The Concealed Carry Lifestyle

Welcome everybody. Thank you for joining me here today. My name is Klint Macro. I'm the founder of the Trigger Pressers Union and I'm a contributor to the Personal Defense Network. Personal Defense Network, PDN, is an online subscription service that has lots of material videos, articles, what have you, on personal defense and it's geared specifically for that. I've been fortunate enough to be a contributor to PDN now for about a year and I've penned four articles that have been published. And one such article was called "A Citizen's Concealed Carry Infrastructure". And that's what this lecture is based on. Basically, what the citizen's conceal carry infrastructure is it talks about there's a lot more to being your own family's first responder than just having a firearm and just having a holster. There's a bigger picture that needs to be considered. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. We all want to live in Mayberry. You guys remember that show, right? I wasn't around when it first aired but I had Nick at Nite and they played it over and over. So I got to see it. I got to watch Opie grow up. We all want to live in Mayberry. Unfortunately, we don't, it's a sad fact. I know where I grew up we had a milkman that would come and let himself into the front door and put the milk into the fridge. And there were several occasions where we were woken up by the milkman and we sat down and had coffee with him. And you don't see that very often in this day and age. Did I live in Mayberry when I was a kid? I don't know, we certainly romanticize our childhood, but it was definitely a different time. And it's not the same way now. And to pretend that we live in Mayberry can set us up for a huge fail. How many of you guys have went to the Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman seminar, anyone do that? Yeah, denial kills you in many ways. And one of those ways, denying that bad things can happen. By denying that bad things can happen we're setting ourselves up for a fail. So it's important that we realize that bad things happen to good people. And we need to prepare ourselves for that. Doesn't mean we need to walk around like this and never talk to anyone and be curt or nasty to people. Certainly not, but we need to be cautious and keep that in mind. If you take on the responsibility to carry a firearm, or what I like to refer to as a tool of self-defense, it needs to be a lifestyle choice. It's gonna change what you wear. It's gonna change how you wear it. It's gonna change where you go, what time you go, where you park. And if we're going to become our family's first responder, there's a lot of continuing education that needs to take place. We need to really hone our skills and hone our craft. Anyone here in the fire service? You would not just put on an SCBA, the tank and the mask, you wouldn't just put it on once and then run into a burning building. You got good with it. You made sure it fit your face. You made sure you could do it laying down, upside down, driving backwards in a fire truck, in the dark. You had to know to use it. You had to know how to change out bottles. There was a lot that went into that before you ever went into a burning building. And if we use a firearm in self-defense to protect our loved ones, we're going into a burning building. That's some serious stuff. Now, when you adopt the lifestyle of concealed carry it's gonna change what you wear. It's gonna change what size pants you wear, especially if you wear inside the waistband. Anyone here were inside the waistband, and when you don't have your gun on your pants fall down? Yeah. My pants, I have to order them a little bigger because I've found, to be comfortable with my particular holster, one size larger. I can wear it, it fits fine, I'm comfortable, but my pants don't fit if I don't have my firearm on. And I try not to ever leave the house without my firearm. So that's another motivation. I don't want my pants to fall down in public, so I better put my gun on. And this is one way I help kind of enforce that lifestyle and help myself to stay compliant with my own rules. You need to understand personal safety concepts. We're gonna touch on some of those. You've been hearing a lot of them today, I'm sure. You need to develop a personal protection plan. Understand the legal aspects of that protection plan and how it affects you, where you live. And then obtain the proper hardware. A tool of self-defense needs to be efficient, it needs to work every time, and be simple to use. You need to realize when using a firearm, in this context, defensive skills are different than marksmanship skills. Marksmanship skills are great to have and it's great to have an understanding of marksmanship skills but, stepping into the defensive context, a lot of those marksmanship skills, we don't have time to exercise those. So we need to learn how to shoot defensively using what the body does naturally under stress and embracing that in our training. Mental conditioning is huge. Having the mindset to fight and survive. Having the mindset to continuously war game and come up with scenarios in your head. There needs to be maintenance and continuing education. One class, this seminar, is not gonna do it. It's a good start, and we need to continuously train and we continuously learn. Law enforcement have to continuously train. Military, they continuously train. There's training that takes place, and there's more training that takes place. Some of it is learning new skills, some of it is just dusting the rust off of the old skills, but maintaining them. And shooting skills certainly are perishable. Now, some personal safety concepts. Situational awareness. You guys have probably heard this a number of