The Cornered Cat
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Emotion motivation
February 16, 2018

A lot of people, when they look at a scenario that they see described online, react emotionally to that description. They then announce what they “would have done” if it happened to them. And that response is almost always based on the way they feel at the moment they read or see the scenario. I feel [angry, upset, disgusted] right now as I read this story, therefore I would do X if that were happening to me. Take a look at the comments section of any news story that involves pedophilia, for example, and you’ll see what I mean. The “I would have …” reactions to such stories are not often very realistic. But they do express deep emotional truths.

What people often miss is that inside the criminal event as it is actively unfolding, they won’t feel the same way they feel right now. Right now they feel un-threatened but also angry. Right now they know how the story ends. Right now they are alone, in social isolation. But in the actual moment, they may feel confused, or embarrassed, or uncertain, or frightened. They will certainly feel some type of social pressure, whether to respond more strongly or not to respond at all. Anger leads to one action, fear to a different one, confusion and embarrassment to other actions. And social pressure is both real and powerful.

But even though emotions are powerful motivators to act, they are poor at helping us decide which actions to take. That is a job for the calm, reasoning mind.

And this is why, when a scenario that you see online or read or hear about gets you emotionally stirred up, it is important to take note of how you feel as you think about those events. Then take time to think about what other emotions you might realistically feel in the heat of the moment. Think about the sounds, sights, smells of the event. Think about the confusion at the beginning of the event. Think about the other people who could be around (children, spouse, co-worker, boss, stranger, pastor or mentor, friend who hates guns or fears violence, friend who also carries …). Will other people help you respond appropriately, or push you into an extreme reaction that’s maybe not justified? Will the presence of other people maybe stop you from reacting at all? (What will the neighbors think? What will my my children see me doing here?) Explore all the emotions these questions might stir up. Pay attention to them. Think about the social pressures you might face and think deeply about the effects they might have on your motivation to act.

But then also set those emotions aside and think as calmly and as reasonably as you can about what would be the smart and legal action to take inside that scenario. Given the emotions you yourself are likely to feel in a similar situation to this one, what are you realistically able and willing to do? Does what you reasonably believe you are likely to do match up with what you believe you should do? If not, what would it take to move yourself into a stronger position of response?

Emotions will always be there, and they are an important component of how people respond under pressure, but they are poor guides to good judgment.

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Safe Space
February 13, 2018

At first glance, this long-ish post will seem to be a little unrelated to my usual topics. But it does apply in many different ways, since self-defense and self-care and conflict resolution are all very closely linked. And since anyone who owns a gun and carries one in public for personal protection might sometimes need to come to grips with the effect our choices have on others. Do the people around us have a “right” to feel comfortable with our choices? Do we have a moral obligation to limit our choices to only those that help others feel comfortable? These are some bedrock issues in many ways.

So I’ve been ruminating on this one for awhile. Forgive me, but I’m going to indulge in a somewhat extended analogy as a way of exploring some issues. If you have a hard time transporting a logic chain from one domain to another, you may not enjoy this. Or you may enjoy it, but miss the point. For that you have my sympathy. Nevertheless, here it is.

Some time back, I came across a blog post written by a woman in the early stages of recovery from alcoholism. In that post, she told the story of a planned get-together among a group of casual friends who knew each other primarily through their shared volunteer work. One of the women invited the others to come to her home for a mid-morning, midweek social event that the blogger was really looking forward to attending.

But…

In the midst of the flurry of group emails planning the event, one woman offered to bring Prosecco. Cue angst and a bit of anger from our blogger. She writes, “The meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. Day drinking while the kids are at school. I can’t go there. It’s not that I’m nervous I might relapse. I know I won’t. I just can’t go hang out at someone’s house where there is alcohol being consumed at that hour and I won’t be able to enjoy myself … I have made a very conscious decision to limit my exposure to mommy drinking. It’s not that I can’t go; it’s that I don’t want to go. I don’t want to force a smile and fake my way through what will be extreme torture for me.”

