Licensed to Kill

I’m going to tell you a story about gun training — what it’s like in America today, and what it could be.

It was September 2023 in Austin, Texas. We’d been sitting in a classroom in the back of a gun shop for six hours, poring over the letter of the law and watching news clips about civilians defending their homes against masked invaders. It was a bit performative for my group. There were two dozen of us, and most of us were combat veterans. But we were curious to experience what it was like for a civilian to earn a license to carry a concealed firearm in the Lone Star State. 

The state of Texas doesn’t require any training prior to carrying a concealed firearm, but they still offer a state-sanctioned curriculum. The idea of allowing people to carry hidden guns in public without copious amounts of training, quite frankly, flies in the face of everything we learned in the military about guns. So for me and my veteran friends, this was less about the training or the certification and more of an experiment to see if civilian gun safety training was as bad as we’d been told. 

The instructor was named Steve (name changed) — a barrel-chested Black man in a polo shirt embroidered with his company logo — and he was carrying a holstered SIG Sauer 1911 Spartan, a large pistol with the image of a Spartan mask clearly visible on the grip. The way the gun protruded 6 inches above his belt line seemed like an odd flex, but this was Texas, where the hubris associated with firearms knows few bounds. 

“How can he quickly draw that pistol when the grip is as high as his elbow?” I whispered to my fellow classmate. We ultimately decided that functionality didn’t matter. He thought it looked cool and that was enough. 

After the classroom portion of the course, we emerged from the gun dealer’s back room into the bright Central Texas sun and sauntered across the strip-mall parking lot to our vehicles, ready to head to the range. I drove separately, so I was not in the van with the instructor when the question of the day was asked.

“Hey Steve,” my friend later told me he inquired, “You said you were in the Army. What was your MOS?”

One veteran asking the military occupational specialty of another is the equivalent of meeting someone from your hometown and asking what neighborhood they lived in. It’s standard and benign but can also tell you a lot about the person.

Steve was teaching us — and countless others over the years — how to have a loaded firearm in public. What do you need to know to be armed at the mall and not risk harming children? How seriously must we take the responsibility that comes with possession of a tool that can instantaneously take human life? These lessons should be the basic tenets of any license to carry course. And because the stakes are so high, the quality and experience of our instructor matters. 

I had chosen Steve for two reasons. First, he was located in Austin, where my group was already gathering for other meetings. Second, he was also a veteran; thus, I assumed the gun skills he would teach us would be commensurate with what we had learned in the military. It also didn’t hurt that Steve was Black, because one of the biggest criticisms of these types of classes — especially those sponsored by the gun lobby — is the use of coded racial language to stoke fear and incentivize the desire for more people to carry guns in public at all times.

Back in the van, Steve told the passengers that his MOS was “42 Romeo.” Veterans like us typically recognize a few MOSs. Eleven Bravo is infantry, 19 Delta is a cavalry scout, 31 Bravo is military police, and perhaps a handful of others can be deciphered from the alphanumeric nomenclature; 42R is not one of those.

At this point, most veterans would’ve nodded their heads and politely inquired, “What’s a 42R, again?” as if we definitely knew once, but just couldn’t recall at the moment. 

Steve volunteered that he had played the trombone in the Army band.

Did we snicker at the concept of being taught how to carry a loaded gun down the public street by a dude who spent most of his Army career providing the live soundtrack to parades and award ceremonies — the literal pomp for the circumstance? Maybe. Though, when I heard, I just rolled my eyes because I appreciate irony.

But that’s the norm for those of us who served in the military. Give me a veteran, and I’ll give you five ways to poke fun at them. The Air Force has cushy offices and nice golf courses. The Navy “deploys” to “hot spots” like Sydney and Bangkok. The Marine Corps — to their chagrin — is part of the Navy. And the Army has trombone players. It’s all in good fun.

We also respect each other immensely. And I respect every moment Steve served in the Army. At home or abroad, whether he was performing a march by Sousa or qualifying at the range with his service weapon. There is no doubt in my mind that his service is every bit as valuable as mine and that of every other veteran I was with that day.

The truth is, most of us had lost confidence in Steve well before we knew his MOS. He lost us by teaching a concealed-carry class that focused not on the awesome responsibility of carrying a weapon that can kill others in an instant, but on fear, paranoia and how to get away with discharging a firearm in public.

His training consisted of PowerPoint slide after slide with screenshots of state statutes accompanied by a discussion about how not to get arrested. Examples of times when a license holder can shoot another human being and not worry about getting convicted of a crime. Frightening elaborations of scenarios where there is some legal gray area. And a reminder to buy insurance from the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, and then, if you discharge your weapon, to call them before the gun stops smoking.

Steve taught us that in Texas, if someone steals “tangible, movable property” from you before sunset, you can’t legally shoot them, but 30 minutes after the sun goes down, it’s legal. Steve, apparently, advocates for checking celestial tables before killing another human.

With pride, Steve recounted the story of his stepfather shooting and killing a man attempting to enter the second floor of his home through an unlocked window using a ladder taken from an unlocked shed. This happened in Georgia, but Steve must have pitched it to local news in Texas. There was no thought that if the property had been locked up, the gun wouldn’t have been necessary. There was no mention of what the invader was after or whether the deceased had children or not.

