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Even in the south you still have unarmed people. According the the FBI 1/3 of all American homes have guns, that still means 2/3 don’t.

Yes Rick had a bag full of guns. And then lost them. And then got them back. And then they got overrun. And then they went to the CDC. From the time Rick joined the group to the end of season 1 was under a week. When they finally did get some time in season 2 at the farm they indeed DID start teaching people how to shoot.

It’s not excusing to understand reality. She’d lived her life in a safe normal world where your kid can go out and play. And now she’s learning, not to mention dealing with all the psychological stress, almost everybody she’s ever known is dead, people are around her keep dieing, the dead are walking, people don’t just wake up one morning able to deal with a new scary reality. There’s a psychological process to deal with trauma, and people don’t function at their best during that.

Why wouldn’t people wander off alone. As you point out, they’re terrified. Any military trainer can tell you fear is the number one emotion for making bad decisions, that’s why so much of training is focused on making you work through fear. Heck Shane even talks about that while training Andrea how to shoot. Yes they SHOULDN’T wander off alone, but they will. People in bad situations do stupid things all the time, because they’re scared and people don’t think right then.

Nothing “suddenly” about it. One of the first things we’re told in the season 3 opener is that they’ve gone all through winter, we’re now 3 to 6 months after the end of season 2 and they’ve spent that time as a roaming band of foragers killing walkers. EVERYBODY has gotten better tactically. Because they’ve gotten the training and experience. It didn’t take months and a lot of whining to start that, they started that training in season 2, a few weeks after Rick joined the group. Your problem is you’re not understanding the timeline math. Season 1 from Rick getting to Atlanta to CDC getting blown up was about a week, season 2 from the freeway to the farm getting overrun was under a month, actually probably closer to 3 weeks. Total time from Rick getting to Atlanta to them starting the training was about 3 weeks, mostly on the run. The progression of what’s happened is very reasonable when you understand the math. They wanted to arm the group but understood most of the group needed training, when they had time for training they trained, now people are trained and they’re armed.

"People do weird things when they are scared."

This is where the writers go wrong. They know, from hearing stories about real people who were in severe survival situations, that tensions are high and people do desperate things, so they are trying to portray such desperate and weird things in the show. Except that they have their characters doing a whole bunch of things that frightened people would never do. That is because these writers have no idea what kind of weird and desperate things frightened people would actually do.

In a world full of flesh-eating zombies, nobody, and I mean NOBODY would wander off alone. You think fear would make them do this? On the contrary, the fear would make them cling together to almost an irrational level, like a drowning man who grabs onto whomever is near. Safety in numbers is one of the most powerfully instinctive behaviors we have. In a life-and-death situation, that instinct would be so powerful that those people would have a hard time leaving the safety of the group even for a second. Wandering off by one's self would be the farthest thing from a natural reaction to this kind of fear that one could think of, but the writes can't recognize that because they've never experienced anything more harsh than mild disagreements over which wine goes best with fish. They know that SOMETHING us supposed to happen when people fear for their lives, but they don't have a clue what, so they just make up silly stuff - and in this case they blew it.

As far as the gun issue goes, if it were me, anyone in my group would know the basics of using a firearm within the first few days. and, if we had the guns, they would all be carrying. Period. Shooting a gun is not rocket science. It does not require a month-long certification class, nor eight weeks of basic training. You can teach the functional basics in a day. These guys were still arguing over the morality of guns well into the second season, which was weeks, if not months, after the initial outbreak. A good example of this in movies was "Aliens" with Sigourney Weaver. She decides to go after the little girl, and the marine shows her how to use the rifle, grenade launcher, and flares within 30 seconds. Would she be as good as a marine? No, but she can still get the rounds to fly out of the weapon in the right direction.

I want this show to be good. It's zombies for Pete's sake, but the writers have been screwing it up because they don't have a clue about real people, or real survival.