RPF0528-Tools_and_Tactics_for_Self-Defense_in_a_Non-Permissive_Environment
00:00:00.000 | Here at Radical Personal Finance, there are two themes that I consciously continually
00:00:07.000 | explore with you in various ways and using different methods as seem practical to me
00:00:13.400 | at the time.
00:00:14.400 | And those themes are living a rich life now and then building a plan for financial freedom
00:00:20.600 | in 10 years or less.
00:00:22.240 | When I built that tagline, which you hear in probably 70 to 80% of the shows where I
00:00:26.080 | lead off by giving you that tagline, I was very intentional about it because it expresses
00:00:31.800 | what I want to talk about.
00:00:33.940 | It gives you some ideas, but it also gives me as a host of this show a pretty wide degree
00:00:40.060 | of latitude.
00:00:42.080 | That wide degree of latitude keeps me coming back to do the show for you, say three days
00:00:46.520 | a week at the moment.
00:00:48.400 | Because if I just came to come and talk to you about IRAs or life insurance every day,
00:00:54.480 | I couldn't do this.
00:00:55.480 | I really couldn't.
00:00:56.480 | I don't make enough money doing a podcast to interest me in doing that.
00:01:00.240 | I'd go back and make millions in commissions and fees if that were what I wanted to do.
00:01:05.240 | So I need that creative license.
00:01:08.120 | I do think that the show has been a little light on specific tactics and nuts and bolts
00:01:13.120 | on finance the last few months.
00:01:15.040 | I have the intention of changing that.
00:01:18.320 | Discussion on why it hasn't changed yet is unimportant for today's show.
00:01:22.680 | But in the vein of discussing issues that are important, that are practical, especially
00:01:28.080 | that relate to your having and living a rich life, I think this week we're going to merge
00:01:33.800 | a little bit of current events with some practical discussion.
00:01:38.720 | Certainly over the last week and a half, our nation here in the United States of America
00:01:41.780 | has been rocked by the most recent shooting in South Florida, here where I live.
00:01:48.180 | The Parkland community is relatively close to me and it certainly had an impact here
00:01:53.820 | in the local discussion.
00:01:54.820 | But I think more importantly, our country is being rocked by this discussion.
00:02:01.280 | And of course that has an impact on you and on me and on your finances and on my finances
00:02:05.360 | and our ability to live together in a culture where we all see and understand different
00:02:09.920 | things.
00:02:10.920 | We all have different perspectives, different opinions, how to live at peace with one another.
00:02:17.200 | Of course, I, like you, have my own opinions and I've become deeply frustrated with how
00:02:23.760 | to express those opinions.
00:02:28.160 | We all, I think, have an outlet.
00:02:29.840 | We all need an outlet.
00:02:30.840 | And it seems like for many of us, our emotions are just kind of boiling under the surface.
00:02:37.200 | I think it's especially hard for people like me who don't have a workplace environment
00:02:41.520 | with many people that you see every day that you can talk about these things with.
00:02:45.000 | And we're primarily left with a digital method of communication.
00:02:49.320 | So this week I'm going to tackle, we're calling it Radical Personal Finance Gun Week.
00:02:55.200 | Now, does this relate to finance?
00:02:57.240 | Well, I think when you hear the titles that I have planned, the answer is yes, absolutely.
00:03:03.640 | For example, today is tools and tactics for self-defense in a non-permissive environment
00:03:08.160 | like a school.
00:03:09.160 | And I'm going to give you some very practical advice that may help you if you're ever caught
00:03:15.320 | in a situation like a school shooting, may help you to protect your children if your
00:03:19.120 | children are in the government schools and you're concerned about giving them something
00:03:22.200 | practical.
00:03:23.200 | I am so deeply frustrated at the fact that nobody wants to have, it seems to me, let
00:03:27.760 | me be careful, it feels to me and seems to me like nobody wants to have a practical discussion
00:03:33.720 | about what you can do.
00:03:35.240 | Instead, we all want to argue about how to change the minds of 150 million people instead
00:03:40.680 | of saying, "Here's something that you can do."
00:03:42.840 | And so today I'm going to give you something that you can do.
00:03:49.640 | That's my goal.
00:03:51.760 | And at least get you thinking because if you're dead, well, I can't really help you live that
00:03:59.080 | rich life, can I?
00:04:01.840 | If your kids are dead, well, that's going to really impact your life.
00:04:07.640 | Yes, that's blunt, but that's the reality.
00:04:11.000 | And so that's why I'm tackling this subject this week.
00:04:16.120 | Now I do recognize that some of what I have to say will be different than what you currently
00:04:22.160 | believe.
00:04:23.160 | So here's my intention.
00:04:24.160 | I have four shows lined up in the shoot.
00:04:27.000 | Today is Tools and Tactics for Self-Defense in a Non-Permissive Environment.
00:04:31.560 | Another two working titles that I think will give you good practical advice that I hear
00:04:36.640 | very few people buying, but one will be How to Assemble a Quality Home Armory on a Budget.
00:04:44.920 | One will be How to Buy an AR-15, How to Buy Your First AR-15.
00:04:49.040 | But of course, I think I need to do a standalone show.
00:04:52.440 | Current working title is The Moral Case for You to Have a Closet Full of Guns.
00:04:55.840 | And that one will not be practical in the sense of nuts and bolts financial advice.
00:05:01.800 | It will be philosophical and moral, but I believe that I need to deliver that one to
00:05:08.040 | you in case you are concerned with some of my topics for this week.
00:05:10.920 | So let's get into it.
00:05:11.920 | Enough preamble today.
00:05:12.920 | Tools and Tactics for Self-Defense in a Non-Permissive Environment.
00:05:16.160 | The use of the word non-permissive environment is something like a school.
00:05:19.520 | It's a fairly common word in the modern self-defense training industry or in the modern firearms
00:05:27.000 | culture.
00:05:28.000 | A non-permissive environment is some place where you're not allowed to carry a gun to
00:05:31.280 | protect yourself.
00:05:32.960 | So if you're looking for non-gun options to protect yourself or protect your children,
00:05:37.120 | that's what today is focused on.
00:05:38.520 | And this is a challenge that many people face.
00:05:40.520 | Now, of course, many teachers in many of our states face this challenge quite acutely.
00:05:48.300 | Most teachers are not allowed to carry guns in schools.
00:05:51.680 | Supposedly schools are gun-free zones where you're not supposed to have a gun.
00:05:55.520 | Now, of course, the term in and of itself is an obvious lie that there seem to be plenty
00:06:01.000 | of guns in schools, but you're not supposed to have a gun in a school.
00:06:03.840 | And so somebody like a teacher or a coach or an administrator who's trying to protect
00:06:07.960 | themselves and their students faces a challenge.
00:06:11.080 | How do I do it if I can't carry a gun legally?
00:06:13.480 | Now, of course, this is something that faces many other people.
00:06:17.600 | Whether you work in a business that – where the business owner or the administrators of
00:06:23.040 | that business or of that environment restrict your right to carry a firearm to protect yourself
00:06:30.040 | in that context.
00:06:31.040 | This is called a non-permissive environment.
00:06:32.840 | Another example would be going to a concert where they say, "No weapons allowed,"
00:06:37.040 | or some other similar place.
00:06:40.180 | Business puts up a sign on the front door and says, "Yes, you may be able to carry
00:06:43.800 | a gun in other places, but you can't carry a gun here."
00:06:46.400 | I want to give you some ideas, but I'm especially, of course, thinking about school
00:06:49.480 | shootings and what the tactics and techniques you need and what you need to teach your children
00:06:55.240 | in order to have a higher probability of surviving such an event.
00:07:00.000 | And also, you may be able to take some of these and apply them to other environments.
00:07:06.080 | But here's my outline of what you need to do to engage in self-defense in an environment
00:07:12.160 | like a school.
00:07:13.160 | I have a few steps.
00:07:15.280 | Number one, of course, is get away.
00:07:19.760 | Number one is not get away.
00:07:20.760 | Number one is don't be there.
00:07:22.360 | I need to add that to my outline right now.
00:07:25.600 | Number one is don't be there.
00:07:27.680 | Most of the time, for you to maintain your physical security, the best path for you is
00:07:33.560 | just simply don't be there.
00:07:35.040 | More on this in a moment.
00:07:36.040 | So number one is don't be there.
00:07:37.040 | Number two is get away.
00:07:38.280 | Number three is hide.
00:07:39.840 | Number four is protect yourself.
00:07:41.760 | Number five is fight back.
00:07:43.400 | Six is treat injury.
00:07:44.400 | And seven is communicate.
00:07:46.080 | This is my simple outline to give you some practical ideas.
00:07:49.000 | So instead of getting mad at somebody and just arguing about how to change the mind
00:07:52.360 | of 150 million of your fellow citizens on a topic such as gun control and gun legislation,
00:07:58.520 | you can actually do something.
00:08:00.280 | So don't be there.
00:08:01.280 | Obviously, one of the biggest challenges is not to be in an environment which is unsafe.
00:08:06.880 | Sometimes you can control that.
00:08:08.600 | Sometimes you can't.
00:08:10.280 | And I want today's show to be not so politically controversial.
00:08:14.440 | So I'm not going to talk about pulling your kids out of government schools.
00:08:17.840 | But you know that I don't understand why your children are in a government school.
00:08:21.160 | I think that government schools are at the core of this problem because of the culture
00:08:24.920 | that they create.
00:08:26.080 | I'll talk about that when I do the political show in and of itself.
00:08:31.200 | But always, your best bet is whenever possible, just avoid being in a dangerous environment.
00:08:36.660 | If you don't go to stupid places to do stupid things with stupid people, you can often avoid
00:08:42.320 | a fight.
00:08:43.680 | If you know that trouble is brewing and you leave, you can often avoid a fight.
00:08:49.380 | And you always, always, always want to avoid a physical violent confrontation.
00:08:55.040 | They don't help.
00:08:56.800 | Physical violent confrontations just don't help.
00:08:59.740 | So always try to avoid.
00:09:01.480 | And it's pretty simple.
00:09:03.400 | Don't be a jerk.
00:09:05.180 | And don't be a jerk in other places.
00:09:06.780 | If we were doing this show on the topic of travel, for example, if you'll just simply
00:09:11.060 | not be stupid and not be a jerk to people, you can avoid many of the problem situations.
00:09:16.680 | You can travel the world without a bit of tactical weaponry.
00:09:20.900 | You can travel the world without any devices for self-defense.
00:09:24.500 | And for the most part, you could probably be fine if you just use your wits and open
00:09:29.360 | your eyes and ask people for advice.
00:09:31.560 | For example, when you're traveling, no matter what country you're in, you need to ask people,
00:09:35.460 | "Is it safe to go to a place?"
00:09:37.700 | You can travel into Iraq today probably pretty safely if you'll just simply ask the local
00:09:44.380 | people who are hosting you in your travels, "Hey, is it safe for me to go to such and
00:09:49.040 | such a place?"
00:09:52.260 | Most of the time, people have this weird idea that a country is unsafe.
00:09:56.660 | It's usually not a country that's unsafe.
00:10:00.180 | It's usually a relatively small number of neighborhoods in a handful of cities that
00:10:06.140 | are unsafe.
00:10:07.900 | If you came to my town and asked me what part of town to avoid, I would tell you, "You
00:10:12.540 | need to avoid this part of town."
00:10:14.620 | If I came to your town, you would tell me, "You should avoid this part of town."
00:10:18.980 | Or "It's probably fine during the day time, but don't go there at night."
00:10:22.620 | Or "Hey, it's really common that the pickpockets are active on the subway station, so make
00:10:27.580 | sure you're paying extra attention when you're at a subway station."
00:10:30.860 | So don't be there in the first place would be the idea.
00:10:35.380 | Now of course, that's more difficult in a context of a school shooting if you've
00:10:39.020 | already made the decision that, "Yes, my child is going to be here," or, "Yes,
00:10:43.340 | you're a teacher," or, "You're a spouse of a teacher," and you're saying, "Well,
00:10:47.860 | I've got to be there.
00:10:48.860 | I've made the decision to be there."
00:10:50.700 | So if you are in a situation where you have difficult things going on, where someone,
00:10:56.300 | let's just stay with the idea of an active shooter in a school, your first option and
00:11:01.380 | first and best choice is always get away.
00:11:05.740 | Run away.
00:11:07.540 | Running away is always the best first choice.
