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All posts in category self defense

You Make The Call

Here’s the situation:

You are sitting in your vehicle in the parking lot of your employer. The parking lot is about a block from the building entrance.  It’s just after the main rush of people coming to work in the morning, so there aren’t that many people around.  As you open your door, you hear shouting.  Looking to your right, you see an SUV in a parking spot with a sedan stopped in front of it.  There is a person in the driver’s seat of the sedan.  At the back door of the SUV, there is a youngish male who is yelling and punching a youngish female.  The female is on her back on the seat of the SUV and is screaming for him to stop, and is calling him by name.  Between you and the SUV is another male, who is doing nothing to stop the altercation.  You have no firearm.  The closest thing you have to a weapon that is handy enough to get quickly is a D cell Maglight under the seat of your vehicle.  You have a cell phone.

What do you do?

(more…)

by daddybear71 on February 28, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in self defense

Posted by daddybear71 on February 28, 2014

https://daddybearsden.com/2014/02/28/you-make-the-call-2/

A Little Humor

Ole the Norwegian was sitting at the bar in his favorite tavern.  Sven came in with his new dog.  This dog was big, mean, and aggressive, and Sven seemed to enjoy letting him bark and snap at people.  The bartender was scared to say anything, and Sven just kept moving down the bar to scare the patrons.

Eventually, it was Ole’s turn.  He was so scared by that dog that he fell off his bar stool.  Ole picked himself up and walked out of the tavern, chased by Sven’s laughter and the growls of his dog.  His entertainment over for the moment, Sven took a seat at a table in the back of the bar.

A little while later, Ole came back in.  He was accompanied by a little yellow dog on a leash.

Sven looked at the little yellow dog and roared with laughter. As Ole tried to eat his lunch and drink his beer, Sven kept trying to get Ole to let his dog fight Sven’s dog.  Ole resisted at first, but eventually relented

The patrons cleared a space in the middle of the bar, and the two dogs met in the middle.

Snap! Growl! Crunch!

Suddenly, all that was left in the middle of the bar was the little yellow dog and a bit of black hair floating toward the floor.

Ole gathered up his dog and started toward the door.

Staring in disbelief, Sven demanded “Vere did you get dat dog?”

Ole answered “Vell, I got him at da zoo.  Before I trimmed his nose and his tail and painted him yellow, he vas an alligator.”

First moral of the story:  You don’t have to look dangerous to be a danger to those who want to harm you.

Second moral of the story:  Never pick a fight.  You might just find out how overmatched you really are.

by daddybear71 on November 25, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in self defense, silliness

Posted by daddybear71 on November 25, 2013

https://daddybearsden.com/2013/11/25/a-little-humor/

A Conundrum

A family friend had a scare last night.  As she was sleeping, someone came in through her kitchen door.  She had forgotten to close the deadbolt, and a goblin took advantage of it.  Luckily for her, the Christmas jingle bells she has hanging on the doorknob rang, causing her Shelty to bark his fool head off.  The goblin heard the ruckus and took off.  My friend called the police, who checked things out, took a report, and put a couple extra patrols through the neighborhood through the night.  Another friend came over and stayed with her through the night, and this morning they were both exhausted from staying up and talking.

I say luck because that was all that kept a scary moment from turning into a real nightmare.  My friend is a small, physically frail middle-aged woman who takes medication to help her sleep.  Her husband travels for work five days out of seven, and her children are away at college.  She’s about as close to an ideal scenario for a home invader as you can get.

I’ve talked to her about the need for better security at her home, including offering to take her shooting to at least see if she can find a gun she can shoot well and works for her.  She’s not anti-gun, but due to some of the medications she takes for pain and to help her sleep, she’s hesitant to have a gun for self-defense.  Her main worry is that under the influence of her medicine, she could make a really bad decision and hurt or kill someone that wasn’t a threat.

I can see her point.  My friend isn’t a drugseeker by any means, but the stuff she takes for pain is pretty powerful.  The fact that mixing painkillers and gunpowder is a bad idea is one of the reasons that I don’t have anything stronger than acetominiphen around the house for my arthritis.  I don’t want to be slowed by medication if I have to defend the home, and I don’t want my judgement clouded by opiates, or have an attorney or prosecutor be able to argue to a jury that I was impaired when I shot a goblin.

I’ve thought of getting her a couple bottles of wasp spray to have around the house.  It’s not a .357, but it’s better than nothing.  I’m also going to suggest to her husband that he upgrade the locks on the doors and get an alarm system.  Again, better than nothing, but they might at least deter a sneak thief that just wants to get into the house, grab something, and get out. 

So what advice would you guys give to my friend if a firearm isn’t in the cards?

by daddybear71 on December 1, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Guns, self defense

Posted by daddybear71 on December 1, 2011

https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/01/a-conundrum/

When seconds count

There’s a cliche in the gun rights/personal security community:  “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away”. 

For a group of people in Minneapolis, it could have read “the police are only a few feet away”. 

A group of friends leave a club, are accosted by a group of ‘youths’, and a fight starts when the men in the group stand up to protect the ladies.  One of the ladies runs to a police station that is 30 feet away for help, and is rebuffed.  One of the men who got his head beaten upon goes to the same station, and is chased out by the police.  Read that again.  A citizen, bleeding from a beating he received within spitting distance of a police station, goes there to ask for assistance, and is forcefully ejected from the building. 

The excuse from the Minneapolis police seems to be “We were busy that night”.  I’ve been in downtown Minneapolis. The police are always busy there.  I guess this means that there’s always something better for the police to do than to stop the savage beating of law-abiding citizens at the hands of a pack of ‘youths’ within eyesight of the police station.

People, if you’re looking for an example of why you should carry a gun when confronted by an anti, here you go.  Three men got jumped on by 10 ‘youths’ and got bloodied.  If one of them or one of the ladies with them had been carrying a pistol that night, the situation would have ended quite differently.  If the animals that attacked them had been just a little more adamant about delivering a curb stomping, someone could have easily gone to the morgue. 

Be responsible for yourself.  Carry your gun. Carry a knife.  Use your tools, your hands, your feet, your teeth, a loose piece of paving, anything to defend yourself.   Make it hard for EMS to tell where your blood starts and your assailant’s blood ends. 

The police are under no obligation to protect you.  They are there to draw white lines around your body, take a report, and ‘try’ to bring criminals to justice.  Even if you could carry around a cop, nothing is going to get him to stop an attack on you and yours unless it’s a personal priority for him.  No-one in his chain of command will fault him for not intervening to keep you out of the hospital or the morgue.

H/T to Radley Balko on this one.

by daddybear71 on September 19, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Minneapolis, self defense, WTF

Posted by daddybear71 on September 19, 2011

https://daddybearsden.com/2011/09/19/when-seconds-count/