That loaded S&W in your holster is a powerful expression of your Constitutionally guaranteed liberty as an American citizen, your recognition of the solemn duty you have to your fellow man, and your willingness to accept the full weight of a life-and-death responsibility.

    When you are prepared to defend yourself, you are equally prepared to defend all of society and all of its guiding principles.  Your responsibilities are therefore many - moral, legal and tactical.  That is why most people, including lifelong gun owners, experienced hunters and competitive shooters, even in states that freely issue concealed carry permits, do not choose to carry a gun.

    Your moral responsibilities are to fire your gun into another human being only when the line of necessity has clearly been reached, and then to fire without hesitation and to full effect. 

Remember the words of Cicero.

    Your legal responsibilities are to justify your actions to those who would call you a criminal at the drop of a hat, and quite possibly to a jury of your peers, most of whom have neither the competence nor the courage to carry a gun in their own defense. 

Read the findings of the Citizens' Self-Defense Act of 2001.

    Your tactical responsibilities are to carry your gun with confidence, to be well trained in your ability to operate it effectively, and to have instilled in yourself an iron will to use deadly force to prevent or end violence committed against yourself or others. 

    Violence happens either at random, or directed toward the obviously vulnerable, or toward someone in particular for a reason.  You can rest assured it will not happen at the shooting range when you are all suited up in your speed rig with a plan of action worked out for the coming run-and-gun stage.  It will happen when you are home sleeping in your bed, shopping at the grocery store, walking out to get the mail, mowing the grass, at dinner, at church, at the theater.

    The most dangerous places in the world are those called 'gun-free safety zones' by their ignorant political creators and known by criminals and psychopaths as 'safe-to-kill zones.'  Even an adolescent school kid can figure out that an advertised killing field where no one is allowed to shoot back is the safest location in the world to carry out a mass shooting.  Don't even consider going to a place like that unarmed, whether it's your kid's school or a national park.  If you can't handle breaking the law, don't go.

    The assistant principal of a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, broke the law.  He kept a .45 in his car parked on the school grounds.  When a deranged student opened fire, Joel Myrick ran for his gun.  Two students were killed because Myrick had to retrieve his gun from his car instead of his holster.  But the .45 eventually prevailed, and Myrick stopped the massacre long before police arrived on the scene.  God only knows how many lives he saved.  But assistant principal Joel Myrick wasn't awarded any medals.  Of the several hundred newspaper and television stories about the incident, only a few even mentioned his name.  Almost none revealed the fact that he used a gun to stop the killings.

    When you bodyguard someone for a while, or when you just live a normal life with your eyes wide open, you realize how vulnerable we all are to becoming another tidbit-of-opportunity in the relentless food chain that sustains the life of this unpredictable world.  It's a realization not of paranoia but of reality.  That's the way it is, always has been, always will be.  You can ignore it out of faint-heartedness, deny it out of lunacy, submit to it out of a fatalistic contempt for your own life and the lives of others, or you can face it with courage and intelligence and prepare yourself to deal with capricious reality's predisposition toward danger.

    Most of those dangers can be met with nothing more than a strong I'm-not-a-victim mind set and body language.  Many others may shrivel with the demonstration of superior verbal skills.  Still others may require a fundamental knowledge of martial arts, a container of pepper spray, a makeshift club, the presence of a well-wielded knife or the sight of a firearm.  A few, perhaps one in a lifetime, will not be affected by any kind of less-than-lethal response and will not end until you churn your attacker's dreams and determination into a chunky red stew and spew it all over the street with a couple of big-bore hollow points.  The trouble is, you never know when or where that last one is coming.

    If you ever find yourself under attack by an armed criminal, you will be on the defensive and he will be on the offensive.  In other words, he will have a strong advantage going in.  And, though he will not have trained himself to shoot nearly as well as you have trained, he will be far more experienced in the art of killing.  The odds are, any criminal who is intent on killing you has probably killed men before, knows how to do it, knows how it feels and likes it.  You're not going to talk him out of it, scare him out of it, or wound him out of it.  You're going to have to kill him.

    Studies show that simply brandishing a weapon saves many lives, but I am personally against the idea of waving a gun around while your adversary thinks.  The way to overcome his offensive advantage is to strike without warning.  Once you make the decision to free your S&W from its holster the entire situation should be over and done with in a second or two.  The most important component in practicing your draw is firing the instant you have a sight picture on your target, and continuing to fire until your assailant no longer exists.

    More than a century of military and police research tells us that most people, including up to 85 percent of trained soldiers and cops, are psychologically unable to use deadly force in a life-or-death situation no matter how compelling the circumstances may be.  If you can't kill, there is no reason for you to carry a lethal weapon.

    Carrying a loaded gun with the ability and will to use it is not a casual fling meant to bring some excitement into your boring life.  It is an all-embracing lifestyle and must take precedence over your respect for law, your fear of social criticism, your love of humanity, your wardrobe and your drinking habits.

    You can never be unaware of the weight you carry on your hip or under your arm.  You can never forget your responsibilities.  You must wear your S&W with the same allegiance as your wedding ring.  If you're not married, your S&W is your wedding ring.  Wear it for life.  Don't even think about leaving home without it.  Be prepared to use it at a moment's notice.  Carry it all the time.  And shoot to kill.

    'Liberty or death,' the meaning of which is clear and absolute, is but a trivial phrase if you do not carry a gun.  For freedom-loving Americans, the five most important words in the English language are, and always have been - from my cold dead hands.

-Boatman-