If you haven't been paying attention, crime is running rampant across the country. From shoplifting to smash and grabs all the way to violent crimes and homicide, criminals are realizing that crime really does pay. These days, a values-based upbringing and common decency are the only things preventing the average person from turning to crime in many of the major cities. Prosecutors in blue states are either negligent, ignorant, politically motivated, out for their personal fame, or beholding to leftist organizations funded by George SoroS to do their jobs. So there's crime a'plenty in the good ol' U S of A. In this episode we'll cover some ways you can protect or defend yourself against the lowlifes that are roaming free. So Let's get to it.
Thank you for listening. I realize I’m becoming consistently inconsistent in producing these podcasts. Best I can do is promise to try harder. Today we’re going to talk about crime, and what you can do to safely go about your day. And while I’m certified to teach the NRA’s Refuse To Be A Victim seminar, this won’t comprise the content of the podcast. We will reference some aspects of the seminar, but cover different aspects.
If you are a concealed carry permit holder or are carrying concealed under other legal means, you have at your disposal the capability (and more on that later) to provide for your defense. If things go sideways and a situation becomes life or death you can employ your firearm. But for a great many reasons, you want to be able to avoid ever being involved in a gunfight. Our aim in this podcast is to get you to start paying attention and to let you know some things to look for.
If you’re a regular listener, you’ll know that the dead horse I most enjoy beating is situational awareness. If you’re new to the podcast, situational awareness is merely being aware of your surroundings and who is doing what. If when you leave your home you’re looking around and paying attention you have situational awareness. You’re one of the rare switched-on people in the world today. If you’re outside the safety of your own home, and you’re buried in your phone, well, congratulations. You’re a typical American.
When I was in law enforcement, I took a lot of reports concerning assaults. Quite a few of the victim’s statements included the phrase “he came out of nowhere.” Now, I assure you these people weren’t assaulted by Gumby. Their attacker didn’t just magically materialize in front of them. The victims simply weren’t paying attention to the world around them, so they weren’t aware of any threats. If you’re not aware of a threat, you can’t take action to avoid or mitigate it.
Now, before you leap to blaming smartphones as the reason I was dealing with those victims, let me tell you to hold up. I was in law enforcement in the late eighties and early nineties, when cel phones were first making their way into our lives. I mean, my first phone was a bag phone, and it was a year before I could get something that didn’t require a shoulder strap. Phones then had one game, snake (Google it), and cost you an hours pay and your firstborn child per minute to talk on, so they weren’t the time and attention suck that they are today. All this to say that people have developed the attention span of a gerbil when it comes to looking for danger.
I guess that’s the logical progression of evolution, losing things you no longer need. We weren’t always this way. Thog had to be on his toes the moment he left his cave to avoid being eaten by cave bears, saber-toothed tigers, snakes, primates, and, depending on where they were, giant, predatory kangaroos. (It’s a thing, really.) Believe me, Thog was constantly scanning for danger. He had no desire to be turned into cave bear dung. This is how we should be. Alert, looking around, identifying threats in advance. In a recent concealed carry class, I was asked if this was paranoia. It’s not, it’s preparedness. See, I don’t teach how to walk around prepared to gun down a threat at any moment. My focus is on the early detection and mitigation of a threat, so you’ll never have to even draw your gun. The simple truth is that there is no real winner in a gunfight, only survivors, so why would you ever want to get in one? Pay attention to what’s going on around you.
The odds of you being specifically targeted by a criminal are extremely low. If you’re valuable enough to a criminal to be recognized and targeted, you doubtlessly are rich enough to afford a security detail. For the rest of us, we can either be targets of opportunity or proactive enough to not be worth the time to a criminal. It’s the sheep or sheepdog principle.
See, the criminals are, well, not wolves. More like jackals. Cowardly opportunists. They look for weak or distracted victims cut off from the herd. They hang out in sparsely populated areas where people go through on their way from someplace to someplace else. These are called transition zones.
If you’re a criminal, and you want to assault, mug, rape, or murder a victim, you have to have a supply of victims. You need to be somewhere close to the supply, but far enough away from large, static groups of people. You don’t want witnesses or some good Samaritan who may come along and interrupt the crime. So you’ll go to hunt in a baited field.
In order to commit an assault, mugging, rape, or murder, a criminal has to put himself in a position that allows him to get his hands on you. If you see someone getting into that position, you have a much better chance of avoiding being a victim. A bad guy needs to get close enough to grab you or at least close enough to threaten you with a weapon and that means he needs to get inside your personal space.
You know how close humans stand to one another in different places. Close on an elevator or in a check-out line at the store is much different than close in an empty parking lot. And while there are people are just socially clueless or Jerry Seinfeld close-talkers, pay close attention to anyone who seems to be trying to get closer to you than the situation calls for. When dealing with threats, distance is life. Distance gives you reaction time. Reaction time allows you to avoid or mitigate a threat.
