Also, that First Amendment (Rated R for Language and Poetry)

An interesting thing happened this week: some snowflakes got offended by the fact that some people I know and I have been discussing various aspects of firearms in the bar we frequently occasion or occasionally frequent.  These people I know got very concerned about that.  We were referred to as “the gun guys in the back” by some of these snowflakes.  For some reason that really bothered the people I hang-out with at this bar.  I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with a privacy issue for them.  I suspect it is the same reason they will carry a handgun concealed, but never openly carry one.  I suppose that is a fair perspective, though different from mine.

Here’s the problem: I’m not giving up my First Amendment Rights any sooner than I’m giving up my Second Amendment Rights.  The snowflakes are offended by the very existence of firearms, and they abhor us brutish rednecks who own, shoot and—God forbid—talk about guns.  To which I respond: melt the snowflakes!  Nobody has a right to not be offended, and I have a God-given right to be offensive.  If my topic of conversation offends you…leave.  But, just like you can take my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands, you will shut me up when you put a bullet in my throat.  But, if you’re going to try, you better be better than me.  The only scumbags I hate worse than the gun grabbers trying to destroy the Second Amendment, are the Politically Correct Thought Police trying to destroy the First Amendment.  I will not be silenced, censored or shut-up for having opinions that pansy-ass snowflakes find too offensive to tolerate in their safe-space little bubbles.  For their bubbles I have just one solution: “Pop!”

The Left wants to shut us up.  The coastal snowflakes cannot handle dissent.  By worrying about whether or not you offend some weak-willed, half-developed, pansy-assed, safe-space dweller, you buy-in to their bullshit.  You buy-in to their concept that they have some right to not be offended by your words.  Here’s my words: fuck them; I have lots of guns, I like shooting them, I like learning about them, I like sharing knowledge about shooting them with other people who like shooting guns and learning about them…and I’m not going to stop exercising my Freedom of Speech about them…BECAUSE I have the Right to Bear Arms!  You want to shut me up?  You better not be a snowflake living in a safe-space, My Little Pony!  You want to shut me up, you better come prepared to do it by force.  And I know no snowflake with the capacity, capability, caliber, courage, commitment, spirit or stones to stand-up, step-up and shut me up by shooting—not shouting—me down.  But if I am mistaken, then I do humbly invite so valiant a courtier to, by pistols, try, at dawn, or rapiers by dusk, or gallantly adding to lore, as in days of yore, by moonlight past twilight with hammers of war!  Your choice, good sir!

            For defending the Freedom of Speech with a sword, the French Poet-cum-English Philosopher Voltaire was banished from France.  He famously founded the freedom of expression thusly: “Though I disagree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  Our First Amendment is based on Voltaire’s conviction that the free expression and free exchange of ideas, uncensored by the state or by popular opinion, is the cornerstone to a free society.  Our Second Amendment was designed to guarantee it.  As Wyatt said, “Which one of you brave men is gonna take it from me?”

With Humble Deference to Voltaire,

Sincerely,

Soule

www.easy6training.com

The Problem With Statistics

Anti-gun folks: “We have the highest rate of gun violence in the industrialized world.”  This isn’t actually true; we have the highest rate of gun violence (the definition of which includes suicides, justified homicides and gang-on-gang violence, as well as homicides) among European and North-American countries.  Some other industrialized countries have higher rates.  I’m sure the liberals weren’t implying that people who don’t live in Europe and North America are less somehow less important than ethnic European nations?  But that’s not the problem with statistics.

I digress; to continue:  Gun folks: “Places with easier access to firearms, concealed carry and/or constitutional carry, have successfully reduced their violent crime rates because the criminals are scared.”  I think that’s probably true, though how statistically significant, correlated or causal such a relationship is to guns may be debatable.  But that’s not the problem with statistics either.

The problem with statistics when it comes to gun violence is that the problem set is not what we think it is.  Both sides argue from good public policy approaches, which are typically based on statistics and utilitarian ethics of doing the most good for the most people.  It’s public policy based on the Greek idea of Logos (logic) and the Utilitarian Ethics of increasing greater good for the many, as evidenced by statistical data.  Politicians look at the nation as the data set for making public policy for crime rates and gun violence, and a whole host of everything else imaginable from nuclear missiles to how many trees to allow to be chopped down in any given forest.  And that is the problem with statistics.

