How One Woman Gained the Confidence to Carry Concealed
Dr. John Woods 09.20.16
![How One Woman Gained the Confidence to Carry Concealed How One Woman Gained the Confidence to Carry Concealed](/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/DSC_0191.jpg)
In a couple lifetimes you don’t meet many people like Kim Condon. Unique, well yes, but really just an everyday person like me or you. She would say she is not anything special with special talents, characteristics, or abilities. Having said that, she would be wrong.
Kim Condon and her husband, Mark, of Clinton, Mississippi have worked through the process, thought, dreamed, designed, and built one of the most state-of-the-art firearms training facilities in the country. Named the Boondocks Firearms Training Academy in Raymond, Mississippi, it is in a rural location but really only ten miles southwest of the state’s capitol city of Jackson. Access is easy and the facilities are top notch.
So, why would somebody, a lady in particular, want to create such a shooting venue? For her own self-worth, self-protection, and to foster that among other women shooters as well as anybody desiring to learn to shoot a firearm correctly for all the right reasons.
“Moving from a feeling of unprepared helplessness to becoming fully empowered to protect one’s self is quite a transformation,” says Kim Condon. Kim made these comments not so long ago as an explanation as to why she wanted to establish the Boondocks FTA. She was driven by the need to build her own confidence and to see it grow in others. She is well on her way.
Kim did not just blindly travel down this road either. She and her husband attended several nationally recognized shooting facilities around the country. They were not simple tourists to observe either. They attended the courses, shot their rounds of fire, and learned the skills firsthand by sweat and I imagine some tears as well. Then they came home and went to work.
Kim was already an entrepreneur so she had down the fundamentals of starting a business, but creating a shooting range was a bit different. “We owned the land, but laying out the site was pretty interesting. We started with a lodge type training building with a big training room, then included the idea for a comprehensive, well-stocked pro shop. We put in two pistol shooting ranges, made space for other future ranges, then we added an outdoors open air gathering building with a huge fireplace,” Kim noted. The site is not only functional, but beautiful.
Now, weekly training courses of all kinds are taught in the class and on the range. Kim works with the group The Well Armed Woman, local chapter and national organization, too. Check them out on Facebook for all the details.