Frank Ettin
Administrator
Balderdash! The world is full of people stumbling through life, doing dumb things and making bad decisions, all guided by what they believe is "common sense." Training and education help people to make better decisions and avoid doing at least some dumb things.peetzakilla said:...Judgement comes from common sense, at least to a very large degree, and common sense can not be trained....
Sometimes one's instinctive, or common sense, reaction is not the correct response. In fact, it seems that one element of training and practice is to overcome instinctive reaction and to learn to automatically do instead what is appropriate.
For example, when driving a car, one's common sense reaction in the event of a skid is to apply the brakes. We know that is the wrong thing to do; and so, if one is lucky enough to get some training in high speed driving, one learns to stay off the brake, turn into the skid and, under some circumstances, even gently apply some throttle.
I remember my first time driving a Formula Ford through Turn 8 at Laguna Seca -- a left-right downhill "S" turn. When hitting the apex of the first half of the turn, you can't see the track. My "common sense" said to back off the throttle. But of course, backing off the throttle under side loading while going downhill is a good way to lose the back end.
Don't be silly. We've seen plenty of illustrations here, in these Forums, that many folks have some very fanciful notions, or who are looking for hard and fast rules, about when or how to use lethal force in self defense.peetzakilla said:...The majority of people who are aware enough to discuss these issues are people who, in actual fact, don't even really need a law to tell them when or if they should be shooting someone. It's just something that we "know"....
This is also not true. Certainly in my experience, having provided basic training to many people, I've seen people go from "not knowing and not understanding" to a higher level of knowledge and understanding. People do, in fact, learn things. If you don't know and understand more now, today, than you knew and understood 5 years ago, you have not been paying attention.peetzakilla said:...Anyone who doesn't, for the most part, simply "know" when, where and if to use a gun is probably not going to get any better through training....