Violence has a data set of one.  Life is a binary state, not a statistical proportion.  There is no such thing as a person who is 72.3% alive or 54.7% dead.  So in matters of life and death, statistics are irrelevant.  It matters not to the murder victim what is the homicide rate.  In a life or death encounter, one hundred percent of your life is on the line, not a proportion of it.  Therefore, any statistical representation of violence, while perhaps informative to social scientists, is not an accurate representation of the true nature of it.  When somebody is trying to kill you, it’s a zero-sum game, you 100% live or you 100% don’t.  It’s a binary state of 1’s and 0’s: 1, the switch is on, I’m alive; 0, the switch is off, I’m not.  There are no proportional statistics or extrapolations to larger populations to be gleaned from such a data set.  To put it more plainly, as Stanley Kubrick did, “The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive.”  Statistics of a sample size of one are not very productive.

Violence, especially criminal violence, is personal, not proportional.  Life is a binary state: you either are alive or not.  When somebody has a knife to your throat in an alley in the statistically “safest” neighborhood in America, that statistic is irrelevant and dangerously absurd.  It lures people into a false sense of confidence about their surroundings, for one thing, but for another, most violence in America is what Tim Larkin calls a “black swan event.”  It’s not that it is rare; it’s that it is a rare event in the life of any one single person.  Even in high crime areas like Detroit and Chicago, ordinary people—who are not making their livings off of violence (on either side of the law)—encounter personal violence pretty rarely.  While they probably encounter it more frequently than a guy living in the woods in Montana, it is still a “black swan event” in their lives.  If it wasn’t rare, people would not suffer from PTSD from violent crimes.  It would be a normal part of their lives, not a trauma.  We do not get traumatized by ordinary events. 

Which of course makes it all that much worse; I’m not trying to diminish the effect of interpersonal violence.  On the contrary, I’m trying to say it is far worse than statistics can reflect, especially homicide, because to the victim of a violent crime, the crime rate is 100%.  And that is what statistics cannot get right.  Statistical representations of gang members per hundred thousand people in Chicago, does not represent violence.  Homicides per hundred thousand people in Baltimore, does not represent violence.  Homicides per ONE PERSON laying on the street with multiple gunshot wounds in the chest, bleeding out…that is violence.  And no amount of math can prepare you for it or protect you from it.

Legislators who believe they can bring the statistics down totally miss the point of interpersonal violence.  I understand their intentions and do not fault them for it one either the Left or the Right; they are trying to make good public policy using numeric data and Logos.  But violence has NOTHING to do with Logos.  It is entirely about Pathos: rhetoric and policy designed to appeal to the emotions of the audience and elicit feelings that already reside within an audience.  Violence is not logical, and thus not statistical, it is deadly (zero-sum) and thus emotional.  People are afraid of violence, regardless of the statistics, and no data analysis will ever change that fear.  Second Amendment advocates often come off as illogical because they talk about freedom and tyranny, ignoring any statistical data presented to them, because freedom is emotional (Pathos)!  In statistical samples of one, any murder rate is unacceptable, and thus people want the ability to protect themselves, and you can “Molon Labe, get the heck right outta my country, or try to pry it from my cold, dead hands!!!”  Harumph!

The issue is not statistical.  It is not even about guns.  It’s about violence, fear of violence, fear of death, the ability to deal death with seeming impunity in some communities.  It is about FEELING terrorized in our own towns.  We are mortal, and as long as we are mortal, evil people can use our mortality to coerce us, or they can implement our mortality for their own evil purposes.  There is no statistical solution to that.  Logos and equations do not apply to a sample size of one with a knife against your throat.  Only another policy of Pathos can solve this problem: bravery.  The only thing that can defeat terror is courage.  You can’t legislate it, but you can EDUCATE it; you can’t sample it in a survey, you have to train it into hearts and minds and an ethos of a society.  The solution to predators is being impossible prey:

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Soule
www.easy6training.com

Truck Guns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a6YdNmK77k

Zombies aren’t real.  I say again, and I know this hurts some of you to hear, but it’s true: zombies aren’t real.  Why in the heck do you have an AK in your truck?  Let’s just assume for a moment you ever actually used that “sporting rifle” behind the seat of your Tacoma; what exactly are you going to tell the cops when they show up?

Look, if you are a SWAT or Military-trained sniper and you have the skill set to end a mass shooter from five hundred yards away with a “sporting rifle,” then by all means carry a truck gun.  If you aren’t that guy, when the cops show, what do you tell them?  “Well…I got out of the bank robbery, so I grabbed my AR and went back inside to put every bystander there in massive mortal damage, officer.  I thought my considerable skills honed through dozens of hours on a fifty yard range with my Bushmaster made me the perfect guy to go start rescuing hostages.  It’s a shame a dozen bystanders got killed in my firefight with the robbers.  But, it’s like the SEALs always say, `Sucks to be a hostage.’”