times today. Maybe you've heard it a lot. This is a term we throw out a lot in the training industry. Using our senses, we can take in and we can process information. And the process of information is key here. If we listen, if we look, if our hair stands up on the back of our neck and we trust that. You guys, we all have our little spidey senses. Anyone been in a room with someone and you just got the heebie-jeebies? Trust that, get out of the room, leave. With situational awareness we can, then, exercise conflict avoidance. If I collect information and process and say, oh, I don't like the way that group of individuals look, that makes me uncomfortable, then, okay, I will cross the street and walk down this way. I've avoided. Conflict avoidance right there. That's an easy example. Matter of fact, I mentioned this in the seminar earlier, we were coming back from dinner last night, a few of the instructors and I, and down one of the roads there was a guy yelling at another guy pretty fiercely and it looked kind of like a nasty situation. So we just walked down another block and then turned right there instead of going down the street we were gonna go down. So, we saved the day. None of us had to use our firearm. None of us had to get assaulted. We walked away from that situation. So, a lot of times people, because of how we are trained to be polite individuals, we might keep ourselves in a place where we're uncomfortable. Don't do that. If someone jumps in the elevator and you're uncomfortable, jump off of the elevator. These are simple things that we can do to avoid potential confrontation. So, whenever possible, remove yourself. Now, situational awareness. You gotta think of it in a 360 degree venue. A lot of times we measure ourselves by our level of awareness. And, you guys, have you heard of the color codes of awareness? You know, you're in condition red, you're in condition yellow, you're in condition white. Well, that's very one dimensional. And using those color codes of awareness to explain the concept of situational awareness is a wonderful way for people to kind of wrap their head around it. But when people say I always live in condition yellow, well, you can't, you can't. Condition yellow would be just aware of your surroundings. At some point in time, unless you sleep with one eye open or you take your pistol into the shower, at some point in time you're going to be preoccupied with something else. Oh, I wrote an article also called "Unicorns and the Situational Awareness Rainbow". And we want to try to avoid chasing down that unicorn of living in one particular state. We have to realize that awareness is 360 degrees. So, you get a chance, check that one out. Tip of the day, 100% guaranteed piece of advice I'll give you, and I gave it in the other seminar. You will win the confrontation you avoid. You will win the confrontation you avoid. So try and employ situational awareness so that you can avoid conflict whenever possible. Restraint is another part of that. Be the better man. I say, man, because women generally don't pound their chest and puff their tails and get in each other's faces. I don't ever really see that. That's kind of a male thing, I guess. Legally, if I get into an altercation, or a shouting match, or a pushing match with someone, even if the gun wasn't introduced or brought into the air, the fact that I have it or, in some states, the fact that I even have a license to carry or a carry permit, may change the charges that could be brought against me. So we need to realize that and recognize that and accept that as part of our responsibility. Whenever possible, back off and be the better man, walk away. Our personal protection plan. When seconds count, police are minutes away. This is a hard truth, and it's not a dig at law enforcement, not at all, but it's reality. Again, we want to accept reality. When seconds count, police are minutes away. Unless you live with a policeman or they just happen to be outside of your house when something bad happens. So, that's why we carry the firearm. That's why we accept this responsibility, becoming our own family's first responder. But, with that in mind, when we develop plans and strategies, if we can buy police those minutes that they need, man, so much the better, right? Not only do we have to win that physical confrontation, which is important, obviously if we don't win the physical confrontation, the things I'm gonna say don't matter, but if we win that physical confrontation, then we're gonna have to deal with that emotional, and that legal, and that financial aftermath. And that's a huge component. And a lot of people don't consider that until they find themselves having to sell their house to pay for a lawyer or whatever. So, it's important that we consider that. So, if there's any way I can escape, evade, barricade myself, move to a different area, maybe find a place of advantage, some cover concealment, that type of thing, then why not. A good for instance here would be, say, you're in the home. If you hear a crash, boom, bang in the middle of the night, take your family, get them into a safe, secure area, lock yourself, barricade, push a bookshelf in front of the door, whatever. Get out your firearm, guard the door get 911 on the phone, and maybe you can buy police those minutes they need to do their job because they're very good at it. And, if they can do their job, then I don't have to press trigger and have to live with the legal, and the emotional, and the ethical, and the moral aftermath that comes after a violent encounter. Outside the home we're a little more at the whim of fate, in some cases. I've never been to this venue before so I can't preprogram a plan. But, as I said before, I get in here, I look around, I