Resources

March 13 2020

How To Purchase A Handgun In North Carolina

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In the State of North Carolina you are required to present and turn in a Pistol Purchase Permit in order to obtain a firearm from a private sale or a Federal Firearms License (FFL) dealer if you do not have a NC Concealed Carry Handgun license. You must apply for your pistol purchase permit in the county of your residence. Each county has their own set of rules to apply for a permit. The amount of time it takes for your application to be processed depends on the volume of requests and your counties procedures. It’s generally around $5 and the process is not uniform across North Carolina.

General Requirements:

Must be 21 years of age or older to purchase from an FFL and 18 for a private sale.
Must provide current/valid ID in the form of either a NC driver’s license or NC state identification card.
Must be a US Citizen or a permanent resident.
Must be a resident of North Carolina for a minimum of 30 days and provide proof of residency in your county. (NC ID or driver’s license)
Must provide a list of previous addresses back to age 16 or the past 20 years.
Must be of good moral character as judged by your sheriff.
Must not have any pending criminal charges that would be a disqualifying offense if convicted.
Must pass criminal history background check. No felonies.
Must be eligible to own, possess or receive a firearm under the provisions of state or federal law.
Applicant must be required to authorize a mental health check – Involuntary Commitments to mental health institutions may be disqualifying.
Must not have a current 50b or a domestic violence conviction.

Tips:

Go to your counties website and see exactly what you need.
Complete what you can online to speed up the process.
Get the process started a month before you feel that you want to purchase your firearm.
Once you have it, make a copy for your own records and keep it in a designated folder.
When you go to purchase your pistol you must bring it with you and hand over the original, even in a private sale.

Links for nearby counties.

March 7 2020

Lessons From The White Settlement Church Shooting in Texas.

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First a CW. The video linked is security footage live streamed of the church service where two attendees and the gunman were killed. Please be aware that the video contains footage of the attack and that this post is a breakdown on what happened and what lessons we can learn from it. Exit from this post if you believe the footage and discussion of the event is to difficult to view.

Watch the video in a separate tab to analyze the lessons I’ve outlined in this post.

In the town of White Settlement, TX a man armed with what appears to be a pistol grip shotgun, killed two members of the West Freeway Church. The whole encounter unfolded in a total of 13 seconds with the exchange of fire between the gunman and the security team lasting less than 4 seconds. Footage captured is gruesome and show how ugly violent encounters can be, as well as how quick they can unfold. This footage is especially relevant to anyone doing security for a house of worship or volunteering to help secure a community event.

There are several lessons that I’ve gleaned from the footage.

Reporting has stated that the church security team was already aware of the individual and keeping an eye on him. In the video he appears not to be dressed in the same manner as everyone else and was alone. The security team has to strike a balance between vigilance and also creating a welcoming atmosphere for attendees. You will have to do the same if you do security for your meetings. Opposite of racial profiling, which is biased, enacts racism, and actually prevents you from accurately identifying a real threat because your are living out prejudices rather then responding to reality, situational profiling means that you are attuned to group aesthetics, verbals, para-verbals, and nonverbal communication norms in a given situation while paying attention to those who don’t quite fit the mold. Maybe its the way someone is dressed, or how they manage space between them and others, the tone and inflection of how they communicate with others. From the footage its fairly obvious that a man in a long black pulled-up hoodie sitting alone in the church is not quite a fit for that setting. In a different church that may be a norm, but not here. Whatever the situation, security teams should work to attune themselves to folks that stick out, communicate that to their team, and strategically position people that are part of the security team in a way that enables them to quickly respond should something happen without bringing attention to themselves. It does appear that the church security team did in fact do this. They had one security person behind him, another to the right of him in a church seat, and a third (who ended up putting a head shot on him) also behind and to the right of him. It’s also been reported that there was a second person, who I’m not able to identify in the video, that put a shot on the gunman. In all he had at least three security people within 10-15 yards of him, and likely a fourth.

