@buzzard. Absolutely correct, panic (what LCol Grossman calls condition black) shuts down your ability to function effectively in a firefight, and even well trained troops are subject to it. Even condition yellow, which is where fear arousal is actually helping you, - shuts down fine motor skills, induces tunnel vision and does other things that your training needs to accommodate.
@bustr. I'm not deriding anyone. By all means, defend yourself as you see fit against whatever threats you feel are present in your life. I'm simply stating that, just as guns don't kill people, guns don't keep people safe. Only someone who is properly trained can do this, and as it turns out, the required level of training is far higher than anyone imagined until quite recently. There is only one writer with two books on the US Army's required reading list, and that is LCol Dave Grossman, whose research into the psychology and physiology of combat uncovered how bad a job armies (and everyone else) were actually doing at training soldiers (and police) for combat.
Think about that. You would think that with dozens of wars over generations of time, with millions of combat veterans, armies would have had this nailed. Nope. They didn't have a clue. Training has been radically changed in the last decade or so in response, and it has gotten MUCH more intense. As a soldier, I've lived through that change. I've been fortunate enough to meet LCol Grossman, and to be trained by and beside some of the people who've been central to this change. Before that, I thought I was good. After all I was a twenty-year infantry soldier, qualified to marksman level every year for that whole time, had a shelf full of trophies besides. Nope. I wasn't good, not even close, because range shoots, and blank fire exercises, and even live-fire exercises do not actually produce skills which work well in real close combat. The drills I learned were likely to fail under lethal stress, because they weren't built around the way people function when someone is trying to kill them. And >I< was likely to fail under lethal stress, because my training didn't expose me to it in a meaningful way. I'm still not good, not even close, because "good" requires full time dedication to the skillset, and I'm a reservist who fights with a radio. I do now know what "good" looks like.
It does not look like an armed schoolteacher.
This is my point.
@everyone else I'm not saying nobody should have firearms. Hunt, shoot clays, shoot targets, hang 'em on your wall, accessorize 'em, carry 'em everywhere you go if that's what you like doing. I am saying that the American violence problem is not guns, and the solution is not guns. The problem isn't guns because the problem is violence. The solution isn't guns because the average armed citizen isn't trained to function under lethal stress. If you want to understand this check killology.com, which is LCol Grossman's website. He can explain this way better than I.
