Noted firearms trainer Claude Werner once said that the best decisions in life tend to be made in advance. This is true of so many things, but it’s especially true of living the armed lifestyle.
Carrying a firearm with you wherever and whenever possible is a good idea, as it’s the best response we’ve come up with to the threat of someone threatening you with death or grievous bodily harm. However, carrying a firearm isn’t enough. You also have to have a mindset and a plan to go with it as well. This is where a lot of gun owners get into trouble, because they’ve created plans in their head which are rigid and inflexible.
For instance, I recently watched a video put out by a large gun rights group where the presenter showed off the contents of his “get home bag.” The purpose of this bag, he said, was to help him get back home no matter what might happen.
In the bag, he had a half-dozen AR-15 magazines, three smoke grenades and a tactical tomahawk. That’s it. No way of procuring water, nothing to create a shelter, just a bunch extra mags for his truck gun, some smoke grenades for concealment and evasion…and a tomahawk.
Clearly he had scripted out a scenario in his head where the only dangers he’d face on the way back home would be man-made and not something more mundane like inclement weather.
I’m guilty of something similar. For years, I’ve had a dedicated home defense gun in a secure location in my house, ready to go. It’s a gun that would bring more to the party than just my everyday carry pistol. I knew I’d need that sort of gun (and only that sort of gun) because the only home defense scenario I could think of was someone breaking into my house to do harm to my family and me.
But that’s not the only threat I might face. For instance, I might inadvertently let in someone who becomes a threat. Now before you say, “I would never do that,” have you ever been at a party and someone’s friend of a friend got out of control? Think that can’t happen at a social occasion in your house? Think again.
And then there’s less-lethal threats outside of my four walls. There are coyotes and wild dogs in my neighborhood. Can they attack someone or something on my property? Of course they can. Will I just sit back inside my home and watch some child get brutalized on my lawn because it’s not happening to me or my family? Probably not.
The home defense script I had created was too rigid. I failed to take into account that nature has a long history of foiling the best-laid plans of men. Rather than rely on just one option (which is currently a Mossberg 500 loaded with Federal FliteControl), I now also have a large can of pepper spray and a bright tactical flashlight in a safe location, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.
A plan is your starting point, not the endpoint. Your plan shouldn’t be rigid and inflexible, but rather be more like a guitar solo in a pop song. The guitarist playing the solo is free to create a melody, but that melody has to be built on a set of rules and complement what’s already happened in the song.
So it is with self-defense planning. Having a wide variety of skills to draw on helps you formulate the correct response when it’s needed. A rigid response, such as loading up your get-home bag with spare magazines and little else, will fail spectacularly when the situation changes.
As I said before, having a plan gives you a starting point, which is better than what most people have. But it’s just a starting point, not the end point. The end point is always living our lives with as few hiccups as possible.