come up with a makeshift plan. I know who here is an ally and is armed. And I know where there's exits and okay, fine. I've made some sort of plan. It's when we don't have a plan, it's when we freeze, I'll talk about that in a bit. Now, when we develop our plan, I'd like you to consider the plausibility principle. This is something that's part of I.C.E. Training's methodology. Rob Pincus, founder of I.C.E. Training. We all have a limited amount of resources. And resources being time, effort, energy, ammo, range availability, what have you, we all have a limited amount. You may have a range in your backyard and have all the access to range time, but maybe you work a lot and you don't have time to do it. I've talked to some guys that were overseas working in teams and they had all the money, and all the ammo, and all the everything they could get their hands on, but they had to keep a low cover, so they couldn't do live fire. So, everybody has some limitation of resources. If we consider what is possible, it's overwhelming and it's hard to deal with. So, let's see, it's possible that a helicopter could fly over here and ninjas could drop out on ropes with AK's and light this room up. That's possible, right? It's possible. But how likely is that to happen? So I'm sure maybe you've caught, I know I've done this, and maybe you have, and maybe you know people that have, that have dedicated a lot of time, effort, energy, ammunition, training or preparing for something that is really unlikely to happen. So, what we need to do, is look at what's probable. And what's probable is gonna be very specific to your own life, and your own home, and your own day job, your own situation. When I'm not doing seminars or teaching, I have a recording studio at my house. So, I am in my basement. So, I don't deal with getting off of a train, or deal with a subway, I don't deal with a parking garage. So, for me to spend a lot of time working a parking garage scenario is probably not a good use of my training time, my training budget, my ammunition. So, I really, really hone the home invasion situation. That's something I really dedicate a lot of time to. Now, if you don't work at home and you're only there the three hours you get sleep between work or whatever, then maybe working that home defense situation might not be the best use of your time. Maybe then working that garage scenario, maybe working shooting seated from your desk 'cause you're concerned about maybe a coworker doing something bad. So, figure out what is most probable, and then dedicate your resources to that. Once you are at a level of competency in that arena, then as resources make themselves available, or as you're like, okay, I got this, now let's look at what's plausible, and that's what's reasonable. I spend a little bit of time in my vehicle driving back and forth to the range. I've got a range nearby where I do most of my classes. Lately, I've been doing more traveling. So, it might be good for me, now, to expand into doing more work having to defend myself in a vehicle. Drawing from my holster while seated and have a seatbelt on. That might be the next best thing for me to train. But if I try and train for every single possibility, I'm not gonna own the skills because I'm too spread out. Does that make sense? So, train for what's probable in your life. Plan for what's most probable in your life. And then, as time, and resources make themselves available, then you can broaden out to what's plausible or what's reasonable. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on television. You guys remember this, you remember this guy from Seinfeld? Jackie Chiles, it was a great character. Educate yourself on the laws in your locality. And I can't sit up here and pretend to tell you what the right thing or wrong thing to do in your state. I know a little bit about Pennsylvania, obviously, 'cause that's where I'm from. But every state is so different. It's maddening how different it is, quite frankly. And should it be different? Well, that's an argument we can have and write letters to your Congressman. Let's get that national reciprocity bill passed. Understand the legal aspect of firearm ownership. What's the procedure for getting a firearm? Do you need a magic card before you can pick one up? I know some states you do. What's the procedure for that? How do you get your a license to carry or your concealed carry permit. Some states require you to store your firearm a certain way, some municipalities. You have to have this type of lock on your firearm when you're not using it. So, it's important that you learn what those laws are and what those rules are so that you don't accidentally break the law. In the NRA personal protection outside the home course, we bring in a legal professional that does business in the locale where we're teaching the classes. It's one of the benefits of the class. You can actually talk to a legal professional and actually get some legal advice. And I have a cop that comes in sometimes, and I have a lawyer that comes in sometimes. I have a group of people that I call upon to teach that lesson for me. And it's interesting, the cops will say, well statute 712-84 says that you can't lift your feet three inches higher than the curb. It's just pretty cut and dry, they're just going off of what's written, just enforcing the law. The lawyers always look at it, well, I would argue. And that's usually the statement they start with. Well, actually the thing they always say is maybe. They never say yes or no, they say maybe. And they'll say, I would argue. And I have a legal professor that teaches use of force at Cal University in Washington, Pennsylvania. And he says, here's the way it was tried. Case A, they did this. Case B, they did