Enemies

Enemies among us. Who are they? It is easier to say who they are not. 

They are not your friends or allies. They don't look different than you. They don't wear uniforms. They are not harmless but are armed and mean to do you harm. They don't take prisoners. They don't care about you. They are not interested in a 'fair fight'. If you don't give them what they want, they may kill you. They may kill you even if you do.

One thing they all have in common is the determination to make you do what they want. Give up your money. Hand over your possessions. Surrender yourself, and perhaps your loved ones, to their pleasures. Provide them with their brand of twisted entertainment. Suffer. Die. Their reasons are many, but their intent is the same. Conform to their demands or suffer the consequences.

Broad generalizations sweep these people into certain identifiable categories: criminals, psychologically ruined psychopaths, religious zealots, and political hardliners are a few of the more obvious ones. We know they are out there among us, but we have no way of recognizing them unless they commit a dangerous act. By then, it is often too late for the victims to take measures to protect themselves.

Mr. Two Time Loser with that meth monkey on his back needs more drugs. Drugs cost money. He walks into a neighborhood convenience store, pulls the pistol he stole from his last burglary and demands money from the clerk. He gets some, but not as much as he feels he is entitled to so he herds the clerk and the customers into the back room intending to take what money they have on them, but panics and begins shooting.

The situation is that only the criminal is armed. The police are unaware of what's going down, being involved with their regular duties, and perhaps dealing with other criminals who have committed various crimes. They can't be everywhere. You have to call them for help. What can the potential victims do?

They can do anything but act like lambs at the slaughter. Rush the shooter. Throw things. Act like a group of angry people who won't go quietly into that good night. The odds are that someone is going to be hurt. However, if no one does anything to stop the shooter, everyone is going to get hurt, or worse. There appears to be a kind of herd mentality in these incidents where a jerk with a gun can be instantly obeyed by a group of people who stand a very good chance of successfully opposing him. But, no one wants to fight back.

The situation changes if someone in the group is armed. By deciding to carry a gun that person has made the commitment to not stand idly by in fear if confronted by a deadly threat. Now, the criminal and the group are on an even keel. One of our potential victims pulls her legal pistol from her purse and opens fire on the bad guy. What happens?

In the vast majority of situations like this, the bad guy, or guys, run. They do not like to be shot at. They panic when their lives are in danger. They run. Even if they don't, in the rare cases when they chose to stand and fight, the potential victims are energized enough to either defend themselves or to flee and seek shelter.

Another scenario which today is becoming increasingly possible and is more deadly than the violent criminal encounter happens when the enemy is motivated not by money or personal animosity, but from an imperative to force his ideology on everyone else. During the last century these ideologues were motivated by political and national systems like Nazism and Communism. They were quite clear in their aims, declaring war on their enemies and wearing uniforms to openly identify themselves. But, that was old school. Today, the ideologues we have to worry most about are motivated by religion, don't wear uniforms and are quite willing to kill as many unbelievers as necessary to force their way of life and religious laws on the rest of the world.

America has been fortunate to have suffered only a few attacks from the religious extremists, but we can certainly expect more, along with the rest of the civilized world, as they push out among us and convert more of our gullible and disaffected citizens to their jihad.

I don't intend to get bogged down in the debate about whether Islam is a religion of peace or not. I think it is obvious that many of Islam's most fundamental adherents are the jihadists that inflict and promote violence in the name of Islam around the world. There is no need to rationalize about poverty or political issues, just listen to what they say about why they do what they do.

These people are the enemy, just as the meth addict with a gun is the enemy, or the home invader from across town, or the road-rage psycho who wants to kill you for driving too slowly is the enemy.

The only question one has to answer is what to personally do about this. There are a limited number of choices.

You can do nothing and just go on with your life as if there are no enemies about and plan for your future as if it was going to be a peaceful extension of your present.

You can keep your cell phone charged so you can dial 911 if the worst happens and you need help and protection from evil.

