Points on Every Day Carry

What, in your opinion, constitutes personal safety for yourself & your family? What steps have you taken to feel some measure of “security”?

Do you carry a gun?

Do you carry a knife?

Do you have pepper spry, or some sort of blunt impact tool with you at all times?

Walk with a German Shepherd?

Is your husband just “A really big guy”?

Do you pray?

What do you consider a safe zone in terms of self defense?

My wife is in the habit of taking nightly walks before dinner around our neighborhood & the surrounding areas. Unfortunately, she is NOT in as great a habit of preparing for the unexpected. Tonight as she left for her evening stroll, I called out “Are you ARMED??!?” in front of my class. To which she shot me a look such as God must have given Cain upon hearing the news, and responded “Hau-Ah!” (Chinese for “Yes, now bugger off!”)

The base principles of Every Day Carry aren’t difficult in theory, it’s the application where people fall down.

First is the rationale: Why do I need to carry anything?

Well, in the I.T. world, we have an understanding of computers: It’s not a question of IF, but WHEN. Sooner or later, you’ll be in deep ka-ka, with the clock ticking. Accept this from the get-go, and we can dispense with all kinds of nonsensical rationale & jump straight to preparedness. The same is true with self defense scenarios. You don’t have to have accidentally parked in a bad neighborhood or chose to drink in the wrong bar. Real life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes, IT comes looking for YOU.

After a traumatic incident in their lives, people often reflect on whatever has just happened a mutter to themselves “You know, I would have given ANYTHING for this not to have happened”. I always look at these people as if they just stepped off a spaceship from Mars, or something…Well, would you have given an ounce of preparedness? All it took was making a correct choice in what you were carrying with you. All you needed to do was park a few blocks further up. You only needed to practice drawing your pocketknife a few times, get intimately familiar with it, so you looked proficient when you needed to. Why didn’t you?

And as I said earlier, sometimes IT comes looking for YOU.

It will more often than not look elsewhere if your facial sign reads “Do not fuck with”. Accept this, and we can go straight to “Avoidance”.

Avoidance comes in all forms. For instance, my mother-in-law is Chinese. I am the first Gweilo (round-eye) in the family, and she is none too pleased about it. To this end, she will often do or say things to give me grief, make me look bad or simply supply tension and resistance where there is none in my life. A few years ago we were all walking around downtown Vancouver B.C. after a late dinner, myself, my wife & her parents. We were probably two miles away from the hotel, and the streets went from well-lit to completely dark except for one strip down main street. My mother-in-law wanted to just mosey on down one of the dark backstreets for no better reason than I wanted to stick to the main (well-lit) drag. And she put up a HELLISH fight about me not following her.

Look, I don’t care what is or isn’t down the street. I’ll never know. There are personal safety rules I never knowingly break, and this is one of them. My wife has absolutely no martial ability. NONE. And although my mother-in-law would scare a basilisk, I doubt she would be much help against four attackers. Except maybe to nag them to death. Oh, and my father-in-law is a skinny nuclear physicist who weighs a little over 125 lbs…Soaking wet. Yeah, BIG help there.

Which means anything that happens will default to ME for protection.

So, avoidance rule one: Avoid the section of Jurassic Park that says “Raptor Paddock” on the map!

See, a rattlesnake has his fangs & venom with him no matter what. It is an accepted part of his physical makeup. He is comfortable with his tools & will use them when appropriate. Your EDC should be like that, something that is as natural to you as grabbing your car keys and wallet before you leave the house. Walking around without your EDC should be akin to feeling like walking around with your fly open, or leaving the house with no pants on. But the only way to achieve this is discipline: You MUST carry something every day! It will be uncomfortable at first, but after a few months you will accept it as part of your normal everyday wear. And you will have it when you need it.

This doesn’t mean that you can be prepared for EVERYTHING, but by carrying say, a sensible knife, nothing huge, and maybe a good-sized ball bearing or two, you have just closed the door on over half of what the big bad world will toss your way. The occasional drunk who has mistaken you for a punching bag. The cocky college jock who wants to prove something to his friends and himself. The dumbass who just rear ended you (or whom you just rear ended…DUMBASS!) and wants to exchange more than just insurance info. Anything that will back off if there is even a slight chance of not coming away unscathed.

Avoidance rule two: Avoid the need to default to your fists alone for protection, carry something semi-lethal and quick to operate. Perhaps it should look a bit ominous as well. No one sane picks up a rattlesnake.

To further use the rattlesnake analogy, it’s the reputation of the snake that lends it the most awe. You know what will happen, MANDETORY, if you screw with it. Setting an example is often a necessary evil that will negate FURTHER violence in most cases. A predator looks for PREY, not a CHALLENGE. If you are in a confrontation, and draw a weapon with no knowledge of how to use it, well, the threat of the weapon has just lost its advantage. You must work with what you carry to the point that you are able to wield it second-nature. You must look comfortable and confident in your abilities, even if those abilities are at their most rudimentary level.

Avoidance rule #3 – Practice with what you carry so that you will be passing proficient with it when the shit hits the Mariners fans.

This is all nothing, by the way, without ability. Not really “martial skill”, although I can’t knock it, but what I mean here is not only the tools needed for the job, but the wherewithal to accomplish it. You must become familiar with violence to be secure in your defense of it. Accept this, get past it, and start focusing on what it will take to raise the level of personal safety for you & your family.

Go back up to what I was saying about “acceptance” for a sec, it’s an important point. You need to realize that a wolf remains a wolf, even if it has not eaten your sheep. If nothing bad has ever happened to you, great, I hope it continues. But using “The Armor of God” as you best self-defense argument has a pig-butt NASTY surprise in store for you. Maybe you still don’t see enough examples in the world around you to make a difference in your psychology, that’s fine. Those who are ready to hear this will hear it. I want to close by saying this:

It takes some serious commitment to violence to be able to respond to it. It takes more than a weekend Self-D course, or a women’s empowerment seminar. A month’s Karate lessons at the local “Y” won’t teach you this.

You have to get your hands dirty.