It appears everyone’s fun loving pal, Joan, has been including me in some of her posts lately. Since I have not returned to her blog, I was completely unaware, but a few bloggers have brought it to my attention, so I popped on over, one last time to see what was up. From what she has been saying, it looks like Grumpy Bastard’s place as my BFF is secure.

I haven’t gone back to her site because I think she is a non-issue. She does not say, do, or post a single bit of helpful, inspiring, funny, educational, or thought provoking information. I get nothing from her. She doesn’t upset me as I have zero respect for her or her mission, so I feel my time can be better spent doing almost anything else.

I have a deep admiration for the other bloggers that are standing up to her and calling her out for what she is, here is another fine example of someone doing just that, but for me I think my efforts are better served helping other victims stop being victims.

Joan has no desire to stop being a victim. For whatever reason, living a life of fear filled with anger and hatred serves her well. That mindset only served to make me fell empty, alone and hopeless, so I chose to find a better more constructive way to live my life and my life’s mission is to help others do the same.

To be honest, I don’t think Joan is much of an adversary. The number of people who are buying into the idea that it is the responsibility of the government to protect them is dwindling at an astonishing rate. Just look at what is going on in Wisconsin. Just look at the numbers climbing for gun ownership among women. Just look at the growing numbers for gun sales in general.

Empty rhetoric is not sustainable. The comments that are left on her posts prove that. The last one had 3. One was from our Jennifer, one was from Joan, and one was from the only guy that appears to support her. People get tired of being scared and angry and eventually they want solutions.

I think the best thing I can do for victims is to share my story and to give real solid resources to help them either avoid being a victim or help them heal from it.

I intend to spend my days doing just that.

And here it is…if you want to know about guns, ammo, self defense, legel issues, training or anything involving tongue punching, you should probably not ask me.

My letter to the anti gun folks has brought me a lot of attention and thus a lot of new people coming to the blog, which I love, but I fear it has given people the false idea that I know something about guns.

My blog is 10 months old. Exactly the same amount of time that I have been shooting. I have learned a lot and I am happy to share my experiences with you and tell you what I have learned, but I am new, new, new and I am not qualified to give advice.

If, for whatever reason, you still want to email me or ask me a question here, that is fine. It’s great. I truly want to help if I can, but chances are about 99% of the time, I am going to send you to the people that help me.

That letter I wrote was not some idealistic rambling. It has been my reality. I have relied heavily on a small community of gunnies that have followed my journey. They know me. They know my story and they have invested in my healing and growth. They are who I go to, a lot.

You don’t have to go back very far in my archives to see the proof. My blog is primarily 3 things. A chronicle of my journey out of a bad situation. A place where I share what I have learned and a place where I ask questions. I ask a lot of questions.

If you have a question about the victim mindset or overcoming a bad guy encounter or what it is like to transition from non gunnie to gun nut, then I am your girl. If you are looking for someone who has access to the smartest, funniest, most supportive people on the planet, then I am your girl. If you are looking for someone to explain to you the what gun takes the 5.56×45 NATO cartridge then I am gonna have to refer you. Well, ok, I know that one, but you get the picture.

I say this not because I am annoyed or upset by the questions. I am not. Its been great talking with you all. I say it because I want you to have the best information you can get and the best thing I can do for you, is to point you in the right direction.

So, ask if you must, but be prepared to be redirected. Thanks so much for coming here to visit with me and to share, it has been a blast. I hope you stick around. I love having you here!

In just short 3 short weeks we will have our winner to the training Give-A-Way!!  I am so excited!!

As I mentioned before, the participation in the Give-A-Way has far exceeded my expectations; because of that I am making another adjustments.

I mentioned before that I thought maybe 20 women would sign up, so I planned on just sticking their names in a hat and pulling one.  Now we have around 200 women who have signed up, so I am not sure a hat is the best way to pick the winner.  I know there are some computer programs that help with this. I might be using one of those.  I still might do some modified version of picking a name from a hat.  I will let you know.

