One man's ongoing rant about the First and Second Amendments. Firearms, Freedom of Speech, and thoughts on keeping you and your family safe during troubled times.
The author of the Boston Gun Bible has identified what he calls “The Third Way.” I thought that I would spend a few minutes writing up a summary of this Warrior Philosophy because it relates to the subject of developing a defensive mindset. Understanding what it means to walk a Third Way may go a long way toward helping you develop and define your own personal system of defensive living.
The Third Way
Society is essentially made up of two kinds of people- the Predator, and the Prey. Oftentimes these lifestyles are referred to as Wolves and Sheep. Tyrants, whether they be the criminal aspect of society or oppressive government take what is referred to as the First Way. The Second way is composed of those who choose to live their lives as without accepting personal responsibility for their safety and liberty. Throughout the animal kingdom, this dichotomy exists. Life is intrinsically a struggle, and a person can accept this reality and learn to defend themselves or they can flee this responsibility. This responsibility can be neglected indirectly by delegating one’s responsibility for safety to other "protectors".
The Third Way is the ancient and venerable tradition of the Warrior or Sheep Dog. Not a predator, the Warrior lives a sterner, more finely tempered lifestyle where honor, personal responsibility, and concern for others are central tenets. The Warrior lives a value imbued life that explicitly eschews the violent domination of others and moves beyond the predator/prey cycle that dominates society. The state for which the Warrior strives is that of Liberty, and the life of Liberty in human societies is moved by four forces: the Soap Box (discussion), the Ballot Box (formulation), the Jury Box (interpretation) and the Cartridge Box (decisive action). The first three do not exist without the fourth. For that reason, firearms and a Warrior mindset are the necessary tools to resist servitude.
Just a few days ago an officer in the US Army shot more than 50 people on base at Ft. Hood, Texas. I can't help but hear over and over again one soldier interviewed saying, “This is our home. We didn't expect an attack here.” The overwhelming question from discerning Americans has been, “Why not?” Honestly, we are at war with an enemy who doesn't fight on fronts. Terrorists operate in a constant state of guerilla warfare, and it would seem to be common sense to maintain a state of watchfulness on a military base during a time of war. Yet our nation's defenders didn't protect themselves. A civilian police officer responded to the scene and dispatched of the traitor. I could write a whole other article on the need for defensive preparedness based on the response time of police forces alone. The responding officer did a wonderful thing, but only after more than 50 people had been wounded. But rather than write yet another article on the whys of carrying a pistol, I thought I'd write a quick article dealing with the how- specifically developing the proper mindset.
Developing a defensive mindset has been on my mind a lot lately. As we interact with others on a day to day basis by necessity we learn to gather information from our surroundings. The dispositions of others around us are one of the biggest threat indicators we encounter. Learning how to interpret that information in today's world of politically-correct indoctrination and ingrained bias is a major obstacle to many of us who decide to daily carry defensive weapons.
As an example, a Caucasian woman walking to her car in downtown St. Louis may automatically disregard her misgivings about the group of loud brash African-American men following her down a side street as racist. However, that response is not necessarily racist- it could easily be a woman's intuition warning her of danger. It is up to us to learn to look past the filter- or paradigm- of modern political correctness and inherent bias and understand the underlying message that our instincts are telling us. If we notice not that the young men are dark-skinned, but that they are drinking from brown paper bags and making lewd comments about her figure, we can quickly see that the woman in our example's initial evaluation of the situation was valid not because of racist thoughts but because the group of men pose a real threat to her safety. However, if she really did notice the young men purely because of their skin color and they exhibit no threatening behavior, yet she fails to notice the older well-dressed White man loitering near her car with his hands in his pockets, then she has failed to look beyond her paradigm and identify the real threat. It is up to us on an individual basis to recognize the paradigm that we see the world in and strive to overcome that view and evaluate our surroundings without filtering.
It's up to each one of us to decide how to get past our preconceived notions and truly take in our surroundings. Keep your eyes moving, not nervously but alertly. Stay in what many self-defense instructors call “Condition Yellow.” I've always summed it up in one sentence, “Head up, eyes open.” That's essentially it. Don't linger overlong on any one thing or person. As a young man, I am all to often tempted to notice the young women in a crowd, but I have trained myself to notice and move on. Who else is noticing her? Do they pose a threat to her or to the rest of the crowd as a whole? Pay attention to hands and waist lines. If a weapon is going to appear in a crowd, chances are it walked into the room either in someone's hand or on their waist. Make a game of it and you will develop the habit more effectively. The next time you're at Wal-Mart, play spot-the-gun. Look for telltale signs on the waistband of other shoppers. Also make it a point to notice whether those around you are right- or left-handed. If you study someone enough to evaluate their handedness, you have spent enough time observing them to notice if anything threatening is in their hands.
