Here at Radical Personal Finance, there are two themes that I consciously continually explore with you in various ways and using different methods as seem practical to me at the time. And those themes are living a rich life now and then building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

When I built that tagline, which you hear in probably 70 to 80% of the shows where I lead off by giving you that tagline, I was very intentional about it because it expresses what I want to talk about. It gives you some ideas, but it also gives me as a host of this show a pretty wide degree of latitude.

That wide degree of latitude keeps me coming back to do the show for you, say three days a week at the moment. Because if I just came to come and talk to you about IRAs or life insurance every day, I couldn't do this. I really couldn't. I don't make enough money doing a podcast to interest me in doing that.

I'd go back and make millions in commissions and fees if that were what I wanted to do. So I need that creative license. I do think that the show has been a little light on specific tactics and nuts and bolts on finance the last few months. I have the intention of changing that.

Discussion on why it hasn't changed yet is unimportant for today's show. But in the vein of discussing issues that are important, that are practical, especially that relate to your having and living a rich life, I think this week we're going to merge a little bit of current events with some practical discussion.

Certainly over the last week and a half, our nation here in the United States of America has been rocked by the most recent shooting in South Florida, here where I live. The Parkland community is relatively close to me and it certainly had an impact here in the local discussion.

But I think more importantly, our country is being rocked by this discussion. And of course that has an impact on you and on me and on your finances and on my finances and our ability to live together in a culture where we all see and understand different things. We all have different perspectives, different opinions, how to live at peace with one another.

Of course, I, like you, have my own opinions and I've become deeply frustrated with how to express those opinions. We all, I think, have an outlet. We all need an outlet. And it seems like for many of us, our emotions are just kind of boiling under the surface. I think it's especially hard for people like me who don't have a workplace environment with many people that you see every day that you can talk about these things with.

And we're primarily left with a digital method of communication. So this week I'm going to tackle, we're calling it Radical Personal Finance Gun Week. Now, does this relate to finance? Well, I think when you hear the titles that I have planned, the answer is yes, absolutely. For example, today is tools and tactics for self-defense in a non-permissive environment like a school.

And I'm going to give you some very practical advice that may help you if you're ever caught in a situation like a school shooting, may help you to protect your children if your children are in the government schools and you're concerned about giving them something practical. I am so deeply frustrated at the fact that nobody wants to have, it seems to me, let me be careful, it feels to me and seems to me like nobody wants to have a practical discussion about what you can do.

Instead, we all want to argue about how to change the minds of 150 million people instead of saying, "Here's something that you can do." And so today I'm going to give you something that you can do. That's my goal. And at least get you thinking because if you're dead, well, I can't really help you live that rich life, can I?

If your kids are dead, well, that's going to really impact your life. Yes, that's blunt, but that's the reality. And so that's why I'm tackling this subject this week. Now I do recognize that some of what I have to say will be different than what you currently believe. So here's my intention.

I have four shows lined up in the shoot. Today is Tools and Tactics for Self-Defense in a Non-Permissive Environment. Another two working titles that I think will give you good practical advice that I hear very few people buying, but one will be How to Assemble a Quality Home Armory on a Budget.

One will be How to Buy an AR-15, How to Buy Your First AR-15. But of course, I think I need to do a standalone show. Current working title is The Moral Case for You to Have a Closet Full of Guns. And that one will not be practical in the sense of nuts and bolts financial advice.

It will be philosophical and moral, but I believe that I need to deliver that one to you in case you are concerned with some of my topics for this week. So let's get into it. Enough preamble today. Tools and Tactics for Self-Defense in a Non-Permissive Environment. The use of the word non-permissive environment is something like a school.

It's a fairly common word in the modern self-defense training industry or in the modern firearms culture. A non-permissive environment is some place where you're not allowed to carry a gun to protect yourself. So if you're looking for non-gun options to protect yourself or protect your children, that's what today is focused on.

And this is a challenge that many people face. Now, of course, many teachers in many of our states face this challenge quite acutely. Most teachers are not allowed to carry guns in schools. Supposedly schools are gun-free zones where you're not supposed to have a gun. Now, of course, the term in and of itself is an obvious lie that there seem to be plenty of guns in schools, but you're not supposed to have a gun in a school.

And so somebody like a teacher or a coach or an administrator who's trying to protect themselves and their students faces a challenge. How do I do it if I can't carry a gun legally? Now, of course, this is something that faces many other people. Whether you work in a business that – where the business owner or the administrators of that business or of that environment restrict your right to carry a firearm to protect yourself in that context.

This is called a non-permissive environment. Another example would be going to a concert where they say, "No weapons allowed," or some other similar place. Business puts up a sign on the front door and says, "Yes, you may be able to carry a gun in other places, but you can't carry a gun here." I want to give you some ideas, but I'm especially, of course, thinking about school shootings and what the tactics and techniques you need and what you need to teach your children in order to have a higher probability of surviving such an event.

And also, you may be able to take some of these and apply them to other environments. But here's my outline of what you need to do to engage in self-defense in an environment like a school. I have a few steps. Number one, of course, is get away. Number one is not get away.

Number one is don't be there. I need to add that to my outline right now. Number one is don't be there. Most of the time, for you to maintain your physical security, the best path for you is just simply don't be there. More on this in a moment. So number one is don't be there.

Number two is get away. Number three is hide. Number four is protect yourself. Number five is fight back. Six is treat injury. And seven is communicate. This is my simple outline to give you some practical ideas. So instead of getting mad at somebody and just arguing about how to change the mind of 150 million of your fellow citizens on a topic such as gun control and gun legislation, you can actually do something.

So don't be there. Obviously, one of the biggest challenges is not to be in an environment which is unsafe. Sometimes you can control that. Sometimes you can't. And I want today's show to be not so politically controversial. So I'm not going to talk about pulling your kids out of government schools.

But you know that I don't understand why your children are in a government school. I think that government schools are at the core of this problem because of the culture that they create. I'll talk about that when I do the political show in and of itself. But always, your best bet is whenever possible, just avoid being in a dangerous environment.

If you don't go to stupid places to do stupid things with stupid people, you can often avoid a fight. If you know that trouble is brewing and you leave, you can often avoid a fight. And you always, always, always want to avoid a physical violent confrontation. They don't help.

Physical violent confrontations just don't help. So always try to avoid. And it's pretty simple. Don't be a jerk. And don't be a jerk in other places. If we were doing this show on the topic of travel, for example, if you'll just simply not be stupid and not be a jerk to people, you can avoid many of the problem situations.

You can travel the world without a bit of tactical weaponry. You can travel the world without any devices for self-defense. And for the most part, you could probably be fine if you just use your wits and open your eyes and ask people for advice. For example, when you're traveling, no matter what country you're in, you need to ask people, "Is it safe to go to a place?" You can travel into Iraq today probably pretty safely if you'll just simply ask the local people who are hosting you in your travels, "Hey, is it safe for me to go to such and such a place?" Most of the time, people have this weird idea that a country is unsafe.

It's usually not a country that's unsafe. It's usually a relatively small number of neighborhoods in a handful of cities that are unsafe. If you came to my town and asked me what part of town to avoid, I would tell you, "You need to avoid this part of town." If I came to your town, you would tell me, "You should avoid this part of town." Or "It's probably fine during the day time, but don't go there at night." Or "Hey, it's really common that the pickpockets are active on the subway station, so make sure you're paying extra attention when you're at a subway station." So don't be there in the first place would be the idea.

Now of course, that's more difficult in a context of a school shooting if you've already made the decision that, "Yes, my child is going to be here," or, "Yes, you're a teacher," or, "You're a spouse of a teacher," and you're saying, "Well, I've got to be there. I've made the decision to be there." So if you are in a situation where you have difficult things going on, where someone, let's just stay with the idea of an active shooter in a school, your first option and first and best choice is always get away.

Run away. Running away is always the best first choice. No matter the situation, run away from the fight. Run away from the fight. If you can get away, and if you can get those who are involved away, run away. When you're in a situation like a school shooter, run away.

And of course, that's what you're trained on. That's what of course the children are trained on by the administration and whatever law enforcement is doing the training is that if possible, get away. If you're at a concert and there's somebody that starts shooting up the place or shooting off a bomb, run away.

