Here's one I hadn't heard before:
"If you do shoot someone, and you belong to a church, have you thought of what your church will say? What will your neighbors say?"
Hmmm, a lot of flippant or callous answers here. Too bad. I think a lot of people have forgotten the issues they wrestled with when they got their first self-defense gun. For some folks, maybe it was long enough ago, or happened at a young enough age, that it's understandable you'd forget.
Me, I've only been shooting seriously for about three years now. When I first got my gun, and especially when I took my first class and got my CCW permit, I found a lot of different things to think through and consider. The reaction of neighbors and relatives was certainly one of them.
I think a lot of people have this starry-eyed idea that they'll be a hero if they shoot and kill some scumbag, that the cops will congratulate 'em and slap 'em on the back, that the neighbors will thank 'em, that the church folks will organize dinners for a week, that the city council will give 'em some kind of medal.
It doesn't work that way.
If you're a LEO and involved in a righteous shoot, you
may be surrounded by LEO friends complimenting and reassuring you. This is a necessary and good thing, and is one of the primary reasons why police who are involved in deadly force encounters tend to recover their psychological equilibrium more quickly than ordinary citizens in similar situations.
For an ordinary person, defending your life might cost you half or more of your friends. If you live in a small community, odds are that the person you shot has friends and relatives whose paths you will continually be crossing. Even if they
know that your attacker was a scumbag, they are hardly likely to give you a medal for offing him.
Remember the shooting in the Texas church a few years back? Some lowlife came into a youth group meeting and started blazing away, killing a bunch of people. Reading about it, I couldn't help but wonder, "What if I'd been there, armed and ready to protect the innocent?" Assuming I'd gotten through the physical difficulty of surviving the encounter, killing the perp, and not injuring any innocents, do you suppose anyone would have cheered? I really wonder. The folks in my own church would be unlikely to cheer (why is Christianity so often merely
fatalism, I wonder?). Bet the folks in your church ain't so different.
Y'know all the threads here that begin with a line like, "I met a gun nut today!" or "You meet RKBA types in the darnedest places..." Such encouraging threads, aren't they? We're not alone, there's others out there like us -- and we are so damned rare that it's
news when we encounter each other at any other venue besides the range. That should give you some clue what you could expect to face after even the most righteous shoot. Who in your community would really understand?
Nope, thinking it through is a good and valid thing to do. These are weighty matters. When all is said and done, you should be able to say, "I will do what I must do in order to survive." But you'd do well to count the cost before you say it.
pax
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it. -- Woodrow Wilson
or thats how some religions look at me...