“Oh, were you a SEAL?”

“Um…well, not exactly, I mean, I graduated Air Force Basic and shot an M16 two whole days, so, yeah, I’m basically a SEAL.”

And, I’d be THRILLED if every idiot rolling around with an AK or AR in their truck was in fact a graduate of Air Force Basic, or a Police Academy, or even some tactical rifle course put on by veterans.  BUT, most of the people rolling around with them don’t have ANY tactical training, much less the precision skills necessary to successfully go BACK into a situation like the one described above or the ability to take out the Las Vegas Shooter from their truck beds.  I am a combat veteran of a combat Military Occupational Specialty with about a dozen firefights under my belt, and I don’t rescue hostages.  Bubba and Billy-Bob, with the AR’s in their Ford Redneck Rescue Raptor, go off guns-a-blazing in some sort of North Hollywood Shootout scenario, trying to “take out” badguys, will get innocent people killed.  And even if they miraculously DON’T get innocent people killed, is that REALLY self-defense?  Or, have they become vigilantes who make situations infinitely worse?

This is my problem with blurring the lines of what self-defense really is.  The NRA does it.  The shooting industry wants to sell you guns, so they do it, as do all of the weapons accessory companies.  The Tacticool Instructors do it.  But then when somebody shoots a guy trespassing in his field at six hundred yards away, and then claims he was “in imminent danger and fear for his life,” the prosecutors sometimes disagree with that industry definition of "self-defense."

Self-Defense is not a set of skills.  It is not a set of shooting skills.  It is not a set of fighting skills.  It is not a set of tactics for “clearing” houses or “securing” fixed positions or anything else.  Self-Defense is a LEGAL DETERMINATION—after an incident occurs—that the actions taken were justified in the eyes of the law.  Cops make that determination, prosecutors make the determination, judges make the determination, and—worst case scenario—sometimes juries make the determination that the actions a person took were justified self-defense.  When you start looking like a vigilante, it becomes exceedingly difficult to argue that the actions were in self-defense.  Willingly putting yourself BACK into a dangerous situation that you have already escaped from, isn’t self-defense.  Now, it may be “defense of others,” and there may be good reasons for such actions (going in to get your spouse out for example), but it’s not self-defense.

Don’t be George Zimmerman.  If you are one of the people who thinks George Zimmerman was an innocent victim, stop reading my blog.  George Zimmerman was a lunatic living out some Batman fantasy; he stalked and killed a kid for no other reason than he didn’t like his fashion choice.  Vigilantism is NOT self-defense.  Running back into a dangerous situation with a rifle can appear to be vigilantism if you don’t have a good reason (like a loved-one inside, or a tactical skill set capable of being effective inside).

Lastly, when the SWAT team does show up, I don’t want to be holding a rifle.  They have their own snipers.  Those snipers may not know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.  Don’t get shot because you were trying to do something you thought was good, just because the cops can’t tell which side you’re on.

In conclusion, we have enough people who hate the gun-owning public without shooting ourselves in the feet looking like the caricatures that the liberals paint of the NRA.  All the 5.11 gear, the fishing vests, the operator hats and rail accessories attached to your AR or AK are not helping the cause of getting everybody in America comfortable, confident and CARRYING a gun with them at all time.  What it’s doing is making people think we’re nutty George Zimmerman types out looking to play Batman.  Other than combat and Zombies, I cannot imagine a scenario in which I would need a rifle with a thirty-round magazine in my truck for anything that would be construed—AFTER THE INCIDENT—as justifiable self-defense in modern American daily life.  Now, I will caveat this by saying, yes, after a natural disaster, or during an on-going terrorist attack, or massive civil unrest, a sport rifle may well be desirable.  After Hurricane Katrina, when civil order disintegrated and a state of anarchy took hold of New Orleans for a brief time, I absolutely would want a rifle.  During the Paris Terrorist Attacks, which were geographically spread throughout the city and carried-out by chickenshit half-men armed with AK-47s, I would absolutely want a rifle to protect my home and family.  But, I believe the right answer in those situations is to secure your home and your loved ones, with an arsenal, at home.  Then, if you need to retreat to a safer place, that is when you get fully equipped and Move Out with the truck gun.  But, that scenario is A LOT closer to a combat zone than it is to a self-protection situation that you would have to justify before a judge as reasonable “self-defense.”  Don't make your defense any harder in a criminal proceeding by how you're equipped.  Zombies ain't real, folks!