Get away as fast as you can. If you will just simply run, generally you can avoid much of the problems, especially if you're dealing with somebody with a gun. Most people are not that skilled with a gun. Even people who train consistently, such as some everyday walk in the beat police officers are not that good with a gun.

If you look at the statistics on police gunfights, which are well recorded, and you look at the number of rounds that a police officer will often shoot in a gunfight versus the number of hits, it is horrendously low. So just simply running away, even if somebody has a gun, may frequently save your life.

It may also save your life because instead of getting multiple wounds, multiple bullets in your body, maybe you just have one or two, those are frequently survivable wounds. Instead of you sitting still and getting a pump full of multiple rounds of lead, one or two bullet wounds are frequently very survivable, especially if they're from a handgun.

Most shootings are with a handgun and not with a rifle. So get away. So in your planning and in your thinking, you should consider how do I get away? Well, of course, you're going to be running. So if you're in an environment where running may be difficult, then think about how to keep quality shoes handy.

If you work in an environment such as a teacher, and especially if you're a woman, if you're a female teacher, you are probably going to be wearing on a daily basis shoes that are more, if there's a scale between fashion and function, that'll tend more towards the fashion instead of the function.

It'd be an unusual teacher who'd want to go to work every day wearing a pair of combat boots or a pair of running shoes. It'd be more frequent that there would be some footwear that at least gives the nod to fashion. If you are a man and you're working in an environment where there's a higher dress standard with your shoes, then you need to think about that and keep a pair of shoes handy that you might be able to use to run away.

The scenarios will be different. And again, please, in everything that I say today, you translate this for your own scenario. Dealing with a school shooter who just walked in the door of your classroom with a rifle raised, ready to kill everybody in the room, obviously you're not going to stop, take a moment, pull your running shoes out of your desk drawer and strap them on before running.

But if you hear gunshots down the road or down the hall, you better believe that if I'm going to run and I'm wearing high heels, I'm not sure why I would be wearing high heels, but in today's world, I guess that probably isn't that far of a stretch. But if I'm wearing high heels and I hear gunshots in the distance, I'm going to take a moment, I'm going to slip on some boots or some shoes.

So keep, if you are usually in a situation like this where you're concerned about your life, keep shoes handy. That would allow you to be able to run. This is also important if you were dealing with something like a fire. If you work in high heels, keep some slip-on boots or slip-on shoes handy so that if you needed to run away in a fire, you would have some foot protection to protect your feet from stumbling over something or walking on embers.

I can't even imagine trying to face a situation, you work at the top of a tower, you work at the top of the World Trade Center and you got to run down the stairs. I can't imagine saying, "Okay, I'm going to run down these stairs in high heels," or, "I'm going to take my high heels off and run down barefoot when a building is collapsing around you." So if you're in an earthquake environment or you're concerned about the risk of a fire in the building, make sure that as part of your personal standard operating procedures for such an event, that you have good shoes handy that you can put on quickly, that you can slip them on so that you can get away.

Another thing to consider is, especially if you're in an environment like a classroom, keep a little bag handy with some useful tools. I'm going to give you a bunch of potentially useful tools in today's show, but some useful tools that might be useful to you to be able to get away.

For example, it would be very important if you were getting away and were being pursued by somebody to have some means of blocking a door, some means of wedging or blocking a door after you go through if you were being pursued. In a moment I'll talk about protecting yourself and blocking the room.

One of the most effective ways to diminish the body count of things like a school shooting is to block when people are hiding and barricading in the room, to block the doors. There are a lot of security companies that are really pushing this ability, not just a simple lock, which can be shot out, kicked through, etc., but a good blocking mechanism to block the door.

But you can do that yourself with a couple of door wedges. You can make some door wedges out of a piece of plywood, go on YouTube just for how to do a door wedge. But if you are at your workplace and you're concerned about somebody coming in and shooting up the place, an angry co-worker dealing with an active shooter situation, you may want the means to be able to block them out of the room.

In which case, you grab a couple of door wedges, keep a hammer and a little bag, bang those door wedges in there and you can wedge the door. Same thing applies when you're traveling and you need to protect yourself in a hotel room, etc., but a couple of rubber door wedges that you buy commercially or a couple of wooden ones that you build yourself could really be effective in helping you to protect yourself from somebody having access to you.

So in getting away, that might be a useful tool to have if you were being pursued, the ability to wedge or block a door behind you and stop somebody from pursuing you. Whenever possible, get away, run away. Think about the scenario that you're concerned with. Whenever I hear or read the details of a scenario like this, I always try to think, "Well, what would help?" I do the same with financial planning, technical financial planning.

Read a story about a couple that had saved money, bought a sailboat and they were going to go travel the world and they wound up sinking the sailboat. And they were out of money doing a GoFundMe account with their news article trying to get money to help them buy a new sailboat because they couldn't fulfill their dream.

When I hear that, I stop and I think and I say, "Well, what would help this couple have survived this?" In that case, it was fairly obvious, buy an insurance policy or buy a cheap enough sailboat that it's not going to be the end of your money if you don't want to buy insurance.

They made those two classic errors and now they're financially destitute, lost the sailboat, lost their dream. They'll have to restart and build from zero. But when I hear about a school shooting and I hear that a new common tactic for a shooter to gain access to easy targets, to build for himself a target-rich environment is to set off a fire alarm, then I think, "Hmm, well, if I'm wearing high heels, maybe before leaving the room with my children, I should take those high heels off, grab a pair of slip-on athletic shoes or slip-on boots and put those on before leading my children out in a fire alarm." I don't know if any teachers do that or not, but I at least think that's a good idea.

And we don't have to pass legislation. We don't have to deal with 100 million people to do that. You just have to think, "Maybe I should keep a pair of athletic shoes in my desk drawer." And if I were trying to run out from a real fire, I want some shoes on my feet.

Those are some ideas of getting away. The next major tactic, of course, is if you can't get away, you hide. Excuse me, I forgot one comment on getting away. Obviously, there are times in which getting away doesn't solve the problem. If my wife and I and my children and I are accosted on the street and I may be able to get away, but my wife and children cannot, in that situation, I'm not saying run, but tell your wife and kids to run and you deal with the situation.

But getting away is generally the best strategy for surviving the fight. And in a situation where the rule of law is consistent, your best case is to do your fighting in court, not on the street. After get away, hide. Now, of course, hiding is what is taught to children, but hiding really is, in my understanding of the current protocols in place for school shootings, hiding makes sense in many situations.

So think about that. I don't have any unique insight into this other than what is commonly taught as far as concealment for the...conceal yourself so that no one knows you're in there, if possible, until you're sure it's actually the police going room to room and not some active shooter.

But if you are in a workplace environment, not a school, not where your employer is not giving you training on what the school's protocol is for this, look around your office right now and think, where would I hide? Maybe a little bit of rearranging of your furniture would be helpful.

Maybe you need an extra piece of furniture in your office so that you'd have a place to hide. Just maybe it's the closet next door to you and if you just had a copy of that key, that would give you a place to hide. But think about if there were a situation where I needed to hide, where would I hide?

And think about it now. Wouldn't be a bad idea to make a list of one, two, or three places. If this is available, I'll go in this direction. If this is available, I'll go in that direction. But sometimes if you can't get away, if your situation, the tactical situation is such that you can't escape without being shot at, then finding a good hiding place could be really valuable.

And you could take this and apply this to your own thinking as far as your house. Do your children know where they're supposed to hide if somebody invades your home? Where are they going to hide? Where are you going to hide? Where is your place to take a stand?

Where are you going to hide? And what's necessary for that hiding? Next is protect yourself. And by protect yourself, I just mean passive defense. Passive defense. There's a difference between passive measures of defense and active measures of defense. Passive defense would be something like blocking the room, blocking a door.

I spoke a moment ago about having door wedges. So if you were going to hide in your office and you're concerned about a workplace shooting, then one of your passive measures of defense to protect yourself would be block the door. If the door to your office opens in, then you need to be prepared with some door wedges.

These could be the small rubber wedges that are commercially made, maybe two or three of them, and a hammer to bang them in under the door, good and strong. This could be some small wooden blocks that you make out of a 1x4, 2x4, and a hammer again to hammer those in.