Learn to look past skin color, sex, age, and other factors and evaluate the world around you based on a set of self-defined threat indicators, and you will have started down the road to developing the defensive mindset you need to ensure that when a real threat presents itself you will be prepared to respond to it. Once you have mastered this skill then you can start developing a system of habits to augment it. As a general practice I recommend you scan the crowd everywhere you go for suspicious behavior, always go armed when it's legal (yes even at home), keep your doors locked at home and in the car, and be prepared for the unexpected at all times. Only those of us with the correct mindset will find ourselves truly prepared to defend ourselves if the time comes.
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It is a nonfiction book that provides a good overall view of various disasters and how to prepare for them. This information can then be used to direct readers to more detailed information provided in other resources. I highly recommend it for those interested in getting their feet wet in the world of preparedness.Patriots is a novel about a group of survivalists as they band together to survive an economic collapse. Shortly after the stock market crashes, food and fuel shortages cause riots and widespread looting. Eventually those unprepared for hard times resort to cannibalism and thievery to survive. This book is a must-read. It is extremely entertaining and packed full of information. One of the reviews I read on Amazon.com stated that you'll read the book twice: once for fun and once more with a highlighter. It's true. If nothing else, Patriots will inspire you and give you ideas for preparing for whatever disasters that may come.
On the subject of preparedness, my family has spent a lot of time lately thinking about preparing for disasters. A couple of years ago a regional ice storm knocked the power out in a large area for about four days. My family was caught unprepared for such a long-term power outage. With several animals on the family farm to care for we decided to stick it out, hoping and praying for the power to be restored every day. I experienced nearly running out of fuel in my Jeep, witnessing a run on portable generators, and the indignity that results from a lack of sanitation. With the almanac forecasting an extremely harsh winter in my area, we have taken the issue of preparedness seriously.
Now we are not paranoid crazies stocking up enough food and water to hide out for years on end like many survivalists claim to do. We are simply a family of people willing to work together to endure natural and man-made disasters. I highly recommend that you take steps to prepare your family for the same. Even if it means purchasing prepackaged 72-Hour Survival Kits it is better than nothing. Couple that kit with a decent pump shotgun and some ammunition and you will be able to provide food, water, shelter, and security for your family for the short term at the very least. Do something, even if it isn't expensive. Buy some extra toilet paper, a few bags of dried beans, and have at least a gallon of water per person, per day on hand.
For some further reading on the subject consider looking at James' blog mentioned above. Also look at Suburban Survivalist, and search for "preparedness" on iTunes for a good variety of podcasts on the subject.
I have recently spent quite a bit of time reading articles at the Backwoods Home Magazine website. This site is full of information on increasing the self-reliance of a home, which is a subject I intend to visit in more detail in the future. Massad Ayoob's article titled, "Armed Civilians Can Help Fight Terrorism" is particularly good. Our society has such a short attention span that we often forget about the threat of terrorism that exists around us daily. Some of us may even be hard-pressed to put into words the various reasons we choose to arm ourselves. The truth of the matter is that there are very evil people seeking to destroy our way of life, and the freedoms that America stands for. Experts agree that the lack of successful attacks since 9/11 does not mean the threat is over. Our enemies are seeking to lure us into the sense of complacency and false security that we now find ourselves in. The threat is as high now as it was on 9/12. Massad has some interesting insights when relating the experience of Israeli citizens trying to enjoy the same freedoms we have here.
The following segment from the afformentioned article highlights a few good examples of why we should carry arms, and why society should embrace the armed citizen as an additional layer of security:
"Not long ago, a woman in a market in Israel saw a man attempting to activate an explosive device strapped to his body. She drew a concealed pistol and shot him dead before he could trigger the suicide bomb, and in so doing she saved countless innocent people from being killed or mutilated. American newspapers referred to her as a “security” person, but the word I get is that she was simply an ordinary lady…with a gun, and the will to use it, and the foresight to have learned to use it properly and effectively.
Many years before, a clutch of terrorists opened fire in a public place in Israel. Guns bloomed everywhere from the concealing garments of honest Israeli citizens. In moments, the terrorists were on the ground bleeding from their gunshot wounds, all dead but one. The wounded survivor said indignantly afterward that no one had told them that their victims might be armed and capable of shooting back.
After the massacre at the Maalot school decades ago, the Israelis developed the policy of having plainclothes volunteer guards in the schools, armed with concealed handguns. They were not hired gun security specialists, but parents and grandparents who had signed up to help protect their children and those of the community. They were trained with their firearms by the civil guard. Since that time, there was no wholesale murder of children in an Israeli school. The one such incident happened on a field trip outside the country, where it would have been known to the murderers that the adult chaperones were not allowed to take the weapons they carried in Israel. Last year, a terrorist gunman opened fire in an Israeli school, and was cut down by civilian volunteer gunfire before he could accumulate a significant death toll.
