Protect Peace

Most of us became gun owners to protect the people we love and to save lives.

There are some that sit around "wishing someone would," you know, the FAFO crowd. Many looking for the confrontation, some hoping it comes.

This week, the news put both types in the spotlight.

While Tennessee is one of the most 2A-friendly states in the country, an "influencer" called Chud the Builder pulled a firearm outside the Montgomery County courthouse and shot a man. He's now charged with attempted murder. His whole "brand" was going place to place calling people the N-word, accusing them of "ch*mping out," and pulling his firearm when they got irate. They call him an influencer. What exactly was he influencing people to do?

Two days earlier in Massachusetts which is classified as one of the most 2A-hostile states in the country, a Marine veteran on Memorial Drive heard gunfire, retrieved his legally carried pistol, and ran toward it. He helped a state trooper stop an active shooter who had already fired more than 50 rounds at random drivers. Along the way he pulled a woman out of her stuck car, made a barricade with the door, and told her to run. She told reporters he saved her life. He probably saved a lot more.

When the 2A community is at our best, we believe in our tools and our training.

Our EDC rotation isn't just what's in the holster.

If we believe in the 2A, it shouldn't be to "FAFO." It should be to protect rights, save lives, and be a builder of a better future and stronger communities.

So we have to ask each other:

Which example are we setting?

Too many tragedies have hit the headlines lately.

The wife of a former lieutenant governor. A vice mayor. Eight children from one family. And so many others whose names never made the news.

Almost every one of them came with warning signs. Someone drinking themselves into a different person. A house where the fights kept getting louder. Someone saying they were fighting demons they couldn't fight alone — that they couldn't take it anymore.

The people who pulled the trigger are the ones who did this. But keeping our communities safe is on all of us.

In the community, we talk a lot about situational awareness — reading a room, knowing our surroundings, spotting a threat before it becomes violence.

How often do we use any of it on the people closest to us?

Getting trained on a firearm is half of protecting the people we love.

Learning the warning signs — and stopping a tragedy before it starts — is the other half.

Protect Peace’s very own Danielle L. Campbell breaks down why Florida’s AG is right — people with nonviolent felonies shouldn’t lose their gun rights.

When we say the war on guns must not become the next war on drugs, this is what we mean. People who have never hurt anyone shouldn’t be permanently barred from protecting themselves because of a nonviolent conviction.

If you paid your debt and you’re not a danger to anyone, your rights should follow you home.

Full op-ed in FloridaPolitics: https://floridapolitics.com/archives/788858-danielle-campbell-ag-james-uthmeier-breaks-precedent-on-nonviolent-felon-gun-rights/

We went to in Dallas last week and the whole experience was eye-opening. One of the most unexpectedly compelling workshops was "Conflict, Ego and the Law" by Douglas Deaton (). He talked about righteous anger being like a dangerous drug — and how often that feeling of being justified can lead to violence. It was thought-provoking in a way that stays with you. Some lessons land harder than others depending on when you hear them.

We often say that the only justified use of force is to defend a life. We even talk about the importance of knowing the difference between defending your life and defending your ego. takes it a step further by saying, "when the gun goes on, the ego comes off." But something about understanding how righteous anger acts like a drug — interrupting decisions that don't have to be life or death and making them precisely that — knowing the difference between defending your life and reacting to anger, even righteous anger, lands different.

As we dug into it more, there's real science behind what he was saying.

Righteous anger isn't neutral — it literally changes how we decide. It speeds us up, makes us more certain we're "right," and lowers our sensitivity to risk, so violent options can start to feel necessary or even noble. When we're morally outraged, brain systems linked to threat and reward light up, while careful, long-term thinking takes a back seat. That mix means we're more likely to choose actions that punish or harm, especially if our group or values feel attacked and our peers cheer us on.

More on this:
• Moral anger in decision-making and organizations (open access): pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5064625/
• How anger shifts risk-taking compared to fear: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4354239/

Training 2A Mindset pewpew

It's that time. Our first Shoot The S**t! of the year in Naples on February 21. Eat, build community and learn life-saving saving skills while sending rounds down range. Register now. Link below.