00:11:11.780 | No matter the situation, run away from the fight.
00:11:15.660 | Run away from the fight.
00:11:17.160 | If you can get away, and if you can get those who are involved away, run away.
00:11:23.460 | When you're in a situation like a school shooter, run away.
00:11:27.780 | And of course, that's what you're trained on.
00:11:29.260 | That's what of course the children are trained on by the administration and whatever law
00:11:33.340 | enforcement is doing the training is that if possible, get away.
00:11:37.400 | If you're at a concert and there's somebody that starts shooting up the place or shooting
00:11:40.540 | off a bomb, run away.
00:11:42.660 | Get away as fast as you can.
00:11:44.620 | If you will just simply run, generally you can avoid much of the problems, especially
00:11:51.660 | if you're dealing with somebody with a gun.
00:11:55.100 | Most people are not that skilled with a gun.
00:11:57.920 | Even people who train consistently, such as some everyday walk in the beat police officers
00:12:06.260 | are not that good with a gun.
00:12:08.420 | If you look at the statistics on police gunfights, which are well recorded, and you look at the
00:12:13.540 | number of rounds that a police officer will often shoot in a gunfight versus the number
00:12:19.840 | of hits, it is horrendously low.
00:12:24.080 | So just simply running away, even if somebody has a gun, may frequently save your life.
00:12:30.960 | It may also save your life because instead of getting multiple wounds, multiple bullets
00:12:36.160 | in your body, maybe you just have one or two, those are frequently survivable wounds.
00:12:42.400 | Instead of you sitting still and getting a pump full of multiple rounds of lead, one
00:12:49.960 | or two bullet wounds are frequently very survivable, especially if they're from a handgun.
00:12:54.440 | Most shootings are with a handgun and not with a rifle.
00:12:58.020 | So get away.
00:12:59.640 | So in your planning and in your thinking, you should consider how do I get away?
00:13:05.080 | Well, of course, you're going to be running.
00:13:08.240 | So if you're in an environment where running may be difficult, then think about how to
00:13:13.400 | keep quality shoes handy.
00:13:15.940 | If you work in an environment such as a teacher, and especially if you're a woman, if you're
00:13:20.000 | a female teacher, you are probably going to be wearing on a daily basis shoes that are
00:13:26.120 | more, if there's a scale between fashion and function, that'll tend more towards the fashion
00:13:32.620 | instead of the function.
00:13:33.840 | It'd be an unusual teacher who'd want to go to work every day wearing a pair of combat
00:13:37.760 | boots or a pair of running shoes.
00:13:40.080 | It'd be more frequent that there would be some footwear that at least gives the nod
00:13:44.680 | to fashion.
00:13:46.500 | If you are a man and you're working in an environment where there's a higher dress standard
00:13:51.120 | with your shoes, then you need to think about that and keep a pair of shoes handy that you
00:13:56.240 | might be able to use to run away.
00:14:00.000 | The scenarios will be different.
00:14:01.400 | And again, please, in everything that I say today, you translate this for your own scenario.
00:14:05.960 | Dealing with a school shooter who just walked in the door of your classroom with a rifle
00:14:12.520 | raised, ready to kill everybody in the room, obviously you're not going to stop, take a
00:14:17.640 | moment, pull your running shoes out of your desk drawer and strap them on before running.
00:14:23.080 | But if you hear gunshots down the road or down the hall, you better believe that if
00:14:28.440 | I'm going to run and I'm wearing high heels, I'm not sure why I would be wearing high heels,
00:14:32.920 | but in today's world, I guess that probably isn't that far of a stretch.
00:14:36.440 | But if I'm wearing high heels and I hear gunshots in the distance, I'm going to take a moment,
00:14:41.320 | I'm going to slip on some boots or some shoes.
00:14:43.360 | So keep, if you are usually in a situation like this where you're concerned about your
00:14:47.480 | life, keep shoes handy.
00:14:50.600 | That would allow you to be able to run.
00:14:53.040 | This is also important if you were dealing with something like a fire.
00:14:57.000 | If you work in high heels, keep some slip-on boots or slip-on shoes handy so that if you
00:15:02.680 | needed to run away in a fire, you would have some foot protection to protect your feet
00:15:07.520 | from stumbling over something or walking on embers.
00:15:11.200 | I can't even imagine trying to face a situation, you work at the top of a tower, you work at
00:15:17.680 | the top of the World Trade Center and you got to run down the stairs.
00:15:21.880 | I can't imagine saying, "Okay, I'm going to run down these stairs in high heels," or,
00:15:26.600 | "I'm going to take my high heels off and run down barefoot when a building is collapsing
00:15:30.040 | around you."
00:15:31.280 | So if you're in an earthquake environment or you're concerned about the risk of a fire
00:15:34.840 | in the building, make sure that as part of your personal standard operating procedures
00:15:39.880 | for such an event, that you have good shoes handy that you can put on quickly, that you
00:15:45.040 | can slip them on so that you can get away.
00:15:49.720 | Another thing to consider is, especially if you're in an environment like a classroom,
00:15:54.500 | keep a little bag handy with some useful tools.
00:15:57.680 | I'm going to give you a bunch of potentially useful tools in today's show, but some useful
00:16:02.240 | tools that might be useful to you to be able to get away.
00:16:06.000 | For example, it would be very important if you were getting away and were being pursued
00:16:11.240 | by somebody to have some means of blocking a door, some means of wedging or blocking
00:16:17.400 | a door after you go through if you were being pursued.
00:16:20.680 | In a moment I'll talk about protecting yourself and blocking the room.
00:16:26.640 | One of the most effective ways to diminish the body count of things like a school shooting
00:16:32.920 | is to block when people are hiding and barricading in the room, to block the doors.
00:16:38.680 | There are a lot of security companies that are really pushing this ability, not just
00:16:42.860 | a simple lock, which can be shot out, kicked through, etc., but a good blocking mechanism
00:16:48.780 | to block the door.
00:16:49.780 | But you can do that yourself with a couple of door wedges.
00:16:52.620 | You can make some door wedges out of a piece of plywood, go on YouTube just for how to
00:16:56.120 | do a door wedge.
00:16:57.320 | But if you are at your workplace and you're concerned about somebody coming in and shooting
00:17:03.560 | up the place, an angry co-worker dealing with an active shooter situation, you may want
00:17:08.000 | the means to be able to block them out of the room.
00:17:11.240 | In which case, you grab a couple of door wedges, keep a hammer and a little bag, bang those
00:17:15.520 | door wedges in there and you can wedge the door.
00:17:17.560 | Same thing applies when you're traveling and you need to protect yourself in a hotel
00:17:20.920 | room, etc., but a couple of rubber door wedges that you buy commercially or a couple of wooden
00:17:25.240 | ones that you build yourself could really be effective in helping you to protect yourself
00:17:29.400 | from somebody having access to you.
00:17:32.000 | So in getting away, that might be a useful tool to have if you were being pursued, the
00:17:36.600 | ability to wedge or block a door behind you and stop somebody from pursuing you.
00:17:41.680 | Whenever possible, get away, run away.
00:17:45.680 | Think about the scenario that you're concerned with.
00:17:52.660 | Whenever I hear or read the details of a scenario like this, I always try to think, "Well, what
00:17:57.100 | would help?"
00:17:58.100 | I do the same with financial planning, technical financial planning.
00:18:01.060 | Read a story about a couple that had saved money, bought a sailboat and they were going
00:18:04.940 | to go travel the world and they wound up sinking the sailboat.
00:18:08.340 | And they were out of money doing a GoFundMe account with their news article trying to
00:18:13.100 | get money to help them buy a new sailboat because they couldn't fulfill their dream.
00:18:17.100 | When I hear that, I stop and I think and I say, "Well, what would help this couple have
00:18:20.500 | survived this?"
00:18:21.740 | In that case, it was fairly obvious, buy an insurance policy or buy a cheap enough sailboat
00:18:27.940 | that it's not going to be the end of your money if you don't want to buy insurance.
00:18:31.040 | They made those two classic errors and now they're financially destitute, lost the sailboat,
00:18:35.260 | lost their dream.
00:18:36.260 | They'll have to restart and build from zero.
00:18:37.620 | But when I hear about a school shooting and I hear that a new common tactic for a shooter
00:18:44.600 | to gain access to easy targets, to build for himself a target-rich environment is to set
00:18:50.760 | off a fire alarm, then I think, "Hmm, well, if I'm wearing high heels, maybe before leaving
00:18:57.780 | the room with my children, I should take those high heels off, grab a pair of slip-on athletic
00:19:02.220 | shoes or slip-on boots and put those on before leading my children out in a fire alarm."
00:19:07.420 | I don't know if any teachers do that or not, but I at least think that's a good idea.
00:19:11.500 | And we don't have to pass legislation.
00:19:13.020 | We don't have to deal with 100 million people to do that.
00:19:15.460 | You just have to think, "Maybe I should keep a pair of athletic shoes in my desk drawer."
00:19:20.000 | And if I were trying to run out from a real fire, I want some shoes on my feet.
00:19:26.820 | Those are some ideas of getting away.
00:19:29.020 | The next major tactic, of course, is if you can't get away, you hide.
00:19:32.900 | Excuse me, I forgot one comment on getting away.
00:19:36.380 | Obviously, there are times in which getting away doesn't solve the problem.
00:19:40.480 | If my wife and I and my children and I are accosted on the street and I may be able to
00:19:45.700 | get away, but my wife and children cannot, in that situation, I'm not saying run, but
00:19:52.540 | tell your wife and kids to run and you deal with the situation.
00:19:56.380 | But getting away is generally the best strategy for surviving the fight.
00:20:00.760 | And in a situation where the rule of law is consistent, your best case is to do your fighting
00:20:07.120 | in court, not on the street.
00:20:10.540 | After get away, hide.
00:20:11.980 | Now, of course, hiding is what is taught to children, but hiding really is, in my understanding
00:20:18.620 | of the current protocols in place for school shootings, hiding makes sense in many situations.
00:20:26.380 | So think about that.
00:20:27.900 | I don't have any unique insight into this other than what is commonly taught as far
00:20:32.280 | as concealment for the...conceal yourself so that no one knows you're in there, if possible,
00:20:40.300 | until you're sure it's actually the police going room to room and not some active shooter.
00:20:44.420 | But if you are in a workplace environment, not a school, not where your employer is not
00:20:49.180 | giving you training on what the school's protocol is for this, look around your office right
00:20:54.420 | now and think, where would I hide?
00:20:59.540 | Maybe a little bit of rearranging of your furniture would be helpful.
00:21:03.280 | Maybe you need an extra piece of furniture in your office so that you'd have a place
00:21:06.180 | to hide.
00:21:08.260 | Just maybe it's the closet next door to you and if you just had a copy of that key, that
00:21:13.420 | would give you a place to hide.
00:21:15.340 | But think about if there were a situation where I needed to hide, where would I hide?
00:21:19.380 | And think about it now.
00:21:20.380 | Wouldn't be a bad idea to make a list of one, two, or three places.
00:21:24.180 | If this is available, I'll go in this direction.
00:21:25.740 | If this is available, I'll go in that direction.
00:21:27.420 | But sometimes if you can't get away, if your situation, the tactical situation is such
00:21:31.940 | that you can't escape without being shot at, then finding a good hiding place could be
00:21:36.900 | really valuable.
00:21:38.620 | And you could take this and apply this to your own thinking as far as your house.
00:21:41.380 | Do your children know where they're supposed to hide if somebody invades your home?
00:21:45.100 | Where are they going to hide?
00:21:46.100 | Where are you going to hide?
00:21:47.100 | Where is your place to take a stand?
00:21:48.700 | Where are you going to hide?
00:21:51.100 | And what's necessary for that hiding?
00:21:54.240 | Next is protect yourself.
00:21:56.300 | And by protect yourself, I just mean passive defense.
00:22:01.540 | Passive defense.
00:22:02.700 | There's a difference between passive measures of defense and active measures of defense.
00:22:09.060 | Passive defense would be something like blocking the room, blocking a door.
00:22:13.220 | I spoke a moment ago about having door wedges.
00:22:16.300 | So if you were going to hide in your office and you're concerned about a workplace shooting,
00:22:23.220 | then one of your passive measures of defense to protect yourself would be block the door.
00:22:28.700 | If the door to your office opens in, then you need to be prepared with some door wedges.
