As part of my job with the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, I’ve had the chance to talk with responsibly armed Americans from across the country through our social media pages and online Community. We’ve had numerous conversations about protecting yourself and your loved ones — and not just physically. Protecting your reputation and private information are also important to your safety.
Thank you for bringing this to the fore again. Many discussions may go off track and the heat of the moment comments posted without considering the consequences of what was posted. Dawn does a fantastic job keeping this reined in and I applaud her for that. Please people read the above and govern yourselves accordingly. Bless.
Dawn and the entire USCCA staff is awesome. I met her when I went to the concealed carry expo in Pittsburgh last year. Everything she says here is true and to the point. Prosecuting attorneys can and do use biligerent and offensive comments against people in court. You have to really be careful. They will find anything they can to incriminate and trip a person up in court and will use it against their entire case.
This is exactly what I teach in class, CCHD as well as DSF.
If you think like minded with someone, take it off line, email, text or over the phone, but not where 12 reasonably minded people can be told in court what you think inside your head by your public actions online.
Thank you Dawn. I am reading “The Perfect Weapon” by David Sanger and it is all cyber. You don’t want to get jammed up by leaving an electronic trail that leads to an adverse conclusion. Thank you for sharing cyber hygiene tips that make a real word difference. Should be required reading for anyone who has an online presence. Next stop for me is a high quality body cam to record any threats that may require self defense.
Agree completely with this article. When I do post, I use expressions of “defending my family or me” and my goal of “stopping an attacker” to protect others and myself. I learned this during my concealed carry class. Such words paint someone else as the aggressor and me as the victim. I’ve had to caution my friends to do the same as well. What happens after an attacker is stopped I’ll leave up to God, but as we’ve seen in news articles, it doesn’t automatically lead to death.
Just this year, I’ve seen a number of people get in trouble for things they said on the internet. Sometimes it’s something said in a heated exchange or late at night, when we don’t make the best rational decisions. Other times it’s been something said to the wrong people, who these days take it upon themselves to hunt down anyone with whom they disagree in order to ruin their livelihood.
The internet is a dangerous place.
There’s no anonymity. Not really. You can hide your name, but it can be found.
There is public information about you and your family on the internet. A lot.
There’s no expiration date. Things you said a decade ago are still out there in the archives.
You can control what you say, but you can’t control what others say about you.
As the saying goes, if you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product.
Frankly, people need to reconsider how they use Social Media and what platforms they use.
Great topic and discussion. And it’s just not gun related comments that people can use against you. Four years ago I spoke out against the direction of the church denomination I belonged to, which is extremely liberal in its theology. An interim minister selectively edited my comments in an effort to publicly attack me. He even went so far as to threaten to withdraw the church’s support of an area homeless agency, if I wasn’t removed from the Board of that agency.