A little “snub-nose .38” like this ended the depredations, and the life, of urban terrorist Twymon Myers. This one is the ubiquitous Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special, in production since 1950 and weighing some 19 ounces with five-shot capacity.
The June 2004 issue of the Gottlieb-Tartaro Report carried the following item under the headline Armed Israeli Citizens Help Curb Terrorists: “Israel’s police spokesman Gil Kleiman says that citizens who carry their own guns are helping to curb the damage terrorists can inflict by being able to stop a terrorist situation. ‘We’ve seen it time and time again,’ said Kleiman. ‘Armed civilians who are well trained can save people’s lives. If there isn’t a policeman, civilians can deal immediately with a terrorist.’”
It's scary to think that our children are targets for fanatics bent on martyrdom, but that is exactly the case. Our society is so determined to fight a war against Islamo-fascism by our rules that we neglect to pay attention to the rules our enemies use to wage war. We cannot expect terrorists to abide by so-called moderate Muslim interpretation of their scriptures. It is folly to clearly label schools, banks, hospitals, churches and court houses as off-limits to legally licensed armed Americans. In a perfect world, those places would be generally accepted neutral zones from all violence. Heck there wouldn't be any violence at all in a perfect world. But we don't live in a utopia, and humankind won't experience that sort of world until Jesus returns. So we need to face the reality that evil people will seek out those "safe havens" as their top priority targets for one simple reason- they can expect little armed response to their attacks. Gun free zones are perfect places to become a victim. It's time for America to learn the lessons that Israel learned- an armed society is a safer society for our children to grow up in.
I also came across a series of great articles on the shotgun in the firearms section of Chuckhawks.com that I thought might shed some more light on the subject of shotguns, both for home defense and for hunting. I can't recommend reading Chuckhawks enough. That site has done much for increasing my general knowledge of firearms.
Take some time to browse the Shotgun page in general, but specifically take a look at these pages:
I have heard a lot of people express lately their desire to purchase a firearm for protection, even from those normally of politically liberal persuasions. Honestly who can blame them? It is common sense that every home should keep a fire extinguisher to minimize damage from a fire. Likewise part of any home's security system should include a firearm as a tool for fending off intruders. Violent crime is on the rise, especially armed intrusion, and every day the news features more horror stories in the headlines. By far the most common question I hear asked about the subject is, “Which gun do I buy?” The answer to that question is never a simple one because the right recommendation has a lot to do with its intended use, the individual's preexisting knowledge of firearms, and their willingness to practice. Assuming a person intends to use their newly purchased gun primarily for home defense, has been exposed to firearms at some point, and is willing to practice a few times per year, I like to recommend that they consider a pump shotgun.
There are a lot of reasons why a pump shotgun makes sense as a home defense weapon. For starters, they are affordable. For less than $200 you can purchase a Remington 870 or Mossberg 500 shotgun at any of your local sporting goods stores, or at most discount stores that have sporting goods departments. They are also relatively safe to own around children. A pump shotgun can be safely stored with a full magazine and an empty chamber. This still requires the slide lock to be disengaged and the action cycled before the gun is ready to fire, which acts as a preventative to unintended discharge by curious children. The shotgun can be stored in a readily accessible location, preferably in a designated safe room for years with little or no maintenance done to it, and it will still prove reliable when needed. Pump shotguns have been around since the 1800's and are the quintessential example of what Michael Bane calls “debugged technology.” For a relatively small investment, the shotgun can actually fill multiple roles in the household. It is an effective defensive weapon while also being quite capable of providing food for the table should the need arise. The shotgun has been the go-to utility firearm in the homes of Americans throughout history, from the blunderbuss carried by the Pilgrims to the doubles carried in the West, through to modern times. Remington sells a combination package with an 870 equipped with both a defense barrel and a longer hunting barrel for around $300. A shotgun so equipped, with the proper ammunition, is capable of taking most game from squirrels on up to deer.
If you're willing to check out the used firearms offered at your local gun store or carefully browse through almost any pawn shop you should find nice used shotguns for even cheaper. Now for a secret- the home defense shotgun is too often chosen by the man of the house to fit him instead of picking a weapon that will fit everyone. He tends to come home with a heavy 12 gauge that the rest of the family- who are often of smaller stature- may be called upon to use in a time of need. Instead of following that pattern, pick up a 20 gauge instead and keep in mind that the home defense shotgun is going to serve the role of a pool gun- that is, everyone will be expected to use it effectively when the time comes to defend themselves. The 20 offers plenty of firepower for home defense and for hunting purposes but the guns are lighter, give less recoil, and are not so deafening to fire in enclosed spaces or blinding in darkness. In many cases someone shooting a 20 gauge can fire three shells in the time it takes someone with a 12 gauge to shoot twice. This is a good example of how that reduction in recoil and weight can make the 20 gauge more effective as a home defense tool than the 12.