In short, this newly-recovered alcoholic wants a safe space, where she can – if only for a short while – enjoy the pleasures of socializing and getting to know new people without the stress of being pressured to drink. Or having to explain why she’s not drinking. (This is, apparently, a non-trivial undertaking in some circles.) She adds: “I feel so defeated. Less than. And, I have never cried so hard or been so physically ill over something that doesn’t involve death or a broken heart.”

Thought Experiment

Now for a thought experiment. Just, you know, to try some ideas on for size.

Let us pretend for a moment that among this same group of friendly acquaintances, there is another woman who sometimes feels panic-sized levels of discomfort during social events. Stipulate that she has had poor luck with most prescribed relaxants, but has discovered that a glass of wine helps her calm down to the point where she no longer has to force a smile and fake her way through a social occasion that would otherwise be extreme torture for her.

She, too, desires a safe space where she can – if only for a short while – enjoy the pleasures of socializing and getting to know people in an environment where she will not feel pressured to be someone she’s not. She, too, feels stressed and unhappy when she thinks about the social pressures others might bring to bear to stop her from doing what she needs to do for her own mental health at that time and in that place. And she, too, feels like weeping – but instead of weeping at the stress of being surrounded by drinkers and feeling pressured to drink, she feels like weeping as she thinks about how hard it would be to be the only one drinking or about having to deal with the group without a glass of wine in hand.

With me so far?

Either one of these women, the real one and the one we just imagined together, might have friends willing and able to accommodate her need for a safe space on this issue. But both of them together… well, let’s just say that it would be difficult for them to share a space without a lot of goodwill and care on both sides, because the conflict is binary: either there is, or is not, drinking at the event. One or the other of them would have to give up her own need in order to accommodate the other’s need.

The space would be “safe” (read: comfortable, with an alternative of truly extreme discomfort) for one of them, but not both of them.

Extend the Idea

We can extend this idea to any number of other conflicts that are binary in nature: one person wants to relax with a cigar, another wants to breathe in a smoke-free environment. One couple wants to teach their children how to dine in an exclusive, fancy restaurant; another wants to enjoy a rare evening blessedly free from the sights, sounds, and smells of small children. One woman wants to relax among her friends without worrying about her choice of words; another finds the sounds of F*** and P**** and D*** and similar words highly offensive and wearying, and wants to enjoy a visit without hearing those words – and without having to explain them to her young child. One person wants to bring his abuela’s favorite recipe to a get-together, and another cannot stand spicy foods or is allergic to a key ingredient.

A little help for the analogy-impaired: sometimes, people get really wrapped around the axle about whether a firearm is – or is not – present in any given place. Shall we allow firearms here, or forbid them there? Sometimes this gets tangled up with “open carry” vs “concealed carry” vs who owns the property vs human rights that apply everywhere a person goes vs all sorts of other things. In every case, when you think about it, one person’s comfort often comes at the cost of another person’s freedom.

Do you find your sympathies naturally shifting alignment as the subject shifts? It would be unusual if you didn’t. Human nature at work there.

The way it used to be

I can vaguely remember this, from early childhood …

it used to be…

… that in cases where the wishes (or outright needs) of one person in a social group seemed to conflict with the wishes (or outright needs) of another, the people around both of them would voluntarily work to reduce the binary nature of the conflict – making it less either/or wherever possible. And this was normal, not forced by law.

For instance, a business owner might offer separate seating arrangements for people who did, and did not, wish to smoke. Or, even even more commonly, the smoker might say to the people around him, “Do you mind if I smoke?” and (here’s the kicker) it would be an actual question. Maybe a restaurant owner would invite families with young children to dine earlier in the evening, reserving the later hours for couples who wished to dine in an environment that did not include sobbing toddlers. People with different dietary tastes and needs created the idea of a group potluck, which often included an elaborate system of etiquette wherein everyone in the group pretended not to notice that the only person who ate Aunt Jane’s fruitcake was Jane’s husband (who under that same system of etiquette, didn’t dare not). Even the woman with the potty mouth would restrain herself in certain environments, and among certain people.

This didn’t always work as perfectly as everyone might wish. But as long as there was some effort on all sides, and some goodwill, that ad hoc system of gentle accommodation worked well enough for most people, most of the time.

