 It's been a tough weekend here, huh? I went to bed on Saturday night and there was a pretty brutal mass shooting down in Texas. Last I heard about 20 people had died and 26 were wounded. I was really frustrated that I'm sick of mass shootings happening in this country, obviously. Texting my friends some thoughts about it, some observations, and then I wake up in the morning to another mass shooting that happened in Dayton, Ohio. So it sucks, obviously nobody wants this to happen and nobody's happy about it. So here are some observations and thoughts that I have as we continue to live in this weird place in America where mass shootings are a thing, sadly, right? My first big observation is that things are getting worse and these guys, these crazy psychotic people who decide to go shoot people up at random, sadly, are getting better. We're witnessing a morphing in the mass shooter type in this country. More often, sadly, they're bringing a rifle and not a pistol, for instance. So there seems to be more thought going into this. You know, they're bringing extra magazines or this guy in El Paso apparently might have had a ear pro on. I saw some report, I don't know if that's verified or not, that might end up not being true, but it might have had ear protection on. And I texted my friends on Saturday night before I went to bed, you know, how soon till they start wearing armor. Well, it turns out all I had to do was go to sleep and wake up and that's how soon they were starting to wear armor because then the guy in Ohio was reportedly wearing armor. So they're getting more calculated and they're coming with better gear and equipment. They're starting to pick rifles and they're starting to wear armor and they're starting to wear ear protection and they're starting to bring a bunch of extra mags to the fight. They're starting to do stuff that means they're going to be here for a while and they're really trying to try to pick their time. So that's sad and that's depressing. Statistically, obviously the chances of you being caught in a mass shooting are incredibly low, incredibly low, but they happen, right? And of course the thing that freaks us all out is they could happen anywhere at any time to anyone, you know, it's a classic terrorism thing, right? You could be next. So what does that mean for you? What do we do about that? You know, I certainly don't think the solution is limiting my rights as a free born American citizen. I certainly don't think that's acceptable because all that's going to do is leave me defenseless for the next time one of these things happens. So what do we do? I think that means three major things for you. You need to be trained. And when I say trained, I mean, you need to have seen a competent instructor to learn how to shoot your gun. I don't think that means at all. I've been hunting all my life or I've been shooting all my life or whatever. You need to see a competent instructor who knows what they're doing, who's going to teach you how to run that gun when your life depends on it. OK, that's the first thing you do. If you haven't taken a legitimate training course from a legitimate instructor, that's the first thing you need to do. OK, you need to come see me, you need to come see someone else. You need to go get training on how to use your gun. Without that, you're no good to anyone when the bullets start flying. OK, the second thing you need to do after you get that training is you need to be practiced. If you were like, yeah, well, I took a training course, Dylan, you know, I took it like five years ago. Well, have you have you shot your gun since? Well, no, you know, do you will do you carry your gun? Sometimes when I'm going to a dangerous part of town, you know, that's not what I'm talking about, right? Like you need to be practiced. You need to regularly do some dry fire. I know that's a lot of fun, right? You need to regularly go to the range. Hopefully you can go to range where you can work from your holster, but you need to practice. You need to take all that stuff that you learned to that training course. When you go to a training course, take notes, right? Then when you get back home, practice that stuff. Practice that stuff. We don't teach you these things for our health, right? We teach you them because we don't want you to die and we want you to be able to make a difference when all the chips are down. So practice that stuff. Get trained, get practiced. And then third one is you need to be mentally prepared to solve that problem, right? And that's probably the most important one, let's be honest. But you need to be mentally prepared to do something. If you're trained and you're practiced and you haven't really thought about it, but the bullets start flying, you decide, you know what, I'm going to leave. You're not doing anyone any good, okay? You're not doing anyone any good. I need you to get in there, I need you to solve that problem. Where did you spend all this money and time to get trained and practiced for if you're not going to actually do something about it when you have the chance? We need to be trained, we need to be practiced, and we need to be mentally prepared to solve that problem. So that's what I'm asking you to do. I'm asking you that. I want to live in a society where when one