I had to renew my license to carry this year. Texas issues such licenses for five years, and it didn’t dawn on me immediately that I’ve been carrying for five years. I decided to share some of my thoughts on concealed carry now that I have been doing it for a while. License not required…
Category: guns
Shotgun or AR for Home Defense?
When it comes to facing the many choices available in terms of home defense, decisions can be difficult. What follows is only my opinion, agree or disagree, I am just putting this out there because I was asked. Handgun or Long Gun I would recommend the long gun in almost every home defense situation. With…
Top 5 Impractical Guns (That I Want Anyway)
This post was written mostly as a joke on a friend of mine who went from writing in SEO (search engine optimization) to actually speaking it. I say mostly a joke because I actually want these guns. Humble apologies for the annoying writing style. Today I am going to offer my Top Five Impractical Guns…
2A: How to Help
I typically focus only on problems under my direct influence. There are an eff ton of issues going on right now that would stress me beyond the ability of my BP meds to keep me among the living. So, I place my attention on things I can control, makes my life easier. However, I have…
Top 3 Concealed Carry 1st Gun Mistakes
Based in part from the questions I get from my readers, and in part from conversations with people who have told me of their own mistakes, as well as those I made on the way here, I have decided to put together my list of the top three 1st carry gun mistakes people make. As…
An Open Letter to the Anti Gun Folks
To those who are against gun ownership, In the self-defense industry, we speak of an action called othering. This is an action, deliberate or otherwise, where we separate our humanity from that of someone who is different from us. We classify ourselves as the ins, and those other people are the outs. And never the…
The Real Issues
I think it is cute how when you try to point and get your dog to look at something, they look at your finger. We tend to project our ideas and intent so well that we assume that the dog knows we mean Hey, look over there. When a dog does it, it is very cute…
Parkland Florida Thoughts
Once again an armed attack on a school has brought out the worst on both sides of the gun debate. Lives were lost, and people were still learning what had happened and who the victims were when the talking heads start prattling on about gun control. I have been asked, and here are my somewhat…
Vegas: Conspiracies, Doubts, and Lies
After a good number of questions coming in following my thoughts on the attack in Las Vegas with an up-front lean toward accepting one or another of the many conspiracy “theories”, I have opted to put some thoughts together on this, and hopefully in some small way get people focused back on the truth instead…
A Lie Agreed Upon
In the aftermath of a tragedy, such as the horrible attack in Las Vegas, we seem to all agree upon a lie. Our politicians and our media are clearly disconnected from the facts of our everyday lives. They do not see what is in plain sight of everyone willing to open their eyes and see….
Gun Control: Lullabies, Legends, and Lies
There was a high-profile shooting yesterday which brought out the typical news media routine of spin the back story on the shooter and deflect the incident into a conversation on gun control, or as they want to call it now gun safety or ending gun violence. The problem starts with a lack of understanding personal responsibility, the shooter…
“What’s Up With the Guns?”
During a recent conversation with one of my adult students, there was a question that came up. “I saw the change in the title of your Facebook page. ‘Martial arts, sharp things, and guns.’ What’s up with the guns?” Now, my student accepted my answer and moved on to another topic without missing a beat….
The 2nd Amendment
In the United States, the first ten amendments are what is known as The Bill of Rights. As an armchair student of U.S. history, I could write quite a bit about the Constitution and the founding of our Nation. It would be a little out of place here, and so I will stick to one issue here….
Range Time
I promised a follow-up to my First Impressions article about the Walther Creed. Here it is. Although the weekend was busy with a North Texas Regional Karate Championships to prepare and direct for KickStart Kids, I snuck away for a few minutes on Sunday morning to try out the new Creed. I had never loaded…
Walther Creed: First Impressions
My Wife is one in a million. A couple of weeks ago she told me, “You need to get around and get your LTC!” (License to Carry, in Texas, formerly Concealed Carry or Concealed Handgun License). I responded that my handgun wasn’t good for concealed carry. For those of you who are new here, my…
Marlin 1895 Rifle
A few people have asked, so here is the answer, yes, the lever-action rifle that is a part of the random banner images is mine. It is a Marlin 1895 lever-action rifle chambered in 45-70 Government. It is a gun type that has appealed to me for a long time. The lever-action guns are pure…
Why I Stopped Being Afraid of Guns
There is a lot of fear-mongering going on right now, and I want to go ahead and share with you just a bit on my change in stance regarding firearms. I was raised to be afraid of guns. There are a lot of reasons for this. People only know what they know and experience. My…
The Shootist I Ain’t
It has been a very busy few weeks, and I had not had a chance to go back to the range. Right now, I have a tournament to prepare, one of the largest karate tournaments I have done to date, and I have been working on that a lot, but my brain needed a break. So, I…
Making Progress
Today I made my third visit to the shooting range. I can see where I am starting to make some progress, and today was the first time that I went to the range and didn’t feel like I wasted money and ammunition. As a quick recap, here are the targets from my first two visits at the…
Wallace Smedley 