School Safety: Mindset and Survival

I have been away from writing for over a month now, taking some time to get to know my new daughter as she has just come into the world to meet her wonderful big sister.

Lt Col. Dave Grossman has written numerous books on the topic of survival mindset and the psychological realities killing from both the military/law enforcement realm as well as the civilian setting of criminal/terrorist violence. He very astutely developed the “social classification” of personality types that humans tend to fit into. To paraphrase his work (I strongly suggest you read his material as it is authoritative and well researched), there are; the wolves – criminals and terrorists with no moral compunction about using violence to get what they want and who comprise a small minority of the population but who have huge influence because of their willingness to use violence; the sheep – the people who do not know how to use violence or are remiss to do so because of moral concerns and look to others to save them or accept subjugation rather than risk fighting, forming the majority of society; and the sheepdog – those who are proficient in the use of violence and will not hesitate to use it – but only use it on the wolves to defend the sheep.

Now this is where the psychology gets interesting. The wolves look for the path of least resistance to gain their bounties and thus the sheep infirm and unable along with the timid sheep who would rather be put upon that stand up to protect themselves are the prime targets. The sheep try to justify why the wolves think like they do, trying to fit the social conditioning they cling to into the frame of behavior the wolves display in their asocial minds. The sheep try to mollify the wolves, and in so doing empower the wolves and embrace their own servitude, all the while protesting the presence of the sheepdogs, whose actions will defeat the wolves. The sheep only like the sheepdogs when they fear for their lives and need someone to act against the wolves rather than simply talk about acting or try to explain away the wolves actions.

So it is in the field of educational safety concerning the issue of asocial violence in school settings. Columbine, Virginia Tech, and too many other school shootings, knifings and other attacks have paralyzed the educational community because they cannot effectively stop the violence using the cry to the sheepdog since most of the violence is done before and effective response can reasonably be expected. They can’t talk to the wolves and make nice because the wolves just want to kill them, and they don’t know how to act with any sense of individual proactive response since they have never trained or admitted the need for such training.

We have seen gun control pushes, cameras and all other manner of bromides pushed but the bottom line is until our educators mandate cost-effective tactical combatives training like the TEACHSAFE(tm) Educaotr Emergency Violence Repsonse Training program to give teachers and students hiding in place a chance to defend the classroom, we will have ever mounting body counts in our educational workplace. We, both members public and educators, should insist that, however unpleasant the idea of responding to asocial violence in schools may be for our teachers and administrators, they learn the essentials of defending the classroom and other designated safe rooms in a school in order to provide stop gap protection until the threat is over. Only when we face this issue head on will we overcome the paralysis that fear and ignorance have created in our emergency violence response training as it now stands.

What happened to “Turn the other Cheek”?

It is a relatively common occurrence for me to train someone and either because they have trained with me for awhile or because the brutality of the nature of what we do shocks them, they ask me if I have any kind of religious faith and, if I do, does teaching self-protection run counter to my beliefs. When asked this I tell people that I am a Christian although I probably spend far more time in the Old Testament than the New. I don’t proselytize, although I probably should, I simply explain, as best I can within my belief, how striking down someone who commits violence against innocents or who declares your existence to be cause for violence, is not prohibited but rather accepted and sometimes directed by God. If we are using the Ten Commandments, justly killing someone is not wrong, only murder is.

This seems to confuse people when considered with the fact I am somewhat vociferous in my insistence that personal defense is a personal responsibility and the fact that what we teach is so blatantly aimed at maiming or killing the attacker. It shouldn’t. The Bible is very clear on the fact that defending oneself, one’s faith and God’s honor, are acceptable use of force scenarios when facing asocial attack or eradication by other belief systems. Often, I have pointed out to me the scene in the garden when Jesus is being seized and prepared for trial that one of his followers cut the ear off the high priest's servant with a sword and is rebuked by Christ for doing so, or the example of turning the other cheek. Unfortunately the context and broader vision of these examples are often lost and neither support the conclusion the Christ acted against the concept of self-protection as so many seem to think it does.

