Shepherd, Sheriff's Auxiliary, activist
I'm
Eric Vought. My wife and I raise sheep on a small farm in MIssouri. I'm disabled, so I tend to
write a lot more now than other things, but we are active volunteers and activists for community self- reliance and personal freedoms, including the RTKBA. I have been helping some of the groups locally research and tweak proposed state legislation.
I am the Commander of the relatively recent (Feb 2012)
Lawrence County Sheriff's Auxiliary which is a volunteer uniformed civil service working emergency and disaster response under the Office of the Sheriff. There are other programs across the country that enlist volunteers to work with law enforcement (under, e.g. VIPS) but none quite as ambitious as this one, in terms of our training and anticipated duties and in the fact that we incorporate armed volunteers, something which seems to have fallen out of favor sometime in the 50's or 60's and which communities and agencies are much more interested in today because of declining budgets and an increase in magnitude and frequency of weather emergencies. We were formed in the wake of the Joplin EF5 which had Deputies from 14 Missouri counties deployed in the disaster zone, leaving local response short-handed.
We have spent much of the last year organizing and designing a training/qualification program (first aid, communications, self-defense, law, disaster response) to try to balance the needs of having competent, well-organized responders on the field versus the reality of the time and expense commitment asked of volunteers. Our county has a Reserve Deputy program for part-time licensed Peace Officers which generally attracts people either retiring from or trying to get into a full-time law enforcement career. By contrast, our volunteers are not necessarily connected to law enforcement but more interested in the community service and emergency response aspects.
Personally, firearms are more or less just another tool for us on the farm, carry permits are required by the Auxiliary, we carry much of the time, and shoot to stay in practice. Black powder has become a bit of a hobby and I actually consider bp shooting to be fun (modern inline bp rifle and a replica 1858 Remington revolver), no longer being able to keep up with archery.
I was a student at Simon's Rock College during the 1992 shooting and have been writing a bit about that in the last few months. I have recently been asked to be part of a panel on Active Shooter situations at the upcoming IAEM in October and am looking for good discussion to challenge and refine my own thinking. Most of the online discussions are frankly nuts on all sides of the issue. I came to this forum because of its very high reputation and have been lurking for a bit.
. If you made it this far thanks for reading and i hope to be a positive contributer to the site.