To be fair, Steve did share some of what I assume were required slides on the secure storage of firearms — a key tenet to military gun safety. Each slide was shown for about three seconds, enough to check the box but not absorb the information.

Perhaps the most egregious and offensive example was the “self-defense” insurance salesman that Steve peddled into the room in the early afternoon. According to him, the world was full of shadowy armed men intent on doing harm to you and your little lady. But for a low, low monthly payment, you can be shielded from litigation, protected from the law, and feel free to shoot before you see the whites of their eyes. Some people call this coverage “murder insurance,” and it’s quite commonplace to be pitched on this coverage in gun safety courses that are affiliated with the gun lobby or gun dealers. 

Strangely, through the entire course, we only shot 50 rounds — most of us using .22-caliber Glocks that we picked up on the firing line fully loaded. This was the only contact we had with a gun in the entire course. It was a stark contrast to the hours upon hours I spent in military training learning every part of an M16; taking it apart, cleaning it and reassembling it, with no ammunition in sight.

By the end, my group completed the concealed-carry license requirements. Mine is in my wallet. A piece of plastic that empowers me to carry a hidden gun in public in 37 states. I’ve never done it, and I don’t intend to. I prefer to express my machismo in ways less likely to harm others. But I carry the card and remember how easily I obtained it.

Beyond that back room

This was just one training session administered to one group. Thousands of similar courses happen every year in Texas, and all over the country — courses that are facilitated by gun shop owners and insurance brokers who stand to make a profit when the students buy, carry and even use a firearm. 

Even though Texas and 28 other states don’t actually require training or a permit to carry a concealed gun in public, the courses still exist. Most people take them because they want the knowledge; they want to be responsible. Additionally, states can offer legal advantages to holding a license to carry, meaning that the law might be more permissive of your use of a gun in public.

The states that allow for permitless carry are, by definition, dangerous. People who have never held a gun before can purchase one, load it and walk into a grocery store with it in their pocket, all on the same day. The gun lovers call this permissive policy “constitutional carry” because they believe it’s covered by the Bill of Rights. But, to me, that’s a bastardized reading of the Second Amendment from a group of people who hide behind our nation’s founding document, because they love guns — as a hobby, a sign of strength or cosplay.

I was recently inside a state capitol building during a contentious hearing about gun legislation. I was advocating in favor of banning military-style assault rifles. One of the gun bros was dressed in 18th century Colonial attire, complete with powdered wig. He bore a resemblance to James Madison, perhaps because he was short. Madison was, famously, 5 feet, 4 inches tall.

“Hey James,” I hollered, “What’s the Sixth Amendment?”

Surely, I caught him off guard, but I’d bet my Adidas sneakers against his knickers that he didn’t know. Maybe he doesn’t even know how many amendments are in the Bill of Rights. But he’s sure as hell memorized the Second. (The Sixth Amendment provides the right to a speedy trial. An important one to know if you didn’t buy the insurance from Steve’s guy.)

I have spoken up against gun violence for various organizations and efforts throughout the years, and it’s a strange thing to be a combat veteran immersed in the national gun debate. It feels like half the country is hoping to prevent gun violence and death, while the other half has no problem with nearly 50,000 Americans dying by guns each year. Every time I think about our nation’s gun culture, I simply can’t square it with my military firearms training.

I qualified as an expert on the M9 pistol and M4 carbine. I took both weapons to Afghanistan and carried the M9 as a sidearm at all times. Until I got to a combat zone, I never, ever carried a loaded weapon outside of a weapons range. I was not military police, so I had no need to be armed in public. It would be ridiculous to walk into the post exchange with a gun in tow.

Moreover, when it came to firearm use, even in combat — especially in combat — the most important skill was not how to get away with shooting, but rather how not to shoot.

A close friend who served as an Army special operator once explained to me that if we wanted to kill the enemy indiscriminately, we’d use bombs, rockets and grenades. We put small arms into human hands because humans can exercise judgment. We can teach soldiers when not to shoot. And spoiler alert, we almost always choose not to shoot.

Yet, that’s not what people across the country are learning in firearms training courses — whether they are required by the state they live in or not. In way too many of these courses, new gun owners are being taught to fear the world and everything in it. They are told that danger lurks around every corner, and all too often the person who represents the danger happens to come from a different background. They are learning, quite literally, how to get away with murder.

To be honest, Steve’s course was probably in the top 20% of gun safety training courses out there, and that frightens me. 

We need something different. We need a new formula for firearms training taught not by those who stand to make money from gun sales and shootings, but by those who respect firearms the way we do in the military and understand their use against another human should only be a last resort. We need to teach people to exercise judgment. We need to counter fear with knowledge.

The experience the other veterans and I had with Steve so dismayed us that we’re doing something about it and building courses that focus on safety and accountability by emulating the respect for firearms we learned in the military. We are now working with Everytown for Gun Safety to advise on Train SMART, their new firearms training program. 

We hope Train SMART provides smart answers to many of the questions we had in Steve’s course. The questions that you must ask before you shoot. And believe me, there were a lot of questions floating around that day, and most had little to do with the trombone.