Jesus was rebuking the man for striking for perhaps several reasons, not the least of which was the fact that this was interfering in the plans God had laid for His Son. Another factor might have been he did not strike at a soldier but at an innocent servant and thus it was not an act of self-protection but an aggression versus an non-combatant or bystander.

Neither of these preclude self-protection and when Jesus heals the man’s ear, it is righting a wrong, showing that force against innocents is not acceptable and that man should understand God’s plan sometime requires sacrifice for others beyond our understanding. It is why people are amazed when a soldier falls on a grenade for another or goes to war to protect against aggression from another group, when a police officer stands up to armed thugs, and why a man dies defending his wife and child, or fighting the tyranny a government which tries to impose on the rights and freedoms we recognized in the Christian foundations of the United Sates. Someone should point out their example as ones that liken them to Jesus Christ’s life and the sacrifice He, and God in giving His Son, to atone for our weakness and sin and, in so doing, protect us.

I explain, if they seek a more thorough expounding, that I believe that God made man’s body to be vulnerable to true violence as a chance to even the field between those with the physical means to succeed on the battlefield or back alley and those who would rather never raise their hand to another. Like David and Goliath, size is irrelevant IF you understand certain basic facts about the body’s design and, perhaps most importantly, IF you refuse to surrender and choose to fight for that which is right, i.e. the right to not be made a victim. I believe that the reason a 90 lb individual can destroy the physical being of a 350 lb person easily is that God provides the means to acquire such knowledge (our mind) and the ability to apply it (our body) if we pay attention to the principles of how the body was built, the moral context of our use of deadly/maiming trauma, and how we can employ deadly/maiming trauma to another if we are faced with having to.

Likewise, we are susceptible to the exact same trauma should we either choose to attack another unjustly or if we choose not to defend the life God has blessed us with. Now remember, this is my belief and as such is my personal conviction. It is one of the factors for my advocacy for potential victims of criminal, asocial violence to become proactive in asserting their rights to defend themselves when threatened with like violence.

You do not have to agree with the premises of my faith to employ what I teach; the physical realities of our body structure are such as to render what we teach a constant, factually proven reality. If you gouge out a man’s eye, his reaction will be exactly what we tell you it will be and so on for each of the specific attack vectors we will show you during your training. Whatever your belief system teaches you is your own whether it is religiously based or not. Many prefer to verse it in the religion of science and that is their prerogative.

The bottom line is whatever belief system you choose, the physiology of the human body is a fact and so the system I teach will be able to defeat the purveyors of asocial violence, IF YOU CHOOSE TO STAND AGAINST THAT EVIL. There it is; the bottom line. You have to choose right from wrong, to know when turning the other cheek means to let someone call you a name or insult you in an ego driven moment of hubris rather than engaging that individual and someone getting very, very hurt, or very, very dead. Being slapped by someone posed no imminent threat to Jesus Christ, it concerned only ego and pride, not physical trauma. This is a lesson in social behavior.

By turning the other cheek in an asocial event like war or criminal violence we voiding the very question of good versus evil, and ceding the victory to evil. When you are choosing between being hurt or killed or to act against that immoral application of force, to destroy the assailant rather than allow evil to triumph the lesson Christ taught by turning the other cheek is misplaced, it was meant to address the social not the asocial.

It is in this larger context that action against asocial violence is not prohibited but encouraged in the text of the two Testaments which form our biblical tradition. Building the city wall with a brick in one hand and a sword in the other recognizes the essential nature of social/asocial conflict – to keep out the wolves from the homes of our families we need to be able to protect the walls of our society. The only thing that can protect against asocial violence and its thuggery and intimidation is the willingness to fight against it. No country has ever had secure borders without establishing as fact the people's willingness to fight, kill and die exists if invaded. Choosing to be a righteous person rather than to allow immorality because of cowardice is central to that, and as it is true for a country, it is true for its citizenry.

SOMETHING FOR NOTHING: The belief you are owed what you want

It always stunned me, when I began teaching middle school, the number of my students who thought they were owed everything they wanted. That attitude was continued on and when I began to teach high school it was being cemented using the language of rights. The scary part of this is that both the parents and the school system largely affirmed student’s rights as superior to, rather than equal to, any other person’s rights. And even more worrisome was the fact that nobody taught the concept of corollary duties or responsibilities incumbent upon those who wish to claim some particular right.

