It should be noted that while training is a good thing, and to be encouraged by the gun carrying public, it is not as essential as you might think.
That is, he cited that the number of permitted concealed carry owners with training who commit crimes is extremely low. But there is no appreciable difference between them and those members of the public *without* training, who also don’t commit crimes, in those states with constitutional carry.
It should also be noted that there is no “crowded theater effect”, in that legal gun carriers everywhere are *very* judicious in firing their weapon. They seek out a clear field of fire, *and* they pay attention to both the foreground and the background of their target.
Finally, gun liberty has restored something that should now be obvious: that “the citizenry *are* the police”.
The uniformed police are just a convenience. There are always too few of them to maintain law and order in society. But the armed citizenry can be *everywhere*, and they are willing to maintain order and *prevent* crime; something the police can only rarely do.
Police are the day and night watch, the gatherers of evidence, the dogged pursuers of those wanted by the courts, and the keepers of order in crowd events and traffic. And with an armed society, this is enough.
“It should be noted that while training is a good thing, and to be encouraged by the gun carrying public, it is not as essential as you might think.”
Quite. As someone with hundreds of hours of high level training:
Armed self defense is pretty simple. Everyone knows pretty much “point gun, pull trigger, target dies”. Basic operation is taught in minutes. Advocate a good holster, teach the Four Rules, and emphasize “keep your booger hook off the bang switch until you’re ready to end someone”, and the rest of training is just getting it all ingrained & removing the innate stupid.
Certainly training is good. Too often it’s used as an excuse to disarm.