You can get in shape and take your pick of martial arts classes to increase your defensive capabilities.

You can be fatalistic and convince yourself that it will never happen to you, but only to someone else.

You can make sure your will is up to date. 

You can do all of these things and you can also arm your self and get the necessary training to better protect yourself and others should it come to that.

The anti-gun people will readily buy into many of those steps but the last one. And, for them, that is their choice. However, they do not get to prohibit me from legally owning and carrying a gun just because they don't chose to prepare meet the enemy. 

That is their choice. They don't get to chose for me.

Mr. Deringer's Modern Day Child

Mr. Deringer's derringer .41 Cal Black Powder Single Shot

We call them derringers because they were Mr. Deringer's invention and over time, the spelling became notoriously loose. By today's definition a derringer is a very small, lightweight "pocket" pistol. Or purse pistol, depending. At one time they were also called "muff pistols", but women generally don't carry muffs now. They are also famous, of course, because President Lincoln was murdered with one, but still, for the era when they were in vogue, the derringer was a popular and effective close quarters gun. Being a single shot, they were most often sold in pairs. One and a backup. I remember building a plastic scale model of a derringer, like the one above, from a kit when I was a youngster. I have always been fascinated with them.

Last year I acquired a new model derringer which, although designed along the same principles as Mr. Deringer's original pistol, and intended for the same use, is a safe, modern, robust and efficient expression of the type: the Bond Arms derringer. You may know about this Texas company and the small but dedicated group of its followers. They, like the gun itself, are unique, original and determined. Unfortunately, I gave in to the persuasions of a friend and sold it to him. One of my less sound decisions.

Bond Arms Patriot Defender .410/.45 (for one) Two Shot

Bond Arms derringers are unique in that they offer a small but robust two-shot answer to the question of self protection. The owner and chief bottle washer of the company, Gordon Bond, is vocal and convincing about the Bond Arms derringer's place and effectiveness in personal self protection. I suggest that you take a trip over to their website and look at a few videos and see what Gordon has to say. I won't plow the same ground here, but I will state my personal ideas about his line of handguns.

Handguns come in all flavors, sizes, calibers and designs, and all are aimed at a certain function. Some are just big hand canons, firing large and powerful projectiles from long, heavy barrels. Perhaps their function is to punch holes in metal walls or stop enraged grizzlies. I've never been quite sure. Some are revolvers, some are semiautomatics. Some are designed and intended for competition, or target shooting, or concealed carry. The design intent, or requirement, should define the form and function of the weapon. Some handguns strive for a middle of the road approach to maximize sales. Some are decidely narrow in their intended application, like a Ruger Mk. II .22 target gun, for example, or a small frame, five-shot, snub nose revolver. The vast majority of handguns do share one common trait: they offer five or more shot capacity before having to be reloaded. In this aspect, Bond Arms is one of the few that stray from this philosophy. The big question is, why?

I would like to offer a few suggestions of my own. 

Generally, opinions on this question revolve around range, effectiveness, the overall average number of rounds that are expended in a self defense gunfight scenario, which is, I believe something like 1.45. And, what I would term as suitability. More on suitability a bit later.

Range

The majority of situations in which a citizen must resort to and fire a gun for self defense happen within a range of one to five yards. Some are even closer than that, involving bodily contact. Timing is also a factor in these situations. Attacks are most often sudden and unexpected. To mention only one example, I watched a video recently of a man who was preparing to back his car out of his garage when another man holding a pistol, walked quickly into view, approaching the diver's side from the rear of the car. The driver had just enough time to see the assailant in his side mirror, pull his own gun, which appeared to be a mid-sized semi-auto, and fire over his shoulder out of his open window at the approaching gunman. The bad guy immediately fled without firing his weapon. Was he shot? I don't know, but the driver's quick, almost reflexive action stopped the encounter and the threat.