If you agree, please like AND share!

Soule

www.Easy6training.com

New Zealand

I wanted to write a bit about the Mosque shootings in New Zealand this week, but I don't want to get into the absurd gun control arguments.  Really, what I want to talk about is threat.  In the military, that is a noun.  What is the threat?  Meaning, what are the capabilities an enemy has, and what are the probabilities he will use them effectively against us?  This is what Intelligence Officers and Soldiers do in the Army; the evaluate threat.

I have a Masters Degree in Public Administration with a concentration in Homeland Defense.  I am a combat veteran with three tours in Iraq.  If I am not an expert, I am at least a credentialed novice in evaluating the threat in our society.  That is why I write these, and why I train the tiny minority of Americans who actually open their eyes to the realities of the Post-9/11 world.

I don't know if I've said this recently, but the difference between the Post-9/11 world and the pre-9/11 world was that acts of war used to be the exclusive domain of nations.  That changed on 9/11.  Twenty guys with box cutters and pepper spray turned four tools of modern transportation into weapons of mass destruction.  We can all start to understand that--we can probably never fully understand lunatics--but we can understand the effects (as in, battlefield effects) that can be achieved by non-nation states with modern technology.

What very few of us understand is the opposite side of the coin.  In a world where warfare can be conducted by non-state actors, that means defense of the nation states becomes the problem of the citizen, not the government.  There were no government assets onboard any of the four planes hijacked on 9/11.  But on the last one, United Flight 93, there were ordinary citizens who recognized the THREAT of terrorism in a new world, violently birthed that morning.  Led by my hero and inspiration, Todd Beamer, ordinary citizens took the awe-inspiring actions to defend the homeland by resisting the terrorists.

The threat we get.  The response, we still don't understand.  Why weren't there armed security guards at the Mosques in New Zealand?  Terrorists look for soft targets.  They don't attack hardened, impregnable fortresses.  They shoot up a concert from a hotel room, they hijack planes and turn them into missiles, they shoot up places of worship, or our insanely unsecured schools.  They don't confront our aircraft carriers or armored divisions, because they will always lose those fights.  The fights they usually win are against our soft targets.

In the Post-9/11 world, we can't afford to have soft targets.  But, the government can't be everywhere, all the time, protecting every movie theater, supermarket, church or school.  But the threat is real to all of those places.  You know what my education in Homeland Defense taught me?  That WE THE PEOPLE have to become the defenders of the homeland.  New Zealand failed to recognize that, just as we have done so many time since the heroes of United Flight 93 showed us how we are going to have to live in the age of terrorist caliphates and simplistically armed fanatics causing mass casualty events with their evil creativity. 

Every time the lunatics succeed in one of these attacks, more are emboldened.  The only thing that defeats terror is COURAGE.  We The People have to develop COURAGE and recognize that since that fateful Tuesday morning that we swore to Never Forget, it is OUR responsibility individually to stand up to these nut jobs.  It is our responsibility as individuals to be prepared to fight back when one of these lunatics shows up in our town.  Prepared with our equipment, prepared with our training, but most of all, prepared with the mindset that We The People ARE Homeland Defense.  There's a famous story from World War Two as the Germans were advancing during the Battle of the Bulge; a young American paratrooper stopped, started digging a foxhole as all these other units were retreating in a disorganized rout.  He said to the tank commander, "I'm the 82nd Airborne, and this is as far as the bastards are going!"

In the Post-9/11 world, We The People must all try to live-up to the worlds of Paratrooper Martin of the 82nd Airborne.  When these coward-ass nut jobs show up in our towns, churches, mosques or synagogues, We The People must be prepared, as the heroes of United Flight 93 were, to say, "I'm an AMERICAN, and this is as far as the bastards are going!"

That is the new truth in the Post-9/11 world.  The threat is not massed tanks or nuclear missiles.  The threat is fanatical individuals hell bent on killing, fueled by hatred, desiring only to terrorize.  The only way to defeat terror is with COURAGE, and we must all be prepared to stand-up.  New Zealand, I feel for you, but like us, you have to come to the realization that you need your people to be hard, so that there are no soft targets for the lunatics to exploit.  We have to be harder than the fanatics who seek to destroy us.  We must be prepared to defend the homeland when it is attacked in our presence.  Above all, we must have the only weapon that defeats terror: COURAGE.

Remember the fallen!

Soule
Easy6