Obviously situational profiling and strategic positioning alone is not enough. The biggest impression I got from the video is that the security team failed to respond to pre-attack indicators once the gunman stood up and had what seemed to be an exchange with the usher. From the time that the shooter got up from his seat and squared his shoulders on the usher, folks in the security team should have been closing distance. They should have certainly responded when he leaned forward and had words with the usher. Unfortunately the first victim on the security team remained seated during that exchange and did not stand up until the gunman was pulling his weapon. It’s hard to see, but behind the liveleak logo at the top left of the screen, you can see the man who put a shot on gunman seconds after the shooting started. He also had quite a delayed response to all the pre-attack indicators. Perhaps he was paying attention to something else, or assumed that his other security team member was going to handle it. It’s been reported that he was the leader of the church security team, and being that they already had suspicion about the gunman, its difficult to understand why he wasn’t paying close attention when he was in the loop. In a perfect response he and the closest security team member would have been paying attention and closed in on the would be shooter as soon as he showed aggression.

Of course its easy to diagnose and pick apart a response after the fact. I’m not blaming the victims here, however we do need to gain an understanding in areas of improvement and ask ourselves honestly if we are training ourselves to effectively respond in terrible situations.

The first victim was the security team member sitting next to the usher who was shot moments later. His response struck me in a more profound way than anything else in the video. We have already covered that he didn’t respond to the pre-attack indicators, but he also responded very slowly and casually after the gun was pulled out. As the gun came out he stood up at a casual pace, stood completely upright, looked away from the gunman (perhaps at his drawing arm), didn’t square his shoulders on to the threat, and after struggling to get the gun out finally unholstered. As he brought the gun forward it didn’t appear that he was trying to get his support hand on the gun or even really get it into the fight with any kind of violence of action. From the time the gunman had his weapon pulled out, to the time the security team member had unholstered is firearm, a total of three and a half seconds passed.

This slow response appears to be what’s called normalcy bias. It’s the predisposition of the human brain to solve problems in a default manner. Immanent threats to your life are not common so the brain has to work through its default solutions before it comes to a realistic conclusion, sometimes it might not land in reality. Data from research scientists on normalcy bias state that 70% of people display normalcy bias during disasters. This behavior is seen in many other videos and reports of mass shootings. For example, during the Las Vegas shooting folks defaulted into believing that the sounds of gunshots where fireworks or that the sound system was malfunctioning. In the recent El Paso shooting, victims who survived reported saying out loud, “this is not happening” while the event unfolded. The brain isn’t able to effectively process the anomaly and lands on flat out denial, obfuscation, or easily explainable solutions while it “mills” to process all the data its receiving.

Lots of folks imagine that people would be running everywhere and a mass panic would immediately ensue. If you watch the video again, look at the man in the blue/green sweater and white button up right at the middle of the screen, it appears that he notices the gunman as he is drawing out the shotgun. When the shots begin to ring out he hardly moves, and continues to not move through the whole sequence. You will also notice that the shooter actually got off a third shot that was redirected upwards just as he was killed. If he wasn’t killed in that moment, he would have been shooting right in that mans direction, yet he remains unmoved. That is the brain struggling to quickly process all the terrible data its being presented with. We can’t say for sure whether that’s normalcy bias or just freezing up, but both reactions are things security minded people need to be aware of and overcome. In the Las Vegas shooting, this church shooting, and the Christchurch Massacre in New Zealand, footage clearly shows the crowd laying down rather than taking decisive action.

In some manner normalcy bias this is positive, normalcy bias keeps us from ducking under a car every time we hear a firework or a loud bang. Imagine everyone trying to running from the concession stand during a NFL game because they heard a loud bang they didn’t know all the context around the noise. Its probably pyrotechnics, not a gunman. SO we don’t all stampede and trample each other to get out over nothing. It keeps us from becoming so hyper-vigilant that we negatively impact our daily living. Normalcy bias also prevents mass panic and utter chaos in the moments following a calamity. From a security prospective we need to train for efficient threat recognition and how to overcome normalcy bias.

To overcome normalcy bias you need to train yourself and your team with preparation. Preparations means having an exit plan and a clear set of “trip-wires.” If you see someone pulling a gun what is the protocol or guiding principles for the response? If you hear gunshots but don’t see where its coming from what are your guidelines. Once you have your guidelines you, personally, need to visualize different scenarios and how you need to realistically respond. Visualization creates pathways in the brain to respond effectively in an unprecedented situation so that you aren’t frozen or acting normally to an imminent threat. Better yet, it familiarizes you with unprecedented situations so that they are no longer unprecedented. Deadly threats need to be treated with extreme violence of action, your SOP’s should reflect that and the way you carry yourself needs to be balanced between being a phenomenal and compassionate human during calm times and a ruthless one when its go time. The jump from empathetic and feeling to decisive and brutal isn’t a easy leap, so having clear and ethical tripwires paired with visualization is key for security. At the same time, balance yourself with awareness of confirmation bias and don’t become hyper-vigilant or aggressive. Find an equilibrium.