Rage? Maybe three feet. Maybe less. Timing? About two seconds.

The man who was about to be assaulted had no time to go to a two-hand shooting hold, nor time to aim in any meaning of the term. Where did his rounds go? I don't know and he probably didn't either. I think the bad guy ran just because his intended victim was firing in his general direction. I can't help but wonder where those rounds would have ended up if the episode had not occurred in a garage.

So, in most instances the range is short. Most guns carried for self defense will far exceed this modest range, which can be a real problem. You shoot quickly, one, two or three rounds. You hit the bad guy with one, and the others miss. Where do they end up? You are responsible for each bullet that leaves your gun. Do they travel across the street and into a neighbor's house? Into a passerby? You won't know if you are not a top shot with a handgun in a adrenaline-soaked, high stress, life-threatening situation. And who is? Not even the professionals, those men and women who train with and carry handguns as part of their jobs, can be acceptably accurate under such circumstances. Look it up. The "miss" rate of law enforcement personnel in these scenarios is shockingly high. You or I won't do as well. We will do considerably worse.

With the standard handgun used for self defense by the average person, the only real answer is to shoot it. A lot. Train, practice in scenarios that will be somewhat like the one you may have to deal with some day. Not just shooting at paper targets or cans, but drawing from concealment and firing safely and accurately. This is not easy. In fact, it is damned difficult. Besides, who has the time, opportunity or money to burn through ammo like that? Certainly not most folks.

Effectiveness

"Effectiveness" is the land of "stopping power". Actually, it is the fantasy land of "stopping power". Shoot a large, strong, crazed male bent on doing you serious bodily harm with 12 gauge 00 buck and you might stop him. Then again, you might not. The human animal is a hardy and strange thing. Studies of law enforcement shootings reveal that sometimes humans don't stop after being shot, even when they have been shot multiple times with large caliber bullets. The image of someone being literally blown off of their feet that is all too common in the movies, is just that: a movie special effects effect.

I define effectiveness in terms of self defense as the ability to stop the threat, not to knock someone down. If an aggressor is threatened by the sight of a gun and stops or flees the encounter, then the threat has been stopped. Game over. Nothing left to do except call the authorities and report what happened. Do this because it is the right and legal thing to do and it might stop someone else from being harmed by the individual that threatened you.

So, having to shoot someone to stop their threat of deadly force (and you must be certain of what the law requires before you resort to deadly force) may not necessarily effective. There is much you can do about that except to be prepared and confident and try your best. After reading about and viewing many real-life videos of these kinds of situations, I am very confident that in most instances, shooting at an aggressor, even multiple ones, is sufficient to stop the threat. They usually run away. Not always, of course, but if we insist on perfection, we will be hiring squads of bodyguards.

So, forget about the stopping power of different loads, bullets and calibers. One may stop a deadly threat by displaying a .22 auto.

Number of Rounds Fired

This relates directly to the discussion on effectiveness, above. Obviously, more damage will be inflicted with more rounds hitting the target. But, again, that doesn't guarantee it will stop the threat. There are many, many documented instances of aggressors being shot multiple times, even with rifle and large caliber rounds, but they keep on coming, or fighting. Yes, it is good policy, if one is forced to shoot in self defense, to shoot until the threat is stopped, but that may only take one shot, or it may take many more than the self defense gun has available. There is no hard-and-fast rule here.

Suitability

Is the weapon – a handgun in this discussion – suitable for self defense? Most knowledgeable people would say yes, with certain reservations. Usually this question pivots around caliber, power and capacity. However, these, I think, are not the main points when considering that most people are not well trained and have never been in a life-or-death confrontation. The important points are, I think:

Will you have a gun available when you need it?

