Gun Free Zone

Question: You are home with your children and someone breaks in and threatens harm. You should:

1. Retrieve your firearm and defend your family.
2. Call 911 and wait for instructions while analyzing the situation, see if you may actually be in danger and comply with the attacker’s desires.

If you choose number 2, you are doing the right thing according to “expert” Kathy Olevsky. And I would recommend that you should have your local mortuary & insurance agent in your phone’s speed dial while you are at it because you will probably will need one of them in a hurry. Ms. Olevsky then continues her advice with the use of “you could use to assist yourself in your defense. An ordinary household object gives women more power. If you can pick up a lamp, a broom, a baseball bat, or a fireplace utensil, any of these items can be used to help you out.” Can you spot the obvious missing item? Yep, no guns in the list.

Ms. Olevsky is a  is a sixth-degree black belt in Karate and God Bless her for her achievement and dedication, but traditional Martial Arts are tough to learn, even tougher to master and, unfortunately no match for somebody with a gun with an intent to cause harm. In my younger years I was one of those kids who never missed an episode of Kung Fu, and watched in amazement Bruce Lee on the Green Hornet making mincemeat out of the Bad Guys. I was small in stature in those days and easy pickings for bullies at school who thought that it was fun to beat me once a day between Math class and Geography class. So, like many kids of my generation I begged, pleaded and cajoled to my parents about allowing me to join some dojo. My mother did not want his baby to be battered and bruised so she refused time and time again but I knew  I was making headway so I kept at it. And when I knew I was close to success, something happened that changed my young mind about martial arts and dumped the idea altogether. Back then in Venezuela, the top martial arts school was run by two brothers: The Plancharts. They were on TV weekly in sport shows demonstrating their abilities (and they were good) and people were lining around the block to register in a class. One weekend one of the Planchart brothers got accosted by a couple of miscreants and, unlike a Hollywood Happy Ending, Mr. Planchart tried to defend himself with his arts obtaining as result a bullet in his thigh and a very fast trip to the closest hospital.That was the end of my desire to learn Martial Arts.

To quote Tom Clancy in his book Clear and Present Danger: “Armed combat beats unarmed combat every day.” Guns have always been the great equalizer when a less physical or less prepared individual is forced to fight against a superior opponent. And also the amount of training time required is much less than with unarmed combat plus the fact that while somebody with a handicap would be hard pressed to apply difficult katas for self-defense, firearms manipulation is a rather simple mechanical enterprise.

There is this stupid sense of superiority that somebody is morally better if he or she goes through life’s challenges completely unarmed and should solve the problem of a violent offender by placing some good karate chops on him like we see in the movies. Unfortunately life thrives on reality where the Bad Guy will cheat to win and you need every resource to beat him at his game. There is no moral victory in laying dead on a morgue table, just sadness.

So, get your gun, practice, take defensive classes which will train you not only to shoot but to develop the proper mental stance not only to survive an encounter but also how to avoid them altogether. Forget about kimonos and tatamis and bowing to your opponent as means for self preservation, you wanna live at the end of the fight.

In defense Ms. Olevsky I have to add that she did point out something important and I quote: “Do this today, don’t wait until you could be attacked. Be prepared, not scared.”

I have no idea why, but and old memory found me this morning. Back in the early 90’s when I was living in certain South American country now under the firm grasp of a Socialist, massive riots and looting occurred. It was long four days of absolute collapse of the government basic services and control which I lived awake in coffee, cigarettes with a single shot shotgun and a Walther PPK on my waist. Thankfully our property was not affected by rioters since I already had a reputation for being somewhat crazy in Sheepland I was seen in more than one occasion experimenting with home made napalm) and an assiduous patrol kept miscreants pretty much away.

On the second day I was witness to a mob attacking a two story bodega about a two blocks away from my house. As typical of many bodegas in the country, it was owned and operated by one owner and his family and they had their living quarters on the upper floor.  It had no side or rear doors, just the front store gated entrance and side stairs connecting the second floor to the ground level.  I have no idea why the bodega was attacked but looters usually do not need one. When I noticed the attack it was already in progress and I fielded a pair of binoculars from the roof of my house to get a clearer picture. I was upset I what I saw since the looters were people that lived in the area, people that bought from that store and even got credit to purchase items from the owner when they did not have ways to pay for them, yet they thought it was OK to destroy his means of living.

The looters breached the store’s gates and proceeded inside. Seconds later they came out holding on the liquor and cigarettes while whooping their victory. After the booze and smokes were depleted, looters came back pretty much for the rest but this time I heard a firearm discharged sending everybody out running while dropping whatever items they had in their hand. The Bodega owner appeared with a big frame revolver in one hand, surveyed the damage and alongside his family recovered what little they could and proceeded for the next hour or so to secure the store entrance with whatever means they had available. Once they finished, they went inside and I returned to my patrol.

