This is a good piece by Scott Witner at the Loadout Room.
Reports are still coming out about the shooters weapons, his weapons cache that was discovered, and now the training he has had. Obviously when a tragedy such as this one happens the suspects life gets turned inside out and the public is overwhelmed with information whether it’s accurate or not.
It is being reported that the shooter had attended a private ‘self-defense’ course that taught military style drills to include shooting on the move. Nobody will ever know his true intention for taking that course. It could have been for recreation or as part of his planning and preparation for the attacks.
“Micah Johnson, an Army veteran, received instruction at the Academy of Combative Warrior Arts in the Dallas suburb of Richardson about two years ago, said the school’s founder and chief instructor, Justin J. Everman.” – Associated Press
The thing that bothers me is how main stream media takes all this information and uses it to manipulate the general populace to thinking that anyone who attends this type of training and has a cache of firearms and ammunition is a threat of some type.
I have served in the Marine Corps, taken shooting courses outside the military, and legally own firearms along with the ammunition for them. The courses I have taken, more specifically, the course I took a few weeks back do a thorough background check to ensure the ones who signed up have a clean record. Case in point, we started off the course with a roll call. When the instructor called my name I spoke up to let him know I was present. When I did he said that when they initially ran my background check they misspelled my last name which resulted in somebody with multiple felonies.
Now obviously if somebody has a clean record and is able to attend the course it’s up to the instructor to be able to ‘read’ the individuals during the course and take any needed action, which may include being expelled from the course and/or being reported to the local authorities.
We learned many facets to shooting pistols in the course I attended. Everything from basic fundamentals to shooting on the move, shooting from different positions, reloading on the move, and a host of other tactics. The people that typically take these courses are responsible adults who understand the dangers associated with it and are only taking the course to better themselves.
As I said in the beginning of the article we may never know the shooters intentions when taking the course he was enrolled in. Maybe the instructor should have seen something in his behavior. In hind sight we can all quarter back the situation. Going forward we all need to be aware of our surroundings and report suspicious activity.
-Scott