As many people have said, if your carry gun is not going to get carried much, then it fails at its intended purpose. Doesn't matter if it is your beloved 1911 .45 or a Glock, if it's home in the safe, you are going unarmed. If a gun is too large, too heavy, too thick, too uncomfortable in any way, at some point, it will be left behind. The best gun is the one you have when you need it, and the one you are most likely to have on you is small enough and comfortable enough to carry. Always. No handgun is really "comfortable". They are more and less acceptable as a carry gun, but that's about it.

Can you shoot it quickly and accurately enough to hit an assailant at close range?

As discussed above, if you use one of the "standard" self defense carry guns like a semi auto or revolver and don't practice consistently and often, then the answer is no. You can't. Especially when things turn suddenly bad and deadly and you are cranked out of your skull with fear and adrenaline. 

Will the projectile that you fire have a low probability of injuring an innocent person should you miss?

Again, unless you are a top shooter in combat situations, the answer is no. Even if you were, the odds of all your rounds going where you intend are small.

This brings me back to the original derringer. Mr. Deringer designed and made a small, easily carried handgun that was effective at very short range, easy to shoot and not deadly far beyond the immediate range needed to stop a threat. I suspect that the Bond Arms derringer, the modern expression of Mr. Deringer's original design, might be just the carry gun for the average citizen. It is a two-shot, rather than a one-shot pistol. It is made with modern materials and quality workmanship. It handles a wide variety of modern ammunition. It appears to be small enough and well configured for concealed carry so that it will be acceptably comfortable over long periods. Loaded with .410 shot shell ammunition, accuracy at close range should not be an issue, and since shot power dissipates rapidly with range, it will be less of a danger to others beyond the immediate vicinity. Being a single-action gun, it should be very safe to carry, and simple to operate.

Probably the biggest issue for some will be the gun's two-shot capacity. In practice, this may not be as important as many people believe. Again, I believe I am correct when I state that the majority of civilian self-defense confrontations occur within a very short range and that they are quickly over once the intended victim shoots at his or her assailant. It is very rare that a standup gunfight ensues in these situations. Rapid reloading of the Bond Arms pistol will require focus and practice and may prove to be acceptably fast. 

The best way to decide these matters is to put them to the test. Fortunately, I have a new Bond Arms Patriot model coming soon which I will use for just those purposes. I will be testing both the .410/.45 caliber barrels, and the .38 Special/.357 Magnum barrels on the gun. All Bond Arms derringers have the capability of easily accepting barrels of different calibers.

I will use it frequently, and carry it daily. Right now the weather is changing. I will be migrating from T-shirts to sweaters to parkas over the course of the fall and winter which will offer a good test for the gun as a carry piece and its effectiveness when things are nice and balmy, and when fingers are frozen and gloves and coats are a hindrance. I will be reporting on my experience with this pistol regularly. I will also be reporting on the experiences and thoughts of friends who will also be trying this gun out, most of whom have little or limited experience with pistols and are older, like me, and smaller and female. I want to see if this would be a good concealed carry and an around the house gun for people of limited strength and abilities.

I will be putting my S&W M&P Shield in the safe and going with the Bond Arms Patriot as my primary carry piece for the foreseeable future.

I will let you know how that goes.

Stay safe.

Dressed for the Streets

Ready for the streets in a comfortable T-shirt, pants and the S&W M&P Shield and a spare magazine.

Now that you've read the caption, you might think you can spot the Shield and magazine somewhere. The fact is that you and 99% of the other people who saw me dressed exactly like this last week had no idea that I was carrying a weapon. That's the idea.

Concealed under the shirt: M&P Shield with LaserMax, mag in Kytex holder and the holster

When one first begins carrying concealed the temptation to check every wrinkle and bulge is difficult to resist. When you look down and see a fold out of place in your shirt, you know it is because your gun is printing. Maybe it is, but to the uninitiated, one fold or small bulge looks very much like all of the other folds and bulges, if they are aware of them at all. Which they usually are not.

