When Trump went down to Atlanta to talk to his NRA friends, he stood there and said with a majestic tone in his voice: “The eight-year assault on the 2nd Amendment has come to an end.” Well, maybe it wasn’t so majestic but you get the point. And like just about everything he says, this dyslexic, ignorant Head of State got it wrong because what he should have said was that the eight-year gun-buying frenzy has come to an end.

There was never an ‘assault’ on the 2nd Amendment even though there were and still are efforts to regulate gun ownership so that we might not suffer from 120,000+ gun deaths and injuries each year. But I didn’t hear any of the pro-GVP politicians or activists ever say that the 2nd Amendment should be abolished, or that law-abiding Americans shouldn’t be able to own guns. Yea, yea, I know - everyone who says they’re against gun violence is really against guns. So what? It’s not going to happen, it never could happen, from a legal and legislative point of view, guns are here to stay.

But what if people simply stop buying guns? What if everyone who wants to own a gun has more guns than they know what to do with, a situation which happens increasingly to be true? If you’re in the business of making guns, you better figure out a new way to sell them or you’ll go out of business, that’s for sure. And I’ve been watching and waiting since November 8th to see what the gun industry would come up with to make up for the loss of demand once their customers realized that they didn’t have to worry about losing their guns.

And the first evidence of a change in strategy came in an email I just received from the NRA. It’s an invitation to become a certified ‘Carry Guard’ instructor, a new training program developed by a self-promoter who claims to be a former Navy Seal with twenty years of naval special warfare experience who also says that he’s a writer and consultant to the outdoor industry, whatever that means. He claims to have a book coming out, Terminal List, which I suspect will be an attempt to gain the attention of all the Tom Clancy fans (which includes me) now that the real Clancy is dead.

Actually, Carry Guard is an insurance program which claims to protect you from ‘certain’ losses if you engage in an act of self-defense using a legally-owned gun. The training program has been tacked on as an extra feature and is advertised as being the ‘gold standard in concealed carry training,’ although the actual details of the program remain to be worked out. If you send an email indicating your interest in becoming a student or an instructor you don’t get any reply, a note on the website says to check back in June for further information about courses, dates and costs.

The NRA started in 1871 as a training organization and currently claims to have more than 100,000 certified trainers, one of whom happens to be me. The training is basically about gun safety and safe gun use and is usually the course which is mandated by the states that require some training in gun safety prior to applying for a gun license or a concealed-carry permit, a.k.a. CCW or LTC. The NRA offers two courses, Defensive Pistol and Personal Protection Outside the Home, which cover aspects of concealed-carry techniques but do not focus on armed self-defense per se.

The gun industry has been venerating the ‘armed citizen’ since the 1980’s. It’s a load of crap. Now they are pushing further into fantasy pretending that military assault and tactical skills are a necessary response to the ‘dangers’ of the modern age.

Want to protect yourself from a sudden event that might change your life? Learn to read and write.