We also have another prized donated by the very nice people over at Firearm Protector!!!!!!  Please check out the side bar for details on the prize and maybe head to their site and leave a comment saying thanks!

There are so many aspects to preparing for self defense that sometimes it can seem overwhelming.  Especially to those of us that are brand new, not only to guns, but just the idea of defending our lives. A basic course will touch on many different topics to help us get started in changing our thinking, but often times we will leave with more questions than answers.   One of the things that was address in my conceal carry class, that left me with a whole lot of questions, was what to do after the shots are fired. We actually discussed it a lot, but there is no way to cover everything in one 2 day course.

I was reading  this post this morning over at God, Gals, Guns, Grub and thought it was excellent. I would recommend reading it, maybe a couple of times.

The nice guy over at The Calm Gun had some unfortunate computer issues and was forced to create a new blog.  Please go visit him at his new location.

Thanks again for all the nice comments about The Open Letter To The Anti Gun Folks.  I am not sure what is consider a lot of views, but as of last night(day 3 of it being up)  I had 12,852.  My next largest viewed post is the Give-A-Way at 1,243. I am humbled by how many people have taken the time to read it and share their comments with me.   I have been overwhelmed by your kindness.

In the rare instance that someone has been negative, I haven’t bothered to defend myself or the post (except in one thread where I simple added clarification) because the people I care about knew what I meant and the others, well their opinions don’t matter to me.  If I knew that my post was going to go viral, as JD put it, I might have made some classifications, but probably not.  

Moving on,

Recently we celebrated my birthday.  My kids made me this cake and I put on my FaceBook that I didn’t have candles in protest of vigils that serve no purpose and are ridiculous, but really my family just forgot to buy them.

This is what my family bought me for presents!!.  I opened up a bag filled with these goodies and the first 2 things I pulled out were packages with what looked to me to be rope, so I said, “Am, I going repelling?”  My husband, said, “Good grief no”.  “Not with 550 cord your not.”  I have a lot to learn and my husband, the Marine, he didn’t really say “good grief”:)

Thank God he stopped me or I might have gone off and done something stupid, like fling myself off a cliff and then I would have to join forces with Courtney and I really don’t want to have to do that.

A wonderful woman from the Noisy Room sent me a very kind email today asking if she could repost my “Open Letter To The Anti Gun Folks” on her blog.

To say that I was flattered would be an understatement.  

As my support and my community, I know you have already read my post, as you are the ones who inspired it, but if you would like see it on her blog go here.

I stole that title from Sean.

Sean has planned an Appleseed trip and he has invited us all to come along.

My husband and I are taking him up on that offer and we both are very excited.  This will be our first time, so I am nervous, but I have heard great things about the event and the people who put it on, plus I get to make Sean look at my tats, so its a win-win.

For more information go here.

Hope to see you all there.

This is for the women, who like me, at one time, or maybe still, doubted their worth.

 If you think for one minute you aren’t worth the fight, think about this..

Someone else in your life does.

You, all by yourself matter. You don’t need a single person to validate your worth, but if you are still working your way to that truth, think about someone, anyone, in your life who would miss you if you decided not to fight.

So, I got another one of ones those “your blog is kind of jacked up” emails from North last night.

He told me my blog is kind of hard to read and suggested I make the font bigger and play with the colors a bit.

I want you all to know that I am aware that my blogs lacks, well everything. It’s not a good design and you may want to sit down for this,

I don’t know what I am doing.

The only person less skilled on a computer than me, is my husband. We literally email, search the web and FB. That is it.

When I first set up the blog, I picked a template, followed the prompts, and started typing. I hated the background color, font color etc. That is actually one of the reasons for so many paragraph breaks. The font size makes it hard to read. Also, I am terrible at asking for help or asking for anything from people, so I just never did. Plus, to be honest, I didn’t even know I could change those things. I had seen cool stuff on other blogs, but I figured it was some professional thing and I am not spending money on a blog no one reads:)

I am still not spending money on the blog because I want to spend it on guns and other col stuff like that, but now that I know how, I will try to make it a better viewing and reading experience for you.