We give away rights as though they have been earned cheaply, and the scary part of this is the assumption turns to factual assertion when mouthed loudly enough and for a long enough duration. This is exactly what is endangering the law-abiding sections of our society. We see illegal immigrants and the leeches that represent them use rights language to sue a man who arrested them after they killed his livestock and trespassed, destroying his property on the way to their illegal entry. The crux of the case? He violated their civil rights by apprehending them at gun point and scaring them with his dog.

We see examples such as the order in California to release, regardless of the outcome faced by the non-convict, law-abiding population by releasing more than 30,000 felons because their living conditions aren’t up to Holiday Inn standards. Why? Because it violates their rights. Hey, here is a novel idea – THEY ARE IN JAIL FOR COMMITTING CRIMES. If they don’t like the accommodations, DON’T COMMIT CRIMES!

This situation is absurd. We worry about defending our homes because the law says we are supposed to flee from robbers and give up our property so we don’t hurt them by defending it. We are supposed to call 911 and wait for the state sponsored help to save us or, more probably call an ambulance or coroner’s wagon to deal with what state the felon decided to leave us in. There is a distinct change needed to the Constitution and the Declaration if this is really going to become our mantra and it should begin with “We the SHEEPLE, in order to become the perfect victims….”

Stand up to legislators that try to defeat your right to self-protection in any fashion. Hold criminals accountable. If they commit crimes give them tough sentences in facilities that aren’t comfortable so they don’t want to be criminals. No television and lots of work details. Tell youth gangs and outlaws we will treat them as exactly that – outlaws. If they want to be outside the law that is okay with us – they then give up their rights since they refuse to recognize anyone else’s so we can deal with them like the other vermin we find in the barn and get rid of them. The sexy star appeal of “gangsta” life might be less so if the were shot on sight for choosing to try and victimize us. There may be thousands of them but if we stand up against them we will realize there are millions of us.

Hold judges accountable for releasing dangerous felons, if the judge lets them go and they re-offend, charge the judge as well. If the lawyers who defend them commit ethical breeches put them in jail and disbar them.

If our politicians make laws that endanger us and terror attacks kill our innocents, charge and try the politicians.

We are “civilizing” ourselves into non-existence. The goons and thugs of Washington and the criminal world are destroying the very essence of character that built this country. We need to reclaim this land as a nation of deep thought and moral action within the realities of the world, not on the actions of the ACLU and other enslaving entities trying to empower those who do wrong.

Getting People Hurt

When asked what I do, I face almost constantly the quizzical look, trying to decipher what I meant by “teaching combatives”. Then comes the inevitable clarifier, “oh, you teach martial arts?” Well no. Not even close. At least not in the way that the VAST majority of people teach martial arts today, and what martial arts have become. You see they have become a sport. You can compete in today’s martial arts, and that is not what a “martial” art was about at all when it first evolved.

When martial arts were first formed it was to kill the opponent. The structure of a sporting martial arts base came when most sides trained in similar arts and so competitions could be held because there are always counters to predictable sets. This evolved from when Traditional Military Spartan Pankration, by many accounts the genesis of modern eastern arts, held competitions where status was conferred based on who died first. Gradually we have seen the necessity of combat be restricted to military groups and the citizenry gradually declines to dependency on others to protect them be it feudal Japan or Europe or modern day reliance on 911.

The martial arts of today proclaim things like using the aggressor’s energy against him or develop self-defense that, according to Cliff Crandall in an interview in the North Country Pennysaver, does not injure and other person – not even your attacker. This is the kind of statement that makes me cringe and fills me with contempt for people who seek to teach people to defend themselves with material that can’t work because the intent isn’t there. I do not know if Mr. Crandall has any field ventures other than his extensive teaching career, but as an educator who came from working hostile environments for many years I would ask him to think back to any real life-and-death experiences facing another and consider them and how they ended. Search your conscience as well because telling people they can stop criminal attack without hurting someone is, in my humble opinion, tantamount to setting them up for murder.