this. Case C, they did that. And one of the cases he brought up, and this is to illustrate the fact that nothing is black and white. He brought up three cases and, basically, it was homeowner, someone breaks into the house, homeowner uses the gun, felt threatened, defended himself with the gun. That's basically the long and short of each one. Reasonably similar situation in each one. In one town, the police pat him on the back, attaboy, you're a hero, God bless you, nothing was ever looked at. In Pittsburgh City proper, the homeowner's still in prison trying to appeal. And in another suburb of Pittsburgh, it went to grand jury, and he ended up being cleared, but he ended up spending probably 35, 40 grand trying to clear his name. So, either way you slice it, what works over here, may not work over there. I dare say folks in Texas are gonna look at things differently than folks in Chicago. So that's something you have to keep in mind. I lived in Los Angeles for a number of years, and there was a list, but one of the reasons on the list why I came back home to Pennsylvania was because I have chosen to defend my family. And I couldn't do that out there with a firearm legally. It was too prohibitive. And, out there, I really felt the need to be able to defend my family with a firearm. 'Cause I lived in some not so nice places out there. California, there are some really wonderful things there, but the laws are kind of crazy, and it's gotten worse since I've left. So, you gotta play ball on the field that you're playing on and you gotta play by their rules. So, I don't ever advocate breaking any laws, certainly not. If you don't like the law, you still gotta follow it. Write your letters to your Congressman, try and change it, but otherwise, it's easy to say, but maybe remove yourself from that situation if you can. Now, the legal aftermath. Understand when the dust settles and the smoke clears, that's just the beginning. And I'm not gonna get too deep in that but, understand as a law abiding gun owner, as a homeowner, the chance of you being charged, or detained, or handcuffed, that possibility exists and prepare yourself for that. Prepare your family for that. I have a nine year old son and we've had discussions about this. If I have to defend you, buddy, they're gonna haul me away in cuffs and that's okay. I didn't do anything wrong, but they have to make the place safe for everybody and that's just their procedure. They don't know me from Adam. And we have those discussions and it's kind of a creepy discussion to have to a nine year old, but I think it's important that everyone in the family is aware of that possibility. So, understand that you're going to probably need to get some type of legal representation. Unless you want to do like in the movies and represent yourself. I don't know how effective that would be. But you're gonna need someone there to cover your back, legally speaking. So make sure you get that legal team in place now. I think that's part of the infrastructure that you have to have in place. Now, the proper defensive hardware. First and foremost, you want to handgun that's reliable. How good is the firearm that doesn't work? Not only is it really frustrating on the range, but when my son's life depends on it, I want that thing to go bang when I tell it to go bang. Fit, fit is super important. Now we first think fit like, okay, it fits in my hand. I can touch all the knobs and the levers, everything's there, I don't have to contort my grip to be able to release the magazine, what have you. That's the first part of it. After that, we need to see if it points, or if it indexes kinesthetically. Meaning, if I'm looking at something and I drive the gun straight out, will it go directly parallel into my line of sight and deliver rounds where I'm seeing without necessarily using my sights? Does it point accurately? I carried a M&P for about a year and a half. And I was doing some shooting with a gentleman named Mike Hughes, who's a pretty awesome trainer. And we were doing some really fast from the holster shots. He was timing it, and targets were turning, and it was a little bit of clock stress. And I'm firing and I'm hitting low consistently. I'm going, doggone it, why am I hitting low? And he goes, that gun doesn't fit your hand. I said, what do you mean doesn't fit in my hand? I went, look, I can do all this, and it feels. He said, no, no, no, no, watch this. So he had me get a perfect grip. He says, get a perfect grip. He says, take a deep breath and close your eyes. And he says, now present the gun to full extension. And I went, and I opened my eyes. He said, open your eyes, and I looked and, sure enough, the front sight was down about an inch every single time. I said, let's try it again, best out of five. Five times, front sight was down every time. So, what that meant, when I wasn't processing the information of catching my front sight and making that adjustment I was just pushing the gun out like this, gun was pointing down at the ground. It just didn't fit my hand. We tried the different back straps, it didn't matter. That particular gun, in my hands, pointed down. Now he said, try my Glock. I tried the Glock and, of course, there's a picture. Even Steven all the way. I tried best out of seven, even Steven, every time. So that gun just fits me better. And I've done this drill with other folks where the M&P fit him and the Glock pointed up in the air a little bit. So, it's gonna be really up to you and how your hands are, the size of your hands, your fingers, your palms, and the particular firearm. One benefit with a lot of those guns I mentioned before, that a lot of them have a removable interchangeable back straps which may alleviate that problem for you. But when you check out