One of the realities of life is that not every problem is a shooting problem. Those of us who teach this stuff often forget to emphasize that to our students, or more precisely we downplay it a bit because it’s hard to sell a shooting class where you learn not to shoot!

(I’m not kidding about that last bit, either. Lots of folks go to shooting classes because they’re fun, and once they’ve paid their money they want to send rounds downrange. Telling them that they just paid hundreds of dollars for the privilege of not shooting very much really rankles some folks.)

The reality is that we rarely need to shoot; we need to think all the time, however. It’s amazing that people often don’t get taught how to think when they have a gun in their hands!

Here are two quick stories I’d like you to read about the need to train to process information and make decisions rather than reflexively shoot. First, Sheriff Jim Wilson learns that actually thinking about what you’re seeing might be a better thing than just letting lead fly; and from the Growing Up Guns blog, Claude Werner teaches someone about the value of learning to do things other than shooting.

Both articles are important and I hope you’ll take the time to read and digest them!

-=[ Grant Cunningham ]=-