Three other simple lessons can be gleaned from the response of the first victim. He had many options available to him in terms of drawing. He could have drawn from a seated position, which is something we need to keep in mind and practice. Perhaps he felt the need to stand up because he was carrying on the small of his back. This is one reason I advocate for appendix carry, simply because it is more efficient movement and less likely to be obstructed. Small of the back draws are harder to clear clothing for, involves much more arm movement, as well as shoulder flexibility that many folks can struggle with. I suspect some of those factors led this victim to take his eyes off the threat and look at his hand when his draw didn’t go smoothly. Unfortunately that appears to have cost him his life.

Additionally, this is why we have a par time of two seconds for a draw to first shot on target. In the video it appears that the shooter is concentrating on the usher and not the security person standing up, but then he notices him and shoots. That whole sequence from stepping back, drawing the gun, intimidating the usher, to picking up on the security team member, backing up five steps, to his first shot, took nearly four seconds. A two second draw to first shot could have ended the threat much sooner.

Last, it would have been beneficial to get off the X while you are drawing the firearm. Our first victim didn’t do this either. Moving while drawing becomes another obstacle the gunman has to overcome to hit his targeted victims. Make sure you and your team are able to move move laterally while drawing.

Though the security leader who put a head shot on the gunman was late to respond in a general sense, after the initial BANG, he drew his gun and put a shot on target in just over a second. Speed and accuracy are essential in any gun fight. Also notice that he was somewhere between 10 and 15 yards. A head shot from that distance, under pressure like that, in less than two seconds, takes a great deal of skill. Are you proficient enough in your firearm handling to perform any such task? Another point of interest is that he didn’t unload on the gunman. He demonstrated judgement between each shot, which was essential because he had people between him and the gunman. You need to make sure you are incorporating judgement into your training, not just shooting fast and accurate.

For the second victim, the usher the gunman originally targeted, he was stuck with some very difficult choices. If you are unarmed and within arms distance and have a gun pulled on you, a best practice is to actually close the distance and dominate the firearm and the arms of the gunman. Guns are distance weapons, closing the distance even more if you are in arms reach allows you to do what is Active Self Protection calls the 5 D’s + One. Control Distance, Deflect, Dominate, Distract, Disarm, and Disable. The usher was complying with the gunman, and we need to remember that compliance is absolutely an option, but it may not always be the winning option. To give yourself more options, like using the five D’s plus one, you’ve got to practice to get the attitude and skills to pull it off.

Now on to the follow through of the security team after the gunman was down. First, the security lead got into a position so that he could see the gunman and continued to keep his gun on him. He also was smart in that as he moved he was careful not to flag other church goers. Some other members of the security team followed that lead and managed not to flag people as they moved. However two responding security people look like they flagged several people in the upper body and head. Please make sure you practice with your people proper muzzle awareness and how to move safely without flagging teammates or innocent folks. Safest position here would have been ceiling, which a few of the security folks did. The second safest is the ground, but remember there are lost of people moving around and one the ground.

Though neither shooting victim lived through the encounter, it appears that moments after the gunman is down that someone comes to their aid. You cant tell in the video if medical aid was given, but that would be ideal. You need to not only have the right equipment, like TQ’s, homeostatic gauze, chest seals, etc., you need to have folks that can adequately deploy those tools. We can’t speculate on if that happened here, and there really isn’t any need to, you can provide excellent immediate aid and it still not be enough. Regardless of that fact, those are essential life saving skills and any security team needs to have a dedicated medical role. It’s best practice for teams to have those tools on their person in the form of an IFAK. If you can manage to equip everyone with an IFAK, containing a similar loadout the medic is cognizant of, that is ideal.