your firearm, get a good grip, go over it in your mind, okay, this is a perfect grip, close your eyes and push the gun out, open your eyes and, if the sights are level, cool, it probably fits your hand, it'll probably index well. Feel, that's up to you. If it feels odd or if it's painful to grip it, some of the stippling and things that you'll see. Stippling's that design or those rough edges that they put on the grip so it doesn't slide out of your hand. Some of that's pretty aggressive. You know, everyone's gonna have their own preference. So you want to make sure that it feels comfortable. Now, the last one is cost. What's it cost? If all things are equal, go with the cheaper one because then you'll have more money to spend on ammo and you can practice more often, right? That makes more sense. I recommend a modern striker fired firearm without an external thumb safety. We don't have to concern ourselves with one more motor action to flip off an external thumb safety. They have safeties internally. Safeties are defeated as the trigger cycle is applied. And, in nine millimeter, the ammunition is, generally speaking, less expensive than other calibers and easier to get ahold of. Practice ammo is plentiful. So, ultimately, we want to practice, practice, practice. Now, let's think about this. In the same sized gun, I can get more ammunition in the gun. Is that a bad idea? More ammo is not a bad idea, right? And, because of the characteristics of nine millimeter, it's much more controllable under a volume of fire. We need to really be concerned about recoil management in defensive application. Because we want to send as much lead down range onto that attacker as fast as we can to make them stop beating, and raping, and hurting our family. If you look ballistically, we just did a ballistic test, I did a class with Dave Spaulding last week and we had some ballistic gelatin, we looked at it, the difference between the 45 and the nine millimeter was so negligible that, unless you were able to pull the projectile out of the gel, you wouldn't have really been able to tell the difference. Now, with the ammunition, again, nine millimeter, but I recommend a bonded jacketed hollow point. It's heavy for the caliber. Bonded jacketed technology is kind of a newer thing. And, basically, as the bullet hits and it expands, the jacket stays attached to the core. Therefore, it expands very evenly and it transfers more energy to the bad guy. And, therefore, it's going to, hopefully, stop them from raping, beating, harming you or your family much faster as opposed to that energy being sent somewhere else or the projectile over-penetrating and going out of the body and maybe hitting the kid on the bicycle down the street. I recommend when you choose your ammunition, then run it through your gun. Make sure you can get 50 to a hundred rounds through the gun without any malfunctions. 'Cause I have seen some cases where certain ammunition was great ammo, but it just his gun or her gun wouldn't eat it. And what good is that? So, we need to make sure we test these things. And it's a little expensive to blow a box of defensive ammo 'cause it's usually a lot more expensive, but you should know, and you should be confident that it's gonna work for you. Inside the home, in some cases, I would recommend frangible ammo. I can tell you, in Western Pennsylvania, we got little coal towns everywhere, And there's this one town called Renton and the Renton Mine used to be there. And every house is the same size, same house, clapboard, balloon construction, and they're two inches apart from each other. And they're, basically, not well constructed. So, even if I shot a 22 in one house, the chance of it going through that wall, into the next wall, into the next house, it's possible. So, the frangible ammunition, it lessens your likelihood for over-penetration and it does transfer a great deal of energy. Now, the holster. The holster must hold the firearm securely and not change position on the body. It has to stay in the same place, hold it securely. And I'll add one thing to that. It must cover the trigger guard. Absolutely must cover the trigger guard. If your holster doesn't cover the trigger guard, I recommend against using it. And I highly recommend against the Frito Bandido, stick it down the front of your pants kind of thing, without a holster. Appendix carry or center line's fine just you want to have a purpose built holster for that. So, make sure it holds the firearm securely and it doesn't change, and it doesn't fall out. So when you get your holster and you put it on, take the gun, unload it, clear of ammunition, have a friend check that it's unloaded, put the ammunition in a whole other room, put it in there and roll around on the floor with your kids, or get up and down out of a chair, or get in and out of your vehicle to make sure that the gun's gonna stay there and not fall out. Especially during your day to day activities. Storage and staging. If your gun isn't on your body, then it's gotta be somewhere, right? Storage is more of a concept for I'm putting the gun away for a period of time. And storage, we're most likely gonna store the gun unloaded and just pack it up. Like maybe your hunting rifle at the end of deer season. If you're not gonna use that rifle again, you're gonna store it, you're gonna put it away. Staging would be a way that we position the firearm while it's still being used as a tool of self-defense. We need to store the firearm and stage the firearm so it's not accessible to unauthorized individuals. We all think of the children. That's the first thing we think of. But we also need to be concerned about that bad guy that breaks in your house while you're at work. We don't want him getting our guns either. And, maybe