Second Amendment:
Train Because You Should
Is Government-mandated Training a Bad Thing?
Some firearms trainers make me sick. I’m not talking about the good ones who train countless citizens or even ones who are awful, and we all know there are some out there. Like the ones who brag they’ve been certified for 40 years, and never got a stitch of training since then. You know the type.
Just like doctors, the firearms community has some people who need a whack upside the head. We have doctors out there who prescribe pills because the drug companies tell them to, not because the meds are needed. We have people going to doctors because Big Pharma is advertising, asking them to prescribe drugs that can do all sorts of harm because there might be some marginal benefit. That is just bass ackwards. But the doctors comply, to the tune of billions of dollars. There’s a word for that. It’s perverse.
A Sad Business Model
We see some of the same in firearms training. Some trainers are training solely because the government forces people to take prescribed classes, to get carry permission slips. It’s not that the classes are good or bad or might teach some of what needs to be known. It’s because people’s rights are denied by the same government that then requires the class, and the wallet cards. And these trainers, loyal to a fault, line up at the government feed trough to chow down on the required meals. A high school diploma ought to require one credit in marksmanship. Now, there’s a righteous requirement.
Are you the type of sycophant ward of the nanny state, incapable of running a business unless the state requires people to take your program under penalty of arrest? You’re running an “education program” that teaches what your master says to teach instead of real firearms training. Don’t get me wrong. The government CCW leash got a lot of people armed and in police criminal databases for safekeeping.
Are you an American, free-thinking, independent business leader driven by profit motive, self-interest, personal initiative and free-market capitalism? You’ve trained earnestly for long, hard hours until you excel at your craft — and you want the public educated.
Could you sell the goods you have and the talent you have, to people who can freely buy your goods? Can you step out from under the state or federal feed bag, and instead of depending on government handouts and coercive support, convince people to get your training because it’s good for them, will help them survive, will prepare them for emergencies, will make you look good and honored, make them solid citizens? This is good. Americans commend this.
Earn It
If you want to cry about inept inability to independently run classes, go tell your mama. If you want to step up to the plate and make an adult of yourself, show your stuff, do good, and be what Americans ought to be, then go out there and sell to the half of the public that has guns instead of the few percent willing to bow and scrape for voluntary taxation, expiration dates and official government-approved “carry cards.” We knew, when discreet carry started, that some gun bubbas would become the “state training industry,” dependent on government handouts, mandates and threats, coercive compulsory classes, and could never do the work on their own. Your countrymen are ashamed of you. Leave the practice, be productive or apply for a salary somewhere, be a wage slave. The savvy, market-oriented, independently motivated, self-reliant business people will rake in the money you deem too difficult to independently earn. Earn. Now, there’s a word you should ponder.
I’ve been saying training opportunities will blossom once Americans’ Second Amendment rights are restored, and the market becomes 50% of the public, the armed half, instead of the small percent the CCW government-enabled market focuses upon.
Constitutional Carry, real freedom, can’t get support from people who need the government leash. They effectively bleed out the support we need for true freedom to carry, for easy opt-in licensed permission. Real constitutional 2A only gets support from folks who understand what 2A is really about. The front end of the gun is where freedom comes from, not bowing to the dictates of the boss.
When my state, Arizona, was on the verge of obtaining this grand prize, no-papers carry and throwing off shackles of “civilized” oppression, we weren’t even sure what to call it. At the time, in 1994, people called it Vermont Carry, because Vermont never had bans, the only such state. Alaska got there next, but Alaska Carry made even less sense than Vermont Carry. So we invented the term Constitutional Carry the night before the law took effect, and the rest is history. Be part of history and teach Americans to carry and shoot safely because it’s right, not because it’s required.
Award-winning author Alan Korwin has written 14 books, 10 of them on gun law, and has advocated for gun rights for nearly three decades. His next book is Why Science May Be Wrong. See his work or reach him at GunLaws.com.
