The 5 Ws of Personal Defense

When someone gets ready to think about, this mindset with the violent criminal actor, where do you start, when it's a big thing? I start with the notion that it's an interaction. It's an interaction between the self-defined person that we've talked about and a violent criminal actor, that's the point. And I think of the five W's of that interaction, right? Who will be involved, right? And from the audience's point of view, this is everything from regular Joe, regular Jane, all the way up to somebody who's carrying weapons for personal defense and has assumed a different kind of persona in the world. And that person will encounter all sorts of different folks in the world. First off, what I call the artifact, just the artifacts of your daily life in the community, a homeless guy, an older person confused, young kids running down the street all the way up to in intensity and an acuity of need to address them a violent criminal actors. Somebody whose purpose is to do your violence, to complete what it is that they wanted to do, so that's the who. The what, is they're being targeted for violent aggression, most importantly, being advantaged for dominance, that's positional dominance, relational dominance, all the ways that dominance can be exerted upon you. And then the enactment finally of physical violence, that's the what. But the what also involves conceptualizing yourself as a target, not as a victim. And we can talk quite a bit about that if you want, but targeting is an external process, but victim selection involves a lot of feedback from you, from your audience member, from the good guy, so to speak who, what, when. It will most certainly not be at a time of our choosing. I mean, the old joke if you know there was gonna be a gunfight at two, you'd bring friends with long guns, myself I wouldn't go at all. If they told me that was gonna be a gunfight at two, but we can think about it in terms of least and most, and minimum and maximum. The least advantage is time for you. And the most advantage is time for a violent criminal actor is when it will happen. And the least and most likely are also kind of confusing because the least likely time for an assault is actually the best time for it because you will be less prepared for it, right? That least likely moment. That's why breaking robberies are so dangerous when you get home, there's this natural pause, I'm home, I'm safe and you're not now, where will it happen? It's easy to say that a violent criminal actor can attack anywhere. And we kind of operate under the old rubric of Farnhams Law. That if we just stay away from stupid people, stupid places and don't do stupid things, we'll be safe. That's not the case, so violence can come to us. And why is this encounter happening at all? First off violence is an intentional act, you can harm someone, you can even use force against someone unintentionally, but to commit violence, it's an intentional act. It's an expression of will, the person committing the violence is expressing their will upon you in a physical form. And those motivations really break down along two lines, instrumental motivation, which is the use of violence to an end. Meaning if I hit you in the head with a socket wrench in order to get your expensive watch, violence is just a tool, just like a shovel is used to make a hole. Express and violence on the other hand is where violence is the purpose, right? Terrorism is the classic expressing, the expression of expressive violence. The purpose of terrorism is to terrorized and use that violence. And some of the most virulent form of antisocial criminal aggression is expressive violence where the point of the crime is to exert violence on someone else. So who, what, where, when, why, I think of the kind of governing dynamics and the last why, is the why for us, for the good guy, for the armed citizen, our motivations are really other directed, let's say a sense of duty, right? I have a duty to my community, police officer obviously has a sworn duty, but if I'm an armed citizen, I've assumed a duty, a range of duties, but then it can be self-directed, right? Like a duty to protect a child is other directed, but self-directed, I just don't feel that in my community, it's good to be threatened by others. And so I want to instill a sense of safety around myself and in and around the community, but each kind of motivation brings with it a risk profile and a risk threshold that you'll accept. I know plenty of people who would accept extraordinary risks to protect the child or protect a spouse, but they would never run those risks to protect themselves. So there's a lot going on. And who, what, where, when and why I think is the most important place to start. and remember as Nietzsche said, when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you, and when you think about these decisions, you have to think deeply because these decisions are feeding back into how you're going to be and how you're going to act in the moment. And so every moment spent planning for this reality and eventual reality, is important.