A handgun is not a Rabbit's Foot

“A very large percentage of people who carry a concealed handgun do not carry it as a weapon. They think of it as a magic talisman that wards off evil, or as a rabbit’s foot. But the mere presence of a gun is no magic bullet. Without the mental willingness to use the gun in the final extreme, its usefulness is strictly limited.” _ Firearms Instructor Tom Givens, quoted in Lessons from Armed America. If you carry a gun without the mental preparation to prepare you to use it to defend your life, you would be safer carrying a rock. It could still be used against you, but at least you aren’t putting a gun in the hands of a bad guy to use against another innocent person. Only you can make the decision, but you must decide before you are faced with an attacker intent on doing you serious harm. You will not have time to decide when you are confronted, and you may not be prepared to live with the outcome of a decision made without serious consideration. Why is it such a hard decision? The possibility of taking a life, even of someone who is threatening yours, is an awesome responsibility. You are also risking the possible aftermath, legal, social, moral repercussions. You may accidently injure an innocent person. Given all of this why would I ever use a gun to defend myself? Because my life, and the lives of my loved ones, are more important to me than the life of a person who made the decision to attack me and hurt or kill me. They made the choice to start something, I’m making the choice to end it, or at least go down fighting for my life. “When an assailant raises a deadly weapon toward an innocent person, the assailant has already made the most important choice of the day, he has decided that someone is going to die. The only decision left for anyone else to make is whether the person who dies that day will be an innocent victim, or one of societies predators.” _ Kathy Jackson, from in Lessons from Armed America