Concealed carry isn’t just about lugging a gun around with you. In fact, at its most basic level, it isn’t about carrying a gun at all. Carrying a gun is just something we do so that we’re able to do the thing that’s actually important to us.

Protecting yourself is the actual root of concealed carry. It’s the whole reason we do this thing. People who are not interested in protecting themselves from physical threats will not often carry a concealed firearm on an ordinary day. At its core, concealed carry is all about self defense.

This means that defensive handgun instructors who never talk to their students about how crimes happen, or about criminals and their victims, or about the legal limits of self-defense are really missing the boat. It would be like hiring a basketball coach who talked a lot about buying a basketball and taught her players how to throw free throws, but who never said a word about the rules of the game. A good basketball coach would help her players learn many skills they might need in order to play the game.

There’s a lot more to playing basketball than just having a basketball and knowing  how to land a free throw, and there’s a lot more to protecting yourself from violent crime than just having a gun and knowing how to hit a paper target.

Learning to shoot can be a hoot! But it’s not the entire game.