at Christmas time, you don't want your goofy brother-in-law Chet getting his hands on it either. Anyone here named Chet? Man, that's good, I haven't had a Chet yet this week. So, usually I upset guys named Chet. I'm thinking of that movie "Weird Science" if you guys remember that, that's where I come up with Chet. How we stage a firearm might depend strictly on your lifestyle choice. I'll give you an example. When I lived in California, I could not carry, I couldn't get a carry permit, but I could have my firearm at home to defend myself while I was there. So, at night before I go to bed, I'd load my pistol up and I'd set it on the nightstand. And I'd go to sleep and sleep like a baby. And I knew that the firearm was there. It was being used as a tool of self-defense in that context. In the morning when I woke up, I'd take the firearm I'd safely unload it, I'd put it back in the box and I'd lock it up because I couldn't carry it with me. Move ahead a few years when I have a baby, that ain't gonna work anymore, that's definitely not a good way to do it. So I went and I bought myself a secure box that I could access rather quickly, that could keep it away from him so he couldn't get his hands on it, but I could get into it reasonably fast and reasonably efficiently. Now let me end this with storage and staging. You have to be compliant with the law above all. I never, ever condone breaking the law. Laws suck sometimes but we have to abide by them. And if we don't like them, write letters to your Congressman, write several letters and have your buddies send letters. Extra magazines. You need to carry extra magazines. Is it a good idea to have extra ammo? Sure, sure. Now, if you look at the empirical evidence, based upon what is most likely to happen, the chances of you needing to reload during a dynamic critical incident is actually pretty low. But, should we be prepared for it? Absolutely. Now, the one thing about having an extra magazine it also helps us clear malfunctions if we have one. 99.9% of the malfunctions we may incur can be fixed with some type of action. Worst case scenario is unload the gun, then reload the gun. So, having that extra magazine's pretty good idea. Flashlights. Who carries a flashlight every day? Having a flashlight is a wonderful way to collect information when we're trying to be situationally aware. If I see a dark area, I either avoid the dark area, or I do a little recon and I do a bit of investigation before I insert myself into the dark area. So, having a flashlight is a wonderful thing. Having a knife is a wonderful thing. Now getting the training to be able to use the knife defensively is even a better thing. Because what if you happen to be in a place where you can't have your firearm? There are places where we can't have our firearm. How many you guys traveled here and didn't bring your firearm 'cause you drove through Illinois? All right, well there. So, what are you gonna do? You just gonna be vulnerable or maybe put some pepper spray in your pocket or have that knife or whatever else that secondary tool of self-defense. Now, here's something to consider that most people don't. Having that flashlight and that knife, or one of the other, this identifies me to the bad guy as a potential hard target. And predators, they go after the soft target. They go after the gazelle that's kind of loafing around and behind the pack. They want the easy, quick kill. They want the easy, quick victim. And if someone sees you with a knife or a flashlight, they look at you and say, hmm, that guy's probably gonna carry a gun too. You know what, I'll just leave him alone. Cause the bad guys want an easy victim. So I think there might be some validity to that. This may identify you also as a potential hard target. Having a medical kit is an excellent idea. Now, a medical kit requires some training but I can tell you a tourniquet and an Israeli bandage, you can be trained on those pretty quick and know how to use one reasonably efficiently. So, an Israeli bandage, you can put in your pocket. They're pretty compact, they don't take up much space. If you want to carry a whole kit, I'll share this with you. I've been carrying this now for nine months. This is a ankle rig made by a Safer Faster Defense. I don't sell these, I don't make any money off them, but I do have a link to their site on my store page on my website. I don't make any money off it, but you click on it it'll send you over to his site. And, basically, you gotta put the stuff in it, but it's a cuff, and I have in Israeli bandage, a clothes ripper, chest seals, a decompression needle, and tourniquet in here. And I carry that with me all the time. Now, I first heard about one of these from an instructor that I was working with. I was taking his class and he showed this to us. I'm like, wow, that's pretty neat. You know, we're all kind of gear nuts, and like, oh, where'd you get that, what's that made of, who makes it, you know, that kind of thing. And I said to him, well, you know, aside from your knife and your flashlight. 