There absolutely are, but I think most of them can be trained to be aggressive enough to defend themselves.
God I have. It’s the unfortunate side of attending lots of classes and being a range safety officer. I needed a box of scarlet “F”'s to hang around their necks… for Fudd…
Majority of self defense cases aren’t from gunfights. Having your life in imminent danger doesn’t mean it’s a “gun fight”. .
And many people who successfully defend themselves have never taken a class
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Why not just tell them, unless they’ve served actual combat tours- then they aren’t sheepdogs.
Why bother. Asking for an argument. Blablablabla …let them talk! I’m sure you’ve met your share of snipers who were about to kill Sadam but got a direct call from the Whitehouse to stand down!
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If we are sticking with animal metaphors it should be noted that it takes a rare breed of sheepdog to actually best a wolf in a confrontation. Most sheepdogs rely on sound and bluster to keep the wolves away from the flock but if they actually close with one they get their throats torn out or get “scalped” (Yes wolves are actually known to scalp dogs in fights by ripping their ears off) in short order. Meanwhile one of the leading causes of mortality of wolves in the wild is other wolves, not sheepdogs.
I like to look to the coyote for my own canine inspiration and take pains to stay out of the wolves’ territory in the first place. I’ll escape if I can, fight if I have to (and fight hard if need be) but discretion is the better part of valor and you win 100% of the fights you avoid.
If we are doing metaphors then I want to be a rabid grizzly bear.
But honestly “sheepdog” is an apt metaphor for most CCW type, they aren’t going to do much in the way of securing the sheep if the wolves actually do show up.
My opinion?
I think its irrelevant to your OP.
Hesitation can be good or bad depending on the situation. A lot of black, white and gray areas.
I would be a rabbit. We raise rabbits and man, those little guys stay busy!
My father also drilled into me the same thing: “Never show your weapon unless you intend to draw. Never draw your weapon unless you intend to fire. Never fire unless you intend to kill.”
As far as the animal metaphors, I prefer to look like all the other sheep in my yuppie clothes and flip flops. I just want to be a little better at spotting trouble and making sure I exit stage left with my fam before something bad happens. I don’t ever want to have to show my weapon again. I’ve done it once years ago and almost cleared leather but a firm stance and strong words stopped the guy in his tracks. He immediately threw his hands up and did a 180 and left once he figured out we weren’t going to be an easy target. Looking back I’d say I let the guy following us get too close before I acted. He was trying to get me to stop and I kept telling him to leave us alone but he just kept coming and closing the gap. But once I acted it was game on. My now wife saw a different side of me that night, I think she was just as shocked as the other guy when I turned and squared up to him. She has since never complained about me carrying or if I’ve turned around because I forgot to holster up before leaving the house.
Can we as a community drop the “sheepdog” moniker? It’s like, hella gay.
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Dumb. I know several guys who have killed multiple people, that would probably hesitate at the sheer stupidity of that question.
This is very true… and disappointing that people think like this…
Agreed. I identify as a carnivorous sheep trying to get the flock outta there, or as duct tape- something to keep things falling apart until the real fix gets there.
How many IDPA matches have you been to?
You are probably directing this request to the wrong forum. I think this forum is already in strong agreement, it’s everyone else who needs to get the memo.
Sheepdog was probably useful in 1975 to get an idea across to people who were still new to the idea of daily carry of a firearm. Today we can pretty much file it with the “I filed down the sear to make my AR-15 go full auto” crowd.
I think there is a lot of truth in this. There are people who talk about what they would do in a given situation but it’s all BS. Until you get caught in a situation where shit goes sideways, you just don’t know. I was present for a unfortunate incident earlier this year and looking in the wrong direction. When it all went south instinct kicked in and I was barely in control of what I was doing. It took me several seconds to get out of that time stretched, wading in molasses feeling before I could evaluate the threat. The event changed my whole thinking on this sort of stuff and my readiness.
You can have the very best equipment, you can be trained and you can practice and you can drill. Every situation is going to be different and at any time when things go bad, you’re likely to react differently, hesitate for a moment or be just a little slower as you process before acting.
Mindset and instinct may be key, preparation essential, but everyone has a bad day and even the bad guys get lucky sometimes.
Refusing to train someone based upon their initial reaction to a question about being capable to do violence only insures that they wont be trained when they need to do violence.
An FM I like is Aristotle’s “Nichomachean Ethics”. He favors the mean in courage as in most things: “The man, then, who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and at the right time, and who feels confident under the corresponding conditions, is brave…courage is noble…it is for a noble end that the brave man endures and acts as courage directs.”
He elaborates a little more. But it’s worth remembering that in his day the citizen-soldier was the norm.
Steven Pressfield’s historical novel, “Gates of Fire” really explores this at length.
Hopefully it means they go get useful training elsewhere. And yeah that really was one of the dumbest things I’ve read about in awhile.
My hope is that the guy wanted his students to think long and hard about carrying a firearm and to appreciate the seriousness of using it in a self-defense situation. In a way, he was cutting his own throat by refusing the revenue he might have gotten from a person he asked to leave. Not knowing his motivation, the guy might have been thinking about it from an angle we can’t even imagine but it just seemed counterproductive.
My “gut” tells me he was trying to cultivate a “brand” based on exclusivity: i.e., not just anyone is lucky enough to take his class.