Or, is the gun your only solution?

The average person and family face a number of threats each day, most of the time without realizing it. This is because we instinctively perform risk assessment to ensure these threats will be mitigated in some way, or have determined they are highly improbable. Look at the number of choices we make each day: We wake up, drive to work, spend 8 hours at work. We drive home again. We choose life partners, whether to have kids. We choose what to eat and how to exercise. We choose where we will go, and what activities we will partake in.

The risks associated with these events can be relatively low, or fairly high. Just driving to and from work exposes us to crashes and injury. Eight hours at the workplace exposes us to all sorts of people that we might not have willingly chosen to associate with if it were up to us alone. Domestic violence is a reality for many of us. To top it off, we sometimes choose hobbies or excursions that may not be the safest option. ‘Thrill seeking’ puts us in close proximity to the consequences of our actions, and for many is a great way to ‘feel alive’.

For the most part, we mitigate these threats rather well. We choose safe cars, safe workplaces, and try to exercise. We choose life partners with care, and hope it will be a mutually beneficial relationship with safety and solace. Even if our hobbies are adrenaline-inducing, we have the technology to employ safety mechanisms to help shield us from the consequences.

However, we also face a number of risks each day that are completely out of our control. Severe weather is a readily apparent one, but the choices of others will often affect us. Distracted drivers, violent or desperate people wanting to harm us, a fragile economy, lay offs from work, contagious disease, and many other things can easily affect us despite our best casual preparations.

Risk assessment is the act of evaluating the things that affect you, and determining if the risk of these things is acceptable to you. To do that, we look at threat events (such as tornadoes, or thunderstorms, or hyperinflation…), break them down into their individual components, and make plans on how to address them.

How?

If you have concerns about a specific threat, or would like to help ensure you and your family are safe, we can help. Not just with the firearm training. We now offer an Emergency Preparedness course at extremely low cost to train you not on what to do, but on how to think about it. Correct. We are not offering our solution, but training in a framework so you can develop your solution.

For instance, a hurricane is a real concern for Floridians and Louisianans, but not so much for Michiganders. Forest fires are a concern for heavily wooded states, but not for desert areas or swamps. Would you rather spend time and money preparing for some googled event and cookie cutter checklist, or spend your resources on training and gear that will actually help you?

If you’ve been worried or uneasy, and feel you need to make a plan, please take this course before you buy ‘a solution’. Ensure the solution you enact is your solution.