'cause we use those all the time, right? Aside from that, what in your everyday carry, concealed carry infrastructure, what have you used? And he says, well, he was a police officer, he says, as a civilian, I've never used my firearm, actually never had to. He says, but I've used that med kit, I think he said three times, he used it three times. And once was a woman wearing heels, slipped on ice and hit her head on the curb. Another time, a kid on a skateboard zoomed pass and slammed into a dumpster. And I forget what the other one was but, basically, there was bleeding and he came over and he administered aid to him. And what a wonderful thing to have. We not only want to be our family's first responder, but maybe it's a good idea to help out a fellow citizen if necessary. And God forbid you use a firearm to defend yourself, you need to patch yourself up. Well, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have that with you too. I can say I've been wearing that for about nine months every day. And now, granted, I wear boots all the time. So that puts it a little higher on my ankle and I'm sure that might be a comfort factor. But I oftentimes forget I have it until I cross my legs and I feel it hitting against my knee or something like that. So consider something like that or even just putting a bandage in your pocket or your purse or just like in the door of your car. It's not a bad idea to have those. And I can tell you the Israeli bandage, or any type of compression bandage, very easy to learn how to use those pretty quick. And it's better to have something than nothing. Now, defensive firearm skills. The body does certain things under stress. People that are trained, people that are untrained. If you study dashboard cameras and surveillance videos, people react very similarly. And we want to consider that in our training and embrace it. If that's how the God or the being above, whatever you believe in, makes you work under stress, when then let's learn how to work best in that context. You want to have learned intuitive responses to learned stimuli. So, I'll give me an example on that. We need to learn what slide lock feels like in our gun. That's one example. If I learn it, I can recognize it without having to cognitively process it. I can go into a reload. I'm more efficient, I'm faster. I can keep my eyes on the target or be looking for a point of advantage to escape to if I go to slide lock. So, you want to practice, understand the physiological changes that the body undergoes during stress. I could spend days talking about that but, what I recommend for you is "Counter Ambush", a book by Rob Pincus, and "On Combat" by Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman Both excellent books that get into that. Also Grossman's book really gets into the psychology of it as well of combat and being attacked and protecting people. But those books really get into it. Rob's book gets in deep on what happens physiologically under stress and how we can specifically incorporate those into our training so that we can be better equipped to deal with things when we have tunnel vision, when we have auditory exclusion. And so, it's important that we're aware of that. Mental conditioning. Remember good old Don Rumsfeld. What we need to do is try to imagine every bad thing that's gonna happen in our own sphere of influence and try to come up with a plan. Even a not so well thought out plan is gonna be better than no plan whatsoever. So, war game it. Sit in your house, what do I do if someone kicks in my door? Well, gee, I guess I'd go over here and grab my gun and go. Oh, wait a minute, my bedroom's over there, maybe I should move my gun to here, and kind of walk through those things. And having a plan is better than no plan whatsoever. Because, without a plan, we could potentially freeze. And I can give you a real quick example of this. When we first moved back to Pennsylvania my mom had some really bad heart issues and we were staying at her home. She had an attack and I came downstairs and I just watched her, I totally froze. I did not know what to do. I couldn't have told you what my name was. My wife came in, took command control of the situation. And, because of her, it was a much better day than it would have been if I were there by myself. And, after reflecting upon that, I never once considered in my life being in that situation, never. My mom, when I was a child, was the Cameron County, Pennsylvania arm wrestling champion at the County Fair. She used to split wood with an ax and throw drywall. She was always very fit. But move ahead 35 years, she's a frail old lady now. And I'd never considered that. So, I think it's important that we try as best we can. Imagine any scenario, imagine anything that could happen in our lives, in our environments, and say, okay, well gee, what would I do? And that's gonna help us avoid that freeze. So, visualize. When you're in your house, visualize someone attacking you. When you're working on the range with a paper target that's never gonna shoot you back, try to visualize and imagine that's a bad guy trying to harm you and your family. That theater of the mind stuff is very important and it's quite effective if you give it it's due. Train to win, fight through fear, and fight through wounds. Now, I'm not saying that you will survive a gunshot wound from a pistol. I am not saying this. But, statistically speaking, pistol wounds are survivable. Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman quotes a story from a law enforcement officer. And she was shot up really bad. And she said, the one thing that kept her going was the fact that she knew that pistol wounds were survivable, and all she could hear was her instructor in her head going keep fighting, keep fighting, keep fighting. So, that will to live is very powerful. So, keep that in the back of your head. If I press trigger, my life changes. So, if I can avoid having to press trigger, I'm gonna do that. Avoid pressing trigger whenever possible. But, if I am left with no other choice, and it means that someone's gonna harm my son, or harm my son's daddy, and I can't get away from it, I'm gonna fight hard and I'm gonna win. And that's just all there is to it. So, maintenance. Train as if your life depends on it, cause it does. If you're in that situation, it certainly does. Better yet, train as if your family's life depends on it. And you want to train every day. Maintain your skills, develop