I’d say that about an hour later I checked the bodega again and I saw a large crowd in front. Their demeanor appeared angry and they were looking up at a window on the second story facing the front of the store. Through the barred window I saw a hand come out making go-away gestures but the crowd did not heed. Some in the mob once more attacked the store entrance, but I am guessing the reinforcement was much sturdier because they could not breach it this time. I kept watching the impasse silently congratulating the store owner for his stand when I saw something that chilled me: some idiot looter appeared suddenly with a Molotov cocktail and launched it towards the second story window. Thankfully it missed and hit the wall creating a fireball of little damage against a cement block structure.

It dawned on me that this was now not a bunch of idiots trying to score some freebies from the neighborhood merchant but a full fledged lynching mob intent on murder and nothing could be done to stop them. Police was nowhere to be seen and those not in the mob were like me trying to protect their households or cowering inside them praying to be spared from the wolves roaming the streets. I saw another looter with yet another Molotov cocktail but this time carefully preparing himself for a perfect pitch. He never did. The hand came through the barred second story window but this time holding the revolver and shooting it. One looter down and a Molotov cocktail rolled off his hand harmlessly.

Another looter, incensed by the shooting of his colleague picked up the firebomb and tried to toss it. The revolver went off again and another looter fell to the ground. This one I could see was dead on the spot. My binoculars allowed me to see the head exploding with perfect detail and the body just switching off to a mass of uncoordinated muscles and bones.  I lost track of the Molotov cocktail but I guess it did not go off again because I did not see a fireball, but a couple more appeared in the hands of other looters. More detonations came out the second story window sending two more looters scurrying and at least one of them leaving blood behind him.

This sequence kept repeating itself for another couple of hours. Mob attacking the gate, failing, mob trying to firebomb the upstairs apartment and getting shot for their efforts. I counted at least four dead on the ground and some 8 wounded taken away when the mob finally decided that it was getting to steep a price to pay for their obstinacy and withdrew to seek easier targets. Some 45 minutes later, the store owner and his family came out, loaded their old pick up truck (amazingly left untouched by the mob) with whatever belongings they could pack and abandoned the store. That night the looters came back and set the whole place on fire destroying the only grocery shop in a mile radius forcing the neighborhood to go farther away for their supplies from now on.

I heard later that the Store owner and his family moved to another city. The store was sold for a pittance but the new owner transformed it into a bike repair shop that went bankrupt soon afterward. Last I heard was that the building was abandoned and became a den of druggies and cheap hookers. Nobody was prosecuted for the attacks to the store and thankfully neither was the store owner for defending himself and his family.

So what can one armed man do? When the Shit Hit The Fan, a store owner saved himself and his family against a crowd and bought himself enough time to escape to safety. This was the leasson I learned that day and I hope you may save this little story in your brain’s memory bank for whenever somebody tries to convince you guns are not the solution.

You will find the following instructions and several variations in the websites of various police departments and rape prevention groups:

Choices if it happens to you:

• There is no right or wrong way to respond. Here are some options to consider.
• Escape: Have a plan in mind and think it through. Use a surprise move to distract the attacker in order to get away.
• Defend yourself: Self-defense may be useful IF you are adept at it; it is useful only if you are ready to use it immediately. Often there is not time to use it effectively or you have not practiced it for some time. If you choose to use it, hit to hurt; run fast toward help and don’t look back. Eyes, nose, throat, knees, shin, foot and groin are effective areas to hit.
• Draw attention: Yell loudly, blow a whistle, break a window, make a scene and yell assertively. Yelling “Fire!” will bring more attention than yelling “Help!”
• Stall for time: Pretend to cooperate until you can get near people or possibly escape.
• Pretend you are crazy.
• Throw up.
• Talk your way out. Try to get the assailant to see you as a person rather than an object by telling him/her about yourself. Don’t plead or bargain with the assailant.

Throwing up as defensive method? Now that is peculiar. No, it is not peculiar, it is stupid! That somebody even had the time to think such retarded and infantile things denotes a deep disconnection to reality and a really politically inclined view on how things are supposed to be according to an anti gun agenda. Nothing stops an attacker better that the high velocity incursion of pieces of metal in the innards of a rapist.

At least there is one group out there that gives women the whole spectrum of self-defense: Arming Women Against Rape & Endangerment (AWARE) is a Massachusetts organization that offers women from how to be aware of your surroundings to avoid being attacked, to training with lethal and Less than Lethal weapons and that is a novel approach in the world that is killing and maiming killing women by political correctness’s idiocy.