A few days ago, I was recording a Cornered Cat Quick Tips segment with Paul Lathrop of the Polite Society Podcast. As we talked, Paul asked me about for some tips for travelers who must go into airports and other gun-free areas. He asked, “What can you do to protect yourself when you’re completely disarmed?”
My response: I told him that I have never been disarmed. Sometimes I don’t have a gun or other dedicated weapon, but that does not mean I’m entirely unarmed. I’m never without resources. Guns provide an important resource for people who want to protect themselves, but a gun isn’t the be-all, end-all of self defense.
What is?
Your ultimate resource for self defense are the things you carry inside yourself — your absolute dedication to get home safe to your family at the end of the day, your decision that you won’t be a victim, your willingness to do whatever it takes to survive, the things you’ve learned about how to protect yourself, and the physical skills you’ve developed to help you do that effectively.
Your gun won’t always be with you. Your protective husband or boyfriend won’t always be with you. Your pocketknife or pepper spray won’t always be with you. But no matter what the circumstances might be, you (and whatever you know) will always be with you!
So today, reading Lise’s Life Assurance blog, I came across an old news story (from October 2011) of a woman who fought off a knife-armed attacker. This quote from the story really jumped out at me:
This woman did not have a gun or a knife of her own. What she had was an absolute determination to survive. She decided she was not going out like that. She acted quickly and decisively, and did what it took to survive. After the bad guy let go, she did not hang around to “win” the fight or make the bad guy pay for putting her in that situation. She did exactly as much as she needed to do in order to escape. And as soon as she’d done that, she left — efficiently.
You might even say, she fought like a cornered cat.