Please be patient as I try to play around the next few days and find what works best. I am not making massive changes. My blog is plain, but strangely, I have grown very attached to it and my new name. I love when you all call me “A Girl”.

I am forever grateful to Mr. North for helping me so much! I desperately needed some assistance and you, as always, were there.

So, I was at Weer’d’s place today and I read this, so I went and checked it out what Joan had to say.

I am not really confrontational and by not really, I mean, NOT AT ALL, and this will probably be the last time I go trolling in the anti cesspool, but she was talking about a vigil that I took part in and I thought I should at least attempt, one time to voice my feelings directly to her instead of just here safely behind 7000(that’s how many of you have come to see me today) of my closest gun friends.

This is how it went…

I said- I am a victim of violence. I was standing in a parking lot, traumatized with my 7 year old daughter. It was not a good day. I participated in the candle light vigil along with my gun because if, God forbid, another awful man comes at me, I have no intention of taking a chance that the next time he just might get my daughter. I hate violence. I hate being a victim. I hate be vulnerable, but what I hate more is having someone tell me I don’t have the right to fight back. This was not a mocking. It was a peaceful way to say it takes more than a candle to stop the bad guy.

She said- No one says you don’t have a right to fight back. If you truly believe there are too many victims and actually lit a candle for that reason, then you believe what I believe. Otherwise, you are mocking. No one said candles would stop anything. You totally missed the point of the whole thing- on purpose I would add.

I said-This will be my last comment, but I do find it interesting that for a group that claims to care so much about people, you didn’t offer me one bit of concern. You didn’t say, gee that must have been hard or I am sorry for your daughter. You just said I missed the point. I think I got it. Loud and clear. Me, the person, the victim, doesn’t matter at all to you.

She said- Nothing.  She didn’t post it.  She has posted other comments and 2 other posts, so I am thinking she is not gonna post it.  

I was over at Newbie Shooter’s place and read this.  I like what he has to say much better.

Just wanted to do a quick update.  We have 2 more prizes donated by 2 more fabulous people. 

Bill  over at Eastern Iowa Firearms training has donated a class for the winner and her friend if the winner either lives in Iowa or is willing to travel there.  That is in addition to the $300 I am donating.  That’s a lot of training folks.

I, again, want to reiterate that all of this donations are going to a single winner and that all of them have come from the kind hearts of these fine people.  I have only solicited one prize.  All the rest have connected me and asked if they could contribute…THAT ROCKS!!

About that one that I solicited, a few days ago, I made a comment on my FaceBook about how much I was enjoying the Remora Holster, but was kind of bummed that I had misplaced my single mag pouch.

A few minutes later Jacqui Reilly from Remora posts a comment, “send me your address and I will send you a new one.”

What?  I didn’t even know she followed my FB haps.  Very cool.

I emailed her right a way and told her I would be happy to pay for my magazine pouch, but would she be at all interested in donating one of their fine holsters for the Give-A-Way.

Her answers, Absolutely!  We would love to!

Score!!!!

Also, a few days ago, I got an email from the gentleman that runs the Weapon Blog, a blog that list all the contests, raffles, give-a-ways, etc.

He has listed our little Give-A-Way.  Again, very cool!!!  He has a lot of great contests listed, so if you haven’t already, head on over and see if there is anything you would like to try for.

At the time I checked out his list, I noticed we are the only ones under the heading of training.

I am not sure if anyone else has given away trainings before, but I am starting to suspect that it is not something that has been done a lot.

Since we all know how important training is, I was a little surprised, so I am aiming to change that.  I have a few things I am working on and lets just see if we can not make training a priority prize. 

If you know of a group, blog, organization that is offering training as a prize please let me know and also let the Weapon Blog people know, so it can be listed there.

On a personal note, I was over visiting ZerCool’s blog and he has a post about needing prayers.  I do not have any details as it is none of my business, but I would appreciate you all heading over there, giving him some words of encouragement and if you are the praying kind, pray.

Good luck to everyone for whatever contest you choose!  Have a great day!  I am off to my real life!