new skills. Use that plausibility principle when you're figuring out what do I want to train, what do I want to do, what do I want to dedicate my range time for today? Take classes, attend seminars, just like you guys are doing. Take good practical defensive courses. Find defensive built courses to take. Learn some non-gun skills. Meaning hand-to-hand, using a knife, whatever. Have some alternate so that if you are in a situation where you don't have your gun or it was knocked away, or you're not allowed to carry it, what are you gonna do? Get some of that training. Be healthier to be awesome. Over the last year, I've lost 50 pounds, well, 40 some. And I tell you what, I feel better, I'm faster, I can hit harder, and I can run longer, and I keep my breath, just by changing my diet. I did nothing crazy. I just changed my diet and it worked. So, if you think you're overweight, or you feel sluggish, do something about it. Because we want to be in the best shape that we can be to be able to handle this situation if, God forbid, we find ourselves in it. Again, this is a lifestyle choice to be your family's first responder. Keep track of your training, create a resume of training. When you go home this weekend or tonight, or whatever, write down all the seminars you attended and the people that instructed them, put them in a binder. When you take a class, put a copy or put the certificate in the binder. When we collect things, we like to get more of them, right? So, you start keeping track of that stuff, it'll motivate you to take more training and do more classes. Also, another benefit to that is, in the legal side of things, God forbid you have to defend yourself in court, better yet, your lawyer's gonna defend you in court, I've been told by many legal experts, as a citizen, it goes a long way to be able to produce that binder. Look, on my own time and my own dime, I didn't have to do this, this was voluntary, I sought out proper training so that I could be safe and effective with the firearm. That goes a long way to help you in your defense. So, having that binder might be good from that aspect. Set realistic goals, maximize your resources. If you can only shoot once a month or 50 rounds at a time, fine, maximize that time, maximize those resources. And I highly recommend Rob's book, "Counter Ambush", it's a great way that talks about training and using your resources to their fullest. The National Rifle Association has NRA certified instructors across the nation. There are fantastic courses, probably in your backyard. Seek out an instructor and take classes. The NRA base is a pistol shooting course, is a foundational course, an excellent course to dust off the rust or get you comfortable enough with your firearm to be able to continue and take defensive training. The NRA has the personal protection inside the home series, personal protection outside the home series, and the defensive module. All of these are available to you guys right now. So, seek out that training. On nrainstructors.org, you click on what class you're looking for, type in your zip code, and say 50 miles, a hundred miles, whatever the radius is, and it'll find those classes for you. And, in the grand scheme of training, they're probably very affordable. PDN Academy, Personal Defense Network, has some online classes, some fantastic courses. Some of them are as cheap as $20. Rob has one on there that talks about the physiological changes under stress that's fantastic and it gets into neurology and how the brain works under stress. A really great class, check that out. Grossman Academy. He has two books that are widely read. One's called "On Killing", which is, I would say, probably a little more geared towards law enforcement and military. But his other book, "On Combat" has some very applicable information for those of you that want to take on the responsibility of being your own family's first responder. If you don't want to read the book, take his online class. You'll get a lot of the same information. Actually, it's updated, so you may get some additional information that you may not get in the book as well. Fantastic course, I think it's $80 he charges for it. Well worth the money, and you get a certificate, put it in your binder. Next Level Training. Mike Hughes, who owns Next Level Training is an amazing instructor, coach, and shooter on his own right. But he developed a cert pistol, which is a training pistol. They've got a booth downstairs. But, aside from his product, Mike has hours of instructional videos for free on his website. Fantastic instructional videos. Check out my article, "Well-Balanced Training Diet" on Personal Defense Network. So, get your license to carry. Get it now. Even if you don't carry, get it now. Get it while you can, and then, maybe by the time you're comfortable, you'll have the card and you can put the gun on and walk outside. Receive defensive training, get that quality holster, get an appropriate storage device. Get your legal defense team in order now because you don't want to be leafing through the yellow pages in a jail cell. Become an ambassador of the second amendment. We've talked about that. And, remember, gun safes don't keep your gun safe from legislators. You gotta write your Congressmen. You gotta write your Senators. These laws that we don't like, let's tell them about it. If enough of us voice our opinions, things will change. And we've seen that starting to happen now. Now's the time to do that and hit that hard. My website is triggerpressersunion.com. And my email is Klint, K-L-I-N-T, Clint with a K at triggerpressoersunion.com. If you have any questions or concerns or you'd like to invite me out to do some training at your club or whatever, please contact me. Thank you very much.