If you have gone to all of the trouble and expense to satisfy the local and state bureaucracy in order to obtain your concealed carry permit it is important that you use it. In a recent survey there were a disturbing number of responses from people, with permits, who carry their guns only when they think they may "need to". What does this mean? That these people are fortune tellers, read the future, have spent the morning with a deck of Tarot cards perhaps? It's wishful thinking.

No one can foretell when and where the need to protect oneself or others from the threat of deadly violence will occur. A few minutes perusing the internet for incidents of self protection by citizens will quickly reveal that these things happen any time, any place, often for no discernible reasons other than that the perpetrators want your money and, or your life for twisted reasons of their own.

"Ooops..., wait a minute, I forgot my gun," is not the response one wants to have when bad trouble starts.

The only sane alternative is to pack your gun legally all of the time. All. Of. The. Time.

This is called playing the odds. Odds are that you will never need it. However the consequences of the odds not falling in your favor can be serious and vicious in the extreme, especially if you've foregone the means to protect yourself. This is not to say that the outcomes of violent encounters won't be harmful to you and other innocents, but at the least you will have the option to effectively fight back.

Maximize your odds.

Carry whenever possible. Find holster combinations that will not inhibit this. No holster makes a gun "so comfortable that I didn't know I had it on." That is just advertising bull. There are holsters that are less obnoxious to wear than others, but you are going to have to find a few that are tolerable, that you can get used to having on, like your belt or your shoes. 

Wear your gun in a place on your body so that it is accessible whenever you need it. Standing, sitting, lying down, driving while belted in your car. Pocket holsters and behind the hip carry are popular, but when one is seated, which is more than half of the time during the day, they are very hard to access. The best places to carry are, 1. appendix, 2. cross draw, and 3. shoulder holster.

You can find excellent holsters made for these carry positions from many reputable makers. Spend some decent money to get quality holsters. They are as important to you as carrying a quality handgun. If you invest in holsters for more a couple of effective carry methods, you will have some flexibility in where you carry that you can vary according to circumstances such as weather and dress.

You should pactice shooting, of course. But also practice (without ammunition) drawing, presenting and dry-firing your guns from your holsters wearing the clothing you would normally wear with them. Violence most often happens quickly and by surprise. Most self defense shootings take place within three to five yards, or closer. You must be quick and you must be effective. 

Practice how to aim your fire in close and quick situations. The old advice to line up the front and rear sights into the standard "sight picture" is not going to do you much good in these quick, close self defense scenarios. Practice focusing on the front sight only. It should be larger and well marked to stand out so it can be quickly acquired by your eyes. Better yet, combine a good, highly visible front sight with a laser sight.

Many of the objections to a laser concern reliability, operability and taking the time to pick up the red or green laser dot on the target. I consider a laser to be an aid which is useful in practicing target acquisition and trigger discipline during dry firing sessions, and as a possible sighting aid in a real gunfight situation. The important thing to remember is that the laser is another option in your tool kit. If you learn to shoot quickly and instinctively with your front sight, you also have the option of engaging with the laser should the situation permit. A laser is especially important in low light conditions, a period in which most criminal encounters tend to happen.

If you train without the laser, and again with the laser, you will have the option to engage with it or not. It is a good tool to have, yet does not make you dependent upon it.

In the photographs below, note that the LaserMax is designed to complement the form factor of the pistol, doesn't interfere with the grip or trigger guard and is light weight so that its presence on the pistol is not really felt. Is it always necessary? No. Is it there if I need it? Yes. Nice thing about the LaserMax is that one can control when it is on or off since it is not dependent on the shooter squeezing the handgrips. Sometimes I want to have a proper shooting grip, but I don't want the laser engaged. My choice.

Carry as comfortably as possible, with more than one good holster for options, train to be quick and accurate, consider a laser to increase your options and stay safe.

