 Hey everybody Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense and today we are going to welcome all of the wonderful new gun owners to the party. I'm filming this in July of 2020 and there have been record numbers of gun sales recently and record numbers of new gun owners purchasing a gun for the first time. So that is fantastic and I'm making this video to welcome all of you guys to it. So the first thing I want to say is welcome to the party, glad you're here, we love to have you. The more people that are into this, the better, even if it does drive up demand and therefore decreases supply and guns cost me more money and bullets cost me more money. I'm still happy to have you, even with all of that. So seriously, it's a great thing, glad you're here, glad you're taking this seriously. That's the first thing I want to tell you, welcome to the party. Second thing I want to tell you, which I guess is kind of the first thing, is gun safety. Okay, so there are four firearms safety rules. The first rule of firearm safety is treat all guns as if they are loaded. Which means I never, never, never want to hear the words come out of your mouth. It's okay Dylan, it's unloaded. We're going to treat all guns as if they're loaded. That means we would never do anything with an unloaded gun that we wouldn't do with a loaded gun, okay? The next three firearm safety rules explain that rule. The second one is never point your gun at anything you're not willing to destroy. I picture like there's a laser coming out of the end of this gun here. I'm not going to point it at you, I'm not going to point it at me. We're not going to point the gun at anything we're not willing to destroy. The third one is keep your fingers straight and off the trigger. I know for us new people that can be hard, right? When I first started doing guns, it's natural. You want to make a fist, I get it. But your finger does not go here, does not rest on the trigger. Your finger goes here, that's where your finger goes. Again, for you new guys and girls, I know that one's going to be tough because you want to just rest your finger there, that's the natural thing to do. But your finger goes here, okay? The fourth rule is know your target, it's foreground and it's background. Meaning I need to know what's between me and my target and what's beyond my target, right? If I pull up my gun in real life to save my life and I'm about to shoot a bad guy and someone runs between me and the bad guy, that's a problem, right? Or if I miss and my bullet goes down the street and it goes into a playground, that's a problem. So those are the four firearm safety rules. So go ahead and rewind this and watch that again. But you should know those, those should be ingrained in your soul. You should do those without thinking, okay? The third thing I would tell you is take a good firearms safety course. In your state, there are a variety of things offered. Even you guys who live in constitutional carry states, which means you don't need a permit to carry, you can just strap up and go, which is the way it should be. I would still tell you to take a good permit to carry course because we want to help learn and educate ourselves about what we're doing here, right? A good permit to carry course should teach you two things. It should teach you the legalities around lethal force and it should teach you the legalities in your state around where you can and can't carry if you have a duty to inform police officers, if signs carry the rule of law, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's what a good permit to carry course should teach you. If you're in Minnesota, come on down, we'd love to have you. But those are the things that you should look for in a permit to carry course. Make sure they're teaching you those things, read reviews of instructors. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad permit to carry instructors and there are a few good ones, so do your research and find out what you can. After that, I think we're in number four. The fourth thing I would tell you is to get a training, a hands-on training course with your pistol. A permit to carry course does not mean that you are trained on how to actually function and how to actually use and run that gun. We've all learned to sport in our life. When you learn to sport, you did not sit in a room and have me have me draw on a whiteboard how to shoot a basketball. It didn't happen. You went out on the basketball court, you got a basketball in your hands and you actually shot and just did that until you could learn it. You had some of coach you, but you did it. You physically did it. Guns are the same thing. It's a physical sport. Unless I get out and I learned to shoot this gun, I learned to reload it, I learned to racket and run it and whatever, unless I do that, you're not going to get better. You can't sit in a classroom and learn how to do that. You've got to get hands on practice, hands on teaching, and hands on correction. So find a good hands-on course to take with your pistol. Again, that's what you need to do because you've got to get out and shoot this gun and run this gun, or you're not going to get anywhere. Again, if you're in Minnesota, actually, no matter where you are in the country, I'd gladly come to you. So take that for what it's worth. I would love to teach you how to shoot guns. After that, the other things I would tell you to do are look into options for safety and storage, right? Let me tell you where the number one place your gun should be stored, loaded and on your person. That's the safest place for your gun in the world, okay? Beyond that, when it's not that, it should be in a safe or some kind of secure storage area, especially if you live with kids. We don't leave guns in cars, right? That's a good way for them to get stolen. And we don't want our guns to be stolen using crimes, or again, appropriated by kids or the people who don't know what they're doing and accidentally, someone gets hurt because of it, okay? You don't want any of that. The other thing, of course, is practice. You want to practice with that gun, and that means going to the range. It means dry-firing. Dry-firing is when you shoot your gun without bullets in it. That's dry-firing, okay? There's a lot you can do with dry-fire. Professional shooters dry-fire about 90% of the time and shoot real bullets about 10% of the time, okay? Because dry-fire is where I learn my draw, I learn my grip, I learn my stance. You can, or not learn practice. You can practice all those things in dry-fire, okay? So you can look into that. There are a variety of books that I've reviewed on this YouTube channel that will help you in that direction, okay? And then the last thing is just keep your gear ready. That means you gotta clean your gun every now and again. You gotta make sure it's lubed. You gotta, again, make sure it's loaded and on your person. That's where guns go, loaded and on your person. Otherwise, I don't know what you bought the gun for to begin with. So, again, welcome to the party. Hope that's some helpful advice to point you in the right direction. I will post a link, again, to a document that I have below here that's a living document. That's all my gear list recommendations. Gear won't make you a better shooter. All this other stuff is more important than gear, but at some point, gear does matter. And so I've had a running list of gear that I recommend, do not recommend, et cetera. And I will put that in the description box below. But I hope that's helpful. I hope that gets you pointed in the right direction. Again, super happy to have you. Glad you're here. And I hope that is helpful. One other point I'd like to make about the Permit to Carry stuff is that the way Permits to Carry work is that usually the sheriff in your state will issue you your Permit to Carry. A lot of people seem to misunderstand this, but the sheriff will issue the Permit to Carry. So you go take a Permit to Carry course, and then the sheriff will issue your Permit to Carry after you complete the course. Then you go to your sheriff and you apply for your Permit. There seems to be some confusion about that, but just so you understand how the general process works. Okay, well, again, I hope all of that information is helpful. I hope it points you in the right direction. I hope to see you in a class sometime soon. Would love to shoot with you and train with you. Until then, do brave deeds and endure.