I quote from Varg Freeborn’s book Violence of the Mind in my book. One of my favorite concepts from his book is his mission concept. I try to put it to good use. Understanding what your mission is when carrying a firearm, what situations you are going to get involved in, and, importantly, what situations you are not going to get involved in is crucial to the success of your mission. I want to take another opportunity to look at Freeborn’s mission concept. This time I’ll be looking at it from a threat perspective. Essentially, the question is: what threat are you up against that could compromise the success of your mission?
Most people assume that the threat is a stranger who is an armed violent criminal. For a change, let’s go ahead and assume that is true. Another true thing is that there are many ways to be armed. Let’s look at a few (I’ll explain the bracketed numbers in a bit):
[1] rifle
[2] ar15 carbine
[3] ar15 pistol
[4] shotgun
[5] full-size pistol
[6] compact pistol
Other things besides firearms can be a factor:
[1] body armor
[2] lots of ammo
[3] night IR vision
[4] thermal vision
[5] optics
[6] light/laser
Of course, that’s only half the equation. Let’s look at the circumstances:
[1] morning
[2] midday
[3] afternoon
[4] early evening
[5] midnight
[6] early morning
And who you are with at this time:
[1] alone
[2] with your friends
[3] with your lover
[4] with your lover and child
[5] with your child
[6] with your parents
Okay, let’s play a game. Get some six-sided dice, take one die, and roll it for each section. You’ll develop a violent criminal threat scenario at the end of the process. For example, I’m up against a guy with a shotgun, with lots of ammo, in the early evening, and I’m with my friends. How does your Every Day Carry (EDC) stack up against this violent criminal threat?
I suspect, if your EDC is anything like mine, it doesn’t stack up well. Combining a mission (i.e., protect your family) with a well-armed threat is very disheartening for an ordinary civilian. Lucky for us, most criminals have the following characteristics:
a. They want an easy victim
b. They don’t want to get caught
c. They don’t want to get shot
d. For Common Violent Crimes (CVCs – everything violent except murder), criminals rarely use firearms when the victim is injured.
So far, so good as our EDC provides a good defense against these characteristics. However, the point of this post is to show that it doesn’t take much change for a violent criminal to have even more of an advantage over an ordinary civilian, even when the ordinary civilian is carrying. In fact, in the last two years, some rather disturbing things have happened:
- Law enforcement has been ordered to stand down during violent riots
- Many participants in these riots who committed illegal acts were not arrested
- Some participants that were arrested were also released on bail quickly
- For those that were out on bail, criminal charges were later dropped (sometimes much later after publicity died down)
- Self-defense acts against the illegal actions of participants have been aggressively prosecuted against the civilian claiming self-defense
- Evidence destruction (e.g., destroying a witness’ cell phone)
- Witness intimidation
- Jury intimidation
If these changes become the new normal, violent criminals will no longer be deterred by getting caught or worrying about going to jail. They will only worry about getting shot. These changes could easily lead to well-armed violent criminals willing to shoot first. This possible behavior change is a disaster for ordinary civilians, as I hope the dice game revealed. Here is what you can do:
- Move out of states that allow/enable the behaviors detailed previously
- Move to states that (a) have strong gun rights, (b) have strong self-defense laws, and (c) have one-party consent to audio and video recording. Lastly, if you find states with all three things, look for one that does not have mandatory sentencing for gun crimes. In general, a state should have incentives that increase the likelihood of a fair jury trial rather than increase the likelihood of a plea bargain. Ordinary civilians who believe they are innocent should not be punished for exercising our Sixth Amendment rights, which mandatory prison sentences do by making a jury trial too risky.
- Get an attorney on retainer and discuss your various self-defense options. For example, can you carry a concealed body camera for audio/video recording that you selectively enable at certain times?