To understand your strengths and weaknesses is to gain the advantage over your opponent. Strengths and weaknesses can be as simple as our eyesight or as complex as post traumatic stress. Understanding these strengths and weaknesses is essential when time is short and you must make a critical decision. The goal is to be able to capitalize on your strengths and to work on your weaknesses. Many factors can be both a strength and weakness, such as age. Age can bring a lower fitness level yet can bring a huge amount of experience filed in your memory. To understand these strengths and weaknesses you must push yourself in training, gain feedback from others and learn to adapt.

Understanding this factor can reduce the possibility of you having to make that ultimate decision. Most of us can control where we go, at what time we travel and what firearm we will carry. Not going into that questionable part of town late at night for a snack or the ATM, keeping up our awareness of the surroundings when we are doing everyday shopping. These are things we can control. We cannot control the terrorist shooting up the mall or the local school. We can not control the drugged up person trying to rob you in the middle of the day. We cannot control the response time of the local police. Taking advantage of what we can control can greatly influence our opportunity to avoid having to make that ultimate decision. Control your life, don’t let your life control you

As soon as we are born we are in danger. Everyday when we decide to get out of bed or drive a vehicle we are at risk. The danger of carrying a concealed weapon is always there. You may leave it in a restroom, it may fall out of your holster, a police officer may make you as a bad guy, you may have to shoot and you may hit a bystander. Yet the opportunities are great. You are in control of your own protection. You may have opportunity to protect yourself and family from a lethal conflict. You may have the ability as an armed citizen to stop a lethal conflict before it escalates. Understanding the dangers and taking advantage of the opportunities life presents is living a life you chose not a choice someone else made for you.

We know certain things such as the capability of our firearm, how many rounds we carry and the consequences of our actions. We know at what level we are trained and what our capabilities are. We don’t know when or if we will be confronted by a lethal threat. We do not know how we will react if this threat occurs. We do not know what the legal or financial outcome may be if we take a life. There are many known and unknowns and we must understand that they will continue throughout or lives. It is our responsibilities to make as many of the unknowns known so that there will be few questions asked if you become involved in a lethal confrontation.