My daughter Nicole is 24 and carries a gun which she is licensed to have. She has been carrying one since she was 21 in California. She works on her shooting skills several times a month with a couple of police officer friends of ours. She has become an amazing marksman and I am very proud of her.
I carried a Derringer for years and years when I lived in NY. Never used it, but I sure felt safer knowing I had it on me. Ironically, my Mom took it from me when I was going thru my divorce! yeah, that was probably a good idea!
By the way, the dog collars that help keep dogs from barking are very similar to Tasers. I have a friend who uses them on his dogs. Not something I would buy for mine though. I still think its cruel.
This is good to practice, but the feeling safe part concerns me. Like I have said in my prior post, you honestly are more likely to get hurt if you pull a gun on someone then were you to leave them be. It may sound silly, but honestly, it is true. Like I have said, a criminal has already made up their minds on what they are going to do. A gun might frighten a mugger, but it may do nothing to a rapist. You can think that you will have the ability to defend yourself, but I would bet that I could put you down quicker then you could get your sidearm out and leveled. Marksman training is useful for concentration and muscle memory, but it does nothing for reaction or "snap" shooting, which is what would be necessary to defend yourself. Then there is the hesitation I have mentioned. This happens to 99% of normal people, and is all a violent criminal needs to get the upper hand.
You can say that you would not hesitate, but I am telling you that you WILL. Why do I say this? Take me for example.
I served in the US Marine Corps. I started out in infantry (the frontline troops). We were trained to remove emotion as much as possible from combat operations. Hesitation is what gets you killed or so we were told. After awhile I changed units and served with the 2nd FAST (Fleet-Antiterrorism Security Team) Company. I have had extensive training in close quarters combat, and while with FAST I became a rather decent reflex shooter (this is where you can process a target and fire your weapon at nearly the same time....kind of hard to explain).
Anyways, I have been deployed on combat operations, and with all the training I have had there is still hesitation. Everytime a soldier or Marine shoulders their rifle they will hesitate for a split second (less then a civilian typically would, but it is still hesitation), and think, can I really take this person's life? Trust me, that thought WILL go through your head if you ever pull out your pistol. It is human nature, and it is not something that MOST humans can easily due. We are taught from childhood (most of us at least) to respect life, and to charish it. Just look at how much we respect animals. We see on the news these people that were killed, and we are always reminded that they had a family. This inborn and socially taught way of thinking is extremely difficult to overcome, and I really doubt that it can be overcome without some sort of outside force involved.
The person that mentioned self-defense has the best idea. The thing about self-defense training is alot of it becomes reflex, which is really the best thing you can have. It takes less time for the body to process a reflex then it does for a concious action. Just the way your neuron pathways form. I still have a great deal of my combat training reflexes in self-defense, and honestly, they could get me into trouble. For example, I had a combative patient the other weekend take a swing at me (they were intoxicated and on Meth). My body automatically responded to the swing by blocking it. Now, that would have been fine, but my reflexes continued, and I ended up putting the patient into what is called a wrist lock. Now, had I kept going I could have easily broken his wrist, but my concious thoughts had finally overtaken my reflexes here. So, by the time I had the swing blocked and the guy in a wrist lock, my first concious thoughts were processed. Think of the difference in speed of how the nerve impulses were propegated.
Hence, this is why self-defense classes are the BEST option. They also do not give a would be attacker another means of attack (like a gun, knife, pepper spray, taser, etc could). Again, the self-defense classes also typically teach environmental awareness as the first way to defend yourself.
Now, to the mods, I am TRULY sorry I have taken this topic way off the original concept of the anger towards the taser company for testing on animals.
