You want to know what motivates me, as an instructor? You want to know why I say you should get some good training, and repeat it on a regular basis? It’s not money and it’s not just self-serving twaddle.

Here it is. It’s that I don’t want you to become this guy. Or this woman. Or this one. Don’t want you to have to explain something like this to your child.

You should know how to live with the gun safely. You definitely don’t want to become one of the people here.  When you have a gun in your home, you should definitely know how to handle the gun at home as well as on the range.

But as far as using it on the range? I certainly don’t want you to become an internet laughingstock, like this guy did. (Who should get full credit for being brave enough to put his story up, as should this one.)

Nobody should ever laugh at your incompetence like they laugh at these women. Nor should anyone be laughing anyway, because of how dangerous that stuff is.

If you ever teach someone else to shoot, even casually, you should know how to avoid this. If you teach other people to shoot, you should know how to avoid this, too.

As far as self defense goes, I don’t want this horrible thing to happen to you. And if you ever do have to defend yourself, I don’t want this to happen.

There aren’t any guarantees in life, and sometimes bad stuff happens to good people. You know this — that’s why you’re here, after all! — but sometimes we forget how fast the bad stuff can happen. Sometimes we don’t realize how sudden violence can be. None of us are born with all the strategies we might need to avoid it, and that’s why we learn from other people.

So if a crime does happen to you, I want you to know what to do about it. You should have both the information and the skills it takes to survive and prevail during a violent crime.

Training isn’t for ninjas. It’s for real people, ordinary good people with boring ordinary lives who love their families and just want to stay safe.

So that’s my goal: to help you be as prepared as you can reasonably be to survive an unexpected encounter. You should be able to survive the tough stuff, and help your family survive it too.

That’s why I recommend good training, regularly repeated.