But now?

Now we want a huge number of things to be regulated by force of law. And by golly, if there’s not a LAW forcing us to do (or not do) a thing, well, screw you for asking us to voluntarily restrain ourselves in any way. How DARE you?!

So there’s that.

Social Pressure and Law

Now let’s add another layer of complexity. Back to our first two women, the blogger who wants to enjoy an alcohol-free social event at 9:30 in the morning on a weekday, and our imaginary sociophobe who needs a glass of wine to counter her social anxiety in the same setting.

What shall we do about them, when they show up in our own social circles?

Shall we go on social media, and shame the alcoholic for being an uptight, controlling prude?

Or shame the sociophobe for her self-medication with an intoxicant?

Shall we lobby for, and pass, a law that forbids any social daytime gathering that includes alcohol?

Or should we pass a law that forbids any gathering that fails to allow alcohol?

Either of these social media interactions, and either of these laws, could be presented to others as a way to be caring and inclusive and socially just. Either of them could be considered a way to help an oppressed segment of the population.

And either of them would be equally oppressive to a different segment of the population.

Totalitarianism is comfortable … for someone.

Time to wrap this thing up. The only conclusion that I have here is that a free society includes some discomfort with the choices others make. Sometimes this discomfort will become quite severe, even disabling. And sometimes this will include choices others make that actually do affect your life in some way. It’s all very flattering for us to think of ourselves that we are super-tolerant of other people, but most of us are only tolerant as long as others’ needs do not conflict in any way with our own. As discomfort rises, tolerance declines.

We can opt to live in a totalitarian society. In a totalitarian society, everything not commanded is forbidden and everything not forbidden is commanded. The laws either forbid the things that make us uncomfortable, or require the things that we think will help us feel better. We can even choose to live in a totalitarian society without that type of law, because with cooperation from people around us, we can force our personal preferences on others just by social pressure alone.

Or we can opt to live in a free society. In a free society, people make choices and sometimes those choices cause discomfort in other people. In a free society, we will sometimes be on one end of that previous sentence, and sometimes on the other end. In a free society, we can voluntarily choose to make room for other people’s needs, but there’s no law forcing us to do that. There’s also no law forcing us not to do that. We then need to figure out our own ways through social muddles, and sometimes that’s going to be messy. Worse, in a free society, some  people will choose to be jerks about things and that means that other people will be left crying. In a free society, we can personalize how we deal with people who do that. And in a free society, we are never forced to do things we ourselves find distasteful – although we might voluntarily do just that in order to take care of those around us.

Bottom line

The cost of freedom is discomfort.

And the cost of comfort is freedom.

Choose wisely.

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“Slap his face and walk away”
February 12, 2018

Q:

“I have often wondered why the old advice of ‘Slap his face and walk away’ is no longer taught in response to an insult or a sexual slur.”

A: 

Because it’s a terribly bad idea to turn a verbal conflict into a physical one, unless you have the tools, skills, and abilities to win a physical fight.

Further, whether or not you have those skills, if you you were the one who turned it into a physical fight, then you become the initial aggressor. Which means that you will not do well in court, as the other person can then quite effectively and justifiably claim that they acted in self defense when they punched you (or worse) in response to your aggression, and the court will very likely agree with them.

 

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Blog spotlight: .357 Magnum
February 10, 2018

If you look to the right of your screen, you should see my blogroll. Lots of interesting things in there (though, sadly, I do need to update again, as all too many previously-active good bloggers have moved on to other things).

One of my faves: .357 Magnum blog.

The reason I love it: Zendo Deb, the blog’s owner, often posts short and very memorable stories from the news. Some of these are people who successfully defended themselves, while others are people who learned a hard lesson — or who can teach us one.

Recommended!

 

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A slight setback
February 9, 2018

Came home from a long day, getting ready for bed. Pulled my holstered gun off my belt and locked it into the quick-access bedside safe — yep, still in its holster. Still loaded. It’s secure, and also ready to go should I need it.

I’m not a big fan of unnecessarily unloading and reloading my carry gun.

Why not?  Because I don’t want my ammunition to suffer from setback. And because I do not want to risk killing the primer without knowing I’ve done it.