It's Not Terrorism, and It Is Predictable

Last week Ayoub El Khazzani, a 26 year Moslem who was living in Europe after returning from Syria, was about to shoot up a French train car of innocent people but instead got his ass severely kicked by American, British and French passengers. Without these people immediately putting their lives on the line to stop Khazzani, the world would have yet another “terrorist” massacre to worry about and argue over.

I understand the worry, but I am becoming increasingly intolerant of the arguments. With instant access to social media and internet sites, such as this one, anyone can and do broadcast their opinions to millions of other people. Yes, opinions are part of free speech, but that does not preclude many of opinion pieces crowding the social media-verse from being ignorant, ill-informed or purposefully distorted. The two most frequent and equally ignorant opinions – giving the benefit of the doubt that their authors are mis-informed rather than merely stupid or biased – claim that acts of “terrorism” are always the result of societal and political disenfranchisement or maltreatment of oppressed people, and that the real problem is guns.

I want to address both of these opinions, but first, a word about what happened on that train in France. According to the New York Times, “…the authorities in at least two countries already knew quite a lot about Mr. Khazzani before he surged into notoriety on Friday afternoon: He was on a French list as a security threat, and Spanish officials told news media there that he had traveled to Syria — not in itself an offense, unless he went there for jihad. Had he been living in France, a tough new surveillance law, approved at the end of July by France’s constitutional council, would have likely turned up even more on him.

Yet with all that the authorities already knew about him, he managed to board unhindered the heavily traveled Amsterdam-to-Paris high-speed train with a sack of weaponry, probably in Belgium, and was ready to inflict serious damage, with dozens of rounds of ammunition, an AK-47, an automatic pistol and a box cutter.”

There is no doubt that Khazzani intended to kill as many people on that train as possible. Unfortunately for the world, he won’t be the only one to attempt something like this, and France won’t be the only country where these so-called terrorists will strike.

“We are now faced with unpredictable terrorism,” said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French security consultant and terrorism expert.

Unpredictable? Terrorism? Not so much. The confusion inherent in the use of these terms is part of the problem.

These types of attacks are not really “unpredictable”. Much the same as mass shootings in the US, one can predict (supported by the basic statistics relating to those events) that mass shootings will almost invariably occur in places where people are unarmed. In this country, we advertise where those places will be. We call them Gun Free Zones, posted with prominent signs that No Guns Are Allowed. Why? It is not for the education of would be mass-shooters. Or for people bent on criminal acts such as armed robbery. When someone who is determined to shoot as many people as possible with minimum danger to themselves is searching for a target rich, low risk environment, gun-free zones are obvious choices. Gun-free schools. Gun-free movie theaters. Gun-free shopping malls. Any place where law abiding citizens are prohibited from carrying legal firearms will do. And, with historically one exception, that is where the killers go.

A case might be made that the entire country of France is a gun free zone, military and police who make up a minuscule number of the population excepted.

How might we deal with this? Mr. Brissard has an opinion:

“The most plausible scenario is some return to the situation prevailing in France in the mid-1990s after a series of Islamist attacks on trains and train stations. For a brief period, military personnel patrolled inside the trains [my italics] and baggage was checked. Mr. Brisard noted that such patrols have, potentially, a much more dissuasive effect than the mere sight of armed soldiers in train stations.”

Why wouldn’t a Boy Scout patrol, or large, muscular men in black T-Shirts with “Safety Patrol” be just as effective? Guns, that is why. Military patrols pack firearms. Police pack firearms. They do this for solid reasons. People like Khazzani don’t want to deal with armed opponents, they want helpless victims. However, if we were to take Mr. Brissard’s proposal to seriously, it would be necessary to dramatically increase the number of our military personnel, provide training, pay them and care for them in order to run patrols in all of the areas where they would be needed. This is just not possible. Nor, would I want to live in a military-patrolled society.

An obvious answer to this problem is to allow citizens to carry their own firearms for self defense and the defense of innocent people. Do not prohibit the ability of people to defend themselves and fight back effectively against violence that others want to inflict upon them. If Khazzani knew that there would be a number of armed individuals on the train who would not hesitate to fight back, my sense is that he would have searched for a different opportunity. Another gun free zone.

