Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Whether or not you choose to equip yourself with one or more firearms is a personal mat-
ter. If this is an area where you lack significant experience, I suggest that you seek professional
training, while exercising caution and discernment. I wrote this chapter for the average Joe, or
Josephine, and not for the well-armed and trained survivalist. If you are in the latter category,
you will probably learn little or nothing from the following pages that you don't already know,
but if you are in the former category, read on!
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When Allison returned to her apartment one evening, she unlocked the front door and stepped inside, just as she had
done a hundred times before. As she walked past her front hall closet, a large muscular man burst from the closet and
attacked her. He held an 8” long knife to her throat and threatened to kill her if she resisted. As he ripped her clothes
off, Allison punched her attacker with all her might. She hit him repeatedly while receiving two deep cuts from his knife
as it slashed across her chest and face, but Allison never gave up fighting. She was able to break free, running out the
front door and down the street—naked, bleeding, and screaming, but alive! Allison is absolutely certain that she would
have been raped and murdered had she not resisted.
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To Arm, or Not to Arm, That Is the Question!
“
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade
me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. . . . The gun is the only
weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply
wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be
left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because
I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would
interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force
from the equation . . . and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
”
—Marko Kloos, “Why the Gun
Is Civilization”
I am a firm believer in being prepared for the unexpected. I would much rather learn certain
skills, and keep a stock of supplies on hand, but never need them, than find out when it is too
late that I wished I had been better prepared. The United States is a heavily armed country. To
not have a firearm puts one at a serious disadvantage when confronted with armed hooligans. A
firearm is the one thing that puts a small-framed woman or an elderly man on a par with a hulk-
ing brute of a man.
Some people say that guns cause more accidental deaths, suicides, shootings of friends or
lovers in arguments, and by having weapons turned on their owners by a hoodlum, than they