This may be something like a door bar that you can buy commercially, the type that goes up against the door handle and uses a rubber stop to block the door. Cheap and easy way to protect your door if you live in an apartment or a dorm room, something like that, in case somebody were to try to break the door down.

If you have the ability, for example, if you own the building, you might want to consider a better blocking mechanism. If you were an executive or a small business owner and you had the – you own the building and you have the ability to drill into the floor, then it would be a good idea to go ahead and purchase something like the night lock door barricades that you install a small bracket into the door, but if you ever needed to totally block that door, you go ahead and install the – just slide the little thing right in and it blocks the door.

So having the ability to block the door would be very helpful as a passive measure of defense to protect yourself. In a moment, we'll talk about active defense, fighting back. Other examples would be perhaps thinking about how would I block the door additionally. If I were a teacher, I would be looking at where I chose to put the bookcases in my room or where I chose to put the filing cabinet in my room and I would consider, do I have the ability to put a filing cabinet near the door so that if I had to block it, it were an inward opening door and I couldn't – my door wedges didn't work, could I push a filing cabinet over to block the door and keep somebody from being able to get in or push a bookcase over or slide it in some way so that it would be harder to open the door.

Think about how you would protect yourself. If you were – if it opened outward, then you would consider, well, is there some kind of mechanism that I could use to help keep that door from opening outward. Next in terms of protecting yourself, go behind cover if at all possible.

Go behind cover. When you teach firearms training or you teach self-defense, one thing that a trainer will be very – and the military as well, be very clear on is the difference between concealment and cover. Concealment is anything that would block the vision of an attacker for them not being able to see you.

So a wall is concealment because the person is not able to see you. But it's not cover. Cover is anything that can stop the penetration of a bullet from being able to actually penetrate the target. I guess if we want to be technical, a lot of times gun people and self-defense trainers will make a difference between penetration and perforation.

The word perforate would be when a bullet would go through both sides of something and penetration would be when a bullet would just come right into something. So if a bullet is penetrating a body, it comes in only one side. If it's perforating a body, it comes – it gets in and out and the same thing would apply to cover.

So the point that is driven home in good training is that cover and concealment are different things. So if you were in a situation where there's a shooter wandering the hallway with a rifle and you are hiding in a closet with the lights off, you might be concealed from the shooter.

If the shooter is unaware of your presence there, you may survive. But if they become aware of your presence there in a concealed fashion, a few rounds from – a few high-velocity normal rifle rounds from a rifle will perforate the wall – most normal walls. A drywall or plaster wall or cement wall can be easily perforated by most normal rifles.

So concealment is not cover. But if you're concerned about protecting yourself, if you could take cover, then you may be able to do so. So in this case, let's say that you have the ability of a filing cabinet and that filing cabinet is filled with papers and books. Now you transform what is concealment into cover.

Now if you're a teacher and you're protecting a class full of children, I don't know how to put 30 children behind a filing cabinet. I don't have that answer. But if you're just dealing with yourself and your own body, then the filing cabinet filled with books could be very helpful.

If it's appropriate to the specifics of your situation, it might be worth your collecting. Go on Craigslist and find somebody who has a garage full of phone books and fill a filing cabinet up with phone books. Depending on the velocity of a round, a small, let's talk about AR-15s for a moment.

An AR-15 is a relatively small bullet that it actually shoots. It comes out at a high velocity, but the actual bullet itself is relatively small and it has very limited ability to perforate cover. That's one of the reasons why historically the military hasn't wanted, why many soldiers in the past were equipped with much larger rifles than something like an AR-15.

But if you're going up against a shooter with an AR-15 that's shooting a relatively small bullet, then a filing cabinet full of books, I didn't look up any numbers, but my guess would be that an AR-15, just a standard 5.56 millimeter round out of an AR-15 would probably not go through more than three or four inches of dense paper like phone books.

So you can create something that would be cover, whether that cover is natural, you have a filing cabinet stuffed full, or whether it's something that you create intentionally. Maybe you only use the front two feet of a file drawer, but you fill the back up with phone books. In any case, look around your office, look around your room and consider where is the cover?

If you could push that bookcase over in front of the door, that bookcase will give you additional ballistic protection. It'll give you additional cover because of those thick books, and you may be able to generate or create additional cover. And so make a plan, I'd push the bookcase over, I'd push the couch against it, or we're going to stack the desks.

Some of this is trained, I don't know how much of this is trained. I just, I don't know. And of course that would depend. So I'm just giving you my best ideas from the principles that I'm aware of. In addition, as far as protecting yourself, then we can get into the world of personal protection.

What elements of personal protection for your actual body would be helpful? In this case, your primary vital organs are of course primarily in your chest. So is there a way that you could design to protect your chest? You, there's, although there may be laws against your carrying a firearm in a non-permissive environment, my guess would be that most of the time there aren't that many laws about your having a ballistic vest, a bulletproof vest so-called, a ballistic vest in your possession.

If I were a teacher and I were concerned about this, it wouldn't be that hard for me to find a place to put a simple bulletproof vest in a desk drawer. And it would be relatively easy to, in a time of crisis, to grab a bulletproof vest and put it on.

Now, maybe you don't want to actually have the vest that may be a little bit over the top. It's relatively easy, perhaps you can buy some soft armor, some soft plates, some soft ballistic plates and just slide them into a backpack. And that could be something that could be easily worn.

You can get a standard backpack that has a laptop sleeve, go and purchase, you can get some hard plates if you have the physical strength to carry them. But go online, purchase a couple of hard plates, maybe a couple of soft plates, slide them right into the backpack in a scenario where into the laptop sleeve or the rear pocket of a backpack and you've created a relatively effective ballistic shield for yourself.

And you can do it in a very low-key way where you don't have constant evidence of, you don't necessarily have a Kevlar helmet sitting there. Most shooters are not very good shots. And especially in an environment where you're dealing with an active shooter situation, there's a higher chance of randomness with the rounds that are going to be arriving at you than there is specifics.

Now if some guy's walking around a room delivering point-blank coup de grace shots to the head, in that situation, your backpack that you put on your, that you turn around and put on your chest is not going to do much for you. But if you're dealing with a relatively random shooting and you're part of a crowd and you toss that thing on your back and you're fleeing from a shooter, I think you've got a pretty good case to say, "I've got some good ballistic protection on my vital organs." You can get shot in the butt as long as they don't get your, what's that, the big artery called the femoral artery.

You could survive those wounds. And especially if you're dealing with something like a rifle round, a full metal jacket rifle round, it may just go right through your thigh and you may be able to run away and get there. You can get shot and you can survive these things as long as you protect your vital organs.

So don't neglect personal protection. Now I guess, I don't know how hardcore to go, you could go and purchase, if you have a closet or something, if you work in a high-risk environment, you could purchase some SWAT shield online, the type of thing that if you've ever seen the SWAT guys stack up to enter a house, the front guy always has a shield.

You can buy that thing for 700 bucks if you were that concerned about it. But you take this concept and figure out what applies to you. But the point is, protect yourself. So one, don't be there. Two, get away. Three, hide, concealment. Four, protect yourself, find cover. Now five, of course, is fight back.

And what bugs me to no end is people diminish the value of fighting back. Go and do some study for yourself on how frequently fights end when somebody fights back. The majority of people, and this is at every level of society, I hate bullies. I hate people who bully.

And one of the things that bullies often get used to is people not fighting back. And a lot of the times, if you're dealing with a bully, whether this is the archetypal bully in the schoolyard, a punch to the nose will stop a bully. It can also happen in the world of rhetoric and political debate.

A punch in the nose will sometimes, frequently, stop a bully. But bullies get used to having their way and bullying other people into wanting what they do. Well, same thing in a fight. If you fight back, whether that's a fist fight or a bar fight or an active shooter, if you fight back, a lot of times it ends it.

In many active shootings, remember, don't take your advice or your input from one single event. But in many of these active shooter scenarios that make the news all the time, frequently, one person fighting back, whether that's one police officer, one armed citizen fighting back, frequently, that will initiate, that'll stop the attack.

