Ready on the Right?

Sometimes you just have to go out with the girls. You know, that group of special women, the ones you've known a long time, the ones you've gone to for support, the ones whose shoulders you've cried on, the ones you've laughed with until the incontinence commercials sadly become a reality,  yeah those ones.

Someone sets a date and a place and a time, and you meet for say...dinner. Or maybe a movie. A shopping trip to The Covered Bridge Festival where you lodge in the finest of single wide trailers only Indiana can boast. Or perhaps a trip overseas together, twice I tell you, where you  gather around a wood table in front of a centuries old fireplace and drink whiskey in a warm, dark, haven of a place called  O'Loughlins in the village Ballyvaughan. Or maybe you just get together...

To fire off semi-automatic handguns, a revolver, a shotgun and an AR-15 rifle while getting yelled at through headphones by a man wanting to get your adrenaline way up while keeping your aim way steady.

Yeah. sometimes you just got to get together with the girls and do that.

It's extremely helpful if there is a group of talented marksmen who wear police badges during the day and teach woman how to stop intruders with intent of imminent harm, at night. Last evening  I completed a Home Self Defense Class sponsored by the Gibson City Police Force. (Illinois) Men who charge a pittance of a fee to teach woman how to protect themselves and those they love if pressured to do so.

Men who understand that true safety in the crazy world has nothing to do with limiting guns to law abiding Americans but everything to do with teaching the skills needed to make use of our second amendment Constitutional rights. 

Men who work long hours on their regular shifts but volunteer to come in extra to teach woman not to be afraid but to be in charge, as much as one can be, in desperate situations. Men who are tired of seeing woman terrorized, threatened, injured and too often killed because they didn't have the skills needed to say "get out! get away! I have a gun!"

The class was not easy. Several woman had never really handled a gun or shot before, some of us had a little experience but like me had been lazy about practicing. My father took me out regularly when I was 12 and he was a cop. Then 40 years go by before eldest son bit the bullet (sorry) and showed me the ropes again. But even though we had different levels of experience and confidence we were committed to knowing more about guns by the time class was over.

When you count the time these officers spent before and after class answering questions, allowing us to shot whatever we wanted as long as we wanted, we had 8 full hours of training.

Not exactly  boot camp but still those 8 hours were intense. Classroom time gave way to range time. Range time gave way to "Oh Dear God you want me to do WHAT ?! time. Each of us were assigned our own instructor to watch every single move we made,  teaching us the basics of how our guns worked, over and over and OVER.  Placement of hands, of feet, of trigger fingers, find your sight. How to slam magazines in. (No sissy stuff tolerated !)

And if they saw us "cheating" i.e not doing it the way they taught us, they made us do it again and again. Then came the shooting. First one round. Then one more. Another one. Then two rounds at a time. Then three. And after each round always back to the basics. Placement of hands, of feet, of trigger fingers, find your sight and for the millionth time "SLAM IT!"

Then the big finale where our skills and our nerves were totally tested. I won't tell you anymore about how they accomplished THAT last feat, hate to ruin it for those of you planning to take the class in the near future,.but I will tell you one of my nursing buddies (yes MS. To-Let of you I speak) went totally Sigourney Weaver in Alien at that point.

You know you've been thinking taking a class like this.  Just do it!

Gibson City Police Department 217-784-8666