What happens to you and your security team in the aftermath is extremely important. I learned this in Charlottesville after the domestic terrorist attack carried out by James Fields during the fascist Unite the Right Rally. There could be more than one attacker and more than one horrible attack. After an attack, don’t get tunnel vision and continue to assess your situation. Our security team was tasked with securing the park we where running out of. We had a huge influx of people coming to the site with medic needs, as well as the processing the trauma of what happened – a white nationalist intentionally running over a thick group of protesters. When some of our members returned from doing emergency first aid they where pretty messed up from what they saw, but we still needed to secure the space. We didn’t know if this was coordinated attack and if there was more coming. Fortunately we were able to swap people out and effectively became somewhat of a safe trauma processing center. We’ve referred to what happened to those returning members as “psychological causalities” in the time since then because they effectively returned with little operational capacity and diminished judgement. Security teams need to stay vigilant especially if a threat is still looming or unknown. You must maintain sound judgement and not make purely reactive decisions.

If you are doing security be prepared to see terrible stuff and know when you or a teammate needs to tap out. Build capacity in your movement and acceptance of that fact so people can have the ability to step away and recover in the aftermath of such terrible attacks. Remove, isolate, or otherwise tactfully redirect people in your team who are made into temporary psychological casualties, and develop a culture that honors that limit. Heaping love, not judgement, on folks that have maxed out their capacity. It’s a sign of humanity and deep empathy to push yourself to that point, and its a matter of best practice to not be involved once people hit that point. Have clear standard operating procedures and protocols for identifying that behavior and how to deal with it so folks don’t take it to personal. If its a group norm and group expectation it’s much easier to address.

Last, but not least, pulling security carries with it an increased possibility of death and severe injury. Don’t ever forget that when you sign up and don’t let your formation treat security in a cavalier or casual manner. For that manner, don’t let folks in the movement treat it lightly either. The most dangerous security work I’ve done was when we had short notice and the organizers didn’t really have scope or any real grounding in what the reality on the ground looked like. They thought they had security and we knew that things were fucked but they didn’t have ears to hear it. I wish in that instance that we would have put our foot down and them have to shift their actions closer to the reality. Don’t be cannon fodder for stupid posturing and don’t be a useful idiot just because you are down for intense scenarios.

I want to emphasize this- We don’t want to die, we don’t want to hurt others, we want all of us to live, and we don’t venerate the warrior. Becoming a warrior isn’t something to aspire to or center yourself around. Destroy the reverence you have for “the gun” and those who wield it. Stop mythologizing armed praxis and looking at it with rose tinted glasses. Every time I do security I recognize that the outcome two of these church goers suffered could be my ending, with my family left behind to pick up the pieces. If you’re going to do the this kinda work, center yourself instead on the innate value of life, not on taking it. As you train let life be your motivation and check any attitude that is glorifies violence even in self defense. Defense is a position we are forced into by folks seeking to damage you, not something we are itching for. I hope you can view defense as an act of self love, of love for your community, rather than some blood lust for violence. If you see that attitude in your security team – address it and if they don’t budge – kick them out.

February 27 2020

Transformation In Self Defense

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Six years ago I was driving down an Appalachian road to seed my plot in a community garden. Though I was traveling nearly ten miles per hour over, a rough looking man in a small red truck was trailing me quite close. After a few miles of his passive pestering I made a poor decision and broke checked him quite hard. Our cars didn’t touch but his reaction was immediate. From my rear view I could see him in a rage. Swerving his vehicle, flashing his lights, honking the horn, slamming his fist into the steering wheel. He was unhinged. In youthful arrogance, I wasn’t too worried until I saw the man lean to the passenger side of the vehicle and point a small silver object at my car.

I can’t be sure it was a revolver, but I was convinced he had just pointed a gun at me. My mind went into hyper-drive at that moment and I stopped making conscious decisions. Just action – reaction. I took the first hard left available to me and sped away. He wasn’t able to react in time but managed to scream out his window something to the tune of “Ill fucking kill you!” as he passed. I decided to quickly drive to my partners workplace down the road and get inside the building then block the doors or something. In my panic I wasn’t having full thoughts.

I got to a four way stop nearly a block away from my left turn. As I passed though I saw the little red truck hauling towards me. I blew through and sped away, he trailed, having made an unbelievable amount of ground on me considering he had to go down a block, over a block, and up a block. As I approached the building, I noticed a man with his daughter swinging in a park at a short distance. I parked and quickly ran to the door- it was locked. Sundays. The red truck was still approaching and having exhausted my only plan, my mind went completely blank. Flight, Fight, or Freeze. I had already fled, I knew I couldn’t fight, so my mind rested on freeze. I took a buck knife out of my car and dazily held it in my hand outside of the car. I had just a blurry sense of “I’m gonna get shot” in my head. Helpless. It would have been smart to stay in the car or drive over the grass to a different road, or do something decisive, but nope, stand out of my mobile shelter with a knife is where I landed.

