Divide and Conquer.

Last week I posted on facebook a verbatim exchange I had with an OCSD background investigator regarding the status of CCW permits in Orange County.

I did this for two reasons:

1) He told me to.

2) I felt that it was important that people either with CCW’s or in the process of getting a CCW have the latest intel.

Our facebook post was copied and pasted to a popular shooting internet forum.

Then the fireworks started.

Almost immediately some members of the forum did their best to discredit the information. 

Some chastised us at Artemis for being “Cheerleaders” for the sheriff.

(Disclaimer: We are contracted with the Sheriff for deputy training…. we also train LAPD, Border Patrol, Homeland Security, and a host of others.)

The pessimism of the forum participants was palpable… and to a degree understood. But that pessimism also created wedges. The gun community… like most communities is robust and full of opinionated personalities. Some hold their viewpoints based on deep ideological reasoning… others because they want to settle scores…. some because they feel once vested in a particular side of an argument they would rather see their opponent vilified then acknowledge the fallacy of their own position.

When we are divided we fall as a political force.

We see that playing out now.

(If you have arrived here from our newsletter continue reading here:)

I have been a lawyer for almost 22 years now. 

I have sat in and listened to appellate arguments and watched as my colleagues debated the tea leaves gleaned from oral arguments, certain they had found the key to how the justices were going to rule. 

They were wrong as often as they were right.

Those of us that are members of the Bar take it upon ourselves to inform our clients of the potential outcomes of a particular argument or course of action. 

Sometimes our prognostication is spot on. 

Other times…. as Justice Holmes once stated so eloquently, “The matter of justice is just as important on what the Jurist had for breakfast as the arguments of the plaintiffs attorney.”

We simply don’t know all outcomes.

What we can do is inform of what we know.

Some on the forums seemed to feel that Artemis was created for the purpose of CCW training. 

Those of you who have been with us from the beginning know the fallacy of that statement. 

Our goal when we opened our doors was three fold: 

1)  to make the single most advanced simulator training available to legally armed citizens.

2)  Provide a multi-simulator facility for law enforcement to train,

3)  Introduce new members into the shooting community.

That last point was critically important to us. 

Our community MUST be expanded if our rights our going to be secured. 

We have historically done an abysmal job in securing that goal. Our dwindled numbers in California speak to our failure. 

We wanted local ranges and local trainers to know we had…and continue to have, no intention of competing with them… quite the contrary… we seek to create new customers for them.

Don’t get me wrong though… we love training CCW holders. 

We feel that training legally armed citizens to be prepared to survive an encounter with evil is almost a religious calling. 

We also feel that the use of our simulators to enhance the training through stress inoculation is invaluable.

Each of our classes also ends with us telling our students to seek out training from other schools. We feel it is important that a students training be continual and not be exclusive to us. 

We are a community, and as a community we must remain committed to an ideal… our ideal as stated in our lobby: You HAVE THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS…. you have the RESPONSIBILITY to train.

An addendum: You have the mandatory obligation to be involved, and to support the efforts of others that also choose to be involved. 

When pessimism becomes the paradigm, and “chairborne rangers” cultivate a spirt of negativism, all of our endeavors become muted.

We can speculate as to the outcome of Peruta when the case is heard before the entire 9th circuit. 

We can also speculate as to the outcome of a final Supreme Court review… but in the end it is just that… speculation.

We owe it to ourselves, and to those that prize freedom as divined by our Creator and only recognizedby our government… not grantedby it,… to push against those perceived transgressions through collective action. 

To support indifference,… to council muted agitation,… or to dismiss the contributions of others, serves only the forces that would seek to strip us of our rights.

Vigilantibus et non dormantibus, juris serventium.