of these people decides to pop off, there is a trained, practiced, and mentally prepared shooter there, and they just immediately T-box that guy and we can all go home. There would be no headline because nothing happened. A bad guy got shot in the head and we all got to go home tonight. That's the society I want to live in. We have trained, competent, mentally prepared shooters all over the country. So the next time some guy thinks he can be a mass shooting star, he gets T-boxed. That's what I want. For those of you who don't know T-box, it's right here. It's a little T, kind of my nose around my eyes. If you put a bullet through there, you can't do this anymore. It's your medulla obangata, it's lights out. It's the only off switch in the human body. For those of you who don't know. That's what I want. I want to live in a world like that where we have safe, competent people who love America and love their fellow man enough to solve the problem. Some gear considerations. The first one is you got to carry your gun. If you only carry your gun sometimes, if you only carry your gun you think you'll need it. I mean, that's been talked about ad nauseam elsewhere, but carry your damn gun, okay? The second thing is quit carrying a bullshit gun. And what I mean by that is, you know, there's this big fascination with little Pocket 380s and those Stubnose revolvers and the slimmest, tiniest, lightest, whatever, most conceivable bullshit that you can get. Enough with that guys. We cannot afford that anymore. I need you to carry your real gun. When I say a real gun, I mean something like a G19 size or bigger. That's what I mean. I need you to carry a real sidearm. The sidearm that you would want if your life depended on it. That's the sidearm I want you to carry, okay? So we got to start carrying real guns. Don't give me this about I can't conceal it or it's not comfortable or I print or whatever. I haven't carried about printing for I don't know how many years. And do you know how many times I've ever been made for carrying my gun? Zero, absolutely zero, okay? So you need to carry a real gun. You got to do that. Some of the things for you to consider about is you should probably bring an extra mag. If you're going to go through all that work to carry a real gun, you should probably bring an extra magazine. You might need it, you know, you might, your gun might malfunction. You might actually have to shoot your gun dry. You know, if these guys are starting to wear armor and they're starting to really come prepared to fight, I would want an extra mag. The other thing is you probably should carry an IFAC. At least at the bare minimum in your car. And in your car, I prefer to have like a full mass casualty bag, right? Like lots of tourniquets and bandages and gloves, maybe a couple chest seals. Like that's what I want in your car. So that after you deal with that problem, you can at least at the bare minimum get to your car and get back because you'll still probably able to do that faster than the EMTs will get there. And if you can put some tourniquets on some people and save some people's lives, that's great. I know a lot of you guys might even carry tourniquets on your person, even better. The last thing, and I thought about this one, is kind of a trunk gun or a cab gun or kind of having a rifle in your car or maybe a AR pistol or AK pistol or something like that and maybe even some plates and stuff in there. And that's great. I mean, I'm not gonna tell you not to do it. The problem of course is that when the shooting starts, you need to go like now, like now. You don't have time to go to your car. So unless you're standing at your car and something happens and you can just reach in your car and get it and go, that's about the only time that that's gonna be useful to you, right? You know, people will go, I don't wanna be confused with a mass shooter. Well, you might be, okay, probably not. Hopefully, you're gonna solve that problem for the police ever get there because they are minutes away and I need you to be seconds away, right? So we don't have time to go back to our car but if you happen to be at your car by the time something happens and you can just grab it and go, that's one thing. See, I'm kind of whatever about that but ladies and gentlemen, we've gotta be ready. We've gotta be ready because this is a thing in our culture now for a variety of reasons that we can discuss, but it's here. And the way to solve this problem is to have trained, practiced, and mentally prepared Americans who are equipped with the right gear who can solve that problem on the spot. You are your own first responder and I am asking you. We as America are asking you to be practiced, trained, and mentally prepared. I need you to be ready because again, the chances that you, specifically you, are ever gonna be there for a mass shooting is low. The chances that we, the practice, trained, and mentally prepared community will ever be there gets a little higher, right? So, if you haven't done your dry fire today, go do your dry fire. If you haven't been to the range in a while, pull out your calendar and get some time on the schedule. If you've never taken a real class, come see me, come see someone else. Get trained. It might just save your life. Do brave deeds and endure.