Sometimes I think that we spend too much time thinking about certain aspects of personal defense instead of looking at the big picture. You know, we get involved in deciding which gun we ought to be carrying, revolver or semi-auto, big gun or little gun, big bullets or little bullets, and on and on. Personally, I think that there are other issues for consideration that are more important, or certainly just as important. Here are a few.
Avoidance. ”Don’t go to stupid places and do stupid things with stupid people.” That pretty well says it all. If the police have been called to your favorite bar the past three Saturday nights in a row, it might be a good idea to change bars. Years ago, my father suggested to me that it was really difficult to be in a saloon brawl if I just stayed out of saloons. It’s fine to enjoy a social drink with friends, the secret is to just be real picky about where you do it. The key is to just use some common sense and stay away from places and people where trouble is likely to arise.
Another real avoidance skill is just keeping our mouths shut. Uncontrolled tempers can cause arguments to turn into violence pretty readily. I suppose your momma told you this and she was right.
Professional Training. What you carry, how you carry it and what you carry in it is not nearly as important as what you can do with it. And the very best way to get those skills up to useful levels is to get training from the experts. In one week at a professional training school, the students will be shooting better than most American police officers. How good do you have to be to survive a criminal attack? You decide; it’s your life at stake.
Awareness. This is the most important survival skill. And the person who tells you that he is always aware is really just telling you that he’s a fool. None of us are as aware as we ought to be or as we could be. And so we even become aware of that fact and continually work on ourselves and our family to be alert for problems while there is still time to implement a plan to deal with them or to avoid them entirely. Crooks like to look for easy targets; don’t be one.
So, as you can imagine, I like guns and gear; I like to talk about them, use them, and acquire new ones. Writing this column just reminds me, and hopefully you, too, to keep the big picture in mind. It is what really matters.
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