31 Oct 12

These comments on customarily observed gun-handling, from a friend and student in Central America. He has been our student in TX, but currently lives with his family down South.

“Your comments on willful unpreparedness begs this response:

People here, in and out of government, have not the foggiest clue with regard to correct gun-handling. After taking your Course in TX, it drives me crazy!

Banks, even retail shops here, are routinely ‘guarded’ by little more than poorly-armed thugs. Ignorant goons with guns! They typically carry pistols in pockets, or in waistbands, without benefit of any kind of holster. I saw one today with his pistol dangling, by the trigger-guard, from his little-finger! This guy was in uniform and part of mall ‘security.’

Rifles are always slung in the horizontal, greeting one and all with the muzzle. Fingers are constantly wrapped around triggers. Manual safety levers are ‘on,’ ‘off,’ and every position in between. Round chambered? No one seems have a clue, nor care!

Every week, we experience hundreds of NDs here. In many cases, personal injury results. It is a daily occurrence. Any yet, no one, in nor out of government, seems to care in the least! Easily preventable gun-accidents just continue to happen with distressing frequency, with scant notice, much less concern, from anyone.

Your style of training in correct handling and carrying of guns, is desperately in need here.

Thanks for teaching me. Now, I just avoid ignoramuses with guns as best I can!”

Comment: I am much less frightened of “dangerous knowledge” than I am of “dangerous ignorance.” Needless accidents, injuries, and deaths described above are the direct result of institutionalized ignorance. And, it is always the willfully ignorant who are the most vain and resistant to true enlightenment.

Gun-accidents are the direct result of personal negligence and are therefore nearly all preventable. Mixing ignorance together with fear, the “method” employed by governments everywhere, has been a consistent and demonstrable failure, and will continue to be as long as it is exercised. Being simultaneously fearful and ignorant is no improvement over being just ignorant!

The acknowledgment of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. And, it is the willfully, arrogantly, cowardly ignorant who predictably retard all human progress!

/John