If you do not intend to hurt the person who is intent on hurting you, which by the way is the defining feature of an asocial attack, then you will be the victim. You do not have to hate the person or even judge them as persons, but you do have to recognize the intent and respond in kind. The only weapon that an assailant carries that is dangerous is their mind. Only their mind can formulate intent and then cause the body to take action to make it happen. Guns, knives and such are only effective as force amplifiers if the mind is in control of the body.

Watching the videos on the site Crandall and his partner Stalloch is to witness a non-fiction translation of Jim Carrey’s famous knife defense class on IN LIVING COLOR. Predetermined responses to predetermined attacks that follow the rule of “you do this and I will do this and then….” The reality is that virtually all martial arts train unrealistically for real life situations. On the street you do not have the ability to ask your opponent to attack in the particular way which your best defense is suited to repel.

The part that really scares me is people will believe this guy. They will throw away time money and develop false ideas about what asocial violence and real trauma are about and then…then they will get hurt. Or killed. Or raped, abducted, car jacked, etc. The false sense of safety instilled by people who may have good intent in their teaching serves only to create victims because they are operating under false pretense. It also makes their students And when they say that they might as well take their clients to a crack house, put a hundred in cash in their pocket, announce the fact to everyone there and shove them out the car while calling 911 to pick up the remains. Misleading and misrepresenting what it takes to survive in a truly asocial event is reckless endangerment and perhaps more akin to manslaughter or second degree murder. This kind of teaching, to defend (reactive) rather than protect (proactive) guts the essence of what martial arts was and is in direct opposition to those people who teach combatives. If only criminals can inflict trauma then only criminals can survive an asocial encounter. Teach the horrible reality of what asocial violence is so your clients never want to fight out of ego, nor should they fear criminals, because they know what is required to survive. Putting trauma into another is simple, direct and devastating but the mindset to choose to do that needs the truth of the issue to present itself so the decision becomes firmly rooted and instinctive.

Disarming a Citizenry and Training People into Victimhood

With the fear of gun owners rising at the prospect of a democrat controlled legislature there is an even more damning agenda being furthered that threatens the entire citizenry of the United States, particularly the children being educated in the public school domain. This is the disarming of their minds and programming them to think and act like victims and dependents.

While Obama and the democrats have had their first major political victory in some time, the whiplash effect may be far stronger than we anticipate. With rhetoric from people like Pelosi, Schumer, Clinton, Reid, Franks, and their ilk, we see an agenda that is eerily reminiscent of 1934 Germany. The potential disarming and control over the economy that is being sought is staggering and it is aligned with what was established 75 years ago in Europe. There are two very dangerous elements here.

The first is the disarming of the citizenry. An armed citizenry is essential to perform the actions we first see mentioned in our Declaration of Independence. It reads that

“when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a
design to reduce them under absolute Despotism,
it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their
future security.”

The surest way to enable a civilian capability to follow the guidance of our forefathers in this most sacred of duties is to have it remain armed, and this is also the best form of defense against any foreign threat to our nation. In fact, I would assert that a trained rifleman is the essence of each American’s duty to this nation and the very first requirement to assure its inherent sovereignty. I pray that Senator Obama will be able to remember and govern in a way where we never have to contemplate the words of our forefathers as a call to arms. I pray that this country will rally and give him its centrist voice as guidance to avoid pursuing the course his rhetoric and that of his rabid left-wing radicals espoused. I pray that it proves only rhetoric and not a real vision for the reshaping of America.

The second point is the indentured servitude of government jobs to prop up the ills of our capitalist system that have been induced by socialist burdens upon its tenets. We have seen a Global Poverty Tax proposed from Senator Obama (I do not recognize his creation of a fake office of president-elect, as there is no such vehicle or structure in our governmental structure – a point I would have hoped a president-elect might have known about) that illustrates his disregard for one of the primary abuses cited in The Declaration. The King was purported to have “…combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution” and make no mistake, this proposed bill does exactly that, giving away a portion of our taxation directed to the unending waste of U.N. corrupt leadership and greedy leeches is a jurisdiction ENTIRELY foreign to our constitution. Along with the continuation of socializing our economy as the Bush administration seems intent on doing, this is not a good indicator of centrist politics.

