It's hard to convince people who live on Mount Olympus to prepare to defend themselves. We capitalize on fear, which the modern American would say is a very sleazy way to make money. When there is a national tragedy, people focus on protection. Purveyors of violence, in those times, make money.
The modern American who believes the gun industry and the shooting industry are sleazy are themselves morons. These people have no concept of how fragile human life really is, and how easy it is to lose it to a bad person. This is the Mount Olympus mentality that modern America has been brainwashed into. This is where combat veterans could be useful in society, not just because of our skills with violence, but because we have seen how life is off of Mount Olympus. Off of Mount Olympus, life is cheap. In the second and third world, death is a constant companion, and people don't need national tragedies to wake up to that reality.
My proof of this is national delusion is that the only people who do not suffer from it, are labelled with a disease by our health care providers. Combat veterans are exposed to the reality of the world outside our borders. Death and destruction are ways of life for despots and fanatics. When they come home they are diagnosed with PTSD or Acute Combat Stress because they had their eyes opened too far. I view this as the fundamental problem with American society since the Vietnam War; we willfully deny and ignore the real world because it is too scary. And anybody who has experienced that real world, thrived in it, are equally scary to the rest of society. But, combat opens our eyes to the fragility of human life, which actually makes us appreciate it a lot more than those who have never had it threatened. The real disease is not over-exposure to the violence of the real world; the real disease is the delusional denial that the real world is not like our fiction on Mount Olympus.
Which is why, when a national tragedy like Las Vegas or Orlando happens, people are shocked and all of the sudden motivated to protect themselves. For a month, anyway, then they forget and go back to living with their heads in the sand. Terrorist attacks like those are cracks in the bubble our society has built around its collective conscious to lie to itself about how safe they are. So, for a few weeks, people get really motivated to be prepared for the next attack. They go buy a gun, shoot it a couple of times, then lock it in a safe on their nightstand and delude themselves into thinking they are even safer. They take it out shooting once every five years...whether they need to or not. This is duct tape that they put over the crack in the bubble that is letting in the light from the real world. It is where the firearms industry and the shooting industry make their money. Is that sleazy?
Maybe, but why does it take a terrorist attack for people to wake up to the reality of how fragile their lives are and how valuable they are, and thus worthy of protecting? Why people are not focused on this all the time is the problem, not that people capitalize on it when it is on people's minds. That's the big problem; people see the Las Vegas shooting and remember that "oh yeah, I was going to get a gun," or, "I really need to get the family into a one day self-defense seminar and then we will be safe." That's all duct tape.
I end all of my classes by telling the students that shooting is a sport like any other and to get good at it, you have to practice. Practice does not mean you take the gun out of the nightstand safe once every five years, or even every year or six months, then go to an indoor range that is completely sterile and controlled and put holes through bulls-eyes. I recommend to them that they shoot at least once a month, if not twice a month. Shoot as much as they can afford. Don't focus only on accuracy, either, go somewhere that allows people to move around and shoot, to shoot from different angles, different positions, etc. Then, don't go back and lock the gun in the safe for another five years. It's not doing any good in there. I tell people that I treat my pistol like a piece of clothing; I put it on in the morning and take it off when I go to bed, and at no point is it ever more than arms reach away from me. I train with it every weekend.
Why do I do this? Because the first combat patrol I went on in Iraq, from the airfield I flew into driving to the Forward Operating Base I was to be stationed at, I did not have a gun. We drew our rifles from the arms room when we arrived at the FOB. That was a miserable experience. When I got back, I though I was "back in the world," that I was safe and sound, so I locked up the one pistol I owned then in a nightstand safe and thought I was good. Then a guy tried to carjack me in a dark alley in the middle of the night, and I pointed my finger at him and he thought I had a gun in the dim light. He cursed, turned and ran away. Except when I'm on an airplane (in which case I'm armed another way), I always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS have a gun on me.
Am I paranoid? Yes. And that is the point of this article. People are not paranoid enough in this country, because they want to live with their heads in the sand and pretend that violence doesn't exist. They want to pretend that violence is the enemy, not the people who use violence as a tool to accomplish political or economic goals. They want to wish it away. You can't wish away violence. Combat does not damage people, combat opens our eyes to the true horror of how easy it is to damage people. America has to open its eyes. Start preparing for combat ALL THE TIME, because you never know when the ambush is going to happen.
We instructors are frustrated because we want people to be safe. I want people to be hard targets. The more people we make hard targets, the harder target our country becomes. But it takes courage on the part of our people to look outside of that delusion bubble our collective conscious has created, and recognize how easy it is to lose life. Then, looking at it full in the face courageously, one has to have the commitment to train enough to become a hard target. Be capable of shooting somebody trying to do you or your family harm. To do that requires an eyes-wide-open, head-out-of-the-sand view of the world. Go down to your local VFW and talk to some Vietnam Vets about how they view the human body, and how easy it is to destroy it. They don't revel in it; but they totally understand how to exploit it should combat find them again. They survived for a reason, because they were better at violence than their enemies. Better means cheating, because cheating is winning.
Last point: you never need a gun until you really need a gun. There are very few legitimate reasons not to be armed. If you're in a place that does not allow it, like an airplane or a government office building with a bunch of cops who are there to protect law abiding citizens like you, then leave it locked in the trunk of your car. But, otherwise, be armed.
Thanks,
Soule
Easy 6
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