Frequently, it seems that that will often make many shooters go ahead and commit suicide when somebody fights back. But none of us who are not, none of us, I'm not in the military, never been in the military, don't want to be in the military, don't want to be a cop, don't want to deal with that.

But none of us are all that comfortable with bullets coming at us. And what bugs me so much, I'm going to get a tiny bit of political in our current world. What bugs me is people underestimate the value of a good defense. The survivability, if you were to walk up and threaten me to say, "Joshua, I'm going to shoot you from five yards away, 15 feet away, across the room with a 22 pistol," statistically that would be very survivable.

Statistically, very survivable, especially if it's not a hollow point bullet, it's just a full metal jacket bullet. Statistically, that would be very survivable. I still don't want to get shot with a 22, even though statistically the evidence is on my side. I would still freak out if you're shooting at me.

And the same thing happens again and again and again with people who are active shooters. Just fighting back, somebody taking rounds that are incoming will often melt down their defenses. Now, of course, in this situation, fighting back, firearm options are very limited. I'm talking here specifically about a non-permissive environment where you're not technically allowed to carry firearms.

I hate these environments, especially if they're not adequate security. I'll talk about that in the show on the morality, the one that I have where I'll deal with the political stuff if you care about my political opinion. But you will have to decide, I want to be clear, you have to decide if the risk to you, especially the legal risk of carrying a gun, is worth the reward of potentially protecting yourself and potentially saving lives.

I think it's immoral to take away from people their moral human right to self-defense if you're not guaranteeing them a very high standard of security. And here's where we get into the problem. It's a classic quote by Bastiat in his essay, The Law, where he talks about when you have to choose.

The quote is, "No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree, but the safest way to make them respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or of losing his respect for the law, two evils of equal magnitude between which it would be difficult to choose." And so when you're in a non-permissive environment like this, I ask you the question, does the person who has the legal control of the premises, whether that's a school administration, whether that's an employer, are they providing actual security or are they just saying, "You're not allowed to carry a gun"?

If they're providing actual security, then I think they have a moral case to say, "We're not going to allow you a gun." I'm okay with a federal courtroom being protected by metal detectors and with it being the federal court's jurisdiction, they're allowed to establish the law and say, "No, you may not carry a firearm here." But I'm not okay with a random business putting a sign on their door saying, "No, you can't carry a gun here." Meanwhile, anybody who wants to ignore that sign can carry it in.

If you're going to remove people's rights of self-defense, you then have the responsibility to provide for them a common defense. Now if you're working in a non-permissive environment and you make the moral decision that you are going to reject the law because the law is immoral, you should be aware that deep concealment firearms options are not that difficult to accomplish.

You may have to be much more careful. I would recommend that you not carry a .45 caliber 1911 and a shoulder holster, Miami Vice style, if you're in a non-permissive environment. But it's relatively easy for both men and women to have deep concealment firearm options that will never be detected without professional scrutiny.

Men have certain advantages, women have certain advantages. In some cases, men have it easier, in some cases, women have it easier. But even a small gun will help in a situation where you're dealing with an active shooter. A .22 caliber five-shot Derringer, the kind of gun that you could hold in the palm of your hand and never have it be seen, when that thing starts going off, you're going to have a tough time shooting it accurately, but when that thing starts going off, only a trained, skilled person, like a military person or like a police officer who has experience with dealing with incoming rounds, is not going to be thrown off balance.

And your active defense may save lives in a situation like that. Now, it may not. There are tactical situations that are impossible, but most of these situations are not tactically impossible. Even a small gun would help, it really would. If you're in a situation where you're in a non-permissive environment and you've decided, "I can't take the legal risk of concealing it on my person," consider, is there a place that you could hide it in your belongings, in your possessions, or in the room?

There may be a way for you to secure a firearm in a way that is a good compromise between the legality and your need to protect yourself legally in case you were caught with that versus the practical access to self-defense. I don't know how to help you make that decision.

I hate these places. I hate them, and I usually stay out of them because I believe that it's immoral to say to somebody, "You cannot provide for your defense, but we're not going to provide a solid common defense." That is an immoral thing. So either you provide a secure stalwart common defense, "All right, if the Secret Service is guarding the President, I'm not trying to get a gun in there, but I'm appreciating the fact that I can trust the Secret Service, but a sign on the door or a corporate policy is not a common defense." Anyway, forgive me, I'm trying to avoid the politics.

But even if you were a teacher, there's a big debate about teachers, so I don't want to fight that debate. Let me be precise and honest with my words. I want to fight that debate. I don't want to abuse you in this show by an extensive discourse on it, but I'll make two comments.

It hangers me to no end that people think teachers are weak. Now I think that teachers, many of them are weak, and that's the problem. So either get rid of the weak teachers or stop insulting people. Of course, the majority of teachers are women. And of course, with this intense feminization of this feminine trait and this desire to not self-defense, not to defend, this desire to run from a fight, that's what needs to be conquered.

That needs to be changed. But there's no inherent biological characteristic why a woman cannot be a crack shot. If I were a teacher and the law permitted it, I'd have a locker in... If school shootings were actually statistically relevant, I'd have a secure locker in the room, a locked up safe.

I'd have a small backpack with a short barreled AR-15 with a red dot sight. I'd have a bulletproof vest hanging there, hearing protection to slap on and ballistic eye protection, a trauma kit ready to go. You give me five seconds to cross the room, put the code in the safe, grab a short barreled AR and put on a vest and some hearing protection, and trust me, that's not that hard to do.

There's no need to think by arming a teacher, there's no need to think that you need to walk around with a desert eagle strapped to your hip all the time. You're not dealing with that kind of scenario necessarily. It's not the Wild West where it's about a quick draw contest.

A teacher could absolutely have a locker in their room and you give me any woman, any teacher, any female teacher, give some qualified firearms trainer a half a day of instruction and a rifle and you could turn any teacher into a very skilled, perfectly adequately skilled defender of her classroom.

You absolutely could, especially if you give her a rifle and not a handgun. It's much harder to learn to accurately shoot a handgun, but you give her a short barreled AR-15. Anyway, thank you for indulging my political comment. That's it for firearm options for today. So if you think about an ability, a way for you to fight back with a firearm, that's fine.

But let's assume for a moment that you're in a non-permissive environment, you can't carry a gun or you've decided that you won't carry a gun or you've decided what are you going to do? Well, a few options. Distraction and I've got these in two categories. First category is distraction devices.

So consider some form of distraction device. The most, none of these are particularly practical, but the most practical one would be a light. A powerful high lumen tactical flashlight is a powerful distraction device. For your own personal self-defense, if you're out in the night, you should have with you a high lumen flashlight and many of these flashlights are really good at having settings, different settings that can be low, medium, high.

If you're in a situation where you think you might need it, you need that distraction device. Get that light, have that light preset on its highest lumen setting and you can blind somebody in a dark environment with a good flashlight. And that's simple. Everybody could have a flashlight. You could have a small one, you can have a big one.

The market has never been better with inexpensive, high quality, high lumen flashlights. There has been a revolution in light technology over the last five years, especially with newer battery styles that produce a much higher output than was possible before. And these new battery styles have given flashlight manufacturers the ability to massively amp up the lumens.

If you have a, if your flashlight is from 10 years ago and you haven't looked at a new flashlight, you would be embarrassed to ever pull out your 10 year old flashlight and try to put it in a competition against a new one. I carry every day a tiny little flashlight, blanking, it's the 47's Mini Mark II.

It's a tiny little flashlight. It's smaller than my thumb, but the lumen output on this, if I put it on a turbo mode, is massive. It'll light up a neighborhood. It's incredible. And it was cheap, it's 40 bucks, I've mentioned on the show before. But having a good flashlight would be valuable.

If I were a teacher and I were thinking, "How am I going to protect my room?" I would consider having a few flashlights in there. If you, it's hard if you've got first graders, but if you're dealing with a class full of juniors, if you had a bag or a drawer with three or four flashlights in it, that might give you the ability to distract somebody who's coming into the door with a gun.

I think the protocol that is usually taught is lights off, everybody quiet, everybody in the back of the room hiding somehow. Well, at least distribute some flashlights, you may have the ability to distract somebody. In some cases, another good distraction device to have handy is an alarm, like a loud horn or a siren.

