Looking through the comments, I realized I owe you a post about my concealed carry class.
As luck would have it, any time I plan something this far in advance (in this case, a bit over a month), things never go smoothly. In this case, it was my Mom being admitted to the hospital. Urk!
Now before anyone gets wrenched out of shape, I didn’t bail and leave my Dad holding the bag–very few things could be that important, and no class makes that list. I beat the EMTs to their house, and with the exception of picking my daughter up at band camp, I was at the hospital until she was ensconced in a room, asleep and we had been told that she was in no real danger. After that, the young lady that provides most of her care was in much better position to deal with the medicos than either my Dad or myself. She speaks the language.
However, once we had her settled, my Dad was pretty much worn out and wanted to go home and rest. The Caregiver pretty much had things wired, so my Dad told me to make the class if I could.
At that point, I hustled back to the Freehold, packed a quick range bag, and beat feet for Mt. Airy, NC, where the class was held. With a quick drive through at KFC, I walked in the door at exactly the starting time.
Expectations were originally set by the 1 1/2 hour long video that we had to watch, filmed at the Marquis De Sade Film Studios. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to take a subject this important and drone you out of your wits talking about it. The narrator succeeded in doing so. Along with their ditzy scenarios for applying the somewhat…unusual…NC laws on CCW and the use of deadly force.
The class portion turned out to be great. After that video, I was expecting a dry, humorless sort of thing, and it wasn’t that at all. Our instructor was quite personable, and has a rather large knowledge of all things that go “bang”. The presentation portion was interesting, and the breaks were a hoot.
The best thing, as far as I was concerned, is that he was able to distill all of the relevant information into a 2 page (front and back) handout that your mom could understand. Given the seriousness of the topic, I think that’s an important take away.
We then did the written test, which I aced (insert requisite boor bellowing “you da man” here), and then it was time for the shooting portion. Our instructor was gracious enough stay late to let the 3 of us who had driven so far finish in one (long) evening. As per usual being a long gun kinda guy I wasn’t impressed with my accuracy but our instructor said I did just fine and signed off on my certificate.
I’ve contacted my local sheriff, gathered all the additional paperwork I need, and I’ll be venturing there sometime next week to file my application. Then we get to have the nice long wait for the process to carry thorough.
Even though this has been relatively painless so far, I still think it’s a load of crap. I still can’t find anything in the Constitution that mentions “reasonable restrictions”. G-r-r-r.
(Edited to fix some horrific grammatical errors. Why didn’t you guys says something?)