The Kit
Of course, simply purchasing a new firearm is just the beginning. I wouldn't even leave the store without purchasing a simple slip-on shell holder and a soft sided case. You'll find that you also need to invest in a simple cleaning kit and get advice on how to maintain your shotgun after firing it. You'll also need to purchase some ammunition. I recommend buying a half case of 100 shotshells in # 7 ½ or 6 shot. These shells are cheap and ideal for both practice and as inside-the-home ammunition. Finally, purchase a shell bag with a simple belt clip as pictured below. This bag will allow you to store a box of ammunition with your gun, and when needed you can slip the bag onto the waist of your pants and reload as necessary.
Manual of Arms- Pump Shotgun
As with any firearm, you need to develop what some people refer to as a manual of arms with your pump shotgun. This is a basic understanding of the way the weapon works, how to care for, store, and handle the weapon, and how to use it both tactically and strategically.
You will need to practice, and even though your pump gun is extremely reliable, a little oil and some basic cleaning will keep the tool from collecting rust while in the closet.
Take your shotgun to a piece of nationally-owned forest, a friend's farm, or your local range or gun club along with some simple cardboard cutouts of roughly human torso size and proceed to pattern your shotgun at around 21 feet and less. You will need to practice loading a shell into a gun with a full magazine and an empty chamber until long after you can do it without looking, and always practice as often as you can afford it so that the skills you learn with your shotgun do not deteriorate.
Understand that every shotgun, no matter how long an extended magazine tube you put on it, will eventually run out of ammunition. Practice reloading "Cowboy style," which means if you fire two rounds, load two more rounds in the tube as you go. Fire one, load one, and so on. Also keep in mind that hunting down an intruder in your home is a bad idea unless that intruder is threatening someone else in your house. Make it known to all the residents in the home that one specific room is designated the safe room, where they will gather in the event that the home's sanctity is threatened. Store the gun there along with extra ammunition as noted above, and be prepared to use the gun only if your family is actually threatened. If all the intruders want is your television material objects are not worth losing your life or taking someone else's over. Repel an attack, but otherwise barricade your family in the room with you, take up a defensive position, and call the police.
For inside the home defense I recommend loading your gun with shot, but keep a few shells of buckshot handy in case extra firepower is needed. Shot is really only an effective penetrator out to about 7 yards. Anything longer than that will require the use of buckshot, which is effective out to around 50 yards. At this point many of you may be asking why not just load the gun with buckshot and be done with it? The reason is that buckshot will overpenetrate at ranges less than 7 yards or so. Tests have shown the rounds to pass through their intended targets with enough energy to penetrate several layers of sheet rock, so even striking the target with all of the buckshot pellets will still leave bystanders at seriuos risk downrange. Unless you live on a farm with no nearby homes, I can not recommend keeping slugs in your home defense gun. Slugs can be used to disable automobiles, and as such are too penetrative to safely use inside your home.
Homework
Visit your local sporting goods store or pawn shop and price a decent used or new shotgun in an appropriate gauge. Then make a purchase, get some ammunition, and practice with it. If you can get training by a professional self defense instructor by all means do so, but if you can't I recommend you check out Clint Smith's Defensive Shotgun video and practice the techniques demonstrated there.
Benjamin Franklin once stated, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Unfortunately a lot of people in our country today are more than willing to do just that. Modern society would rather let someone else claim responsibility for their protection than take the initiative and keep themselves secure. The Bill of Rights, signed into law on December 15, 1791. The first two of those sacred Ten Amendments states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The second states, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." It is these first two amendments that allow Americans to protect themselves from tyranny. Yet these two Rights are the two that our government erodes and attacks on a regular basis. Our elected officials are interested in pursuing their own personal philosophical goals at the expense of their constituents' rights, and the Old Media refuses to play its role in passing along the truth about what is happening to this country in the process. It is time that we, as responsible citizens, equip ourselves with the ability to protect and provide for our loved ones in time of hardship. The world that we live in is becoming increasingly hostile to middle class Americans. Economic downturns, natural disasters, political unrest, and the ever-present threat of terrorism all threaten our way of life in very real ways. For those reasons and more it is becoming clear to many regular people that there is a need to learn about personal defense and understand how to prepare for tough times. This blog will focus on my efforts, as a middle class red-blooded American male, to learn and pass on what I learn through the medium of the New Media. Stay tuned.