00:22:35.240 | These could be the small rubber wedges that are commercially made, maybe two or three
00:22:39.900 | of them, and a hammer to bang them in under the door, good and strong.
00:22:44.640 | This could be some small wooden blocks that you make out of a 1x4, 2x4, and a hammer again
00:22:50.700 | to hammer those in.
00:22:52.100 | This may be something like a door bar that you can buy commercially, the type that goes
00:22:57.640 | up against the door handle and uses a rubber stop to block the door.
00:23:03.540 | Cheap and easy way to protect your door if you live in an apartment or a dorm room, something
00:23:07.180 | like that, in case somebody were to try to break the door down.
00:23:10.980 | If you have the ability, for example, if you own the building, you might want to consider
00:23:16.060 | a better blocking mechanism.
00:23:18.140 | If you were an executive or a small business owner and you had the – you own the building
00:23:22.140 | and you have the ability to drill into the floor, then it would be a good idea to go
00:23:26.220 | ahead and purchase something like the night lock door barricades that you install a small
00:23:30.900 | bracket into the door, but if you ever needed to totally block that door, you go ahead and
00:23:34.660 | install the – just slide the little thing right in and it blocks the door.
00:23:39.880 | So having the ability to block the door would be very helpful as a passive measure of defense
00:23:44.700 | to protect yourself.
00:23:45.700 | In a moment, we'll talk about active defense, fighting back.
00:23:49.500 | Other examples would be perhaps thinking about how would I block the door additionally.
00:23:55.800 | If I were a teacher, I would be looking at where I chose to put the bookcases in my room
00:23:59.900 | or where I chose to put the filing cabinet in my room and I would consider, do I have
00:24:04.940 | the ability to put a filing cabinet near the door so that if I had to block it, it were
00:24:10.060 | an inward opening door and I couldn't – my door wedges didn't work, could I push a
00:24:14.200 | filing cabinet over to block the door and keep somebody from being able to get in or
00:24:18.660 | push a bookcase over or slide it in some way so that it would be harder to open the door.
00:24:25.660 | Think about how you would protect yourself.
00:24:27.260 | If you were – if it opened outward, then you would consider, well, is there some kind
00:24:31.260 | of mechanism that I could use to help keep that door from opening outward.
00:24:38.340 | Next in terms of protecting yourself, go behind cover if at all possible.
00:24:43.340 | Go behind cover.
00:24:44.760 | When you teach firearms training or you teach self-defense, one thing that a trainer will
00:24:49.980 | be very – and the military as well, be very clear on is the difference between concealment
00:24:55.900 | and cover.
00:24:57.700 | Concealment is anything that would block the vision of an attacker for them not being able
00:25:03.760 | to see you.
00:25:05.540 | So a wall is concealment because the person is not able to see you.
00:25:12.100 | But it's not cover.
00:25:13.180 | Cover is anything that can stop the penetration of a bullet from being able to actually penetrate
00:25:19.660 | the target.
00:25:20.660 | I guess if we want to be technical, a lot of times gun people and self-defense trainers
00:25:26.740 | will make a difference between penetration and perforation.
00:25:29.860 | The word perforate would be when a bullet would go through both sides of something and
00:25:34.460 | penetration would be when a bullet would just come right into something.
00:25:38.940 | So if a bullet is penetrating a body, it comes in only one side.
00:25:42.680 | If it's perforating a body, it comes – it gets in and out and the same thing would apply
00:25:46.980 | to cover.
00:25:48.840 | So the point that is driven home in good training is that cover and concealment are different
00:25:57.180 | things.
00:25:58.180 | So if you were in a situation where there's a shooter wandering the hallway with a rifle
00:26:02.220 | and you are hiding in a closet with the lights off, you might be concealed from the shooter.
00:26:08.500 | If the shooter is unaware of your presence there, you may survive.
00:26:12.980 | But if they become aware of your presence there in a concealed fashion, a few rounds
00:26:19.440 | from – a few high-velocity normal rifle rounds from a rifle will perforate the wall
00:26:26.040 | – most normal walls.
00:26:28.480 | A drywall or plaster wall or cement wall can be easily perforated by most normal rifles.
00:26:38.680 | So concealment is not cover.
00:26:40.920 | But if you're concerned about protecting yourself, if you could take cover, then you
00:26:46.080 | may be able to do so.
00:26:47.800 | So in this case, let's say that you have the ability of a filing cabinet and that filing
00:26:52.420 | cabinet is filled with papers and books.
00:26:55.960 | Now you transform what is concealment into cover.
00:27:01.240 | Now if you're a teacher and you're protecting a class full of children, I don't know how
00:27:06.680 | to put 30 children behind a filing cabinet.
00:27:09.240 | I don't have that answer.
00:27:11.680 | But if you're just dealing with yourself and your own body, then the filing cabinet
00:27:16.160 | filled with books could be very helpful.
00:27:19.200 | If it's appropriate to the specifics of your situation, it might be worth your collecting.
00:27:24.840 | Go on Craigslist and find somebody who has a garage full of phone books and fill a filing
00:27:29.680 | cabinet up with phone books.
00:27:31.960 | Depending on the velocity of a round, a small, let's talk about AR-15s for a moment.
00:27:39.720 | An AR-15 is a relatively small bullet that it actually shoots.
00:27:43.680 | It comes out at a high velocity, but the actual bullet itself is relatively small and it has
00:27:48.440 | very limited ability to perforate cover.
00:27:51.680 | That's one of the reasons why historically the military hasn't wanted, why many soldiers
00:27:58.640 | in the past were equipped with much larger rifles than something like an AR-15.
00:28:03.000 | But if you're going up against a shooter with an AR-15 that's shooting a relatively small
00:28:07.480 | bullet, then a filing cabinet full of books, I didn't look up any numbers, but my guess
00:28:14.320 | would be that an AR-15, just a standard 5.56 millimeter round out of an AR-15 would probably
00:28:21.140 | not go through more than three or four inches of dense paper like phone books.
00:28:25.640 | So you can create something that would be cover, whether that cover is natural, you
00:28:29.040 | have a filing cabinet stuffed full, or whether it's something that you create intentionally.
00:28:33.200 | Maybe you only use the front two feet of a file drawer, but you fill the back up with
00:28:36.720 | phone books.
00:28:38.120 | In any case, look around your office, look around your room and consider where is the
00:28:43.080 | cover?
00:28:44.080 | If you could push that bookcase over in front of the door, that bookcase will give you additional
00:28:48.600 | ballistic protection.
00:28:50.960 | It'll give you additional cover because of those thick books, and you may be able to
00:28:55.720 | generate or create additional cover.
00:28:59.600 | And so make a plan, I'd push the bookcase over, I'd push the couch against it, or we're
00:29:02.800 | going to stack the desks.
00:29:04.540 | Some of this is trained, I don't know how much of this is trained.
00:29:07.440 | I just, I don't know.
00:29:08.840 | And of course that would depend.
00:29:09.840 | So I'm just giving you my best ideas from the principles that I'm aware of.
00:29:14.240 | In addition, as far as protecting yourself, then we can get into the world of personal
00:29:19.720 | protection.
00:29:20.920 | What elements of personal protection for your actual body would be helpful?
00:29:26.520 | In this case, your primary vital organs are of course primarily in your chest.
00:29:31.160 | So is there a way that you could design to protect your chest?
00:29:35.080 | You, there's, although there may be laws against your carrying a firearm in a non-permissive
00:29:40.520 | environment, my guess would be that most of the time there aren't that many laws about
00:29:44.520 | your having a ballistic vest, a bulletproof vest so-called, a ballistic vest in your possession.
00:29:51.200 | If I were a teacher and I were concerned about this, it wouldn't be that hard for me to find
00:29:56.280 | a place to put a simple bulletproof vest in a desk drawer.
00:30:01.080 | And it would be relatively easy to, in a time of crisis, to grab a bulletproof vest and
00:30:06.640 | put it on.
00:30:07.640 | Now, maybe you don't want to actually have the vest that may be a little bit over the
00:30:11.280 | top.
00:30:12.280 | It's relatively easy, perhaps you can buy some soft armor, some soft plates, some soft
00:30:17.160 | ballistic plates and just slide them into a backpack.
00:30:20.720 | And that could be something that could be easily worn.
00:30:23.960 | You can get a standard backpack that has a laptop sleeve, go and purchase, you can get
00:30:29.000 | some hard plates if you have the physical strength to carry them.
00:30:33.480 | But go online, purchase a couple of hard plates, maybe a couple of soft plates, slide them
00:30:37.720 | right into the backpack in a scenario where into the laptop sleeve or the rear pocket
00:30:44.080 | of a backpack and you've created a relatively effective ballistic shield for yourself.
00:30:50.760 | And you can do it in a very low-key way where you don't have constant evidence of, you don't
00:30:56.400 | necessarily have a Kevlar helmet sitting there.
00:31:00.440 | Most shooters are not very good shots.
00:31:03.200 | And especially in an environment where you're dealing with an active shooter situation,
00:31:07.160 | there's a higher chance of randomness with the rounds that are going to be arriving at
00:31:11.520 | you than there is specifics.
00:31:16.720 | Now if some guy's walking around a room delivering point-blank coup de grace shots to the head,
00:31:23.160 | in that situation, your backpack that you put on your, that you turn around and put
00:31:28.560 | on your chest is not going to do much for you.
00:31:31.520 | But if you're dealing with a relatively random shooting and you're part of a crowd and you
00:31:36.640 | toss that thing on your back and you're fleeing from a shooter, I think you've got a pretty
00:31:42.040 | good case to say, "I've got some good ballistic protection on my vital organs."
00:31:47.640 | You can get shot in the butt as long as they don't get your, what's that, the big artery
00:31:52.160 | called the femoral artery.
00:31:56.040 | You could survive those wounds.
00:31:57.240 | And especially if you're dealing with something like a rifle round, a full metal jacket rifle
00:32:01.160 | round, it may just go right through your thigh and you may be able to run away and get there.
00:32:05.400 | You can get shot and you can survive these things as long as you protect your vital organs.
00:32:08.920 | So don't neglect personal protection.
00:32:11.720 | Now I guess, I don't know how hardcore to go, you could go and purchase, if you have
00:32:16.600 | a closet or something, if you work in a high-risk environment, you could purchase some SWAT
00:32:21.360 | shield online, the type of thing that if you've ever seen the SWAT guys stack up to enter
00:32:26.840 | a house, the front guy always has a shield.
00:32:28.440 | You can buy that thing for 700 bucks if you were that concerned about it.
00:32:32.760 | But you take this concept and figure out what applies to you.
00:32:36.520 | But the point is, protect yourself.
00:32:38.520 | So one, don't be there.
00:32:40.160 | Two, get away.
00:32:41.160 | Three, hide, concealment.
00:32:42.680 | Four, protect yourself, find cover.
00:32:45.360 | Now five, of course, is fight back.
00:32:48.240 | And what bugs me to no end is people diminish the value of fighting back.
00:32:53.940 | Go and do some study for yourself on how frequently fights end when somebody fights back.
00:33:01.720 | The majority of people, and this is at every level of society, I hate bullies.
00:33:08.400 | I hate people who bully.
00:33:10.680 | And one of the things that bullies often get used to is people not fighting back.
00:33:14.480 | And a lot of the times, if you're dealing with a bully, whether this is the archetypal
00:33:17.800 | bully in the schoolyard, a punch to the nose will stop a bully.
00:33:23.040 | It can also happen in the world of rhetoric and political debate.
00:33:25.680 | A punch in the nose will sometimes, frequently, stop a bully.
00:33:29.160 | But bullies get used to having their way and bullying other people into wanting what they
00:33:32.520 | do.
00:33:33.520 | Well, same thing in a fight.
00:33:34.800 | If you fight back, whether that's a fist fight or a bar fight or an active shooter, if you
00:33:38.760 | fight back, a lot of times it ends it.
00:33:41.280 | In many active shootings, remember, don't take your advice or your input from one single
00:33:47.000 | event.
00:33:48.000 | But in many of these active shooter scenarios that make the news all the time, frequently,
00:33:55.480 | one person fighting back, whether that's one police officer, one armed citizen fighting
00:34:01.440 | back, frequently, that will initiate, that'll stop the attack.
00:34:06.440 | Frequently, it seems that that will often make many shooters go ahead and commit suicide
00:34:11.840 | when somebody fights back.
00:34:14.560 | But none of us who are not, none of us, I'm not in the military, never been in the military,
00:34:19.440 | don't want to be in the military, don't want to be a cop, don't want to deal with that.