One of the best self-defense items that you can have is a loud horn. Go to, you get a Home Depot or wherever, buy one of these horns, the loud air horns that are used in the boating industry. Buy one of the loud ones. They're easily sold, they're very inexpensive, but a loud horn is a very, very valuable self-defense item.

If you are being attacked in a parking lot, as you walk across the parking lot, if you're being attacked in your house, if you are a college student or your son or daughter is a college student, make sure they have access to a loud boat horn and the ability to use it.

In that way, if your daughter is being raped, have a horn there, so instead of just yelling and screaming, that she can actually get some attention. Another example would be a siren. These are simple things that there's no physical danger like there is with firearms or bladed weapons, but they're very powerful distraction devices.

I thought through the scenario, if I have a classroom of 10th graders, I think a couple of horns and some lights would be very helpful distraction devices. Those are distraction devices. You may have your own. Next would be hitting instruments, some kind of instrument that could be used for hitting and hitting effectively.

Obvious examples would be a baseball bat. A baseball bat is something that any teacher could have in their classroom, and yet in a time of need, that baseball bat is kind of a big deal. So a hitting instrument like a baseball bat is important. I'm thinking here, chuckling, because it just came to me, there's a scene in the old Laura Ingalls Wilder books.

I forget which one. Actually it was Farmer Boy and the one of Almanzo. In that situation, it was a one-room schoolhouse scene and there was this young, bookish, dweeby teacher that was hired on as a new teacher in the one-room schoolhouse. Of course, he was bookish and physically weak.

So the students who were the bullies of the school were going to be lined up to – and they decided this was the day that they were going to put the teacher down. They were going to fight the teacher. Well the day came that they were going to fight the teacher and that teacher hid in his teacher desk.

When the big bullies of the school came up the aisle to fight the teacher, he had in his teacher desk a bullwhip, pulled out the bullwhip and went to town on those boys and sent them on their heels. He solved the problem, got the kids out of there, but it was through the use of a tool.

If you're a teacher, if you're someone like that, you have to have the same thing. You've got to have the tool. If you are a relatively non-physically imposing woman, you're going to need some kind of instrument that will help you with your physical strength. Because if you're going up against a guy coming in the door with an AR-15, you need something a little bit more than saying, "Please, politely, please don't kill me." A baseball bat will go a long way, a hitting instrument.

Other instruments, something like a walking cane or a stick, a collapsible baton, the style of law enforcement. I don't want to get hit with a baton. They're powerful, short little things. You keep it in your desk drawer, whack that thing open and you've got an effective tool. If you've got a – depending on your type of environment, maybe it's a wrench.

If you work in an environment where it's appropriate, keep a tire iron handy and make sure that it's easily accessible to protect yourself. There are all kinds of ideas. A big old mag light, the old style of police style flashlight, a big old mag light is a very effective weapon.

But all of these hitting instruments can be helpful. Now, what bugs me about the conversation is people often immediately take the role of victim and that's what angers me about this. People take the role of victim and say, "Well, you just can't do anything against a dude with a rifle." Want to bet?

You can absolutely do something against a dude with a rifle. Now, if you've got a dude with a rifle that's on the other side of a football field and you're coming across a hundred yards of empty ground and there's only one of you, there's not a chance in the world that you're going to make it across that football field alive.

But if you've got a guy coming in the door of your room and you've got a couple of flashlights, a loud horn, you've got a baseball bat that you handed out, two of them, walking cane, you've got a bunch of people, you blocked the door, you can absolutely get on it with a guy with a rifle.

You may lose a couple of people in the process, but you're going to lose them anyway. If a dozen students rush the guy with a rifle, three or four of them may go down, but that's better than 10 of them going down and the other ones will actually get there and get the rifle out of his hands.

Great thing about a rifle is it shoots really well. It's easy to shoot. Hard thing about a rifle, it's very hard to use in close quarters, especially if somebody can get it and it's much easier for somebody to control the barrel of a rifle than it is control the barrel of a handgun.

So think about having hitting instruments available to you and position some of those weapons in a way that is available to you. Throwing instruments as well. Things that can be thrown. An example here would be a baseball. Now talk about plausible deniability. If I were trying to protect a workplace or if I were a teacher, I would go down to the sporting goods, I would, who am I kidding, I would ask around to get for free somebody who has an old baseball bat bag.

I would get the baseball bat bag and I would load it up with three or four old bats. I would get with the metal ones so they can really deliver some damage. I load it up with some bats and I'd load it up with baseballs and toss a couple of old gloves in there as well.

Now we've got baseball equipment, but what you actually have is very useful hitting instruments, a couple of baseball bats, and if I'm hiding in a classroom with a group of junior economics students, you better believe every one of the biggest guys in the room, the toughest guys, I'm going to give every one of them a baseball and I'm going to toss out that sack of, excuse me, I'm going to give them the bats and I'm going to toss that sack of baseballs out and I'm going to give every single student in there a baseball and give as many as I can.

You think that's stupid? I don't, maybe it is. If you have experience in this, maybe, I made up this entire show off the top of my head so this is just how I think about it. I didn't read all the people who actually paid to do this for a living.

But I'm not going to be a victim and I'm going to make sure that that teacher is not a victim and those kids are not victims. And we're not going to hide in the corner and get shot cowering in the corner. We're going to fight back. So some guy pokes a barrel of a rifle in our classroom and I've got four of my big junior students all have big metal baseball bats and they're positioned near the door on either side.

You can't shoot them both the same way. This is not a SWAT team coming in where they're coming in stacked. You got one guy going left, one guy going right and even if it were, a room full of junior students would put a hurt on a SWAT team. And I've got everyone else with baseballs saying if you see something, come through and I'm standing there with a horn saying if you hear my horn, everybody go.

And the guy pokes the barrel of a rifle through and there's flashlights going off, there's baseballs getting pelted at him and there's a couple of guys with bats that are beating him and there's a horn going off. I'm sorry, but you better be a battle-hardened special forces soldier to be able to keep any decent shooting with that.

So throwing instruments and this can be all kinds of things. A bundle of keys in some environments can be important. A sack of baseballs, a padlock, find things that are compact, that are heavy and that will do some damage. Example, a big old hockey puck lock, you know, the kind they put on the trailers, the ones that look like a puck, you got a couple of those in a drawer somewhere, that's a totally innocuous thing.

And talk about a hurting throwing weapon, I don't want to get hit in the face with a hockey puck lock from a landscaping trailer. So look around your house, look around your office, look around a store and try to think, what are things that can be thrown? Next category is flailing instruments.

A flailing instrument is a classic example of a self-defense weapon and there are all kinds of ways that you can do this and do it innocuously. A bike chain with a couple of heavy padlocks on the end is a formidable flailing weapon. And by chain you need a very flexible chain, so you need something that is either fabric rope or flexible chain.

But a flexible bike chain with a couple of padlocks on it is a formidable weapon in a close quarters battle. A padlock, a big heavy padlock stuck down on the end of an athletic tube sock, this creates a powerful flailing weapon, almost equivalent to a SAP, a leather SAP.

Or a sock with a handful of big D cell battery stuff down on the bottom. If you're in a, I don't think that would work, if you got a guy coming at you across down the end of a hallway with an AR-15, you got to get there of course, get close to him.

But if you're in a close quarter combat scenario, then a flailing weapon can be helpful. Another example would be you could put together a big heavy key ring and put a long strong lanyard on the end. You take that and swing it around. There's a weapon from the world of martial arts called a monkey fist, same thing.

And there are all kinds of options of these if you go looking. And if you're in a non-permissive environment, you should look. There are people that you can get just get a heavy leather belt or not too heavy because you want the belt to be flexible. But get a fabric belt or a light flexible leather belt, but put a big heavy belt buckle on it.

There are people that sell online big heavy metal belt buckles. If you need a flailing instrument, you have a belt and there are techniques that can be used. People sell things called a SAP cap, which is a baseball cap that has lead shots sewn into it. So if you need to use it as a defense weapon, you take the cap off your head and whack somebody and that lead shot is a brutal impact weapon.

