Calling All Concealed Firearms Instructors
Kathryn A. Graham, the Texas Director for Armed Females of America and co-owner of Safetynet Associates, has just launched a new Internet domain located at http://texaschlfaq.com, which contains a huge, completely separate, non-commercial and comprehensive Frequently Asked Questions list, or “FAQ,” covering the Texas Concealed Handgun Law. Over the next few months, Armed Females of America and Safetynet Associates have established an alliance to assist in building similar web sites for the numerous other U.S. states that have current shall-issue concealed carry legislation, using state certified instructor volunteers in their individual states who may also promote their own commercial licensing classes as compensation for their efforts, provided they do so with taste and in separate web documents.
(PRWEB) February 8, 2004 - San Antonio, TX -- The new Texas web site already
has more than 115 articles containing information for Texans on how to apply for
a concealed handgun license, the Texas rules and laws governing licensees
(including the changes in law that went into effect on September 1, 2003), gun
safety, conflict resolution, proper conduct upon contact with law enforcement,
additional resources for information about other states and reciprocity for the
Texas license, firearms rights advocacy organizations, and more.
The FAQ
web site is extremely easy and intuitive to use, and visitors are encouraged to
post new questions for Kathryn Graham and John Tarsikes, equal partners in
Safetynet Associates, to consider answering publicly in the FAQ for everyone to
access the information. There is no charge or obligation at any time for this
question and answer service, and you may post your questions completely
anonymously. You may also answer any open question for another person, with
personal or anonymous credit for the answer. Your answer will be held long
enough for any necessary editing and so it may be checked for accuracy against
the current law in Texas, and then if it is clear and accurate, it will posted
with or without credit, as you direct.
As a result, this is expected to
be an evolving and growing collection of documents, with frequent new
information - in other words, a growing online library on concealed carry in
Texas. While Graham and Tarsikes, as non-attorneys, may not interpret the law or
give legal advice, they can and will tell you what the statute says. They hope,
in the future, to find an attorney volunteer to answer more interpretive
questions.
The copyright on the site is very clear, and it explicitly
grants permission to print all or any part of the FAQ for your own study or to
pass on to another interested party without charge, provided credit is properly
attributed for the material. The only restrictions are that no fees may ever be
charged for the information, and the information needs to be refreshed from the
main site frequently to keep up with new changes. If you are a certified
instructor for Texas, you may use all or any part of this information or its
organization on this site to assist you in providing your own state-required
class and charge your usual fee for your time in teaching the class, provided
you do not charge an additional fee for this material. If you are a webmaster,
you may link to the entire FAQ, or print individual sections or articles for use
on your own web site(s), provided the articles are properly attributed and there
is no charge for anyone to access the information. Notification in all cases is
appreciated, but never required.
Both Ms. Graham and Mr. Tarsikes are
certified concealed handgun instructors for Texas, and they teach frequent
classes together for concealed handgun license applicants and renewals in the
San Antonio area, as well as throughout Texas, in addition to their private
investigations and security businesses which make up the core services of
Safetynet Associates.
“As things actually stood until I built this
site,” Ms. Graham comments, “there was no single place to easily access all of
this information on Texas unless you actually spent the necessary funds to apply
for the license and take the state-mandated class – at which point you only
hoped that your instructor would provide it all in a clear and understandable
format during the 10-15 hour class. Many of our students over the years have had
a lot of questions for us before they even felt entirely comfortable in making
the decision to apply for the license. The Texas Department of Public Safety has
always been quite cordial and willing to answer all questions for interested
parties, but the concealed handgun people at DPS are very short-handed, and it
can take some time to get an answer. Also, many people are understandably
hesitant to approach a government agency to ask questions about firearms, either
because they are afraid of personal embarrassment due to unfamiliarity with
firearms and/or the law, or because they are afraid of getting their names on
some possible government ‘watch’ list.
“Unless you ask for personal
credit on an article you post, which you are certainly more than welcome to do,”
Graham continues, “we will never even know, or care, who is actually posting. We
will review the information for clarity and accuracy under current Texas laws,
but we will not attempt to identify the poster. That’s the whole point of this
site. We expect this site to become a very, very busy place, and we expect to
have all we can do just to keep up with providing legitimate answers and
information on changes in the law as they take place. Short of a subpoena, the
State isn’t going to get any identifying information on you from our web server
logs if you want to keep it that way - and the sort of thing that John and I
think might generate such a subpoena would concern actual illegal activity in
the first place – and not the mere asking of a question. This site is meant to
be a public information repository for all law-abiding Texans with an interest
in firearms safety, laws and concealed carry. That’s all we intend for it to
be.”
Both Graham and Tarsikes are strong advocates of the right to keep
and bear arms. “As a retired police officer myself,” Tarsikes says, “I can
deeply appreciate the fact that every single U.S. state that has passed
shall-issue concealed carry legislation to date has seen extraordinary
reductions in violent crime. This is not rocket science! Nor is it any sort of
crime for any citizen to try to determine what the law is or how to follow it
without getting into trouble. This web site contains real world, practical
information from ordinary law-abiding people who have carried legally every day
for years under this law (which group includes more than 234,000 active licenses
as of this date), and something of this nature would have settled many of my own
concerns before I applied for the license in the first place. Kate and I now
hope that our site will help to settle those same concerns for other people, as
well as providing a quick reference and refresher material for those who already
have an active license.”
“And,” Kate adds with a twinkle in her eye, “the
more people who carry under the laws of this state without ever getting into
trouble, the harder it will become for our legislators to ever pass state
legislation attempting to take this very fundamental right away from us – and
the easier it will become to pass badly needed state legislation restoring true
Second Amendment carry under the U.S. Constitution - as the State of Alaska has
recently done to our great surprise and joy, rolling back decades of state gun
control laws. If I have a personal or political agenda for making this effort,
that’s it in a nutshell. Go ahead – please – and make the whole thing completely
unnecessary! Put us all out of business as license instructors! We want that
more than anything in the world. We would much rather spend our time just
teaching people how to shoot safely and accurately. If nothing else, it’s a
heckuva lot more fun!”
To volunteer for this effort in your own state and
find out what it will entail, please contact Safetynet Associates at
830-832-4189 or email the national offices of Armed Females of America at e-mail
protected from spam bots.
For more information:
http://www.texaschlfaq.com
http://www.armedfemalesofamerica.com
http://www.texasarmedfemales.com
http://www.safetynetassociates.com
Or contact John or
Kathryn at 830-832-4189.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/2/prweb103481.htm