Having had several days to digest the class and what was learned, I keep coming back to a good question in comments: Why exactly would an ordinary slob like myself spend a significant amount of time, money, ammo, sweat and pain to learn a fighting discipline that he is highly unlikely to use? I always have my pistol on me, so logically I should be concentrating on that and my meager ground fighting skills. I’m also more likely to grab a shotgun than my AR if trouble comes knocking at home. I don’t foresee myself ever being employed in a position to require rifle skills. And if a person finds himself in a life threatening situation and has the time to equip himself with a carbine and has the elbow room to fully use it, maybe retreat would be the better option.
Still, I think my time and money was spent wisely. If the conditions at hand favor the use of a rifle, then nothing else will do. No other arm legally available to the American citizen offers the power, capacity, range and sheer kick-assability that the military style autoloading carbine does. Sam Colt may have made individual men equal to other individual men, but Gene Stoner, John Garand, Mike Kalashnikov and Dieudonne Saive made a man equal to a whole gang of men.
The portability of pistols and short range shock power of shotguns makes them most useful for defense. The large capacity and power of the rifle make it also suited for defense, but its reach makes it mandatory for offense. Either a pistol or rifle will fend off evil when it comes to visit you, but if you need to go to evil and flush it out to defeat it, then you need a rifle. American law only recognizes reactive self defense as a justification for the use of lethal force, going and seeking out a fight is not legally protected in any way.
But I think it’s a capability that the American citizen should have.
Citizenship goes beyond voting and jury duty and paying taxes. For all of their cornball rhetoric, one thing the Appleseed people get right is recognizing the Western free citizen militia tradition that runs from ancient Greek hoplites to Frankish shock infantry to Colonial Minutemen. While I in no way want to suggest that I am at all equal in contribution to the citizens who wear a uniform to go into harm’s way, I do think of this class and the skills it has given me as my own small commitment to the idea of the well regulated but poorly organized militia.
My pistols and shotguns are for the defense of family and home. My rifle is for my country.
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I agree with you that anyone interested in firearms for self defense should know how to use a rifle defensively. I’ll go further and say anyone seriously interested in the subject should have a good grounding in the fundamentals of handgun, rifle, and shotgun.
After that, none of us have unlimited time or money so we should prioritize how we want to spend our limited resources on serious training. For me, my next class is likely to be a fightin shotgun class, since that’s my weakest area, but then it will be back to mainly handgun classes for quite awhile. I just figure it makes the most sense to spend the most time, effort, and money on the gun I’m most likely to have on hand when needed.
Training is never wasted though. Time learning anything is always time well spent.
I see my carbine as a defensive tool that will keep miscreants at a good distance, and it can keep them at a much gooder distance than a pistol can. It can also transition to the defense of my country, but since I’m in the BayAryan California that’s unlikely to be required – the Powers that Be will rollover and pay Danegeld first.
Funny how a lot of people would jump all over you for saying how you would defend your country, after all your just a citizen and that is military business. People forget about Japan and how they didn’t invade the states for a reason. They saw American citizens, and realized that holy cow they can shoot better than out soldiers.
Well said.
People forget that long gun beats handgun in a defensive situation like protecting your abode from goblins, or roving gangs of goblins that feel invincible after a natural disaster.
In the event of nastiness, the knowledge that I can be effective at 200 yards with a light high capacity carbine, even if only to send a well aimed warning shot, is serious piece of mind. Handguns will only get you so far.
Rifles rule! Yeah, I carry a handgun or two daily, and if shit goes south in the night my house shotgun with light would get deployed, but an AR and an AK and a FAL and a Garand are always at hand to control the immediate area.
1. Guns are neat.
2. Tae Kwon Do is even less likely to be useful, but people spend a lot of time on that, too. At least shooting a bad guy with a carbine would work in the unlikely event that you did need it.
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