All of this sets the stage for a socio-political situation that is terrifying and the immediate point of this article and our right to self-protection. While we are being disarmed and made reliant upon government employment and handouts, the indoctrination of our youth continues in the heavily socialist halls of public education. Here students are encouraged to see the “vision” of a leader who has not been vetted in any legitimate manner by a media that used to be an effective watchdog but has lost all integrity and intellectual legitimacy, while being taught to memorize rather than think independently and avoiding logical discussion that questions the hierarchy in any manner. During the past elections I was told by many students that they are called racist for thinking independently and threatened in the hallways or embarrassed in the classroom.

This treatment of our children with systemic bullying and as unthinking automatons, creates illogical situations that allow our schools to be prime targets for those enemies who would attack us and the criminal bullies who feed on our youth without care. It is the tolling bell of our doom as a society if we purport to want a society that indeed embraces the tradition of the American Revolutionary leaders.

I have talked before about the use of 911 and teaching students to accept being bullied and hit rather than to stand up to bullies and fight back if required to defend themselves. The trend is accelerating in schools as the “no-tolerance” positions have hardened into “no thought” positions. If a kid is being bullied and we say to that child “do not fight back on pain of suspension” we are in fact saying “let the goons do what they want to you and be a good little victim.” This is absurd.

Much like those who wish to do away with gun ownership, it punishes only the law abiding. It criminalizes those who would stand up and defend the values this country was founded on and rewards the bully, criminal, terrorist and sycophant. Bullies and their ilk get what they want, a victim they can prey upon without fear of reprisal. Schools are rarely going to call the authorities and have charges pressed if they can bury it themselves by suspending both kids so the bully gets a free victim, and time off from the place he hates to be and the good kid gets to have a beating and then get thrown out of school and have a mark on his academic record that might hurt his college application. Oh yeah, and the tax payer gets to spend money sending a tutor home to the suspended kids, so they get a free round of victimization. Wow, sounds swell, sign me up.

If we teach our kids to continue to be victims, they will become like that later on. They will pick up the phone and call 911 and wait for the rescue as people attack them. Or if they grow into teachers they will know no better than to hide in a room and let themselves and their students become victims if the gunman enters the room, never even thinking about fighting back, just accepting their fate as a sheep being led to the slaughter. Sound like Germany in the 1930’s? Mind your business and we will take care of everything. Orwell was prophetic; he just missed the date in his title.

By extension this should scare people because if we are a school of lemmings and manufactured victims who surrender at each turn, we have much to fear from either a government that would strip us into economic and metal servitude or a terrorist who would enslave or convert us to their religious viewpoint. Either way learned victimhood has only one logical outcome – servility. Servility whether it be to the re-establishment of either the structures of feudal serfdom of early Europe, the re-institution of the oppression of censored life under socialist/communist rule, or the theocratic intolerance of the Caliphates of Islam.

And the criminals will be those who hold office and those complicit who stood by and watched or encouraged the sacrificing of the essence of the greatest country on earth as it is destroyed on their watch to the social parasites who would feed upon the able and just.

A Truthful Politician and a Dishonest Chief of Police

Well, I never thought this would be so blatant, but the mandate to teach society how to be a victim is gaining ever more ground it seems. Imagine yourself in this scenario; a robbery is taking place, two people locked in a deadly struggle, one person has driven his thumb into the eye socket of the other causing him to scream, reach for his eye and step back. What do you do to survive this? We will come back to this in a second.

This week during an economic downturn when crime is historically seen to rise and violent crime is on the rise in his neighborhood, Alderman Quincy Troupe has called on the citizenry to arm themselves to protect their lives and property. BRAVO! He is one of very few politicians to buck the trend of teaching and preaching people to become victims. He called it just as it is; the police cannot protect you from violent crime. Troup stated the “the community has to be ready to defend itself because it's clear the economy is going to get worse, and criminals are getting more bold….” Exactly right.

