Had trouble uploading one of my mountain scenery photos so I picked this one of a young Lao militia member. Plastic surgery on the nose? Doesn't look like a Lao nose to me, must be a movie star.

Back during the early height of the pandemic here I was sold a handgun. I'm not a handgunner, never liked them much, not accurate, not powerful, mostly used in bad ways. Besides, I suck at shooting them, couldn't hit the broad side of barn while standing inside.

A friend who had given my kid a black powder rifle, and given me lots of reloading equipment sold it to me at a very advantageous price. Plus it is what a lot of people carry for a bear gun these days.

I don't like advertising that I have a firearm even while hiking so I wanted to take a conceal carry license. No one had classes, all canceled, remember it was the height of the pandemic. One company who specialized in training police forces, military police, and security forces, did have authorization from the state to conduct the classroom portion of their licensure online. So I signed up.

Because so few people were interested, and because it was online, their director of all classes in the US was teaching the online portion. I thought it one of the best classes I'd ever had on anything. I especially liked the parts about conflict avoidance. I'd no interest in knowing when it's legal to shoot someone but I found his teaching to be interesting on all areas he covered in eight hours.

A couple weeks later I went to take the written test and was able to complete all pages without referring to the open book written material once. The course was taught that well. The school also required range time at the facility.

The range portion of instruction was taught by a woman who also taught their police forces etc. They tried to simulate the confusion and difficulty of real life conditions I guess. Targets were a human silhouette (which I find a little creepy) and first they had us practice, "two to the torso, one to the head" the head being the only sure place to stop someone from being a threat.

They teach you to keep shooting until the person is no longer a threat. The trainer would also yell at us to shoot different color circles that were printed on the target and in the middle of calling out circles she'd shout "GUN GUN GUn" at which point we were supposed to ignore any colored circles and shoot two to the body, one to the head.

It felt to me as if we were being trained to overcome our reluctance to shoot people and amongst the loud cacophony of 12 handguns being shot at colored circles, when we hear the word "Gun", we instinctively start shooting the silhouette.

Looking at things from the other perspective I'd guess a lot of cops get shot and the objective of trainers is to train cops to come home alive every single day.

The few times I've been pulled over at a traffic stop I have all my paperwork in my hands at the top of the steering wheel, with the windows to the car open so they can see in while approaching me. Probably a good idea to set them at ease from the get go. No reaching for things, empty hands, no jumping around, etc., above all I wouldn't want to shout "GUN" real loud.