When I caught a little sense I looked up and saw the red truck idling outside the entrance of the park. He stayed there for 5 minutes, probably thinking if I was worth shooting or something. Then he left. I don’t know why he didn’t come finish me, maybe it was the father and child in the park being witness? I’ll never know. In my haste I misplaced my keys and couldn’t find them at all. I called my partner who showed up 30 minutes later with spare keys. In the time between their arrival I was still frightened that the red truck might come back and was smacked with the realization that I definitely could have died without much of a fight had homeboy decided to follow through. It was the first time in my life I felt I needed a gun…

Fast forward several years. I had moved into a very reactionary area in rural North Carolina that is still a bit of a hotbed of white-nationalist and neo-confederate organizing. I was also put on a crisis de-escalation team at my job where you had to overcome the flight-freeze response to keep others safe in dangerous situations on a fairly regular basis, and had gotten pretty good at it. I understood what adrenaline and fear did to my mind and how to direct it.

Important to my personal story, I started some anti-racist organizing and in 2017 organized an anti-klan demonstration in Asheboro, NC after finding out about a scheduled cross burning and KKK klavern in the area. Vice did a small garbage documentary on it and tried to paint folks standing against violent racism as armed provocateurs. A local white nationalist group found it and thoroughly doxxed me. They featured it on 4chan and 8chan, the latter being an explicitly neo-nazi forum whose users are connected to several targeted killings and mass shootings. They posted not only my name and photo, but pictures of my home, my car, my farm animals, mentioned my partner, and promised to kill my infant child. Usually doxxing is an intimidation tactic by folks that live at a distance and leveraged anonymously through the internet. Typically it’s not something to be too overly concerned about. However, the group that doxxed me was a trained white nationalist militia with multiple members within a 7-15 minute drive of my home. I had seen a few of them out and about the community before we were aware of each other. Beyond that, my inbox was pinged every now and again with agitated neighbors who stumbled across my doxx in a somewhat mainline right wing media outlet. On a few occasions I was told to, “remember what we do to commies in this part of North Carolina” alluding to the 1979 Greensboro Massacre where several klan members shot into a crowd of protesters and murdered several anti-racist activists on live television. Despite that they acquitted of any crime in the court of law, which resulted in a wave of Klan violence across the country. Impunity.

Needless to say, I was hyper-vigilant from that point forward. I am a queer and anti-racist organizer in the most openly hostile area I have ever lived in. However, this time was different than when I had a gun pulled on me years prior. I was familiar with armed self defense, adequately trained, and put a lot of thought and time into firearms for self defense. I’d learned some medic skills associated with gunshot and stab wounds. I had familiarized myself with North Carolina’s self defense laws and legal thresholds. I could reliably hit what I was aiming at under pressure and learned a good deal of self defense tactics. I hardened my house, set up preventative measures and early alarms, had an escape route and discussed it with my family. I was prepared and this time if fear and an adrenaline dump came, I knew that my training would enable me to fight back if I had no other option. No more freezing. My mind was resolved that if people wanted to harm me, my family, or for that matter my broader community, that they would have to overcome a well prepared person. I’m not a soft target anymore.

The transformation I went through between those years, and continuing now, has been profoundly empowering. I am confident in my ability to put up a fight and do not have to rely on the government or police to protect me. In fact, even if I didn’t have those skills it doesn’t appear smart to do so. Only 30% of violent crimes are responded to by the police in less than 5 minutes. Over 60% take six minutes to an hour for police to arrive. That’s a lot of time to handle a life threatening situation. Most armed encounters happen in seconds with little build up. By acquiring these skills I have affirmed to myself that my life is valuable, that I deserve to live, and that anyone trying to snuff my torch will be met with a capable opponent.