It's a flailing weapon, but it'll do some damage in a close quarter environment. Now some of those, forgive me for getting a little bit off, that's not applicable necessarily to the school shooting environment, but I want to inspire and stimulate your thinking so that you can look around where you are and say, "How can I not be a helpless victim?" Next example would be poking instruments.

So things like an umbrella, whether that's just a standard umbrella, a cheap one from the dollar store, whether that's a good golf umbrella that you get that has a little bit more heft, or you can actually buy about 80 bucks, you can buy an expensive and fancy self-defense umbrella that is, the thing is rock solid.

It's really well built. You can stand on it. It won't break. It's designed for poking. It's designed for popping the umbrella open and using it to protect yourself against physical blows. It won't do anything against bullets, of course, but somebody who's attacking you physically can be used as a club, but an umbrella is a very useful tool, or a broomstick, or a mop handle, those kinds of things, poking instruments, or a lacrosse stick, something that could be useful in your place of business.

You interpret that however you need, but don't think that, you know, a lot of people have been killed with shovels. A good shovel or a good mop handle will give you some good defensive capability against somebody who's attacking you. Not so useful against a gun unless you're in close range, but a lot of times if you're in a scenario where, if you're in a close quarter combat place, the guns, especially a long rifle, a rifle's capabilities are significantly diminished in a close environment.

A handgun in many ways is a more effective weapon because the person with the weapon can actually control it in a close quarter combat environment. That's why most of the time if you have a SWAT team or some other military team that's dealing in a known close quarter environment, they'll usually use a submachine gun, a much smaller submachine gun versus a rifle.

If you're going up against an AR-15, some guy has a standard long barrel on it, it's not a short barreled rifle, just a standard long barrel on it, that's unwieldy when he starts going around corners, so all these things can make a difference. Next category is slashing or stabbing instruments.

Obvious examples would be scissors. I have a pair of scissors that I grabbed from my grandfather's desk before he died, and it's awesome, it's old, but it's just pure metal and the things are huge. As far as a stabbing weapon to protect yourself, to keep in your desk drawer, I use them for cutting, but there also would be an extremely effective stabbing weapon.

They're not safety scissors at all. So there's no reason why you couldn't have enough plausible deniability with having a decent pair of scissors or a letter opener or a knife. Whatever the rules are that you decide to follow, I think it's very important to consider carefully what the rules are and then consider what the penalty is for breaking those rules.

You might find it much easier to conceal a large knife in your work environment, and the legal penalties for concealing that large knife may be less than the difficulty of concealing a handgun or the legal penalties for concealing a handgun if you work in a non-permissive environment. So consider what options would fit in your work environment.

Next, and these are not appropriate for school defense, but I want to emphasize them in case you live in some place where you're legally not permitted to buy a gun or you're 15 years old and people don't think you should have a gun, what can you have to protect yourself?

One of the most effective things for home defense, I'm convinced, is either a spear or a sword. I think the weight is actually on the spear. If you think about a scenario, let's say that you're a young man or a young woman living in something like a college dorm.

This is a non-permissive environment for multiple reasons. One, you have very little privacy of your things. So two, you're on a school campus, which most of the time you're not allowed to carry a gun even if you own one. Three, you may be under the age of acquisition where you can't buy a gun legally and you don't have anybody that would lend one to you or you don't want to get involved in that.

You can't protect it. If you own a gun, you have a responsibility to protect it. So you've got to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands and make sure that it's not stolen from you and used to commit crime by somebody else. And in considering those scenarios, I would do that calculation and it's hard for me to imagine that I would have a gun if I were in a college dorm.

But it may be much more reasonable for me to have a spear. For example, Cold Steel is a well-known knife manufacturer. Make excellent quality products. But they sell these spears that are used for different purposes. Some of them are just cool. Some of them are hunting, etc. But you could take the spear off of its shaft, keep the shaft leaning up in the closet, conceal and secure the actual spear.

It would be a large bladed weapon. Check whatever rules or regulations you're subject to. But in your own home, that would be a very effective weapon. Now if somebody is seeking to attack you in the confines of your own home, somebody's beating the door down, a spear is very intimidating and is brutal in terms of its actual physical effect on an attacker.

If my daughter were in a situation like that, you better believe I want her to have a spear handy. Now I've never heard somebody talk about, "Oh, you should have a spear," necessarily a spear. That's not common discussion. But it's a whole lot more effective than having just a cell phone, right?

Having something, if some drunk frat boy is trying to beat down her door, that'll put a little bit of intimidation in her and help to level the playing field. Sword as well. A sword is one of those things that may be regulated, but when you're dealing with regulations, recognize that if you're looking at the laws of your city, you live in a place like New York City or San Francisco or Rome, look at the laws and ask yourself, are these laws based upon concealment or are they based upon possession?

Many times there may be a knife law that says you're not allowed to have a weapon that's over a certain number of inches, say it's four inches. On that situation, I don't see any reason to take the risk for you to walk around with a five-inch knife. Just get yourself a good, well-built four-inch knife, a folding knife, to carry with you as a protection weapon when you're concealing it on your body.

But that doesn't apply to your home. There's no reason why you can't legally have a big old cold steel samurai sword in your home. There was, I forget the timeline on this, but there was a news story of a college student up in Tallahassee, I think it was FSU student, who protected his home, was broken into by I think a couple of assailants during the middle of the day, protected himself with a spear.

He won. Sorry, not a spear, a sword, a samurai sword. He won. The guy with the sword won. The person who was being attacked, the guy who was defending his house. So those are not appropriate for schools. I can't imagine how, I don't think that's a practical solution for a school.

But if you are young, if you are in a place where you don't have the ability to arm yourself, you can't defend yourself effectively with a gun, you've chosen not to defend yourself with a gun for whatever reason, then don't think that you're defenseless. Think ahead and acquire the equipment that you need to make a good defense.

Next would be projectile instruments. So we've covered distraction devices, hitting instruments, throwing instruments, flailing instruments, poking instruments, stabbing or slashing instruments, the final three, projectile instruments. So simple things here would be something like a slingshot. A slingshot, a modern slingshot. There are variations of it, but people have taken the old technology, the things that I made when I was a kid, you go out and find a fork tree and make rubber bands, and they've become very, very accurate devices that can deliver a steel shot at a very high velocity.

I'd rather, if I'm going up against a guy with a gun, if I've got cover and we're not in, when we're in an environment where this person is, they're filled with adrenaline, they're not looking for threats, they're in a target rich environment shooting unarmed people. If I can get behind cover and I can have access to a slingshot at relatively close distances, there's a good chance that I can deliver enough annoying shot to them, one or two that would actually hit to perhaps at least slow them down and save some lives.

It's hard for me to imagine, I haven't read the laws in your school, but it's hard for me to imagine that your school has said, "Well, teachers can't have a slingshot." Or in other circumstances where perhaps you're, we're not talking about school defense here, but you're dealing in an area where you have very restrictive gun laws.

There's so many ways to get around these draconian gun laws that are enacted in some places, but some simple things would be an air rifle. Basically an air rifle is relatively, you're able to acquire it and depending on how the law is written, if you read it, you may be able to acquire a high velocity air rifle.

If you go out and do some careful shopping, you may find a high velocity air rifle or a high velocity handgun rifle, air pistol that would be an effective deterrent. The same way that I don't want to get shot with a .22, I don't want to get shot with an air rifle, especially a high velocity one.

I don't want to get shot, period. I don't want to get hit with a slingshot, a steel ball coming at me at a very high velocity. I don't want to get hit with that. These things are enough to deter, in some situations, these things are enough of a deterrent to be helpful in certain circumstances.

Other obvious examples would be things like crossbows, less effective for defense because they're too slow to actually use, I'd rather have a slingshot and a bag of shot than probably in some situations than a crossbow. But if I had a crossbow that was ready to go, had an arrow knocked and was ready to use accompanied by a slingshot, now you can get into some effective defense if you live in a place, a country or a city or in a non-permissive environment that is going to be very problematic for you.

So projectile instruments have their place. While we're on the subject of... I'll do that in a minute. Next category would be sprays and irritants. Big one here is pepper spray. Pepper spray, and especially if you are in a school environment or if you're in a home environment, then you may purchase pepper spray that would be different than what you can carry on your person.

