Pistol courses and Profanity

Today, I’d like to tell you about pistol courses… profanity… and what they have to do with keeping you out of jail.

You see, this past Saturday I held a CCA Defensive Pistol course. It was a beautiful spring day and there’s just something special about shooting on an outdoor pistol range surrounded by the (small) mountains of West Virginia. We had a great class and it’s always amazing to see how much improvement folks make in such a short period of time.

I could tell you all about what we did at the course and how they became such better shooters, but instead, strangely enough, I want to tell you about one thing that I didn’t do during class and that I didn’t hear any of, and that is foul language.
Stay with me on this one because this is an important lesson…

At my pistol courses you will never hear any profanity coming out of my mouth. I don’t believe in foul language and try to never say it. Personally, I don’t think it’s professional. However, some of my friends who are top instructors let the F-word fly like crazy, so obviously to each his own.

However, in addition to religious or professional beliefs about the use of profanity, I think there is an important reason not to use foul language that most people over look. Instead of trying to explain it, let me give you an example.

Let’s say you cuss all the time and it’s become a habit and the F-word is no big deal to you. You’re walking away from the ATM one day and a man comes at you with what you believe is a knife. You quickly draw your gun and you shout “You Mother F*****” as you fire a few rounds. He falls backwards and you again shout, “Don’t you F***** move.”

Well, the cops arrive and it turns out the “knife” was really a shiny key and the guy was asking you to jump his car. And there happens to be a few witnesses around that you didn’t see. These witnesses tell the cops that you were an angry man and called the guy a “Mother F*****” and were cussing frighteningly at him. How do you think that’s going to look when you have 4 witnesses testifying against you?

I realize this is far-fetched…

But my point is, if you’re confronted with a deadly force situation you don’t want witnesses who’ll say something like “I heard him scream “I’ll blow your f****** head off.’” You don’t want to sound like the aggressor and have it look bad for you by using language that people expect criminals to use.

You also don’t want to let this language slip when the cops are talking to you either. You don’t want a cop on the stand reading his notes saying, “When I interviewed Mr. Johnson he said ‘yes, I shot the mother f***** because he was going to kill me.’”

And if you’re really having trouble breaking your language habit you can do what my mother used to do to me growing up when I used bad language. Let’s just say a bar of soap doesn’t taste very good.