The power of that can not be understated for minorities and targeted people. Black, brown, trans, fem, queer, elderly, disabled, and many more – society on a structural level devalues your life. It denies you access to health care, overrides your choice, inflicts mass injustice, disadvantages you economically, and both erases and rationalizes your oppression- even blames you for it. It diminishes your worth because of who you are, but by arming yourself, by skilling up your abilities, you are undercutting those cultural norms. By arming yourself you are declaring your self worth and re-situating both your power and agency back on your own shoulders. In the essay, “Notes for a critical theory of community self defense,” the author argues that self defense, especially when we connect up with one another, is a direct action to overcoming oppression and is therefore transformative not only on the personal level, but on a community level. It is feminism incarnate. It is queer liberation. It is black and brown liberation. It is an active challenge and dismantling of the structural pressures which work to take our very lives through all manners and mechanisms of violence.

The transformation that I went through is what Armed Margins is dedicated to dispersing throughout our community. It is a project that seeks to not only equip vulnerable and targeted people with the ability to defend themselves, but to also connect with one another and thereby transform our communities.

-Mitch

Like what Armed Margins is doing? Find out how to support here.

February 20 2020

Pro Tip: Make Range Days Count

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First Shot Of The Day
Incorporate Time Pressure
Have A Standard
Identify and Diagnose After You Push To Failure

Make Range Days Count Here are some tips I use to keep my range days from turning into a waste.

1) Have a skill you want to work on and a drill to get feedback on that skill.

2) Pay close attention to your performance during the first shooting sequence. Real life self defense encounters don’t have warm up shots. Personally, the first skill drill I run is a timed draw to first shot from 15 yards (or whatever yardage you’d like). A fast and accurate draw to first show is an essential armed self defense skill.

3) Have standards. That means not blaming the gun for a poor performance or making the margin for error so big that you never challenge yourself. Getting hits anywhere on a silhouette target isn’t good enough.

4) Push to failure. Are you drilling holes through holes on your paper target? You won’t improve if you aren’t pushing yourself until you find your limit. Of course find a way to do this in a safe manner. Change the distance, add time pressure, incorporate movement, embed complex decision making, increase your heart rate, switch up shooting positions, add reloads, shoot in shitty conditions. All of those elements could be factors in a self defense shooting. If you are absolutely slaying it on the range all the time you aren’t doing yourself a favor. If you ever do a private session with me, I’ll make a conscious effort to find your failure point. False confidence is not acceptable in self defense and could get you killed.

5) Identify and diagnose failure points. Once you push to failure figure out what you did wrong. Maybe you jerked the trigger, or flinched, or didn’t catch your front site post, or you found yourself going to fast. It could be any number of things. If you don’t identify the problem how can you fix it? Get to know thyself.

6) Isolate skills. Once you’ve identified your problem area(s), isolate one skill at a time. Decrease the difficulty of your drills around that skill until you are consistent, then run your original drill again and see if you’ve improved.

Follow these 6 easy steps every time you go to the range and you are on your way to continual improvement.

-Mitch

Like what Armed Margins is doing? Find out how to support here.

February 17 2020

You can shoot but can you defend yourself?

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You Can Shoot But Can You Defend Yourself?

There is a lot of talk in gun culture about the features of this gun or that gun, the benefits of different barrel twist rates, how some accessory is advantageous in some certain scenario, or how to set up your plate carrier. Those are all fine and dandy, however the expenditure of time and energy that people invest into configuring their load-out for every contingency is largely disproportionate to the practical matters of self and community defense. Bottom line, conflict will rarely escalate to a level that justifies a lethal means of defending yourself. You need to have the skills to scale effective interventions during escalating situations.

Now I’m certainly not implying that certain demographics don’t incur more instances of targeted violence than others or to wholesale forgo preparation for armed encounters. However, let me ask you this: Are you more likely to have to confront an unarmed aggressive individual at work or to get into a firefight with multiple threats?

Take your Ego out of the Fight

From a legal and moral standpoint, you can’t simply reach for a knife or a gun just because someone slapped you or called you a derogatory slur. If you want to avoid the legal wrappings that will put you through a meat grinder after a critical incident, it is absolutely vital that you scale your response in accordance with the changing situation at hand. In fact, in North Carolina it’s written into the law. That means not pulling a gun because someone tailgates you or shouts “bitch!” from across the road (you’d be surprised how often this occurs).