00:34:21.840 | But none of us are all that comfortable with bullets coming at us.
00:34:25.520 | And what bugs me so much, I'm going to get a tiny bit of political in our current world.
00:34:30.820 | What bugs me is people underestimate the value of a good defense.
00:34:39.200 | The survivability, if you were to walk up and threaten me to say, "Joshua, I'm going
00:34:46.440 | to shoot you from five yards away, 15 feet away, across the room with a 22 pistol,"
00:34:54.320 | statistically that would be very survivable.
00:34:57.200 | Statistically, very survivable, especially if it's not a hollow point bullet, it's
00:35:03.000 | just a full metal jacket bullet.
00:35:04.520 | Statistically, that would be very survivable.
00:35:06.960 | I still don't want to get shot with a 22, even though statistically the evidence is
00:35:12.280 | on my side.
00:35:13.280 | I would still freak out if you're shooting at me.
00:35:15.840 | And the same thing happens again and again and again with people who are active shooters.
00:35:20.920 | Just fighting back, somebody taking rounds that are incoming will often melt down their
00:35:26.760 | defenses.
00:35:27.760 | Now, of course, in this situation, fighting back, firearm options are very limited.
00:35:32.040 | I'm talking here specifically about a non-permissive environment where you're not technically allowed
00:35:36.440 | to carry firearms.
00:35:37.680 | I hate these environments, especially if they're not adequate security.
00:35:40.880 | I'll talk about that in the show on the morality, the one that I have where I'll deal with
00:35:45.440 | the political stuff if you care about my political opinion.
00:35:48.120 | But you will have to decide, I want to be clear, you have to decide if the risk to you,
00:35:53.040 | especially the legal risk of carrying a gun, is worth the reward of potentially protecting
00:35:58.440 | yourself and potentially saving lives.
00:36:00.760 | I think it's immoral to take away from people their moral human right to self-defense if
00:36:08.760 | you're not guaranteeing them a very high standard of security.
00:36:13.040 | And here's where we get into the problem.
00:36:15.440 | It's a classic quote by Bastiat in his essay, The Law, where he talks about when you have
00:36:21.080 | to choose.
00:36:22.400 | The quote is, "No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree,
00:36:27.000 | but the safest way to make them respected is to make them respectable.
00:36:30.760 | When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in
00:36:35.000 | the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or of losing his respect for the
00:36:39.720 | law, two evils of equal magnitude between which it would be difficult to choose."
00:36:45.480 | And so when you're in a non-permissive environment like this, I ask you the question, does the
00:36:49.560 | person who has the legal control of the premises, whether that's a school administration, whether
00:36:55.720 | that's an employer, are they providing actual security or are they just saying, "You're
00:37:01.360 | not allowed to carry a gun"?
00:37:04.800 | If they're providing actual security, then I think they have a moral case to say, "We're
00:37:09.240 | not going to allow you a gun."
00:37:11.200 | I'm okay with a federal courtroom being protected by metal detectors and with it being
00:37:16.000 | the federal court's jurisdiction, they're allowed to establish the law and say, "No,
00:37:21.160 | you may not carry a firearm here."
00:37:23.220 | But I'm not okay with a random business putting a sign on their door saying, "No,
00:37:27.840 | you can't carry a gun here."
00:37:29.160 | Meanwhile, anybody who wants to ignore that sign can carry it in.
00:37:33.400 | If you're going to remove people's rights of self-defense, you then have the responsibility
00:37:39.440 | to provide for them a common defense.
00:37:43.120 | Now if you're working in a non-permissive environment and you make the moral decision
00:37:47.800 | that you are going to reject the law because the law is immoral, you should be aware that
00:37:55.120 | deep concealment firearms options are not that difficult to accomplish.
00:38:00.200 | You may have to be much more careful.
00:38:02.280 | I would recommend that you not carry a .45 caliber 1911 and a shoulder holster, Miami
00:38:07.320 | Vice style, if you're in a non-permissive environment.
00:38:10.720 | But it's relatively easy for both men and women to have deep concealment firearm options
00:38:16.720 | that will never be detected without professional scrutiny.
00:38:21.400 | Men have certain advantages, women have certain advantages.
00:38:24.340 | In some cases, men have it easier, in some cases, women have it easier.
00:38:27.720 | But even a small gun will help in a situation where you're dealing with an active shooter.
00:38:33.240 | A .22 caliber five-shot Derringer, the kind of gun that you could hold in the palm of
00:38:40.460 | your hand and never have it be seen, when that thing starts going off, you're going
00:38:44.840 | to have a tough time shooting it accurately, but when that thing starts going off, only
00:38:48.640 | a trained, skilled person, like a military person or like a police officer who has experience
00:38:55.460 | with dealing with incoming rounds, is not going to be thrown off balance.
00:39:00.260 | And your active defense may save lives in a situation like that.
00:39:04.840 | Now, it may not.
00:39:06.640 | There are tactical situations that are impossible, but most of these situations are not tactically
00:39:11.720 | impossible.
00:39:12.720 | Even a small gun would help, it really would.
00:39:15.040 | If you're in a situation where you're in a non-permissive environment and you've decided,
00:39:18.480 | "I can't take the legal risk of concealing it on my person," consider, is there a place
00:39:23.540 | that you could hide it in your belongings, in your possessions, or in the room?
00:39:27.520 | There may be a way for you to secure a firearm in a way that is a good compromise between
00:39:34.800 | the legality and your need to protect yourself legally in case you were caught with that
00:39:42.400 | versus the practical access to self-defense.
00:39:45.600 | I don't know how to help you make that decision.
00:39:47.560 | I hate these places.
00:39:49.080 | I hate them, and I usually stay out of them because I believe that it's immoral to say
00:39:55.020 | to somebody, "You cannot provide for your defense, but we're not going to provide a
00:39:58.140 | solid common defense."
00:40:00.140 | That is an immoral thing.
00:40:02.220 | So either you provide a secure stalwart common defense, "All right, if the Secret Service
00:40:10.420 | is guarding the President, I'm not trying to get a gun in there, but I'm appreciating
00:40:15.340 | the fact that I can trust the Secret Service, but a sign on the door or a corporate policy
00:40:20.300 | is not a common defense."
00:40:22.340 | Anyway, forgive me, I'm trying to avoid the politics.
00:40:26.320 | But even if you were a teacher, there's a big debate about teachers, so I don't want
00:40:32.700 | to fight that debate.
00:40:36.020 | Let me be precise and honest with my words.
00:40:41.740 | I want to fight that debate.
00:40:43.620 | I don't want to abuse you in this show by an extensive discourse on it, but I'll make
00:40:49.500 | two comments.
00:40:52.380 | It hangers me to no end that people think teachers are weak.
00:40:55.780 | Now I think that teachers, many of them are weak, and that's the problem.
00:40:59.820 | So either get rid of the weak teachers or stop insulting people.
00:41:05.740 | Of course, the majority of teachers are women.
00:41:08.420 | And of course, with this intense feminization of this feminine trait and this desire to
00:41:13.380 | not self-defense, not to defend, this desire to run from a fight, that's what needs to
00:41:19.020 | be conquered.
00:41:20.020 | That needs to be changed.
00:41:21.020 | But there's no inherent biological characteristic why a woman cannot be a crack shot.
00:41:26.780 | If I were a teacher and the law permitted it, I'd have a locker in...
00:41:33.660 | If school shootings were actually statistically relevant, I'd have a secure locker in the
00:41:38.900 | room, a locked up safe.
00:41:41.620 | I'd have a small backpack with a short barreled AR-15 with a red dot sight.
00:41:47.900 | I'd have a bulletproof vest hanging there, hearing protection to slap on and ballistic
00:41:52.660 | eye protection, a trauma kit ready to go.
00:41:56.080 | You give me five seconds to cross the room, put the code in the safe, grab a short barreled
00:42:00.220 | AR and put on a vest and some hearing protection, and trust me, that's not that hard to do.
00:42:08.780 | There's no need to think by arming a teacher, there's no need to think that you need to
00:42:12.340 | walk around with a desert eagle strapped to your hip all the time.
00:42:16.580 | You're not dealing with that kind of scenario necessarily.
00:42:20.940 | It's not the Wild West where it's about a quick draw contest.
00:42:23.880 | A teacher could absolutely have a locker in their room and you give me any woman, any
00:42:31.060 | teacher, any female teacher, give some qualified firearms trainer a half a day of instruction
00:42:37.580 | and a rifle and you could turn any teacher into a very skilled, perfectly adequately
00:42:45.820 | skilled defender of her classroom.
00:42:50.140 | You absolutely could, especially if you give her a rifle and not a handgun.
00:42:54.060 | It's much harder to learn to accurately shoot a handgun, but you give her a short barreled
00:43:00.060 | AR-15.
00:43:01.060 | Anyway, thank you for indulging my political comment.
00:43:05.260 | That's it for firearm options for today.
00:43:07.100 | So if you think about an ability, a way for you to fight back with a firearm, that's fine.
00:43:12.140 | But let's assume for a moment that you're in a non-permissive environment, you can't
00:43:15.420 | carry a gun or you've decided that you won't carry a gun or you've decided what are you
00:43:19.540 | going to do?
00:43:20.540 | Well, a few options.
00:43:22.740 | Distraction and I've got these in two categories.
00:43:25.460 | First category is distraction devices.
00:43:27.800 | So consider some form of distraction device.
00:43:31.180 | The most, none of these are particularly practical, but the most practical one would be a light.
00:43:36.700 | A powerful high lumen tactical flashlight is a powerful distraction device.
00:43:42.940 | For your own personal self-defense, if you're out in the night, you should have with you
00:43:47.260 | a high lumen flashlight and many of these flashlights are really good at having settings,
00:43:54.860 | different settings that can be low, medium, high.
00:43:57.020 | If you're in a situation where you think you might need it, you need that distraction device.
00:44:00.420 | Get that light, have that light preset on its highest lumen setting and you can blind
00:44:04.660 | somebody in a dark environment with a good flashlight.
00:44:09.900 | And that's simple.
00:44:11.380 | Everybody could have a flashlight.
00:44:12.380 | You could have a small one, you can have a big one.
00:44:14.540 | The market has never been better with inexpensive, high quality, high lumen flashlights.
00:44:20.820 | There has been a revolution in light technology over the last five years, especially with
00:44:26.500 | newer battery styles that produce a much higher output than was possible before.
00:44:31.500 | And these new battery styles have given flashlight manufacturers the ability to massively amp
00:44:36.460 | up the lumens.
00:44:37.780 | If you have a, if your flashlight is from 10 years ago and you haven't looked at a new
00:44:40.980 | flashlight, you would be embarrassed to ever pull out your 10 year old flashlight and try
00:44:45.500 | to put it in a competition against a new one.
00:44:47.580 | I carry every day a tiny little flashlight, blanking, it's the 47's Mini Mark II.
00:45:00.580 | It's a tiny little flashlight.
00:45:01.620 | It's smaller than my thumb, but the lumen output on this, if I put it on a turbo mode,
00:45:06.340 | is massive.
00:45:07.340 | It'll light up a neighborhood.
00:45:08.940 | It's incredible.
00:45:09.940 | And it was cheap, it's 40 bucks, I've mentioned on the show before.
00:45:13.500 | But having a good flashlight would be valuable.
00:45:16.300 | If I were a teacher and I were thinking, "How am I going to protect my room?"
00:45:20.540 | I would consider having a few flashlights in there.
00:45:23.760 | If you, it's hard if you've got first graders, but if you're dealing with a class full of
00:45:28.140 | juniors, if you had a bag or a drawer with three or four flashlights in it, that might
00:45:32.500 | give you the ability to distract somebody who's coming into the door with a gun.
00:45:36.380 | I think the protocol that is usually taught is lights off, everybody quiet, everybody
00:45:40.300 | in the back of the room hiding somehow.
00:45:42.060 | Well, at least distribute some flashlights, you may have the ability to distract somebody.
00:45:46.380 | In some cases, another good distraction device to have handy is an alarm, like a loud horn
00:45:51.820 | or a siren.
00:45:53.420 | One of the best self-defense items that you can have is a loud horn.
00:45:57.500 | Go to, you get a Home Depot or wherever, buy one of these horns, the loud air horns that
00:46:02.920 | are used in the boating industry.
00:46:04.340 | Buy one of the loud ones.