 

The round of ammunition on the left is healthy and the length it should be. The one on the right has suffered a slight setback.

The round of ammunition on the left is healthy and it is exactly the length it should be. The one on the right has suffered from setback, making it significantly shorter.

 

As you load a round of ammunition into a semi-automatic gun and then remove it from the chamber without firing, the bullet naturally tends to get pushed back slightly into its case. When this happens, the compressed powder can 1 create much higher pressures inside the chamber than the gun is designed to handle. The result can be a bit … messy. Also expensive and painful.

Loading, unloading, and reloading the same round can also cause the primer mix inside the case to get knocked out of place, a problem you won’t be able to see by looking. But the missing primer mix means the round simply will not fire when you need it.

When a self-defense gun fails to fire, the results can be catastrophic for the person who was relying on it to save their life.

What to do about this? I love this advice from Chuck Haggard of Agile Training and Consulting.

“If you simply must unload/reload daily … I strongly urge you to not re-chamber the same round more than 2-3 times, and to keep track of this to mark the round coming out of the chamber with a Sharpie so that you know how many times it’s been chambered. A tic mark on the rim of the case is easy to do, and easy to see.”

This seems to be an easy solution. Avoid unloading and reloading your gun whenever possible. But when you must, keep track of how many times you’ve done it. Simple.

Summing up:

  • Avoid loading, unloading, and reloading the same round multiple times.
  • Keep track of the number of times one round has been through the process by putting a small mark on the side of the case each time it comes out of the chamber.
  • When one round has been loaded and unloaded more than a handful of times, take it to the range and shoot it during practice. Do not continue to load and unload that round for self defense.

One round of ammunition costs around 50 cents. One new handgun costs around $500. And one life is priceless.

Stay safe.

Notes:

  1. Note the word can. This is not to say it necessarily does, in every case. There are informal but popular “research” papers that say this isn’t a big deal, on the basis of one backyard test with a hammer and no way to measure the pressure inside the round. But on the other hand there are also many, many first-hand reports of setback being a factor in exploded guns, including several that come from law enforcement agencies that investigated multiple incidents. And there are even graphs and things that explain the science behind this. (Also see: Normalization of Deviance.) A single exemplar of a gun that failed to explode as expected does not overcome the weight of experience and the science that says setback-induced overpressure can indeed be a factor to respect. ↩
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Landowning Nobility & Property Rights
February 8, 2018

Historically, one of the reasons European peasants were denied the right to own or carry around firearms was because other people owned the land upon which they lived and worked. Peasants owning weapons would violate the property rights of the landowning nobility.

Seems to me that America has been headed that same direction for awhile now. People rent their dwellings from one company, ride to work on buses or trains owned by another company, and work inside office buildings owned by yet a third company.

And in many states, there are laws preventing people from carrying the tools to defend themselves in many or all of those locations — because they don’t actually own the land where they work, or live, or travel.

This means we are slowly drifting toward a situation in which we agree with the royalty and nobility of a bygone era: the lower classes should never be allowed to exercise any human rights that the people who own the land don’t want them to have.

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The perfect is the enemy of the good
February 7, 2018

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

It’s an old saying. And it means, sometimes we work so hard to do things perfectly that we fail to do them well. Or at all.

Case in point: it’s good to be prepared to defend yourself. Some of us want to do that by owning a reliably functional gun we can carry in a secure holster. That’s the good.

But to do that same thing perfectly would mean (among many other things) that we must first find the perfect gun. And once we start down that road, good enough is not good enough anymore.

When we chase the perfect gun with too much passion, we too often stop asking basic questions such as, “Will this gun fire when I press the trigger?” 1 and “Will it fling a bullet approximately in the same place the sights indicate it should?”

Worse, we sometimes get positive answers to these questions, and then sneer at the very simplicity of the answer we get. It’s not fancy enough. Finding that gun wasn’t hard enough. Whatever. And we lose track of how crucially important those basic questions really are.