It’s important for folks of vulnerable and targeted demographics to consider the unpleasant fact that you will undergo more scrutiny by law enforcement, the judicial system, and society at large, than white male counterparts in the aftermath of a defensive shooting. This is all the more reason to have scalable interventions. You give yourself more options to avoid having to use a firearm altogether and establish a more solid defense in the eyes of onlookers because you attempted de-escalation.

In my opinion, weapons are NOT scalable to the vast majority of situations, and that is precisely what is so disgusting about modern America’s popular gun culture. To the detriment of folks everywhere, people are very ready to go from 0 to 100 chiefly due to their own egos and pride. They lust for it. For many, owning a firearm has become part of their identity, something that they are proud of and boast about. Which hey, by all means, be proud of who you are and your hobbies. But for you dear reader, don’t mistake a tool as a replacement to common sense and simple human decency. Blood lust and aggression have no place in the world of self defense.

Though there is no requirement to retreat in North Carolina, if you can safely disengage from an aggressive person, folks who are carrying should make a genuine effort to do so. Someone bumped you in the shoulder and called you a p*ssy? Apologize and walk away. Is there a homophobic asshat shouting in your face? If you’re armed, it’s wise not to engage to the extent possible. Is there’s a kid breaking into your unoccupied car in the driveway? Don’t take human life over your possessions. The only justifiable use of your firearm is when you are in genuine fear of serious injury or in fear for your life.

Shooting in self defense is something you are forced into. Its a form of subjugation. That level of violence is an immediate oppression on your body. It takes away your choice, devalues your life, and threatens your health. It’s a very real trauma being inflicted on you, maybe motivated by inflated ego, or toxic misogyny, or racial hatred, or any number of oppressive ‘isms we are trying to fight – but your life matters and you shouldn’t allow people to run your life into the ground without putting up a fight. Conjure the spirit of “queer as in fuck you.”

The point I’m making here is that an intelligent and strategic self defender that can balance between being a compassionate loving human being and a capable individual that will staunchly, even violently, defend their life, will ALWAYS be more effective than an aggressive, callus, and egotistical one. Only after you have exhausted all the tools at your disposal to avoid a conflict, THEN it’s go time. Sometimes that decision has to be made extremely quick, other times there is breathing room for principled disengagement. It’s incumbent to every armed self defender to be capable of basic de-escalation tactics.

What do you REALLY need for your everyday survival?

The everyday reality is that you are far more likely to have to manage a situation than to fire a shot. Even so, if you’re carrying you are still armed, and that takes some thoughtful consideration. If you are serious about defending yourself, you should be developing skills and general awareness outside the use of a firearm.

On a practical level, knowing empty hand concepts, verbal/non-verbal de-escalation, pre-attack indicators, and threat assessment are the skills that will keep you safe. None of those involve range time.

Furthermore, if you have to enter non-permissive environments you will not have a gun on your person and must lean on the skills mentioned above. These settings come in all shapes and sizes: religious centers, schools, government buildings, airports, demonstrations, maybe your workplace. In those circumstances, your best tools are sound judgement, situational awareness, a clear exit, and good communication to prevent potential conflicts from erupting.

Try as hard as you’d like, there are just times when your firearm won’t be within immediate reach for one reason or another. Better to sharpen the tools that you can carry with you anywhere rather than the ones you can only wield in select environments and extreme circumstances.

In my four years working on a homeless outreach and mental health crisis team, I have seen a good share of violence and intervened in several situations. Some instances included deadly weapons such as knives and the presence of firearms. Despite the threats, I can say in hindsight that having a gun on my person would not have given me a distinct advantage in handling those particular situations. In fact, I never had a firearm on me while conducting that work. The need for a firearm did not materialize because I was able to effectively intervene before things escalated to that level.

In addition to firearm skills, those unarmed skills I used to control my environment as things escalated, are capabilities I want to translate to the students of Armed Margins. The skills I depended on the most were almost entirely centered on managing space between individuals, directing the environment and onlookers, verbal and non-verbal communication, simple clear directives, and observing the body language of agitated persons. I’m not encouraging you not to carry as often as possible, but I want to make clear that you are severely selling yourself short if you think shooting fast and accurate is the penultimate of self defense. 10 times out of 10 I would choose to work alongside a person of moderate shooting skill, solid judgement, and the ability to scale interventions, than an excellent shooter who is aggressive, has no ability to scale, and is escalatory.

-Mitch

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