00:46:05.580 | They're easily sold, they're very inexpensive, but a loud horn is a very, very valuable self-defense
00:46:11.860 | item.
00:46:12.860 | If you are being attacked in a parking lot, as you walk across the parking lot, if you're
00:46:16.580 | being attacked in your house, if you are a college student or your son or daughter is
00:46:22.140 | a college student, make sure they have access to a loud boat horn and the ability to use
00:46:27.740 | it.
00:46:28.740 | In that way, if your daughter is being raped, have a horn there, so instead of just yelling
00:46:33.380 | and screaming, that she can actually get some attention.
00:46:36.140 | Another example would be a siren.
00:46:38.020 | These are simple things that there's no physical danger like there is with firearms or bladed
00:46:43.300 | weapons, but they're very powerful distraction devices.
00:46:49.100 | I thought through the scenario, if I have a classroom of 10th graders, I think a couple
00:46:54.620 | of horns and some lights would be very helpful distraction devices.
00:46:59.060 | Those are distraction devices.
00:47:00.700 | You may have your own.
00:47:01.700 | Next would be hitting instruments, some kind of instrument that could be used for hitting
00:47:06.220 | and hitting effectively.
00:47:08.500 | Obvious examples would be a baseball bat.
00:47:10.580 | A baseball bat is something that any teacher could have in their classroom, and yet in
00:47:14.700 | a time of need, that baseball bat is kind of a big deal.
00:47:20.900 | So a hitting instrument like a baseball bat is important.
00:47:24.300 | I'm thinking here, chuckling, because it just came to me, there's a scene in the old Laura
00:47:29.740 | Ingalls Wilder books.
00:47:31.140 | I forget which one.
00:47:34.300 | Actually it was Farmer Boy and the one of Almanzo.
00:47:39.260 | In that situation, it was a one-room schoolhouse scene and there was this young, bookish, dweeby
00:47:46.580 | teacher that was hired on as a new teacher in the one-room schoolhouse.
00:47:53.300 | Of course, he was bookish and physically weak.
00:47:56.860 | So the students who were the bullies of the school were going to be lined up to – and
00:48:01.580 | they decided this was the day that they were going to put the teacher down.
00:48:04.060 | They were going to fight the teacher.
00:48:05.660 | Well the day came that they were going to fight the teacher and that teacher hid in
00:48:09.620 | his teacher desk.
00:48:10.620 | When the big bullies of the school came up the aisle to fight the teacher, he had in
00:48:15.300 | his teacher desk a bullwhip, pulled out the bullwhip and went to town on those boys and
00:48:20.580 | sent them on their heels.
00:48:22.180 | He solved the problem, got the kids out of there, but it was through the use of a tool.
00:48:26.380 | If you're a teacher, if you're someone like that, you have to have the same thing.
00:48:29.260 | You've got to have the tool.
00:48:31.060 | If you are a relatively non-physically imposing woman, you're going to need some kind of
00:48:37.140 | instrument that will help you with your physical strength.
00:48:39.620 | Because if you're going up against a guy coming in the door with an AR-15, you need
00:48:44.180 | something a little bit more than saying, "Please, politely, please don't kill me."
00:48:50.620 | A baseball bat will go a long way, a hitting instrument.
00:48:53.160 | Other instruments, something like a walking cane or a stick, a collapsible baton, the
00:48:58.580 | style of law enforcement.
00:49:00.300 | I don't want to get hit with a baton.
00:49:02.420 | They're powerful, short little things.
00:49:03.820 | You keep it in your desk drawer, whack that thing open and you've got an effective tool.
00:49:09.500 | If you've got a – depending on your type of environment, maybe it's a wrench.
00:49:13.600 | If you work in an environment where it's appropriate, keep a tire iron handy and make
00:49:19.160 | sure that it's easily accessible to protect yourself.
00:49:21.960 | There are all kinds of ideas.
00:49:23.060 | A big old mag light, the old style of police style flashlight, a big old mag light is a
00:49:27.500 | very effective weapon.
00:49:29.080 | But all of these hitting instruments can be helpful.
00:49:32.420 | Now, what bugs me about the conversation is people often immediately take the role of
00:49:40.900 | victim and that's what angers me about this.
00:49:44.620 | People take the role of victim and say, "Well, you just can't do anything against a dude
00:49:48.100 | with a rifle."
00:49:49.100 | Want to bet?
00:49:50.680 | You can absolutely do something against a dude with a rifle.
00:49:52.940 | Now, if you've got a dude with a rifle that's on the other side of a football field and
00:49:56.060 | you're coming across a hundred yards of empty ground and there's only one of you,
00:50:01.260 | there's not a chance in the world that you're going to make it across that football field
00:50:06.100 | alive.
00:50:07.380 | But if you've got a guy coming in the door of your room and you've got a couple of
00:50:12.260 | flashlights, a loud horn, you've got a baseball bat that you handed out, two of them, walking
00:50:15.880 | cane, you've got a bunch of people, you blocked the door, you can absolutely get on
00:50:19.660 | it with a guy with a rifle.
00:50:21.700 | You may lose a couple of people in the process, but you're going to lose them anyway.
00:50:27.180 | If a dozen students rush the guy with a rifle, three or four of them may go down, but that's
00:50:33.100 | better than 10 of them going down and the other ones will actually get there and get
00:50:36.140 | the rifle out of his hands.
00:50:37.820 | Great thing about a rifle is it shoots really well.
00:50:39.580 | It's easy to shoot.
00:50:40.740 | Hard thing about a rifle, it's very hard to use in close quarters, especially if somebody
00:50:44.340 | can get it and it's much easier for somebody to control the barrel of a rifle than it
00:50:47.540 | is control the barrel of a handgun.
00:50:50.340 | So think about having hitting instruments available to you and position some of those
00:50:55.080 | weapons in a way that is available to you.
00:50:59.200 | Throwing instruments as well.
00:51:00.940 | Things that can be thrown.
00:51:01.940 | An example here would be a baseball.
00:51:04.540 | Now talk about plausible deniability.
00:51:06.800 | If I were trying to protect a workplace or if I were a teacher, I would go down to the
00:51:13.900 | sporting goods, I would, who am I kidding, I would ask around to get for free somebody
00:51:20.140 | who has an old baseball bat bag.
00:51:22.660 | I would get the baseball bat bag and I would load it up with three or four old bats.
00:51:27.260 | I would get with the metal ones so they can really deliver some damage.
00:51:31.220 | I load it up with some bats and I'd load it up with baseballs and toss a couple of old
00:51:34.540 | gloves in there as well.
00:51:36.140 | Now we've got baseball equipment, but what you actually have is very useful hitting instruments,
00:51:42.460 | a couple of baseball bats, and if I'm hiding in a classroom with a group of junior economics
00:51:47.980 | students, you better believe every one of the biggest guys in the room, the toughest
00:51:52.020 | guys, I'm going to give every one of them a baseball and I'm going to toss out that
00:51:55.180 | sack of, excuse me, I'm going to give them the bats and I'm going to toss that sack of
00:51:59.540 | baseballs out and I'm going to give every single student in there a baseball and give
00:52:04.060 | as many as I can.
00:52:06.140 | You think that's stupid?
00:52:07.140 | I don't, maybe it is.
00:52:08.980 | If you have experience in this, maybe, I made up this entire show off the top of my head
00:52:13.260 | so this is just how I think about it.
00:52:14.820 | I didn't read all the people who actually paid to do this for a living.
00:52:18.420 | But I'm not going to be a victim and I'm going to make sure that that teacher is not a victim
00:52:22.500 | and those kids are not victims.
00:52:23.500 | And we're not going to hide in the corner and get shot cowering in the corner.
00:52:28.000 | We're going to fight back.
00:52:29.540 | So some guy pokes a barrel of a rifle in our classroom and I've got four of my big junior
00:52:36.380 | students all have big metal baseball bats and they're positioned near the door on either
00:52:40.060 | side.
00:52:41.060 | You can't shoot them both the same way.
00:52:42.060 | This is not a SWAT team coming in where they're coming in stacked.
00:52:44.580 | You got one guy going left, one guy going right and even if it were, a room full of
00:52:48.540 | junior students would put a hurt on a SWAT team.
00:52:51.740 | And I've got everyone else with baseballs saying if you see something, come through and
00:52:55.340 | I'm standing there with a horn saying if you hear my horn, everybody go.
00:52:59.200 | And the guy pokes the barrel of a rifle through and there's flashlights going off, there's
00:53:02.820 | baseballs getting pelted at him and there's a couple of guys with bats that are beating
00:53:06.580 | him and there's a horn going off.
00:53:09.300 | I'm sorry, but you better be a battle-hardened special forces soldier to be able to keep
00:53:15.460 | any decent shooting with that.
00:53:19.780 | So throwing instruments and this can be all kinds of things.
00:53:23.460 | A bundle of keys in some environments can be important.
00:53:27.740 | A sack of baseballs, a padlock, find things that are compact, that are heavy and that
00:53:33.740 | will do some damage.
00:53:35.860 | Example, a big old hockey puck lock, you know, the kind they put on the trailers, the ones
00:53:43.580 | that look like a puck, you got a couple of those in a drawer somewhere, that's a totally
00:53:49.580 | innocuous thing.
00:53:52.100 | And talk about a hurting throwing weapon, I don't want to get hit in the face with a
00:53:57.940 | hockey puck lock from a landscaping trailer.
00:54:01.860 | So look around your house, look around your office, look around a store and try to think,
00:54:05.440 | what are things that can be thrown?
00:54:07.460 | Next category is flailing instruments.
00:54:09.780 | A flailing instrument is a classic example of a self-defense weapon and there are all
00:54:16.980 | kinds of ways that you can do this and do it innocuously.
00:54:21.860 | A bike chain with a couple of heavy padlocks on the end is a formidable flailing weapon.
00:54:29.460 | And by chain you need a very flexible chain, so you need something that is either fabric
00:54:34.060 | rope or flexible chain.
00:54:35.700 | But a flexible bike chain with a couple of padlocks on it is a formidable weapon in a
00:54:41.220 | close quarters battle.
00:54:43.540 | A padlock, a big heavy padlock stuck down on the end of an athletic tube sock, this
00:54:49.420 | creates a powerful flailing weapon, almost equivalent to a SAP, a leather SAP.
00:54:54.020 | Or a sock with a handful of big D cell battery stuff down on the bottom.
00:54:58.060 | If you're in a, I don't think that would work, if you got a guy coming at you across down
00:55:01.460 | the end of a hallway with an AR-15, you got to get there of course, get close to him.
00:55:05.600 | But if you're in a close quarter combat scenario, then a flailing weapon can be helpful.
00:55:10.500 | Another example would be you could put together a big heavy key ring and put a long strong
00:55:15.220 | lanyard on the end.
00:55:16.580 | You take that and swing it around.
00:55:17.980 | There's a weapon from the world of martial arts called a monkey fist, same thing.
00:55:23.220 | And there are all kinds of options of these if you go looking.
00:55:25.540 | And if you're in a non-permissive environment, you should look.
00:55:28.060 | There are people that you can get just get a heavy leather belt or not too heavy because
00:55:31.660 | you want the belt to be flexible.
00:55:32.660 | But get a fabric belt or a light flexible leather belt, but put a big heavy belt buckle
00:55:38.520 | on it.
00:55:39.520 | There are people that sell online big heavy metal belt buckles.
00:55:43.140 | If you need a flailing instrument, you have a belt and there are techniques that can be
00:55:48.020 | used.
00:55:49.020 | People sell things called a SAP cap, which is a baseball cap that has lead shots sewn
00:55:56.820 | into it.
00:55:57.820 | So if you need to use it as a defense weapon, you take the cap off your head and whack somebody
00:56:01.820 | and that lead shot is a brutal impact weapon.
00:56:05.060 | It's a flailing weapon, but it'll do some damage in a close quarter environment.
00:56:10.260 | Now some of those, forgive me for getting a little bit off, that's not applicable necessarily
00:56:16.200 | to the school shooting environment, but I want to inspire and stimulate your thinking
00:56:21.160 | so that you can look around where you are and say, "How can I not be a helpless victim?"
00:56:26.340 | Next example would be poking instruments.
00:56:28.800 | So things like an umbrella, whether that's just a standard umbrella, a cheap one from
00:56:34.720 | the dollar store, whether that's a good golf umbrella that you get that has a little bit
00:56:38.840 | more heft, or you can actually buy about 80 bucks, you can buy an expensive and fancy
00:56:44.120 | self-defense umbrella that is, the thing is rock solid.
