In the wake of the August 22nd murder in Charlotte NC, we face September 11th. How are they alike?
The problems that broke out on August 22nd have been in place for decades, have been misread, stupidly handled and are now the subject of 24/7 “opinion” coverage.
Please, don’t call it “news.” It ain’t.
Social media has spun up the outrage machine with greater intensity. Calls for “closing the barn now that the horse has decamped” flood all the opinion outlets.
Just like September 11th. The planks for that operation were in place long before Slick Willie, interns, and the first Shrub as President. Like the issues regarding mishandling race relations by government well-meaning, slow-witted types, a loss of knowing how to deal with the mentally ill population (somewhat driven by art in the form of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, among others), and a people living the soft life here in the States, they all came home to roost in this case on a light-rail in the southern US.
So what? The topic field of this service isn’t how public policy considered, ordered and carried out by lightweights will routinely fail. That’s not news, anymore than Chris Cuomo, Joe Rogan and others in the pod-space broadcast news.
The question for us is how to adjust to conditions. The social space is busy with that one too. A famous “common tater” (h/t, Claude Werner) asks “I carry here, but still settling on the right EDC. Trying several. I don’t want to print excessively under my shirt. I want stopping power and capacity.”
It really doesn’t matter what the gun is – the upsized subcompact (above) is fine, properly holstered. But the state of mind is more critical than the gun – below, we demonstrate a condition of unreadiness. The gun isn’t the point – it’s your willingness to break contact.
I suggest that’s not the problem. Our poor émigré could have been armed, in the sense of carrying self-defense tools, but was completely unaware of the problem until the fight was over.
Guns weren’t critical to her situation. If your noggin is placed squarely into your fourth point of contact, it just doesn’t matter.
Like before, it’s ain’t what you carry; it’s how you conduct yourself. Consider the term “tradecraft.” It’s not just about foreign intelligence gathering in hostile environs. If you believe there really is a “safe place,” you’re part of the problem, another casualty for the rest of us to have to deal with.
There are no safe places. None.
One response is instructive: “After Charlotte I'm carrying every time I leave the house.”
So, we had to have someone killed before you realized there was a problem. This is someone who’ll forget Charlotte, like people have forgotten 9/11 (and Pearl Harbor), and will carry for a while before it becomes “uncomfortable.”
As to what you carry, that’s a time-killer. The fact that you get up, check your gear and gear up, gives you an opportunity to get your mind right – that’s the important fact. I don’t need discussions of capacity, “stopping power” (oh, please!), and other nonsense. What I need is you understanding that the world is not a friendly place, that going to the watering hole at dusk is fraught with peril, and to know how to put yourself in a place of situational dominance – those are key.
Consider your mission. That one took me a while, but Claude Werner isn’t called the Tactical Professor for nothing; he provided that piece of the puzzle.
A veteran of Army SF, he knew well what his mission was for each foray into the cold. When I was a copper, it was to seek out the malefactor, collect the needed information and physical evidence, do the laying on of hands to seize that malefactor and to bring him properly before the court for judgement.
What was Iryna Zarutska’s mission? What is mine now – or that individual posting on social media?
The first objective is to avoid contact. See the problem before it becomes a problem, then avoid it, evade it – escape from it. Failing that mission component, you have one option: Force a break in contact.
How? It could be a sweep-and-strike, it could be area denial with chemicals, it could, in the worst case, be engagement with lethal countermeasures.
When the gun goes on, first thing, adjust your state of mind. Set Readiness Condition YELLOW.
To do that last, you have to be equipped (and willing) to do it. Worrying about “is a P365 better than a G19 or a 38 revolver” is hardly the point. Aside from lethal engagement, the role of the concealed handgun(s) is setting your mind into the right frame.
Set Condition yellow.
Until you’ve handled the software component, selecting a gun is simply stupid. Get your head right, then you can play with fashions.
But not until.
— Rich Grassi
