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Today I woke up to news of a devastating church shooting in Michigan, this article won’t be about that, there is not enough public information out for me to comment on that event beyond this:
In America we believe that we have unalienable rights granted to us buy our Creator, among these are the freedom of religion, the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press and the freedom to peaceably assemble. Those people who were killed inside their place of worship today did not deserve to die because of their religion. No man with the right to call himself an American believes that a man should be killed because of his ideas or for his religion, especially when peaceably assembled inside their place of worship. (Slightly edited passage from my last article)
After hearing the news I decided to conceal a larger than usual gun inside my waistband as I prepared to go to church, I’m sure you could understand why. When I got to church I noticed a guy (who I’ve seen coming for months but haven’t ever talked to) with a handgun strapped to the outside of his belt at the three o’clock position. Understandably he was concerned about church security and he wanted to do something about it but as I looked at this guy and the gun on his hip I realized there was no way I could trust him with my life. He thought that the simple act of openly carrying a gun would make him and those around him more safe but I believe the opposite was true in this instance and in almost every other circumstance when a civilian is open carrying a handgun.
In our age of entitlement we love to talk about our rights, but we rarely if ever talk about the responsibilities that go along with those rights. As Americans we have the right to bear arms for the security of a free state. Going along with that we, as Americans, have the responsibility to train ourselves seriously to be capable of securing our free state with said arms. I won’t claim to be a gun, or self-defense expert but I have spent enough time studying and training to realize that that guy, along with every other civilian I’ve ever seen open carrying a handgun, has not taken that responsibility seriously. I’ll explain how I could tell.
The first red flag I noticed with this guy was his choice of gun, which in fairness wasn’t terrible. Most of the time when I see someone open carrying they have a cheap 1911, a big revolver, or some clunky polymer gun from the 90s that hasn’t been produced since then. I didn’t get a very close look at this guy’s gun because it is a bad idea to stare at strangers’ guns but I’m 95% confident he had a Springfield Hellcat which is much better than any other gun I’ve seen someone open carry.
Objectively the Springfield Hellcat is not a bad gun, in fact it is a pretty good gun, but it has two problems, namely that it is a Springfield and (the one more applicable to this situation) that it is a Hellcat.
Springfield Armory makes good handguns, I pay fairly close attention to the gun industry (evidenced by the fact that I can name the model of a handgun from twenty feet away) so I know they make good guns, but because I pay attention to the gun industry I would never buy a Springfield product, they focus their efforts towards government contracts and have pushed for policies that hurt civilian gun rights. People have to be pretty big nerds to know that so it isn’t quite fair for me to judge people who ignorantly buy a Springfield based on that fact alone (especially since their guns are good) but you also have to be a pretty big nerd to be good at shooting handguns and you have to be pretty good at shooting if you want to stop a mass shooter in a building full of people. Owning a Springfield signals to me that you probably don’t know much about the modern gun industry which signals to me that you probably don’t go shooting very often which signals that you probably aren’t very good with a handgun and trusting you to make a precise shot under the stress of a mass shooting would be foolish.
But, like I said, it is not entirely fair to judge someone solely off of their decision to buy a Springfield since those are good guns despite the actions of their manufacturer. Let’s get to the Hellcat issue. The Hellcat is designed for concealed carry, it is one of the better concealed carry guns on the market. But that is the problem here, why open carry a gun designed to be carried concealed? Concealed carry guns like the Hellcat are smaller and harder to shoot than their full-sized counterparts. In the context of concealed carry choosing a gun more difficult to shoot makes sense when you need to optimize for concealability, but in the context of open carry concealability has already been thrown out the window so a larger easier to shoot gun is a much more appropriate choice. There is no reason to even own a gun designed for concealed carry if you aren’t planning on carrying it concealed. Had he been carrying his Hellcat concealed I’d have no problem with it, but the second it is carried outside the waistband it is the wrong gun for the job, better than any other gun I’ve seen someone open carry, but still a dumb choice for the scenario, suggesting to me he had not thought things through.