00:56:48.080 | It's really well built.
00:56:49.080 | You can stand on it.
00:56:50.080 | It won't break.
00:56:51.080 | It's designed for poking.
00:56:52.180 | It's designed for popping the umbrella open and using it to protect yourself against physical
00:56:57.560 | blows.
00:56:58.560 | It won't do anything against bullets, of course, but somebody who's attacking you physically
00:57:00.960 | can be used as a club, but an umbrella is a very useful tool, or a broomstick, or a
00:57:07.080 | mop handle, those kinds of things, poking instruments, or a lacrosse stick, something
00:57:11.580 | that could be useful in your place of business.
00:57:15.040 | You interpret that however you need, but don't think that, you know, a lot of people have
00:57:20.880 | been killed with shovels.
00:57:23.520 | A good shovel or a good mop handle will give you some good defensive capability against
00:57:28.960 | somebody who's attacking you.
00:57:31.240 | Not so useful against a gun unless you're in close range, but a lot of times if you're
00:57:35.400 | in a scenario where, if you're in a close quarter combat place, the guns, especially
00:57:41.720 | a long rifle, a rifle's capabilities are significantly diminished in a close environment.
00:57:47.760 | A handgun in many ways is a more effective weapon because the person with the weapon
00:57:54.680 | can actually control it in a close quarter combat environment.
00:57:58.920 | That's why most of the time if you have a SWAT team or some other military team that's
00:58:05.440 | dealing in a known close quarter environment, they'll usually use a submachine gun, a much
00:58:10.080 | smaller submachine gun versus a rifle.
00:58:14.160 | If you're going up against an AR-15, some guy has a standard long barrel on it, it's
00:58:18.920 | not a short barreled rifle, just a standard long barrel on it, that's unwieldy when he
00:58:22.480 | starts going around corners, so all these things can make a difference.
00:58:26.000 | Next category is slashing or stabbing instruments.
00:58:30.160 | Obvious examples would be scissors.
00:58:32.480 | I have a pair of scissors that I grabbed from my grandfather's desk before he died, and
00:58:37.240 | it's awesome, it's old, but it's just pure metal and the things are huge.
00:58:42.320 | As far as a stabbing weapon to protect yourself, to keep in your desk drawer, I use them for
00:58:46.400 | cutting, but there also would be an extremely effective stabbing weapon.
00:58:49.680 | They're not safety scissors at all.
00:58:51.960 | So there's no reason why you couldn't have enough plausible deniability with having a
00:58:56.360 | decent pair of scissors or a letter opener or a knife.
00:59:00.160 | Whatever the rules are that you decide to follow, I think it's very important to consider
00:59:05.480 | carefully what the rules are and then consider what the penalty is for breaking those rules.
00:59:13.160 | You might find it much easier to conceal a large knife in your work environment, and
00:59:19.640 | the legal penalties for concealing that large knife may be less than the difficulty of concealing
00:59:26.840 | a handgun or the legal penalties for concealing a handgun if you work in a non-permissive
00:59:30.920 | environment.
00:59:32.040 | So consider what options would fit in your work environment.
00:59:36.400 | Next, and these are not appropriate for school defense, but I want to emphasize them in case
00:59:41.840 | you live in some place where you're legally not permitted to buy a gun or you're 15 years
00:59:49.040 | old and people don't think you should have a gun, what can you have to protect yourself?
00:59:54.800 | One of the most effective things for home defense, I'm convinced, is either a spear
00:59:58.680 | or a sword.
00:59:59.880 | I think the weight is actually on the spear.
01:00:04.800 | If you think about a scenario, let's say that you're a young man or a young woman living
01:00:10.400 | in something like a college dorm.
01:00:12.880 | This is a non-permissive environment for multiple reasons.
01:00:17.160 | One, you have very little privacy of your things.
01:00:20.200 | So two, you're on a school campus, which most of the time you're not allowed to carry a
01:00:25.240 | gun even if you own one.
01:00:27.160 | Three, you may be under the age of acquisition where you can't buy a gun legally and you
01:00:32.080 | don't have anybody that would lend one to you or you don't want to get involved in that.
01:00:35.160 | You can't protect it.
01:00:36.160 | If you own a gun, you have a responsibility to protect it.
01:00:38.040 | So you've got to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands and make sure that it's
01:00:40.880 | not stolen from you and used to commit crime by somebody else.
01:00:44.760 | And in considering those scenarios, I would do that calculation and it's hard for me to
01:00:50.440 | imagine that I would have a gun if I were in a college dorm.
01:00:55.280 | But it may be much more reasonable for me to have a spear.
01:01:03.340 | For example, Cold Steel is a well-known knife manufacturer.
01:01:08.480 | Make excellent quality products.
01:01:11.640 | But they sell these spears that are used for different purposes.
01:01:14.280 | Some of them are just cool.
01:01:15.360 | Some of them are hunting, etc.
01:01:17.600 | But you could take the spear off of its shaft, keep the shaft leaning up in the closet, conceal
01:01:25.980 | and secure the actual spear.
01:01:29.560 | It would be a large bladed weapon.
01:01:31.960 | Check whatever rules or regulations you're subject to.
01:01:35.640 | But in your own home, that would be a very effective weapon.
01:01:38.440 | Now if somebody is seeking to attack you in the confines of your own home, somebody's
01:01:42.220 | beating the door down, a spear is very intimidating and is brutal in terms of its actual physical
01:01:48.720 | effect on an attacker.
01:01:50.080 | If my daughter were in a situation like that, you better believe I want her to have a spear
01:01:53.800 | handy.
01:01:54.800 | Now I've never heard somebody talk about, "Oh, you should have a spear," necessarily
01:01:59.640 | a spear.
01:02:00.640 | That's not common discussion.
01:02:02.980 | But it's a whole lot more effective than having just a cell phone, right?
01:02:07.620 | Having something, if some drunk frat boy is trying to beat down her door, that'll put
01:02:13.480 | a little bit of intimidation in her and help to level the playing field.
01:02:17.560 | Sword as well.
01:02:18.560 | A sword is one of those things that may be regulated, but when you're dealing with regulations,
01:02:24.040 | recognize that if you're looking at the laws of your city, you live in a place like New
01:02:27.080 | York City or San Francisco or Rome, look at the laws and ask yourself, are these laws
01:02:32.560 | based upon concealment or are they based upon possession?
01:02:38.080 | Many times there may be a knife law that says you're not allowed to have a weapon that's
01:02:42.620 | over a certain number of inches, say it's four inches.
01:02:46.640 | On that situation, I don't see any reason to take the risk for you to walk around with
01:02:50.000 | a five-inch knife.
01:02:51.040 | Just get yourself a good, well-built four-inch knife, a folding knife, to carry with you
01:02:56.080 | as a protection weapon when you're concealing it on your body.
01:03:00.880 | But that doesn't apply to your home.
01:03:04.280 | There's no reason why you can't legally have a big old cold steel samurai sword in your
01:03:09.120 | home.
01:03:10.320 | There was, I forget the timeline on this, but there was a news story of a college student
01:03:14.200 | up in Tallahassee, I think it was FSU student, who protected his home, was broken into by
01:03:20.420 | I think a couple of assailants during the middle of the day, protected himself with
01:03:24.200 | a spear.
01:03:25.200 | He won.
01:03:26.200 | Sorry, not a spear, a sword, a samurai sword.
01:03:30.320 | He won.
01:03:31.320 | The guy with the sword won.
01:03:32.320 | The person who was being attacked, the guy who was defending his house.
01:03:35.440 | So those are not appropriate for schools.
01:03:37.720 | I can't imagine how, I don't think that's a practical solution for a school.
01:03:42.720 | But if you are young, if you are in a place where you don't have the ability to arm yourself,
01:03:49.840 | you can't defend yourself effectively with a gun, you've chosen not to defend yourself
01:03:55.640 | with a gun for whatever reason, then don't think that you're defenseless.
01:04:00.360 | Think ahead and acquire the equipment that you need to make a good defense.
01:04:06.380 | Next would be projectile instruments.
01:04:08.300 | So we've covered distraction devices, hitting instruments, throwing instruments, flailing
01:04:12.880 | instruments, poking instruments, stabbing or slashing instruments, the final three,
01:04:17.720 | projectile instruments.
01:04:19.060 | So simple things here would be something like a slingshot.
01:04:22.400 | A slingshot, a modern slingshot.
01:04:25.560 | There are variations of it, but people have taken the old technology, the things that
01:04:29.240 | I made when I was a kid, you go out and find a fork tree and make rubber bands, and they've
01:04:33.440 | become very, very accurate devices that can deliver a steel shot at a very high velocity.
01:04:41.480 | I'd rather, if I'm going up against a guy with a gun, if I've got cover and we're not
01:04:49.120 | in, when we're in an environment where this person is, they're filled with adrenaline,
01:04:53.640 | they're not looking for threats, they're in a target rich environment shooting unarmed
01:04:57.240 | people.
01:04:58.520 | If I can get behind cover and I can have access to a slingshot at relatively close distances,
01:05:04.280 | there's a good chance that I can deliver enough annoying shot to them, one or two that would
01:05:10.800 | actually hit to perhaps at least slow them down and save some lives.
01:05:15.400 | It's hard for me to imagine, I haven't read the laws in your school, but it's hard for
01:05:19.800 | me to imagine that your school has said, "Well, teachers can't have a slingshot."
01:05:25.560 | Or in other circumstances where perhaps you're, we're not talking about school defense here,
01:05:32.840 | but you're dealing in an area where you have very restrictive gun laws.
01:05:37.600 | There's so many ways to get around these draconian gun laws that are enacted in some places,
01:05:43.920 | but some simple things would be an air rifle.
01:05:46.560 | Basically an air rifle is relatively, you're able to acquire it and depending on how the
01:05:53.400 | law is written, if you read it, you may be able to acquire a high velocity air rifle.
01:05:58.360 | If you go out and do some careful shopping, you may find a high velocity air rifle or
01:06:02.520 | a high velocity handgun rifle, air pistol that would be an effective deterrent.
01:06:12.680 | The same way that I don't want to get shot with a .22, I don't want to get shot with
01:06:15.720 | an air rifle, especially a high velocity one.
01:06:19.400 | I don't want to get shot, period.
01:06:20.880 | I don't want to get hit with a slingshot, a steel ball coming at me at a very high velocity.
01:06:27.160 | I don't want to get hit with that.
01:06:29.440 | These things are enough to deter, in some situations, these things are enough of a deterrent
01:06:34.400 | to be helpful in certain circumstances.
01:06:37.380 | Other obvious examples would be things like crossbows, less effective for defense because
01:06:41.440 | they're too slow to actually use, I'd rather have a slingshot and a bag of shot than probably
01:06:46.520 | in some situations than a crossbow.
01:06:49.200 | But if I had a crossbow that was ready to go, had an arrow knocked and was ready to
01:06:55.240 | use accompanied by a slingshot, now you can get into some effective defense if you live
01:07:00.120 | in a place, a country or a city or in a non-permissive environment that is going to be very problematic
01:07:07.200 | for you.
01:07:08.200 | So projectile instruments have their place.
01:07:11.880 | While we're on the subject of...
01:07:13.320 | I'll do that in a minute.
01:07:16.560 | Next category would be sprays and irritants.
01:07:18.480 | Big one here is pepper spray.
01:07:20.660 | Pepper spray, and especially if you are in a school environment or if you're in a home
01:07:24.560 | environment, then you may purchase pepper spray that would be different than what you
01:07:28.440 | can carry on your person.
01:07:30.920 | In my opinion, every single person, especially every single person who carries a firearm
01:07:37.120 | should also carry pepper spray.
01:07:38.960 | I think it's irresponsible not to have a less lethal means of defense, to only have a gun
01:07:46.000 | as your only option.
01:07:47.440 | I think you need to carry pepper spray.
01:07:49.640 | But with pepper spray, there's a difference between what you may be able to carry in your
01:07:53.040 | pocket versus what you may be able to have in your home.
01:07:57.160 | And when you actually look at pepper spray, and if you're willing to do the research and
01:08:00.280 | spend some money, there's a big difference in different applications.
01:08:03.880 | There are cloud forms of pepper spray that will give you...
01:08:07.800 | If someone was a close-up attacker, it'll just fill the air with a choking cloud.
