For The Children!
by Frank Sharpe
Fortress Defense Consultants
Fortress just finished up a private Level I Rifle Course in the western part of the US. Weather was intense with cold and sideways sheets of rain, but our students came to work and much was accomplished!
Per our policy, we run a hot range. Everyone present, both students and instructors, are required to continuously carry loaded pistols and rifles – even on breaks! We refer to this as “learning to LIVE with your gun.” We carry them at all times during class because someday we may have to.
News Footage from this past weekend’s gang violence in Waco, TX, should give us all pause to consider such training immediately.
Officers on scene are equipped with AR15/M4 type rifles, and are carrying them all shift. There is no “rack” to place them in while on break, and there is no “safe place” to store them while using the restroom.
Our hope is that some brave department trainer has required them to do so before this event occurred, as safely working with slung rifle while completing an investigation or providing scene security is not something to be learned on the fly.
As noted from the picture above, it can be done with ease and little fanfare by trained rifleman (and women!).
Instructor extraordinaire Scott “Always a Student” Thornton, from Shoot Smart of Fort Worth, TX, takes an opportunity for story time during the dinner break.
His rifle is loaded, selector on ‘safe’, muzzle is pointed down, and the rifle is under his immediate control, as were the other 16 rifles in the room. After instruction on the morning of day 1, students ran drills, charged magazines, commiserated, socialized, ate meals, moved vehicles, arranged targets, used the restroom, and even read stories to our host’s children, all with loaded rifles. There were no problems.
Were sure such images provide aneurisms to the members of Bloomberg’s gang of thieves, and other such statist control freaks, be we know that this past weekend there weren’t a bunch of safer children anywhere!
LOL. That’s Texas. Darn near every kid in Texas has been read to by someone carrying a gun. It’s just how they do things.
Haven’t you seen that map of Texas where they put little red dots on Gun Owners’ homes? Yeah, it’s the map where all of Texas is bright red.
Sam
The class wasn’t in Texas – opposite direction, actually. 😉
Sam must have read Texas into it.
So, where was it? Wyoming? Rumor has it the folks in Wyoming are pretty firearm friendly as well – it’s just there aren’t as many people there as in Texas.
John
Hopefully it will be Illinois sometime in the future!