The next red flag I saw with this guy’s carry set up was his holster. It can be argued that one’s choice of holster is more important than their choice of gun and this guy (along with every other person I’ve seen open carrying a gun) chose the wrong one. Again, I didn’t get too close to the guy to take a good look but the holster appeared to be of incredibly low quality, he probably didn’t pay more than twenty bucks for it. The holster looked like it was not made for a particular gun, was not well secured to the guy’s belt and had a difficult to remove strap keeping the gun in place, all of these things are to be avoided. Nobody should ever buy a holster as bad as his.
When buying a holster you want one that is made from a material like kydex and is made specifically for your gun. A good quality kydex holster will securely hold your gun without the need for any straps or other mechanisms for you to fumble with when lives are on the line. Most importantly it won’t allow anything into the trigger guard that might pull the trigger unintentionally. Cheap holsters like the one this guy had are dangerous because they fail to do all of these things, they rely on additional straps to secure the gun in place because they are loose and probably can let objects into the trigger guard.
They are also a sign that the holster’s owner does not take their second amendment responsibility seriously. It is dumb to spend five hundred bucks on a gun but then be unwilling to pay fifty for a good quality holster. Someone who isn’t willing to sacrifice an extra fifty bucks for the right gear is unlikely to sacrifice the hours of practice it takes to be useful when combatting a mass shooter, another reason why I didn’t trust that guy.
In the state I live anyone who can own a gun is allowed to carry it openly but in order to carry a concealed weapon a permit is required. I have a concealed carry permit so I know from experience the process of obtaining a permit is not hard (at least in my state). It involves taking an eight hour class that goes over the laws, safety issues and a bit of the moral issues involved with self-defense, after that applicants have to prove that they can hit the broad side of the barn, then they can go to their local sheriff’s office to get their fingerprints taken and within a few weeks (assuming they pass a background check) the applicant will be mailed a permit. This is an easy straightforward process that doesn’t take more than a weekend of sacrifice and two hundred bucks. As far as the responsibility behind the second amendment goes I’d say going through this process is the bare minimum.
It is safe to assume that someone in my state (along with most places in the US) who choses to open carry in an urban environment has not gone through this simple process and thus has not taken upon themselves that bare minimum responsibility associated with the second amendment. This was the biggest red flag I noticed with the guy at church today along with every other person I’ve ever seen open carrying a handgun. Anyone who takes this stuff seriously would make the effort to jump through the simple hoops to get a concealed carry permit. Sure you could argue and say “shall not be infringed” all you want but it really isn’t that hard to get a permit, if you’re not willing to do the bare minimum how can I trust you with the responsibility of protecting our free state?
And I don’t think the bare minimum is enough, if you want to be able to stop a mass shooter, you should also be a good shot and have spent enough time training to know your capabilities and be striving to improve them. If you can’t consistently hit a man-sized target at 25 yards and a terrorist busts into your church through a door 25 yards away from you then it’s not the best idea for you to take that shot, the risk of hitting someone else is too high. People like to say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” this is obviously true but many of these people also fail to realize that similarly guns don’t keep you safe, it is the person behind the gun who does assuming he has the necessary skills. A person who has not spent the time to develop those skills is not keeping anyone safe.
A person who walks around with a crappy gun in a crappy holster who hasn’t taken the time to attend a basic concealed carry class is going to get himself killed before he can save anyone. Also why is the focus always on the gun in these scenarios? A gun is helpful in a mass shooting, but what happens when the shooter is taken out? A bag full of tourniquets and chest seals would be even more important but nobody ever thinks to bring those. Self defense and the responsibility to secure a free state involve a lot more than simply having a gun on your hip, it requires knowledge, discipline and discernment, qualities I’ve never seen demonstrated in someone who open carries.