01:08:11.740 | But then there are also more streaming forms of pepper spray where you could effectively
01:08:17.880 | dissuade or deter somebody at say 10 feet away.
01:08:21.920 | So if you shop carefully, you may look around, and if this is for your home or for your dorm
01:08:26.320 | room or for your classroom, I would be inclined to make some selections of a large canister
01:08:34.600 | of something that has some good velocity, the ability to go out 10 feet or 15 feet,
01:08:39.480 | because you don't have the constraint of how do I conceal this thing in my pocket.
01:08:43.120 | A big old canister of commercial law enforcement grade pepper spray will be a much more effective
01:08:51.480 | deterrent than a small little, goes on my key chain, canister of pepper spray.
01:08:58.640 | So think about that and then shop appropriately for the scenario.
01:09:03.680 | There's such an important nuance when you're thinking through what type of weapon would
01:09:07.920 | I choose in a certain environment, because there's always a balance.
01:09:11.000 | There's always a trade-off.
01:09:12.560 | If you knew you were going to go and get in a gunfight today, if you knew that, man, I'd
01:09:18.480 | be in there with an AR-10.
01:09:20.360 | I'd have a bulletproof vest.
01:09:23.400 | I'd have a half a dozen 40-round magazines ready to go.
01:09:26.200 | I'm sorry, that makes 40s with a .308.
01:09:29.480 | I'd be in there with a long-distance rifle.
01:09:33.120 | I'd have a handgun strapped to my side.
01:09:35.120 | If I knew I was going to get in a gunfight, I'd have a ballistic helmet on.
01:09:39.240 | I'd do everything I could.
01:09:40.640 | But the thing is, of course, you don't know you're going to get in a gunfight.
01:09:43.280 | When we're dealing with a school shooting, we're dealing with a statistical anomaly
01:09:46.320 | that has a risk of happening that is so close to zero that most people can go through their
01:09:53.240 | entire life and never think about preparing for it.
01:09:56.600 | That's the reality of it.
01:09:58.240 | And so I think it would be a little silly to do over-the-top preparation for something
01:10:02.640 | that's very statistically unlikely to happen.
01:10:05.080 | We always have this trade-off is the point.
01:10:07.020 | You don't go around with an M1 Garand strapped to your back on a daily basis unless you're
01:10:10.760 | in a war zone, and most of us are not.
01:10:13.820 | So you make trade-offs, and the same thing with things like sprays and irritants.
01:10:18.040 | Another example would be something like a fire extinguisher in terms of what you could
01:10:21.920 | have available to you.
01:10:23.720 | A fire extinguisher could be a very effective and useful tool for self-defense.
01:10:29.600 | Number one, if you had a large fire extinguisher that put out a significant stream, now you
01:10:34.800 | have the ability to distract and to deter or at least throw their aim off somebody who's
01:10:40.600 | coming at you, an attacker.
01:10:42.680 | It wouldn't be unusual to have a large fire extinguisher that could put a stream of irritating
01:10:47.960 | vapors 10 feet away, 15 feet away.
01:10:53.560 | That's too far away for you to be effective with your pocket knife.
01:10:57.240 | You're up against a guy with a rifle who's coming around the corner 15 feet away from
01:11:01.680 | your desk.
01:11:04.320 | Your little pocket knife doesn't do you very much good.
01:11:06.660 | You're going to get shot before you can reach him.
01:11:09.700 | But if you can distract him enough with using a fire extinguisher, he comes around the corner
01:11:17.280 | enough for you to send your co-worker across to stab him in the neck, now all of a sudden
01:11:22.840 | you have the ability to protect yourself.
01:11:24.520 | So think about that in advance.
01:11:26.920 | Notice where are the fire extinguishers if you're a teacher, or perhaps you want to go
01:11:30.200 | ahead and have your own fire extinguisher that's underneath your desk or in the corner
01:11:35.200 | of your office.
01:11:36.200 | How are you going to get into trouble for having an extra fire extinguisher in your
01:11:40.900 | office or in your desk drawer?
01:11:43.220 | Could even be valuable part of your fire safety plan.
01:11:46.380 | Other things that could be useful in different contexts, things like road flares could be
01:11:50.180 | formidable weapons if you had a moment to strike it up.
01:11:53.900 | There are contexts in which something like that seems fairly innocuous, but is a valuable
01:11:57.940 | self-defense item.
01:11:58.940 | A little hard to explain road flares if you're a teacher in a classroom, but for somebody
01:12:03.180 | else who needs a valuable self-defense item, but is in a non-permissive environment, that
01:12:09.500 | could be very helpful.
01:12:11.460 | Last couple of options, tasers.
01:12:13.840 | So this would be a whole discussion in and of itself, but the police style taser where
01:12:18.740 | it actually shoots a dart that has an electrical wire that's attached to the gun, you can buy
01:12:23.740 | those yourself commercially.
01:12:25.940 | How effective they are for self-defense, you be the judge.
01:12:29.060 | Whether you want to spend the money, whether that's useful, you be the judge.
01:12:31.980 | But in terms of the laws regulating the possession of a taser versus the laws regulating the
01:12:37.180 | possession of a firearm, there'd be a big difference there.
01:12:40.500 | And of course, there are other tasers that are the up-close contact devices.
01:12:44.660 | I don't think those do you any good in the type of environment we're talking about here,
01:12:49.620 | but perhaps in your home as far as protecting your apartment or your dorm room or having
01:12:54.100 | one by your bed might be a valuable protective device.
01:12:58.180 | Finally, I think there is a place, although this would be extremely dangerous, I think
01:13:01.780 | there's a place for fear devices.
01:13:04.020 | Here I'm just thinking of the point of intimidation, something like an airsoft gun or something
01:13:09.580 | like one of the other workarounds, by the way, if you live in a place with draconian
01:13:15.140 | gun laws, like a big city or something like that, one of the things is to get an old antique
01:13:20.340 | firearm.
01:13:21.540 | And so if you have an antique firearm, a pre-1898 firearm, even if it's just a big old shotgun,
01:13:27.580 | that can produce enough fear in somebody that no, you're not going to fight off somebody
01:13:31.300 | who's committing a determined attack against you with six guys with submachine guns who
01:13:36.700 | are invading your apartment.
01:13:39.000 | But in terms of putting the fear in one person, some drunk is trying to get in the door and
01:13:43.460 | steal your drugs or whatever that type of situation, you can possess an antique firearm
01:13:48.780 | and it'll do what you need it to do.
01:13:50.340 | And it doesn't necessarily have to be a black powder, ball and powder type design.
01:13:56.260 | Although there are plenty of good modern black powder weapons that will come in under the
01:14:00.820 | exceptions for black powder weapons that would also be very intimidating.
01:14:04.580 | But in terms of a fear device, another fear device would be something like an airsoft
01:14:07.580 | gun.
01:14:08.580 | There are times at which I could imagine, because you can buy an airsoft gun that looks
01:14:13.340 | relatively similar to some other type of submachine gun, they have them in replicas.
01:14:18.460 | There are times in which I can imagine that being a useful deterrent to somebody in terms
01:14:23.760 | of an intimidating threat.
01:14:25.740 | Remember this, when it comes to the actual firearm statistics as far as gunfights, number
01:14:30.460 | one, most people who defend their life with a firearm don't pull the trigger.
01:14:34.860 | It's important to note that.
01:14:37.980 | But you don't hear those stories.
01:14:39.660 | That's the problem with the way that firearms usage in the United States is reported.
01:14:44.320 | You hear stories about the very few big shootings constantly, but you don't hear stories all
01:14:50.740 | over the nation every day about the fights that are diffused by the presence of a firearm
01:14:55.620 | or the fights that are not started by the knowledge of a firearm present.
01:15:00.420 | And so frequently a fight is stopped or an attacker is stopped by simply brandishing
01:15:06.180 | a firearm at somebody.
01:15:07.620 | And in some cases, perhaps if you have an airsoft gun, that may be enough of a fear
01:15:12.980 | device that it could save your life in terms of your ability to brandish it at an attacker
01:15:18.580 | and put a little bit of fear in them.
01:15:20.140 | Even if you had to use it and pull the trigger, a bunch of airsoft pellets coming at my face
01:15:23.820 | from somebody who's a good shot and I'm not wearing goggles, I'm going to turn around
01:15:27.580 | and run.
01:15:28.580 | Now, be careful because one of the major dangers of things like airsoft guns is they can be
01:15:34.380 | mistaken, especially by law enforcement for a legitimate real firearm.
01:15:39.420 | And so now we run the wrong risk where a 10-year-old kid brandishes an airsoft gun and a police
01:15:45.980 | officer mistakes it as a real firearm.
01:15:48.740 | It's a real danger.
01:15:50.260 | So be very circumspect in how you would apply it.
01:15:52.580 | But I think a fear device like an airsoft gun could be an effective deterrent of some
01:15:57.740 | crime.
01:15:59.580 | Those would be many methods of active self-defense, ways for you to fight back.
01:16:04.660 | The key thing I want you to remember is this.
01:16:07.420 | Most people who attack are not used to defense.
01:16:12.460 | Now most people aren't used to defending themselves, but most people who attack are not used to
01:16:16.500 | defense.
01:16:17.500 | And consequently, a vigorous defense, a vigorous active fighting back will often deter an attacker.
01:16:26.820 | Not always.
01:16:27.820 | There's no guarantee of that.
01:16:28.820 | You can find plenty of evidence for fights that are not deterred.
01:16:32.460 | But what do you have to lose?
01:16:35.820 | That's why Flight 93 and 9/11 I think changed probably forever the idea of hijacking an
01:16:45.740 | airplane because up until Flight 93 and up until 9/11, frequently the passengers on an
01:16:52.180 | airplane would have gone along with the demands of the hijacker.
01:16:57.180 | They would have been passive.
01:16:58.860 | They would have sat still and complied with all the demands knowing we're going to land
01:17:02.220 | somewhere.
01:17:03.220 | There's going to be a hostage negotiation.
01:17:04.220 | We're going to be rescued.
01:17:05.220 | I think 9/11 changed all that.
01:17:07.780 | It's hard for me to imagine, at least an American airliner, and I would assume it's probably
01:17:12.980 | globally, but it's hard for me to imagine an American airliner that were hijacked by
01:17:17.540 | terrorists where basically all the passengers didn't fight back or at least didn't move
01:17:22.780 | in that direction.
01:17:25.240 | You put three people or four hijackers up against a plane load of angry people, yes,
01:17:32.260 | the guns will kill some people.
01:17:34.380 | But at the end of the day, the three or four against the plane load of angry people are
01:17:37.540 | going to lose.
01:17:39.260 | Now they may drive it into the ground.
01:17:41.940 | That's a problem.
01:17:43.060 | But even in some of these active shooter environments, about the only one that was tactically impossible
01:17:46.980 | was Las Vegas.
01:17:47.980 | The details on that are still so unclear as we wait for the official reports.
01:17:53.040 | But that was the only one that I've looked at that was basically tactically impossible.
01:17:57.720 | I wonder sometimes if these things are going to change as far as when people, instead of
01:18:02.220 | just running, which is the right solution, are going to fight back and especially when
01:18:06.420 | there are crowds of people.
01:18:08.460 | I don't know.
01:18:10.060 | I haven't reviewed the reports and I wouldn't venture an opinion past that.
01:18:14.540 | But I think the same thing is going to happen.
01:18:16.580 | I do.
01:18:17.780 | So after fighting back, then the last two is treating injury.
01:18:21.420 | Treat injury.
01:18:22.420 | So be prepared to treat injury.
01:18:24.140 | There's no reason in the world, if you're concerned about safety and physical safety,
01:18:27.780 | you may not be allowed to have a gun, but there's no reason why you can't have a trauma
01:18:33.300 | kit, a good first aid kit with some tourniquets.
01:18:38.500 | There's no reason why you can't take some training on how to use that.
01:18:41.540 | Whether that's just you tooling around YouTube and making a couple of purchases on Amazon,
01:18:45.940 | whether that's taking good legitimate medical class, medical training, there's no reason
01:18:50.380 | why you can't be prepared to save a life.
01:18:53.180 | And my understanding as a non-medical person, my understanding is that there is a good chance
01:18:58.980 | of being able to save somebody's life in a situation like this if there is quick response
01:19:05.200 | to severe wounds, such as wound packing and a severe bleeding wound, if you have the right
01:19:10.820 | dressing for that, or if there is the ability to apply a tourniquet.
