pelosi is in the House of representatives and represents San Francisco in addition to being speaker of the house. People in Palm Springs cannot vote for Pelosi.

Nonetheless the writing you linked to isn’t bloodthirsty. It was written for an audience that likes guns, gave good advice (don’t do like I did – don’t carry until you’ve been to the range and know your weapon). Links to the NC concealed carry class story put more good information out there.

There are four rigid criteria that must be satisfied to justify shooting another person in self defense in North Carolina, but I imagine the law here isn’t too much different in the 30 or so other states where concealed carry is allowed.

In plain English, we can’t start a confrontation, must try to diffuse or escape the situation if we can, and can only pull a weapon when some tries to kill or sexually assault someone else or ourselves, and once we fire, we can only shoot to stop the threat, not to kill. That last detail was printed on the bottom of every page of the course syllabus, in bold text: Do not shoot to kill. Shoot to stop the lethal threat.

This CCW ethos is in a post of GC Gomer’s linked to from the one you’ve linked may be something his audience isn’t ready to internalize, especially given that his other writing is often violent fantasy. On the other the fact of his reporting taking a course that includes the above quoted material makes me doubt he is actually dangerous, he may be yanking people’s chains. No harm in doing the same to him of course.

This thread is wonderful for two reasons: (1) it provides some good experiential advice for those contemplating CCW (alas, I cannot because I live in now-restrictive Orange County in the People’s republic of Kalifornia) and (2) you just gotta know that all of the bleeding-heart, left-wing, peace-creep, pinko libs are suffering cardiac arrest just reading this stuff.

-Voiska PVO

“Good experiential advice?” For whom? While statistically males make up 52% of all live births, because of their gender-linked propensity for risk-taking and “teh stupid” in general, their numbers decline throughout adolescence. By the time males reach their mid-20’s they account for only about 48% of the population. From there they are dispatched at an exponentially higher rate than their distaff counterparts via a combination of trans fats, beer and TV.

If Bob Owens wants the majority of the population to benefit from his life experience, perhaps he should take the “Pepsi Challenge” and acquire the sort of experience that would benefit the majority of the population that is most likely to be raped, robbed or assaulted: i.e., women.

Aside from the limitless possibility for snark presented by the very thought of Owens in his best Dame Edna dress eating Cheetos, I’d like to know how he handles the fact that the weight of a Ruger 89 (900+ gms) will make that dainty thigh holster slide down his pantyhose.

And I hear that a manufacturer in Texas now makes purses with holsters discreetly sequestered therein. I’d like Owens to test them in a real life situation. In other words, how long would it take him to find the gun while he’s rooting through the assortment of tampons, used Kleenex, candy wrappers, and make-up that most women carry during a surprise simulated hold-up? Long enough for the mugger to get pissed and grab the purse with the gun? And how long will it take Bob to report the theft of the gun after the incident?

And just to make the test interesting, let’s have Bob agree to take hormones–to simulate how women might feel during a really bad case of cramps or menopause. And then have him make the 5 hour drive to grandma’s in the summer, in a car with problematic air conditioning–with two kids fighting in the back seat. Somewhere between the first “She touched me!” “Did not.” “Did too!” and the 100th “Are we there yet?” I’m betting Bob Owens will be ready to lock, load and take aim at the little boogers.

The belief that CCW will decrease crime is a lot like taking cholesterol lowering drugs: It’s a quick fix for the symptoms of a more complex problem that in reality takes a hell of a lot more effort and/or expense than most people want to devote to it.

And as an official DFH,who was taught to shoot at age 12, I can attest personally to the fact that this skill has come in handy in a State like California that is populated by alleged “bleeding-heart, left-wing, peace-creep, pinko libs:” It got me kicked from jury duty!

He lives for the day when he is involved in a firefight situation and can go all heroic on the bad guys asses, in slow motion with multiple angles and preferably filmed by Michael Bay. Most of us grew out of this when we were about ten years old.

He talks about his training:

There are four rigid criteria that must be satisfied to justify shooting another person in self defense in North Carolina, but I imagine the law here isn’t too much different in the 30 or so other states where concealed carry is allowed.

In plain English, we can’t start a confrontation, must try to diffuse or escape the situation if we can, and can only pull a weapon when some tries to kill or sexually assault someone else or ourselves, and once we fire, we can only shoot to stop the threat, not to kill. That last detail was printed on the bottom of every page of the course syllabus, in bold text: Do not shoot to kill. Shoot to stop the lethal threat.

This is sensible. The mere carrying of a weapon doesn’t turn one into a threat to society. Diffuse (defuse?) situation or run away when possible.

What’s wrong with this?