In my opinion, every single person, especially every single person who carries a firearm should also carry pepper spray. I think it's irresponsible not to have a less lethal means of defense, to only have a gun as your only option. I think you need to carry pepper spray. But with pepper spray, there's a difference between what you may be able to carry in your pocket versus what you may be able to have in your home.

And when you actually look at pepper spray, and if you're willing to do the research and spend some money, there's a big difference in different applications. There are cloud forms of pepper spray that will give you... If someone was a close-up attacker, it'll just fill the air with a choking cloud.

But then there are also more streaming forms of pepper spray where you could effectively dissuade or deter somebody at say 10 feet away. So if you shop carefully, you may look around, and if this is for your home or for your dorm room or for your classroom, I would be inclined to make some selections of a large canister of something that has some good velocity, the ability to go out 10 feet or 15 feet, because you don't have the constraint of how do I conceal this thing in my pocket.

A big old canister of commercial law enforcement grade pepper spray will be a much more effective deterrent than a small little, goes on my key chain, canister of pepper spray. So think about that and then shop appropriately for the scenario. There's such an important nuance when you're thinking through what type of weapon would I choose in a certain environment, because there's always a balance.

There's always a trade-off. If you knew you were going to go and get in a gunfight today, if you knew that, man, I'd be in there with an AR-10. I'd have a bulletproof vest. I'd have a half a dozen 40-round magazines ready to go. I'm sorry, that makes 40s with a .308.

I'd be in there with a long-distance rifle. I'd have a handgun strapped to my side. If I knew I was going to get in a gunfight, I'd have a ballistic helmet on. I'd do everything I could. But the thing is, of course, you don't know you're going to get in a gunfight.

When we're dealing with a school shooting, we're dealing with a statistical anomaly that has a risk of happening that is so close to zero that most people can go through their entire life and never think about preparing for it. That's the reality of it. And so I think it would be a little silly to do over-the-top preparation for something that's very statistically unlikely to happen.

We always have this trade-off is the point. You don't go around with an M1 Garand strapped to your back on a daily basis unless you're in a war zone, and most of us are not. So you make trade-offs, and the same thing with things like sprays and irritants. Another example would be something like a fire extinguisher in terms of what you could have available to you.

A fire extinguisher could be a very effective and useful tool for self-defense. Number one, if you had a large fire extinguisher that put out a significant stream, now you have the ability to distract and to deter or at least throw their aim off somebody who's coming at you, an attacker.

It wouldn't be unusual to have a large fire extinguisher that could put a stream of irritating vapors 10 feet away, 15 feet away. That's too far away for you to be effective with your pocket knife. You're up against a guy with a rifle who's coming around the corner 15 feet away from your desk.

Your little pocket knife doesn't do you very much good. You're going to get shot before you can reach him. But if you can distract him enough with using a fire extinguisher, he comes around the corner enough for you to send your co-worker across to stab him in the neck, now all of a sudden you have the ability to protect yourself.

So think about that in advance. Notice where are the fire extinguishers if you're a teacher, or perhaps you want to go ahead and have your own fire extinguisher that's underneath your desk or in the corner of your office. How are you going to get into trouble for having an extra fire extinguisher in your office or in your desk drawer?

Could even be valuable part of your fire safety plan. Other things that could be useful in different contexts, things like road flares could be formidable weapons if you had a moment to strike it up. There are contexts in which something like that seems fairly innocuous, but is a valuable self-defense item.

A little hard to explain road flares if you're a teacher in a classroom, but for somebody else who needs a valuable self-defense item, but is in a non-permissive environment, that could be very helpful. Last couple of options, tasers. So this would be a whole discussion in and of itself, but the police style taser where it actually shoots a dart that has an electrical wire that's attached to the gun, you can buy those yourself commercially.

How effective they are for self-defense, you be the judge. Whether you want to spend the money, whether that's useful, you be the judge. But in terms of the laws regulating the possession of a taser versus the laws regulating the possession of a firearm, there'd be a big difference there.

And of course, there are other tasers that are the up-close contact devices. I don't think those do you any good in the type of environment we're talking about here, but perhaps in your home as far as protecting your apartment or your dorm room or having one by your bed might be a valuable protective device.

Finally, I think there is a place, although this would be extremely dangerous, I think there's a place for fear devices. Here I'm just thinking of the point of intimidation, something like an airsoft gun or something like one of the other workarounds, by the way, if you live in a place with draconian gun laws, like a big city or something like that, one of the things is to get an old antique firearm.

And so if you have an antique firearm, a pre-1898 firearm, even if it's just a big old shotgun, that can produce enough fear in somebody that no, you're not going to fight off somebody who's committing a determined attack against you with six guys with submachine guns who are invading your apartment.

But in terms of putting the fear in one person, some drunk is trying to get in the door and steal your drugs or whatever that type of situation, you can possess an antique firearm and it'll do what you need it to do. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a black powder, ball and powder type design.

Although there are plenty of good modern black powder weapons that will come in under the exceptions for black powder weapons that would also be very intimidating. But in terms of a fear device, another fear device would be something like an airsoft gun. There are times at which I could imagine, because you can buy an airsoft gun that looks relatively similar to some other type of submachine gun, they have them in replicas.

There are times in which I can imagine that being a useful deterrent to somebody in terms of an intimidating threat. Remember this, when it comes to the actual firearm statistics as far as gunfights, number one, most people who defend their life with a firearm don't pull the trigger. It's important to note that.

But you don't hear those stories. That's the problem with the way that firearms usage in the United States is reported. You hear stories about the very few big shootings constantly, but you don't hear stories all over the nation every day about the fights that are diffused by the presence of a firearm or the fights that are not started by the knowledge of a firearm present.

And so frequently a fight is stopped or an attacker is stopped by simply brandishing a firearm at somebody. And in some cases, perhaps if you have an airsoft gun, that may be enough of a fear device that it could save your life in terms of your ability to brandish it at an attacker and put a little bit of fear in them.

Even if you had to use it and pull the trigger, a bunch of airsoft pellets coming at my face from somebody who's a good shot and I'm not wearing goggles, I'm going to turn around and run. Now, be careful because one of the major dangers of things like airsoft guns is they can be mistaken, especially by law enforcement for a legitimate real firearm.

And so now we run the wrong risk where a 10-year-old kid brandishes an airsoft gun and a police officer mistakes it as a real firearm. It's a real danger. So be very circumspect in how you would apply it. But I think a fear device like an airsoft gun could be an effective deterrent of some crime.

Those would be many methods of active self-defense, ways for you to fight back. The key thing I want you to remember is this. Most people who attack are not used to defense. Now most people aren't used to defending themselves, but most people who attack are not used to defense.

And consequently, a vigorous defense, a vigorous active fighting back will often deter an attacker. Not always. There's no guarantee of that. You can find plenty of evidence for fights that are not deterred. But what do you have to lose? That's why Flight 93 and 9/11 I think changed probably forever the idea of hijacking an airplane because up until Flight 93 and up until 9/11, frequently the passengers on an airplane would have gone along with the demands of the hijacker.

They would have been passive. They would have sat still and complied with all the demands knowing we're going to land somewhere. There's going to be a hostage negotiation. We're going to be rescued. I think 9/11 changed all that. It's hard for me to imagine, at least an American airliner, and I would assume it's probably globally, but it's hard for me to imagine an American airliner that were hijacked by terrorists where basically all the passengers didn't fight back or at least didn't move in that direction.

You put three people or four hijackers up against a plane load of angry people, yes, the guns will kill some people. But at the end of the day, the three or four against the plane load of angry people are going to lose. Now they may drive it into the ground.

That's a problem. But even in some of these active shooter environments, about the only one that was tactically impossible was Las Vegas. The details on that are still so unclear as we wait for the official reports. But that was the only one that I've looked at that was basically tactically impossible.

I wonder sometimes if these things are going to change as far as when people, instead of just running, which is the right solution, are going to fight back and especially when there are crowds of people. I don't know. I haven't reviewed the reports and I wouldn't venture an opinion past that.