01:19:16.300 | Now I couldn't go beyond that with my personal knowledge.
01:19:20.700 | I would defer you to somebody who knows, and that's their area of expertise.
01:19:24.140 | But I do think that this is valuable, and I think this is important to consider, because
01:19:29.020 | frequently, they may be able to save somebody's life by having some knowledge about medical
01:19:34.380 | treatment.
01:19:35.460 | In these active shooter scenarios, there's going to be some time while the police deal
01:19:40.140 | with things, and there aren't going to be—paramedics are not allowed in until the situation is
01:19:44.940 | resolved.
01:19:45.940 | It's not like the battlefield that you see in a movie where the medic is in there with
01:19:51.940 | bullets whistling over their head.
01:19:53.140 | The paramedics are not allowed in until the police resolve the situation.
01:19:57.420 | That may take minutes, it may take hours, but you might be there with the ability to
01:20:03.220 | treat injury.
01:20:04.900 | So even if you're aware of—I think most of us know pressure is probably the best thing
01:20:08.760 | to apply to a wound, even if you don't have any equipment.
01:20:11.220 | I think most of us—are there enough medical personnel around that can say, "Look, take
01:20:15.580 | this shirt, put pressure here, try to stop the bleeding."
01:20:18.480 | But a little bit of training and a little bit of a trauma kit handy would really go
01:20:22.460 | a long way.
01:20:23.460 | And then finally, communicate.
01:20:24.460 | I think it's important to have a tool to be able to communicate.
01:20:29.260 | A simple obvious example is having a cell phone.
01:20:33.100 | Always having a cell phone that's handy, having a cell phone that's charged.
01:20:37.020 | And then in this case, I think it's valuable to consider, if I were a teacher, I'd want
01:20:42.500 | to have a little bag put together with a few simple things, like maybe, like I said, some
01:20:47.700 | door wedges, a hammer, maybe some kind of edged weapon if I were able to do that.
01:20:54.180 | But I'd at least want to have a cell phone handy, and I want to have one handy.
01:20:57.940 | Now, most of the time, people are going to have their own cell phone, but get yourself
01:21:02.300 | a little cheap flip phone, a feature phone that's not a smartphone that can be used
01:21:07.260 | to dial 911.
01:21:08.820 | If I were hiding in a closet somewhere, and my cell phone had been on the other side of
01:21:16.500 | the room, not on me, locked in a desk drawer, I'd a whole lot rather, while I'm going
01:21:21.820 | out the door, reach up to the top of a bookshelf and grab down a little bag that has a phone
01:21:26.380 | that I can use to call 911, so that way if I'm stuck hiding in a closet, I have a cell
01:21:30.140 | phone handy.
01:21:31.300 | So consider that.
01:21:32.300 | If you are in a risky environment where this is actually worth planning for, then consider,
01:21:37.500 | is there a way to have a cell phone charged or an extra one?
01:21:40.500 | And then in some scenarios, maybe a radio.
01:21:43.500 | If you have the ability to have a radio, for example, if you live in a place that's earthquake
01:21:46.780 | prone, work in a Mexico City, you better have a radio as part of your scenario.
01:21:52.020 | You live on a mud, or California, but in Mexico City, you live on basically a big mud flat
01:21:59.620 | that is an awful place to live with regard to earthquake risk, so your kit needs to have
01:22:04.580 | a radio.
01:22:05.580 | And something with charged batteries, you should have some extra lithium batteries in
01:22:09.380 | there, so that if you're trapped inside of a building, the rescuers are there, you can
01:22:14.580 | have the potential to reach out to them with your little radio, your little FRS radio that
01:22:18.700 | you bought, and be able to communicate with them and tell them, "Listen, I'm in here."
01:22:22.740 | If they know you're alive and they know you're there, they'll move heaven and earth to get
01:22:26.580 | you out.
01:22:27.580 | If they don't know you're there and they don't know you're alive, they won't.
01:22:30.860 | So those are my ideas for you.
01:22:32.340 | I hope that these are helpful for you.
01:22:34.900 | Today's show is longer than I anticipated, but I really think that most of what I shared
01:22:41.180 | with you today is very practical.
01:22:43.420 | I hope that you can take this and interpret it into what is appropriate for your situation.
01:22:51.580 | But I wanted to give you some ideas that are actually usable, that don't require you changing
01:23:01.140 | the mind of 150 million people in order to have something.
01:23:07.580 | This is what bugs me to no end about so many modern debates.
01:23:11.940 | People want to change the mind of 150 million people and big giant laws and use government
01:23:17.700 | coercion instead of saying, "Here are some practical things you can do."
01:23:23.420 | Almost any issue in our society, there are things that we need to solve with legislation.
01:23:28.620 | I believe that.
01:23:29.940 | I really do.
01:23:31.220 | There are problems that can be solved with legislation.
01:23:35.460 | But solving things for hundreds of millions of people with legislation is a very ham-handed
01:23:41.100 | way of going about it and is usually very poorly done.
01:23:46.940 | But educating people and giving ideas can be effectively done.
01:23:53.940 | So you're hearing the frustration in my voice, and I've tried to keep myself on a tight emotional
01:24:00.300 | leash, but you're hearing the frustration in my voice about people not talking about
01:24:06.300 | practical tools and tactics.
01:24:08.980 | Don't wait for the government to act.
01:24:12.340 | You act.
01:24:15.260 | Don't wait for the government to somehow give you the permission to carry a gun.
01:24:21.300 | Carry a gun.
01:24:22.980 | Don't wait for the government to require you to get training to use a gun.
01:24:28.380 | Go and get training.
01:24:30.980 | Talk about guns in a different show that'll be so that those of you who don't want to
01:24:34.700 | hear my thoughts on guns can check out.
01:24:37.020 | But don't wait if you are a teacher and you're concerned about...
01:24:42.980 | I think I've given enough practical ideas here of things that I think would help.
01:24:46.780 | Now, if you have inside knowledge that what I've described here won't help, well, tell
01:24:54.460 | me.
01:24:55.460 | I'll have you on the show to tell me what will help.
01:24:56.460 | If you are a police officer, if you have experience and knowledge in this situation, and you can
01:25:02.700 | give some practical tools for what people can do that don't require changing the constitution
01:25:07.140 | of the United States, you email me and I'll have you on the show.
01:25:11.940 | But these are things that you can do, and fighting back will help.
01:25:18.460 | There's a big difference between looking for the ideal and say, "How can we stop all mass
01:25:25.700 | shootings?"
01:25:26.700 | You're not going to do it.
01:25:28.300 | It's not going to happen.
01:25:30.180 | As long as people are sinners and there's sin in their hearts, and as long as people
01:25:33.340 | can come up with weapons, everything from a gun to a stick to a knife to a train to
01:25:38.380 | a plane to a car...
01:25:40.860 | I'm not making these things up.
01:25:42.620 | The battle over...
01:25:44.580 | Forgive me.
01:25:45.900 | The battle over weaponry is nothing new.
01:25:49.940 | In a separate show, the example that I always use, if you go back and when I was a kid,
01:25:54.220 | I read the book Robin Hood.
01:25:56.880 | In that book about Robin Hood, there's the character Little John, who's this friar who...
01:26:03.620 | Sorry, Little John of Friartuck, that's what it was.
01:26:07.180 | There's this character where these two characters are fighting.
01:26:10.740 | Little John and Friartuck are fighting with their staffs.
01:26:13.660 | Well, why do they have big sticks?
01:26:16.020 | Why do they have staffs?
01:26:18.580 | Because the government said they couldn't have a sword.
01:26:21.580 | And so the way that they got around the law, the way that the peasants got around the law
01:26:25.300 | was by having a big giant staff, a walking staff.
01:26:29.620 | What are they going to pass a law that says you can't have a walking staff?
01:26:33.020 | And there was exact same thing about the non-permissive environment.
01:26:35.660 | Guarantee, some of those guys had a sword.
01:26:38.060 | Guarantee that as firearms started to be developed, some of them had firearms.
01:26:42.160 | But the entire point was this battle of saying, "Well, we're going to restrict the peasantry
01:26:47.220 | from having a sword."
01:26:49.140 | Peasants said, "Okay."
01:26:50.140 | I bet you some of them had a sword under their mattress at home, had it hidden in the woods
01:26:55.020 | for if they really needed it.
01:26:56.740 | But they just said, "You guys are going to engage in sword control.
01:27:00.540 | We're going to have our staffs."
01:27:03.400 | And you give a skilled person a staff, it's a deadly weapon.
01:27:08.900 | Somebody attacks you with a stick, you are legally authorized to use deadly force to
01:27:13.560 | defend yourself.
01:27:14.560 | A stick, a hammer, a bat, these are deadly weapons.
01:27:21.020 | Somebody attacks you with a hammer, you are...
01:27:23.020 | I'm not giving legal advice, I'm just saying the doctrine of self-defense.
01:27:26.620 | Somebody attacks you with a hammer, you are legally authorized to defend yourself with
01:27:31.100 | deadly force.
01:27:34.380 | Point is that this is not a new debate.
01:27:38.140 | But there are those who are going to spend all their time arguing and saying, "We got
01:27:41.380 | to get rid of all the sticks because the peasants are holding around sticks."
01:27:46.820 | Those who would just say, "You know what?
01:27:48.380 | I think it's a good thing for people to be able to defend themselves or let's get around
01:27:51.140 | the government's stupid rules with a new approach."
01:27:54.180 | The point I'm driving is I want to be one of practical solutions.
01:28:00.260 | I want to look and say, "How can I make things better?"
01:28:03.020 | And the point I was trying to say with any of these, I do not think that by you having
01:28:08.100 | a baseball bat or a bag with half a dozen baseball bats and a bunch of baseballs in
01:28:14.060 | your classroom, I don't think that's going to keep anybody from dying if some kid comes
01:28:19.580 | into your school with an AR-15 and starts shooting the place up.
01:28:24.500 | I don't think you can guarantee a zero death casualty event.
01:28:29.500 | But you may be able to protect the lives of your students and you may be able to cut the
01:28:35.060 | death toll from 17 to 11.
01:28:39.620 | And that's really worth doing.
01:28:42.820 | So don't be lazy and spend all your time arguing about things that are unsolvable.
01:28:48.780 | The gun control debate is absolutely intractable.
01:28:52.620 | Now I'll give you my thoughts on that at a different show, but it's not going to change.
01:28:58.100 | But what you can do is you can say, "What are some practical steps that I can take in
01:29:03.420 | response to this that may help me within my sphere of sovereignty, within my jurisdiction
01:29:10.900 | to improve things?"
01:29:12.980 | I think that's worth doing and I hope you do too.
01:29:15.420 | Thank you for listening to today's show, You Radical You.
01:29:21.100 | Before you go, I have one question for you.
01:29:23.580 | Was there an idea in today's show that helped you?
01:29:26.500 | Were you inspired?
01:29:27.500 | Were you motivated?
01:29:28.500 | Did you get an idea on how you can earn more or spend less money or invest more wisely
01:29:33.420 | or perhaps protect yourself from catastrophe and insulate yourself from financial disaster
01:29:39.020 | or just improve your life and your lifestyle?
01:29:40.980 | Well, if so, I have three requests for you.
01:29:44.140 | Number one, take action.
01:29:47.340 | Listening doesn't improve your life.
01:29:49.420 | Doing, however, can revolutionize your life.
01:29:53.220 | Number two, take the idea or concept that you learned from me and go and teach somebody
01:29:58.980 | else.
01:30:00.180 | If you want to really learn something, go and teach it to others.
01:30:03.860 | That ripple effect of you to someone else will systematically transform your life and
01:30:09.300 | the lives of all those around you.
01:30:11.540 | Number three, if you thought there was financial value in what you just heard, I'd ask you
01:30:16.220 | to come by and pay for it at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.
01:30:20.260 | Now however much you want to pay, that's up to you.
01:30:22.700 | But if the show is worth a dollar a month, come by RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron
01:30:26.700 | and sign up to support the show at a dollar a month.
01:30:28.980 | If the show is worth $20 a month to you, I'd be happy to have your $20.
01:30:33.140 | Hey, if it's $1,000 a month, write me a check.
01:30:36.580 | Don't send it to me on Patreon, but I'd be happy to have that as well.
01:30:40.900 | RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron is where you can do that.
01:30:43.700 | Thank you.