Winter Parking Is A Mirror of Your Training

This is the time of year that the snow first starts to come down. And in it’s white glory and quiet peace that it brings nature, it brings chaos to parking lots everywhere. People have spent the last 9 months parking in spots delineated by lines. Those lines guide us on. With a thin coat of snow covering those lines, all that spacial awareness goes right out the window. Why?

It’s because people pay less attention to how far away they need to be in order to open doors, how close they need to be to not double park and more attention on the lines. This isn’t just a few people, it’s just about everyone. We trust those lines, we rely on those lines. We don’t pay attention to how are vehicles are lined up to anything else, except when we have trouble opening our doors because someone else so rudely parked too close to or on the line.

When the snow comes, people park where ever. Parking lots get jammed up, people get frustrated, some people can’t find a parking spot all of a sudden….simply because others were thinking only about themselves and not the greater good. In other words, people don’t track how their parking affects others down the road.

When you try to get firearm owners past the beginning stage of training, they often go the way of the winter parker: they worry about themselves and not the world around them. In other words, they are clueless of the extra coat they are wearing over that holster, or where actual available cover is. They go to the range and do what they have always done, the same thing over and over and over again. Their draw is wrong, their aim is perfect for accuracy but not flash or point shooting. They really don’t practice muzzle awareness. They have their mental lines drawn in their head and that’s all that matters to them.

But when life comes at you like the weather always does, almost everyone will be the guy who quadruple parked his pickup truck in the company lot, which forces 3 other people to park a half mile away. In the firearms world, its the guy who prematurely draws his gun, and goes to jail and makes the news making all CPL holders look foolish. Or the hunter who fires his gun accidentally while crossing a stream. Or the guy who left his gun in a safe at home to rust because he never found the time to train. There is the lady who didn’t think about the gun in her purse until after it was yanked from her arm and stolen on the streets. There is the man who ensured his safety by not carrying a loaded gun, and when he is assaulted, he was carrying his grandson and couldn’t load the firearm and he was killed for the $20 in his wallet.

The point is, life happens. Getting a CPL doesn’t make you ready for a defensive encounter any more than getting a driver’s license magically puts your car into the parking spaces perfectly during the winter. The sad thing is, we know the snow is coming every year….we live the chaos of the parking lots day in and day out for months….and very few people do anything to improve their parking ability.

My challenge to you is that you realize that double parking in the snow might get you a ticket….but not training for scenarios that you are not in control of with your firearm can kill you….and your family.
If you cared enough about your security for you and your family to get a firearm and a CPL, shouldn’t you get that additional training and refresher training? You know, something more than shooting a few rounds at the Gun Club once a month with George and sharing a beer in the clubhouse.

Get someone who is trained to push you to the next level, to throw a curveball that you can learn from. Someone who can provide you with the skills that can save your life.

The funny thing is that most firearm owners balk at having the State tell them what is safe and what isn’t. But when the State gives out a pathetically weak standard of 30rds at the range, the vast majority of firearm owners do exactly that and nothing more.

Your life is worth more than what the State says is the bare minimum of training, right? Dear Lord, I should hope you think so, too. Get some advanced firearm training!