But I think the same thing is going to happen. I do. So after fighting back, then the last two is treating injury. Treat injury. So be prepared to treat injury. There's no reason in the world, if you're concerned about safety and physical safety, you may not be allowed to have a gun, but there's no reason why you can't have a trauma kit, a good first aid kit with some tourniquets.

There's no reason why you can't take some training on how to use that. Whether that's just you tooling around YouTube and making a couple of purchases on Amazon, whether that's taking good legitimate medical class, medical training, there's no reason why you can't be prepared to save a life. And my understanding as a non-medical person, my understanding is that there is a good chance of being able to save somebody's life in a situation like this if there is quick response to severe wounds, such as wound packing and a severe bleeding wound, if you have the right dressing for that, or if there is the ability to apply a tourniquet.

Now I couldn't go beyond that with my personal knowledge. I would defer you to somebody who knows, and that's their area of expertise. But I do think that this is valuable, and I think this is important to consider, because frequently, they may be able to save somebody's life by having some knowledge about medical treatment.

In these active shooter scenarios, there's going to be some time while the police deal with things, and there aren't going to be—paramedics are not allowed in until the situation is resolved. It's not like the battlefield that you see in a movie where the medic is in there with bullets whistling over their head.

The paramedics are not allowed in until the police resolve the situation. That may take minutes, it may take hours, but you might be there with the ability to treat injury. So even if you're aware of—I think most of us know pressure is probably the best thing to apply to a wound, even if you don't have any equipment.

I think most of us—are there enough medical personnel around that can say, "Look, take this shirt, put pressure here, try to stop the bleeding." But a little bit of training and a little bit of a trauma kit handy would really go a long way. And then finally, communicate. I think it's important to have a tool to be able to communicate.

A simple obvious example is having a cell phone. Always having a cell phone that's handy, having a cell phone that's charged. And then in this case, I think it's valuable to consider, if I were a teacher, I'd want to have a little bag put together with a few simple things, like maybe, like I said, some door wedges, a hammer, maybe some kind of edged weapon if I were able to do that.

But I'd at least want to have a cell phone handy, and I want to have one handy. Now, most of the time, people are going to have their own cell phone, but get yourself a little cheap flip phone, a feature phone that's not a smartphone that can be used to dial 911.

If I were hiding in a closet somewhere, and my cell phone had been on the other side of the room, not on me, locked in a desk drawer, I'd a whole lot rather, while I'm going out the door, reach up to the top of a bookshelf and grab down a little bag that has a phone that I can use to call 911, so that way if I'm stuck hiding in a closet, I have a cell phone handy.

So consider that. If you are in a risky environment where this is actually worth planning for, then consider, is there a way to have a cell phone charged or an extra one? And then in some scenarios, maybe a radio. If you have the ability to have a radio, for example, if you live in a place that's earthquake prone, work in a Mexico City, you better have a radio as part of your scenario.

You live on a mud, or California, but in Mexico City, you live on basically a big mud flat that is an awful place to live with regard to earthquake risk, so your kit needs to have a radio. And something with charged batteries, you should have some extra lithium batteries in there, so that if you're trapped inside of a building, the rescuers are there, you can have the potential to reach out to them with your little radio, your little FRS radio that you bought, and be able to communicate with them and tell them, "Listen, I'm in here." If they know you're alive and they know you're there, they'll move heaven and earth to get you out.

If they don't know you're there and they don't know you're alive, they won't. So those are my ideas for you. I hope that these are helpful for you. Today's show is longer than I anticipated, but I really think that most of what I shared with you today is very practical.

I hope that you can take this and interpret it into what is appropriate for your situation. But I wanted to give you some ideas that are actually usable, that don't require you changing the mind of 150 million people in order to have something. This is what bugs me to no end about so many modern debates.

People want to change the mind of 150 million people and big giant laws and use government coercion instead of saying, "Here are some practical things you can do." Almost any issue in our society, there are things that we need to solve with legislation. I believe that. I really do.

There are problems that can be solved with legislation. But solving things for hundreds of millions of people with legislation is a very ham-handed way of going about it and is usually very poorly done. But educating people and giving ideas can be effectively done. So you're hearing the frustration in my voice, and I've tried to keep myself on a tight emotional leash, but you're hearing the frustration in my voice about people not talking about practical tools and tactics.

Don't wait for the government to act. You act. Don't wait for the government to somehow give you the permission to carry a gun. Carry a gun. Don't wait for the government to require you to get training to use a gun. Go and get training. Talk about guns in a different show that'll be so that those of you who don't want to hear my thoughts on guns can check out.

But don't wait if you are a teacher and you're concerned about... I think I've given enough practical ideas here of things that I think would help. Now, if you have inside knowledge that what I've described here won't help, well, tell me. I'll have you on the show to tell me what will help.

If you are a police officer, if you have experience and knowledge in this situation, and you can give some practical tools for what people can do that don't require changing the constitution of the United States, you email me and I'll have you on the show. But these are things that you can do, and fighting back will help.

There's a big difference between looking for the ideal and say, "How can we stop all mass shootings?" You're not going to do it. It's not going to happen. As long as people are sinners and there's sin in their hearts, and as long as people can come up with weapons, everything from a gun to a stick to a knife to a train to a plane to a car...

I'm not making these things up. The battle over... Forgive me. The battle over weaponry is nothing new. In a separate show, the example that I always use, if you go back and when I was a kid, I read the book Robin Hood. In that book about Robin Hood, there's the character Little John, who's this friar who...

Sorry, Little John of Friartuck, that's what it was. There's this character where these two characters are fighting. Little John and Friartuck are fighting with their staffs. Well, why do they have big sticks? Why do they have staffs? Because the government said they couldn't have a sword. And so the way that they got around the law, the way that the peasants got around the law was by having a big giant staff, a walking staff.

What are they going to pass a law that says you can't have a walking staff? And there was exact same thing about the non-permissive environment. Guarantee, some of those guys had a sword. Guarantee that as firearms started to be developed, some of them had firearms. But the entire point was this battle of saying, "Well, we're going to restrict the peasantry from having a sword." Peasants said, "Okay." I bet you some of them had a sword under their mattress at home, had it hidden in the woods for if they really needed it.

But they just said, "You guys are going to engage in sword control. We're going to have our staffs." And you give a skilled person a staff, it's a deadly weapon. Somebody attacks you with a stick, you are legally authorized to use deadly force to defend yourself. A stick, a hammer, a bat, these are deadly weapons.

Somebody attacks you with a hammer, you are... I'm not giving legal advice, I'm just saying the doctrine of self-defense. Somebody attacks you with a hammer, you are legally authorized to defend yourself with deadly force. Point is that this is not a new debate. But there are those who are going to spend all their time arguing and saying, "We got to get rid of all the sticks because the peasants are holding around sticks." Those who would just say, "You know what?

I think it's a good thing for people to be able to defend themselves or let's get around the government's stupid rules with a new approach." The point I'm driving is I want to be one of practical solutions. I want to look and say, "How can I make things better?" And the point I was trying to say with any of these, I do not think that by you having a baseball bat or a bag with half a dozen baseball bats and a bunch of baseballs in your classroom, I don't think that's going to keep anybody from dying if some kid comes into your school with an AR-15 and starts shooting the place up.

I don't think you can guarantee a zero death casualty event. But you may be able to protect the lives of your students and you may be able to cut the death toll from 17 to 11. And that's really worth doing. So don't be lazy and spend all your time arguing about things that are unsolvable.

The gun control debate is absolutely intractable. Now I'll give you my thoughts on that at a different show, but it's not going to change. But what you can do is you can say, "What are some practical steps that I can take in response to this that may help me within my sphere of sovereignty, within my jurisdiction to improve things?" I think that's worth doing and I hope you do too.

Thank you for listening to today's show, You Radical You. Before you go, I have one question for you. Was there an idea in today's show that helped you? Were you inspired? Were you motivated? Did you get an idea on how you can earn more or spend less money or invest more wisely or perhaps protect yourself from catastrophe and insulate yourself from financial disaster or just improve your life and your lifestyle?

Well, if so, I have three requests for you. Number one, take action. Listening doesn't improve your life. Doing, however, can revolutionize your life. Number two, take the idea or concept that you learned from me and go and teach somebody else. If you want to really learn something, go and teach it to others.

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