{"id":4760,"date":"2019-01-07T19:47:10","date_gmt":"2019-01-08T01:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/?p=4760"},"modified":"2019-01-07T19:47:10","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T01:47:10","slug":"lets-talk-about-sheepdog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/?p=4760","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Talk About Sheepdog"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

*note* this is a transcript of my segment on the Assorted Calibers Podcast episode 37<\/a>*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome to Oddball\u2019s Corner Pocket.  This week, I thought I\u2019d step away from knives a bit and talk about something that I\u2019m not a huge fan of in the firearms community.  Namely, the use of the term \u201cSheepdog.\u201d
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If you hang around in the firearms community long enough, you will here concealed carriers referred to as sheep dogs.  There is this metaphor that there are the wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs. The wolves are the criminals that prey upon the defenseless sheep, the sheep are the general populace that either are unable to, or choose not to carry firearms to defend themselves, and the sheepdogs are the noble concealed carriers that defend the flock.  I\u2026 do not like this metaphor.
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I don\u2019t really have any issues with calling criminals wolves.  They are predators that prefer to prey on the weak, and can be ruthless.  The only qualm I might have is calling them something as smart and noble as wolves, but I\u2019ll let it slide.
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I do have issues with calling folks that don\u2019t carry sheep.  Are some folks that don\u2019t carry as oblivious and defenseless as sheep?  Sure, but there are folks that choose or are unable to carry that I wouldn\u2019t categorize as such, and I refuse to look down on.  It\u2019s very difficult for me to argue that a teacher should carry a gun on the drive to work, park off school property, store their gun in the car, and hope no one breaks in and steals it during the day.  There\u2019s a number of states where that\u2019s the only way they can carry going to and from work without committing a felony.
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On similar note, I know someone that has decided not to own a firearm because they have serious clinical depression, and they\u2019re afraid that they will use it on themselves.  Are you going to argue that they\u2019re wrong? I\u2019m not.
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And that\u2019s not even getting into how many people have sat down and seriously decided that they\u2019re ok with the possible outcome of carrying a gun.  I\u2019ve told folks that I know that every time I strap a gun onto my hip, I know that that day might be the day that someone forces me to kill them. I really don\u2019t like that idea, and I take comfort in the fact that the chances of that happening where I live is very small, but I accept that that is a possible outcome.
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It also makes the assumption that guns are the *only* means of self defense, when that\u2019s simply not true.  I quickly listed off some of my martial arts credentials in my segment on Cold Steel in episode 36. Are you trying to tell me that I stand no chance of defending myself without a gun?  Sure, a gun helps, and I believe that it\u2019s the best tool out there when things get to that point, but it\u2019s just that. A tool. There\u2019s a decent chance that I can deal with most situations with a knife, or bare hands, or even, and I\u2019ve done this a number of times, with words and quickly leaving.  Self defense should be layered, and \u201cdeploy gun\u201d is Defcon 1, everything else has failed. I will tell you that going home and telling your friends \u201choly smokes, I avoided some serious stuff today\u201d is a lot more fun than ending up in the back of a squad car while the cops figure out what happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, there\u2019s the term \u201csheepdog\u201d itself.  I am *not* a sheepdog. Being a sheepdog means that it\u2019s my job to protect the flock.  Nope. Sorry. The only folks that I\u2019m interested in protecting are myself, and my loved ones\u2026 and even they are sometimes on their own.  Michael Bane recently talked about it in great length on his Down Range podcast, and I have to agree completely. There are sheepdogs out there.  They\u2019re called the police. It\u2019s literally their job, and they have all sorts of legal protections in place because of it.
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I think, if anything, I like the attitude of the porcupine.  As long as you stay over there, I\u2019ll stay over here and everything will be cool.  If you try to attack me, well, then there\u2019s going to be issues, my quills are going to come out, and you\u2019re not going to like it.  Although, granted, I would say that there have been days that folks would say I\u2019m more like a honey badger. I\u2019ve decided that I\u2019m going to go do a thing, and I will do that thing.  If you get in my way, I will mess you up, but\u2026 that might be more of an anger management thing.
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Here\u2019s a quick story to illustrate the point.  This past weekend, I was having dinner at chain steakhouse with a couple of my martial arts instructors after a day of testing students for their next level.  As we were finishing up our dinner, we witnessed a couple of folks from a few tables over getting into a fight. We, as trained martial artists, quickly assessed the situation, and jumped into action by\u2026 deciding what we wanted for dessert.
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The fight was over there, and did not threaten to involve our table, so we let it remain someone else\u2019s problem.  If we had taken the sheepdog mentality to heart, we would feel an obligation to jump in and deal with the offending parties.  Instead, we made sure that we were safe, and felt kind of bad for the cops that had to stand out in the cold rain while they interviewed the individuals to figure out what was going on.
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Thanks for letting me rant about this, and let\u2019s try to let this analogy die.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

*note* this is a transcript of my segment on the Assorted Calibers Podcast episode 37* Welcome to Oddball\u2019s Corner Pocket.  This week, I thought I\u2019d step away from knives a bit and talk about something that I\u2019m not a huge fan of in the firearms community.  Namely, the use of the term \u201cSheepdog.\u201d If you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}