Yes, I can now anticipate the blow-back, the outrage among those who think that all guns are evil and more guns just lead to more violence, a conclusion not supported by objective fact and research. However, I’d like to quote Sam Harris who has what I consider to be one of the best reasoned responses to these objections. Sam is an intellectual, an atheist, a liberal in most senses of the word, with degrees in Philosophy and a doctorate in NeuroPsychology. Sam has a very practical and common sense approach to violence and guns:

“Although I might find a few useful things to say to such readers [of his article on The Riddle of the Gun], let me concede that the bar is probably set too high. Thinking about violence is not everyone’s cup of tea...It is irrational, however, to imagine that such insouciance can pass for an informed opinion on how best to respond to violence in the event that it occurs. I have now heard from many people who have never held a gun in their lives, and are proud to say that they never would, but who appear entirely confident in declaiming upon the limitations of firearms as defensive weapons. Before proceeding, perhaps there is general rule of cognition we might all agree on: It would be surprising, indeed, if avoiding a topic as a matter of principle were the best way to understand it. [my italics]

With respect to guns, I need to make a practical and ethical decision about whether or not to own one, given my specific security concerns and the level of violent crime in the society in which I live. ... The choice to own a gun comes down to this: If I hear a window break in the middle of the night, I want to be armed with more than my idealism.”

Or, in this case, if some whack-job pulls out an AK-47 in the midst of my shopping experience, train ride, or Walmart parking lot, I want to be armed with more than idealism or a can of pepper spray.

Anyone who seriously opposes the right of people to protect themselves from violence have no business trying to impose their paranoia and fear on others. I could go on to argue against all of the themes anti-gun people have put forward, but I will save that for later. I now want to turn to the other term which I think is confusing and misleading: terrorism.

The handy term terrorism has become a general catch-all to explain acts of violence in support of an opposing philosophy, political system or religion. To call people like Khazzani terrorists is to dilute the nature and definition of the threat they pose, and thereby to dilute the appropriate responses to them and the threat the pose to the world. These people are Islamic zealots who are determined to establish a world caliphate in order to rule in obedience with religious laws that date from the middle ages. They believe that God has mandated that they enforce his will, as dictated to an illiterate merchant fifteen hundred years ago, or kill anyone who opposes, disagrees or “insults” these dictates.

This is not a joke. These people are not disaffected, poor minorities who have been driven to violence by injustice and oppression. The 911 hijackers who killed over 3000 American were all well educated, well to do or wealthy and living well in the United States. What they had in common was belief in the fundamentals of Islam, in “holy war”, in the world caliphate that God demands they establish.

These people are religious fanatics. Not “terrorists”. This makes them immune from the frequently proposed solutions their apologists put forward. Better living conditions. Jobs. Relief from “oppression” by a foreign government. Democracy. They really don’t care about that. They care only about what Allah and his representatives tell them they must do or suffer Allah’s consequences.

Which can be severe.

Insult the Prophet. Death. Leave the faith. Death. Speak out for reform. Death. Don't surrender. Death.

Pretty effective it appears.

What can one do in the face of violent fundamentalism? Not much except to educate as many people as possible, especially the children. As long as their societies remain closed to education (remember the young Moslem girl Malia who at 14 was shot because she wanted to go to school? If not, you should learn about her.) that approach is also closed to us.

I don’t have any answers to this terrible world problem, but I do have an answer to what is coming – more religious violence here and in Europe. Stop incidents of violence as soon as they begin. Let the violent people, religious and otherwise, know that they are not safe anywhere from armed citizens willing and able to fight back.

Is this perfect? No. Will innocent people suffer? Yes. Innocent people are and will be suffering anyway. Why let this continue without fighting back?

be armed