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.
