Grandpa's, Prayers and Wyatt Earp...From the Internet

 

Why I Carry a Gun

My [old] grandpa said to me, "...son, there comes a time in every man's life when he stops bustin' knuckles and starts bustin' caps and usually it's when he becomes too old to take an ass whoopin".

I don't carry a gun to kill people. I carry a gun to keep from being killed.

I don't carry a gun to scare people.  I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.

I don't carry a gun because I'm paranoid.  I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.

I don't carry a gun because I'm evil.  I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.

I don't carry a gun because I hate the government.  I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.

I don't carry a gun because I'm angry.  I carry a gun so that I don't have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.

I don't carry a gun because I want to shoot someone.  I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.

I don't carry a gun because I'm a cowboy.  I carry a gun because, when I die and go to heaven, I want to be a cowboy.

I don't carry a gun to make me feel like a man.   I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the ones they love.

I don't carry a gun because I feel inadequate.  I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am inadequate.

I don't carry a gun because I love it.   I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful to me.

Police Protection is an oxymoron. Free citizens must protect themselves.

Police do not protect you from crime, they usually just investigate the crime after it happens and then call someone in to clean up the mess.

Personally, I carry a gun because I'm too young to die and too old to take an ass whoopin'.

Author unknown 

Defenders Prayer   

Lord make me fast and accurate
 

Let my aim be true
And my hand faster
Than those who would seek to destroy me
 

Grant me victory over my foes
And those that wish to do harm to me and mine
 

Let not my last thought be "If I only had my gun"

 
And Lord if today is truly
The day that you call me home
 

Let me die bravely
In a pile of empty brass

Author Unknown 

Concealed Carry Prayer

Heavenly Father, Protector, Shepherd, In You we trust.
It was Your hand that guided the authors of the Constitution as each amendment was penned.
And it is with that heart, born out of a desire to protect your flock against the evil of a fallen world
That I have chosen to exercise my God-given right to carry a gun.

And I pray with every waking breath, with every essence of my being,
That I am not called to use it.
But if I’m called to protect the flock,
Let my reaction be swift,
My training be true,
And my aim precise.
And if it is my day to return to you,
Oh, Father,
Before I go,
May innocents be saved and the evil destroyed.
Amen.

Author Unknown

Wyatt Earp's Five Thoughts on Gunfighting

1. If I hoped to live long on the frontier, I would shun flashy trick-shooting — grandstand play — as I would poison.
2. When I say that I learned to take my time in a gunfight, I do not wish to be misunderstood, for the time to be taken was only that split fraction of a second that means the difference between deadly accuracy with a six gun and a miss. It is hard to make this clear to a man who has never been in a gunfight. Perhaps I can best describe such time  as going into action with the greatest speed of which a man’s muscles are capable, but mentally un-flustered by an urge to hurry or the need for complicated nervous and muscular actions which trick-shooting involves. Mentally deliberate, but muscularly faster than thought, is what I mean. 
3. In all my life as a frontier police officer, I did not know a really proficient gunfighter who had anything but contempt for the gun-fanner, or the man who literally shot from
   
   the hip.
4. In the days of which I am talking, among men whom I have in mind, when a man went after his guns, he did so with a single, serious purpose. There was no such thing as a bluff; when a gunfighter reached for his forty-five, every faculty he owned was keyed to shooting as speedily and as accurately as possible, to making his first shot the last of the fight. He just had to think of his gun solely as something with which to kill another before he himself could be killed. The possibility of intimidating an antagonist was remote, although the ‘drop’ was thoroughly respected, and few men in the West would draw against it. I have seen men so fast and so sure of themselves that they did go after their guns while men who intended to kill them had them covered, and what is more win out in the play. They were rare. It is safe to say, for all general purposes, that anything in gunfighting that smacked of show-off or bluff was left to braggarts who were ignorant or careless of their lives.
5. I have often been asked why five shots without reloading were all a top-notch gunfighter fired, when his guns were chambered for six cartridges. The answer is, merely, safety. To ensure against accidental discharge of the gun while in the holster, due to hair-trigger adjustment, the hammer rested upon an empty chamber. As widely as this was known and practiced, the number of cartridges a man carried in his six-gun may be taken as an indication of a man’s rank with the gunfighters of the old school. Practiced gun-wielders had too much respect for their weapons to take unnecessary chances with them; it was only with tyros and would-bes that you heard of accidental discharges or didn’t-know-it-was-loaded injuries in the country where carrying a Colt’s was a man’s prerogative.

Source of quotes – Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshall by Stuart Lake