Criminals who specialize in ambushes need places to hide where you won’t see them until they’re close enough to attack. In this case, you won’t see the attack coming until it’s too late, but you can learn to identify these places and give them a wider berth. Remember, distance is life. Look around for likely hiding spots, like entrances to alleyways, large windowless vans in parking lots (they don’t call them rape vans for nothing), hidden corners, recessed areas behind a door you might have just exited, and more. Look behind you, and ask yourself “If I wanted to ambush someone, where would I hide?” Try to think like a criminal.
If you are walking down a street or in a parking lot and someone deliberately changes their course so that they will bump into you soon, there’s a reason. It might be an innocent reason, say they decided to go into a store you’re going to pass, but it’s also possible they’re closing in on you to commit a crime. Slow down so you won’t end up at the same place at the same time and see what they do. If they slow down to match your pace or change their course again, they’re reacting to you for some reason, and it’s probably a bad one. Go into a store, cross the street, turn around and go the other way, do whatever you can to avoid contact.
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If you get approached by someone from a direction that doesn’t allow you an easy exit, be suspicious. You don’t want someone to be able to use a wall, a locked door, a car or something else you can’t easily maneuver around to trap you and put you in a vulnerable position. Always be looking for escape routes and things you can use to your advantage to avoid people.
Criminals are now more frequently working in pairs or groups, and there are a number of positioning traps they can set. If two or more people split up as they approach you, pay attention to where they go. One might be circling around to approach from a different angle while the other distracts or surrounds you. Be on guard when anyone approaches you unsolicited in a fringe area. Distraction is a common ploy to focus your attention away from a threat. If multiple people are standing such that you must walk between them or pass them in a line be extremely suspicious. Several people leaning against a wall in a line such that the first one can start following you after you pass him and the others can close in in front of you? Consider crossing the street, going to the far side of the sidewalk, or turning around and going the other way. If the demeanor of a group wants to send you scurrying for a lighter, some kerosene, and a wide method of dispersal, you may want to avoid them at all costs.
The context of a person’s actions can help determine if they have innocent explanations. You’ll know or at least have a strong sense of how much a threat a person’s actions are based on the time of day, the location, the behavior of the individual(s), and other factors. A Girl Scout trying to sell you cookies in the grocery store entrance is really nothing to fear. Being approached at a gas pump at night by a stranger who looks like he spent a weekend fighting truckers for meth money who attempts to get much too close to you is an entirely different thing. Use context when determining if you’re dealing with a potential problem versus an innocent social faux pas or coincidence.
Always remember, be situationally aware so you can identify threats in advance and avoid or mitigate them. Avoidance of danger is always preferable to an armed encounter.
We talked about capability early on in this episode. If you are capable of something, you have the physical and technical ability to perform a task. If you’re a concealed carrier, and you train regularly with your gun, you have the capability to defend yourself in the gravest extreme. If you are carrying your gun, you have the tools you physically need to accomplish defending yourself, so you are capable. It’s important that you have a gun in good working order, loaded with effective ammunition, and that you can accurately fire it.
Now, having the capability of defending yourself is only part of the battle. It’s the part you can absolutely train for and master. But it has to work with the capacity to be able to defend yourself. Capacity is the emotional ability to do something. This is a very important aspect of self-defense that you just can’t practice.
The emotional aspect of using deadly force to defend yourself is something not many instructors address. Gunfights are loud, messy, confusing affairs. There is absolutely no way to train yourself to the point where you will know for certain how you will react when the balloon goes up. Pulling that trigger on another human being goes against everything we as normal, functioning human beings were taught from the time we were little. You don’t hit people, you don’t hurt people. Our brains are just wired that way.
What would it be like to physically take someone’s life, no matter how justified? How react to it? How might you feel the next day and the next month? How do you handle the immediate aftermath, when you’re covered in someone else’s blood, shaking, with people looking at you while a dead or wounded or dying bad guy is at your feet? Most instructors don’t talk about this because it’s a terrible reality no one wants to think about, and because most haven’t ever actually been in the situation. You need to be emotionally prepared for all the physical mess involved in self-defense. You have to have the capacity.
And that will do it for this episode. Again, thank you for listening. If you enjoyed what you heard here, consider telling your friends about us. They can listen in on our website, and if they use podcast apps we’re listed in all the major directories.
Coming up, we have a South Carolina concealed weapons permit class on Saturday, August 17th, a Ladies Only Basic Handgun Clinic Saturday and Sunday, October 26th and 27th, and a Basic Carbine class Saturday, November 23rd. Info and registration links for these classes are in the show notes.
Until next time, shoot safe.
