 Hey guys, Dylan Schumacher with Citadel of the Fence and today I want to talk about being the hero. Coronavirus mayhem is going on right now when I'm filming this and a lot of people are out panicking buying guns which is great, good for you. It's a lot of people who of course who have never used or owned guns before and now want a gun to protect themselves, which is which is great. That's what guns are for and I've read a couple articles seen a bunch of tweets about people saying, well you know, why would you buy a gun? It won't make you safer. It'll make you, it'll put your life in more danger It's not helpful. It's not gonna do anything and on and on and on, which is all of course untrue and obviously the common person knows that that's why they're out buying guns but the thing that I thought was the most interesting or at least deserved the most discussion was this idea that you can't be the hero. It was this, it's a lot of these tweets and stories that I've read have this general mocking tone of who are you to think that you could be a hero and you're gonna save your family and you're gonna protect everybody with your gun? And it's this kind of high-minded. I sneer at this idea of heroism and I derive you for thinking that you could somehow be the hero or somehow save people. I guess I think that's interesting for a couple things. One, I wonder when it became unfashionable to desire to be heroic. When did, when did that happen? I don't know. I guess somewhere pretty recently in the past like 10 or 20 years where at least on the extreme left it became, it became derided and it became something that is to be mocked and sneered at and and just treated like some kind of boyish childhood fantasy that doesn't have any place in the real world. However, throughout history all societies that I know of have embraced and supported and held up heroism as a trait that's valuable, that that's a noble trait, that it's something to be pursued, that of course we want you to be heroic and do heroic things and seek to be the hero. Because those societies obviously need people to do heroic things in order to continue to exist. Namely protect them from other societies, correct? So I find this whole sneering at heroism thing really interesting. One, just from a kind of anthropological viewpoint, but two from a much more personal point if it was you or your wife or your kid that was trapped inside some area with a mass shooter and I was on the outside of that building and I had the requisite skill set and equipment to go in there and solve that problem and bring them out alive. Wouldn't you want me to do that? Vice versa, right? I mean if it was my kid in there and you had the requisite equipment and skill set wouldn't I want you to go in there and save them? I mean the answer is of course yes, of course we want that. That's why we still do hold up heroism in a lot of different contexts, right? We treat firemen as heroes because they risk their own lives to go into burning buildings to pull you out of them or good police officers who again enter those situations in order to bring people out alive. These are heroic things. I think I tend to define a hero as someone who would risk their lives for someone else or someone who is willing to pay the cost so that others won't have to. Those are kind of what I think of as heroic things. So what I want to tell you is be the hero, desire to be the hero. I don't see anything wrong with that. I don't understand why it's a bad thing that should be derided to want to be heroic. I want you to get in there. I want you to problem solve it. Part of the reason I teach people how to shoot guns is because I hope that someday they're in a good position where they can be the hero where they can stop someone from killing other people and thereby save many. That's what we want. We want people to be heroes. I want to live in a nation of heroes, home of the brave. So be the hero, get in there, problem solve that situation and don't ever let anybody deride you or sneer at you for your desire to be heroic. The desire to protect and to be heroic is a good desire. Yeah, sure, we can get off the rails with it a little bit, but you can do that with anything. But the base core desire of desiring to protect people and be heroic and save people, that's a good thing. And I'm going to support that all day long. To brave deeds and endure.