Instead we get all wrapped up in a whole bunch of inconsequential things that just don’t matter as much. Such as a specific brand name, type of finish, expert gunsmithing, or fancy sights… because we don’t just want a good gun that will do the basic thing in a basic way. We want the best possible gun we can get that will fill that role. So we shop features and make comparison lists of relatively unimportant points, pestering our gun-buddies with ridiculous questions about arcane ballistic trivia and worrying endlessly about minor features.

After all, we reason, this is a big life change. So taking the first step into self-defense gun ownership cannot possibly be as simple as walking into a store and walking back out again with a gun that has a good reputation and reasonably fits our hand and budget. It has to be harder than that.

Eventually, our search stalls out. We’re frozen in indecision, confused by all the possible choices. We end up like the mule who laid down and starved to death halfway between two good piles of hay, because the poor thing couldn’t decide which direction to go.

The search for perfect guns sometimes takes people the opposite direction into a kind of reverse snobbery. The ones who go that route get wrapped up in finding the absolutely cheapest possible gun they can find. That becomes their definition of perfect. To be clear, this isn’t always a bad thing; sometimes it is simply necessary and there’s nothing wrong with that. Being on a limited budget is a factor for some people, and sometimes a very serious one indeed. The challenge comes when the immediate price becomes the only thing we shop for. Instead of looking for the best value within the budget, we start looking for the lowest sticker price regardless of value… and without even thinking about the long-term costs of the purchase. 2 That’s a losing game, especially when funds are tight, because a lot of apparently good deals turn out to be quite expensive if the basics are not covered first. Save money where you can, but make sure the basics are covered when you do.

So more about the ‘reverse snobbery’ thing: sometimes we meet those people on gun boards and other social media, bragging about how they put a snooty-nosed Olympic master to shame by outshooting them with their little Crapojamamatic. Don’t believe those wish fulfillment stories, most of them — but do pay attention to the quirky and perverse pride behind them. Human nature can be fascinating!

Sometimes the definition of perfect gets narrowed down to one  impossible or nearly-impossible criteria. I’m reminded of one woman who was looking for a gun that fit her hand perfectly. Unfortunately for her, her hands were very small, even smaller than an average 10-year-old child’s hands, so finding a gun that met her technical challenge was never in the cards. She’d have done okay with a gun that was just a little too large for her, and there were a few that would’ve fit well enough. But she refused to buy anything at all until she’d found that nonexistent Holy Grail — and as an unmodified, affordable, off-the-shelf gun, at that. You’ll sometimes see other people do something similar with a longing for a high-end gun even if that’s completely outside their real-world budget and even though there’s a mid-range gun that would do them just as well.

So they, and we, keep looking. And looking, and looking, and looking.

And in the meantime, the gun goes unpurchased and our great plan to learn how to protect ourselves … just drifts away.

****

Looking for a decent, functional gun to learn to shoot with?

My recommendations:

Glock 19
M&P Compact 9mm
Sig P320 Compact 9mm

If you need to learn to shoot, any one of the above guns will be a good and reliable choice. Which one should you get? Whichever one floats your boat. Or whichever the sales guy offers you a good deal on.  Later you can — if needed — buy a smaller gun in the same line (Glock 43, M&P Shield, P320 Sub-Compact) for carrying, and it will feel familiar with similar controls and that’ll be good too. But a word of caution: don’t try to learn to shoot with the smallest little gun you can find, because that’s uncomfortable and will likely create some bad habits. Choose a reliable, mid-size gun to begin with. Any gun from this list will be just fine, and so will you.

***

Notes:

  1. “Will it fire when I press the trigger?” is the without-which-not of a personal defense gun. In real estate, the three most important factors are location, location, location. In defensive weapons, it’s reliability, reliability, reliability. ↩
  2. This would be a gun that was cheap in the store, but that fires an odd type of ammunition that’s hard to find and expensive. Or a gun that’s an unusual size or shape, so there aren’t a lot of affordable holsters for it. Sometimes the long term costs will outweigh the immediate benefit of “a good deal,” especially if the gun also does not function reliably. ↩
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Observation
February 6, 2018

While common wisdom says we can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, practical experience has shown that flies are most strongly attracted to bullshit.

Choose your instructors wisely.

 

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