Protect your rights to own guns — get training

There’s a lot of talk about new gun laws right now. It’s important for gun owners to let their legislators and Congressional delegates know gun rights are important to us, but it’s also important to keep from giving the anti-gun movement any ammunition.

All the talk in the news lately about new gun control laws has me worried. As gun owners, we need to let our senators and representatives, both in the state house and in Washington, D.C., know that we are serious about our rights. But that’s not enough. It’s also important to make sure that we’re safe, responsible gun owners.

In my opinion, everybody who owns a gun, and especially those who carry guns, should have training. Not just what you get from hunter’s safety, but training specific to the guns you have and use. I don’t want to see laws that make it mandatory to get training if you want to own a gun. If you own guns, you should take the initiative to get the training, without having a law that requires it.

If a higher percentage of gun owners can show that they have taken classes or had other training, and that they did it on their own, we’ll have a good argument to keep laws requiring training off the books.

Also, the anti-gun crowd is always quick to bring up accidents involving firearms. If all of us get more training with our guns, we should reduce the likelihood of accidents, and that should keep the antis from getting more ammunition, so to speak, to use against us.

There are tons of places you can get that training. Most community colleges offer classes ranging from safety to concealed carry. A lot of communities also have groups that offer a ton of different types of training. Then there are the big outfits like Front Sight down in Nevada, where they teach more specific self-defense and firearm handling classes.

Just do a search on the Internet, and you’ll find more classes than you could possibly take. Pick a few and complete ‘em. You, and your rights, will be safer.