In the face of such an honest appraisal, we see the stance that is becoming far too common in America today. The Chief of Police, Dan Isom, citing politically correct programming rather than the politically incorrect fact that when law-abiding citizens arm themselves the crime rates tend to drop. Chief Isom stated that arming a citizenry and by extension learning to proactively protect yourself, is not a "recipe for a less violent community." The communities with mandatory carry laws or a high percentage of citizens who do carry have a lower crime rate on average than the national data would suggest they should have. Coincidence? No, criminals are predators and will seek the easiest prey and if we disarm the citizens all we will get are more victims. Why won’t the Chief say this? Because the liberal media paints people who wish to still be independent poorly. Because politicians want docile and the LEO community is edging towards complicit enforcement of this mindset.

It is only true that crime increases when restrictive, draconian laws more suited to the feudal period disarm citizens and leave armed felons loose to prey on them. The level of intellectual dishonesty that is now accepted from our media and political leaders in order to socially engineer a docile electorate is staggering and makes the stance taken by the Alderman even more important and noteworthy. It is, in my opinion, the attitude of many in law enforcement that we need to get back to going after criminals and being more worried about the rights of law abiding citizens rather than the rights of the animals who would prey on us. I hope those officers will actively start to push that agenda and force change form the ground up.

Now back to the simple scenario we setup as a mindset check for ourselves at the outset. How did you solve the dilemma? Did you envision yourself as the person being attacked or attacking? I wonder how many of you saw yourself driving your thumb into the eye of the criminal, followed by a sharp kick rupturing his testicles and exposing his throat which you then smashed your forearm into as you step past to stomp on his knee so you can safely escape? If you saw yourself as the victim of a criminal, you need to adjust your reference point and think about what you would do if your attacked; would you know how to fight back? I ask my clients this often and after the first time they train with me, their mindset is one of making things happen to save themselves and their families rather than having things done to them and hoping to survive. If the good don’t learn to survive, to claim our inherent right to self protection, what kind of society are our children doomed to inhabit?

The Economy and Crime

The sluggish economy is having a negative impact on personal safety. Huh, who would have thought it? Tough times mean that scarce resources will get even more scarce. It means that money that would have flowed in to criminal hands will start to dry up and we act like this increase in violence is a surprise?

Criminals are after all the forefront of socialist economics, take from those who earn and give to those who do not, using whatever force necessary to compel either compliance or capitulation. Criminals do what they have always done, and what governments and more recently the IRS are perfecting, taking money from those who work to support the growing block of voters who would rather not work and use their votes to gain “entitlements”, also known as government sanctioned theft. Both of these events will get far worse in the coming years but only one threatens, at least at this point, to do you physical harm in the process. That is the criminal by the way. Thought I should point this out now, lest the "Fairness Doctrine" stop me from voicing my opinion later on.

As the economy plunges, criminals will accelerate their plundering to ensure that their pockets do not go unlined. You will see, as has already been occurring, a sharp increase in violent crime. Property crime and the likes will probably see a small decrease as criminals who had plenty of capital from illegal ventures in a booming economy turn back to the basics and their baser natures.

This is the time when frustration will breed shorter tempers and outbursts from those who lack civility and wish to inflict on others simply because the tantrum makes them suppose themselves “better” somehow. Domestic violence usually increases, as do sexual assaults, robberies and murders. What does this mean for those of us outside the criminal way of life? An increased chance of violent crime finding one of us and trying to make us a victim, slower police response as their resources get stretched thinner and face budget cutbacks, fewer medical services should we suffer injury as resources and personnel cutbacks can be expected as government slowly loses the ability to generate revenue.

If you have been putting off the one or two days it would take to learn to really protect yourself, and now worry about spending money in tough times to do so, think about he costs of becoming a victim. Not just the emotional and physical costs of months of rehab or the fear that grips people who have been victimized, think about your ability to earn a living if you are in hospital or fearful of every sales call you make.

Tough economic times and the criminals who prey on innocents should not dictate your ability to function as part of society. Learn the truth about criminal violence by reading “THE THREE SECOND SURVIVAL GUIDE: UNDERSTANDING CRIMINAL VIOLENCE AND WHAT IT TAKES TO AVOID VICTIMIZATION” and then make a commitment to yourself and those you love…learn to protect yourself with the C.R.A.S.H.™ SYSTEM from Imminent Threat Defense Systems and the 2-for-1 sale on their STREETEDGE™: Defeating Criminal Violence one or two day seminars.