Anybody can defend themselves!
Do you walk around town like this? I don’t understand why people spend a lot of money to play army when they’re never going to have “full battle rattle” in a self-defense situation. I mean, it’s your money, do what you want with it, but what the heck is the point? I think the money you spend on all this “kit” you cosplay with once a year, would be better spent on practice ammunition for the concealed carry pistol you actually carry on a daily basis. You will never have your “operator outfit” in a self-defense situation for a couple of reasons: 1) no mugger is going to attack you like that, which may be a good reason for you to wear that stuff all the time when you go outside…. 2) but, nobody does that, because it sucks. Navy SEALs don’t walk around San Diego in all of their gear. Green Berets don’t walk around Colorado Springs with all of their gear. Now, maybe some of them keep it in their vehicles just in case they have to intervene in an active shooting, but that’s not self-defense.
To be clear, I have no problem with veterans making money off of their time in the military and selling their skillset to civilians willing to pay money for the knowledge. I do that same thing with handguns. I just don’t think it is a very good return on the investment for a civilian who may have to defend themselves some day without a carbine with an optic, a helmet and a plate carrier. Because they won’t have any of that crap when an armed criminal predator attacks them. So, don’t go to the range wearing this junk.
Full disclosure, when I started as an instructor, I used to wear a thigh holster and extra mag pouches in my 5.11 Tactical clothes, because I could draw and shoot really fast from my “Han Solo” rig and look super-cool. But at the end of the class, I would take that gun and put it in a case, take the holster off and put it in a bag, take the extra mag pouches off and put them in the bag with all the extra magazines, then I’d put on a leather belt-slide holster for a compact pistol on a belt made to hold up pants. Then the lightbulb went off…oh, I don’t carry all that “battle belt b.s.” every day, so why am I training with it on the range? I stopped doing the cool-guy crap, and started to wear my actual carry gun and my actual carry holster and the clothes I actually wear around town, concealing the gun the way I actually do on the street. That’s the way we should train, because that’s what you’re going to have when you get attacked.
“But, what if I do carry like that?” Then, you are a cop. Or maybe some other armed professional. And, by all means, train that way because that’s the most likely setup you will have when you need to use your tools. HOWEVER, if you are not a cop, or armed security of some sort, and you walk around town with a Batman Belt, you are putting yourself in severe legal jeopardy. You are going to have to convince a District Attorney that you were a victim, and if you “kit out” like a vigilante, you’re going to have a hard time convincing that DA that you weren’t out looking for trouble. People who go out hunting for bad guys are not self-defenders. They are cops, they are soldiers, they are bounty hunters, and they are legally empowered to do those things; civilians are not. George Zimmerman is not an example of good self-defense; he went out looking for trouble and had a Batman fantasy going on in his head, and just because he got away with it doesn’t mean he’s a good example. Neither is Kyle Rittenhouse, even though there are lessons we can learn from that shooting, the biggest lesson to learn from it is to not put yourself in stupid places where violence is guaranteed to ensue. The best self-defense technique is the one you never have to use. Dressing up like an “operator” on the range is pointless unless you’re going to dress like that on the street, and if you dress like that on the street, you’re going to have a very hard time convincing a DA, a judge, or a jury that you were the innocent victim in a self-defense engagement.
Spend your money on whatever you want, but your best return on investment for self-defense training expenditures is practice ammunition. Getting great at drawing and shooting combat accurate shots from the holster you’re going to actually carry the gun in, in the manner you’re actually going to conceal it. Those are the things that will make you more likely to survive the fight and then survive the legal fight after the fact. Yes, I am far more lethal and safer armed with a carbine and wearing body armor, but that directly contradicts the story of self-defense, which you have to prove in a court of law. If you claim self-defense in a shooting, you have to prove it, meaning the burden of proof shifts from the prosecutors to the defense, and if you are wandering around town geared up with battle belts and body armor, that job will be extremely difficult. Which is why almost nobody does it, including the actual operators when they’re back home in the States. Which is why you shouldn’t spend a lot of time and money training with that crap.
Don’t get me wrong, I have all of that junk. I bought it all when I was in the Army and an actual armed professional. I have worn it once since getting out of the Army in 2009. Riots were going on, cities were burning and ANTIFA announced on social media that they were coming to the suburbs; well, I live in suburban America, and I geared up to defend my home, sat in my garage loading magazines for several hours waiting for the social justice “warriors” to show up. Wasn’t necessary, because ANITFA, like most communists, are cowards. So, I’m not saying there isn’t a place for that junk. What I’m saying is if you don’t have those things issued to you, and you aren’t rich, you are better off spending your limited resources on getting really good with a concealed carry pistol from a concealed carry holster. Don’t waste your money on a bunch of gear until you are an absolute master with your handgun from a concealed holster. Also, don’t go spending several thousand dollars on a handgun thinking it will make you a better shot; a $500-$600 pistol that you shoot several thousand rounds of ammunition through is a far better way to become a good shot.
Once you are John Wick with a handgun, then okay, start branching out. But if you’re not at that level, you should dedicate your training time and money to getting to be a master with the tool you’re most likely going to have on you in a self-defense situation, not training with a bunch of cool-guy gear you’ll almost never have when you’re attacked. It’s called Every Day Carry for a reason, and unless you’re an armed professional, tactical gear is NOT your every day carry. Stop wasting money.
Secondly, most importantly, you do NOT have to be a Green Beret to shoot a mugger, a robber or a rapist. Special Operators don’t get attacked by criminals. So, out of however many violent crimes there are in a given year in America, a certain percentage of them are defeated by self-defenders, and none of those successful self-defenders are Navy SEALs or Delta Force members. If there are one or two exceptions to this statement, okay, yes, some criminals are really, really stupid, but generally speaking the people who successfully defend themselves against violent criminals are civilians with very little training. And that is the point, you do not have to be GI Joe to defend yourself. Anybody can do it with a couple of days of training and a commitment to frequent practice.
In four hours, I can train you how to effectively use your handgun to defend yourself. In another four hours, I can train you how to defeat multiple attackers in a self-defense situation. With enough practice at those things, I can teach you another four hours and have you able to defeat most active shooters using your concealed carry handgun. Four more hours, and I can teach you how to use an edged weapon or any sharp object to defeat a violent criminal predator or terrorist when you aren’t allowed to carry a pistol. Now, all of these are contingent on the student practicing on a routine basis, and the more they practice, the better they will be, but given about sixteen hours of training, any average person could learn to be more dangerous than the vast majority of violent criminal predators. You don’t have to be a black belt, you don’t have to be a sniper, you don’t have to be an operator of any sort to have the skills necessary to defeat most violent criminals. It is easier than you think. And this is the problem with the “full battle rattle” cosplay classes I see a bunch of armed professionals giving to civilians; it deters most civilians from seeking the training required to carry a sub-compact pistol. It undermines the fact that anybody can defend themselves. Gang bangers are not Spetsnaz. They’re not al Qaeda. And even when actual terrorists have attacked us, ordinary civilians have successfully stopped them.
Todd Beamer led the first counter-assault against al Qaeda in the War on Terrorism, saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives and he never spent a day in SWAT School or Ranger School or Selection or BUD/S. He was a civilian martial artist and he had the most important attribute necessary to defeat evil scumbags: courage. That’s the thing you should be learning from the “Operators,” not the best battle-belt set-up, or what plate carrier to buy, or even how to do tactical reloads….because that’s all b.s. Courage is what defeats terror, and the heroes of the Special Operations Command can do a great deal to teach all civilians about that. Emulate their warrior values like honor and bravery, not their outfits.
“So buy him a drink, and lend him an ear.
He’s nobody’s fool, but he’s the only one here,
Who remembers the smell of the black-powder smoke,
And the stand in the street at the turn of a joke…”
-Johnny Cash, The Last Gunfighter Ballad
Please like and share. If you disagree, or you’re a Delta-SEAL-Ranger-Recon-Beret who thinks I’m a conventional Army pussy, feel free to argue, but bring numbers of operators who have been victims of attempted rape versus the women I successfully train to shoot the rapists😊
Soule
