"The News" and "The NEED for a Buddy"

If you follow the news like I do, you are totally perplexed by the shooting of two political figures in Minnesota.

The "facts" in the news articles would lead you to believe that the shooter "shared a room" with another man but was married to an attractive woman. He had a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that had lost funding after Trump/Musk spiked USAID but was a fervent MAGA supporter. Was a Democrat who was in Walz's good graces but was extremely pro-life. That he was a sophisticated "security professional" but left multiple manifestoes and target-lists laying about like a bachelor draping dirty socks on furniture.

One group's visual of potential nuclear targeting and nuclear fallout for WWIII.

The previous image is doom-porn. The actual fall-out pattern will depend (at least partially) on the jet-stream which is notoriously dynamic.

The news reporting on Israel/Iran is even murkier. We could be 7 days away from WWIII and there is no way to tell.

So, what do you do if you are wandering through a section of the woods where you have never been before and your GPS starts babbling the Hokey-Pokey?

You pull out your compass. Or, if you don't have a compass then you start paying attention to the time and the position of the sun and the direction of the sounds of human activity. Failing that, you turn off the GPS and rely on your own, internal compass.

I now read the news for entertainment. I am running on inertial guidance and some very old books for my directions. 

A modest proposal

I hesitated to bring this up because many of my readers dwarf my knowledge about this topic...but I haven't seen it mentioned on any of the blogs I frequent.

"Buying into the most common scenarios where you must employ a firearm to protect yourself is programing-to-fail." 

The fix? Bring a buddy. If you must go to a known, hazardous environment then always bring a buddy. That includes baseball games, music festivals, ethnic festivals and so on.

This thought occurred to me while I read this article by Steve Tarani*.

Wolves hunt in packs. They often use the strategy of separating their intended target from the pack and then surrounding it.

Don't make it easy for the wolves.

I don't care if you have the shooting skills of Jerry Miculek. If three thugs get you into an alley on their own turf (or worse, you, your wife and your two, young grand-daughters)...then you will lose 99% of any gunfights you start. And if they don't like your looks, they can kill you with little risk to themselves whether you start a gunfight or not.

You can conjure up all kinds of scenarios where you can survive or even prevail. BUT...nearly all of those scenarios depend on the aggressors using suicidal-bad tactics and Divine good-luck.

Our mind's eye visualizes us in one-to-one confrontations where we have ample warning. That is a reasonable scenario if for a thief breaking into a "hardened" house but I don't think it is reasonable for the streets of the big city. 

The US Military does not send highly trained, very-fit operators with body-armor into hazardous situations without at least one buddy. Snipers have a "buddy". CQB operators don't go alone. They are the professionals. And you think you can do better or will be luckier </sarc>.

Medical facilities

As we get older we become heavier users of medical care.

Some of that medical care is only available in big cities. Nearly all big-city hospitals have metal detectors that make carrying "a piece" into the building impossible.

Maybe you don't have a buddy who can spare the time to have-your-back for a trip to the hospital. Diagnostics can involve long periods of sitting in waiting rooms.

What can you do?

Maybe park your car on the outskirts of the city and call an Uber to drop you off at the door of the medical facility? Maybe you can have one buddy drop you off at the door and a different buddy pick you up.

Inconvenient? Well of course it is. But the decisions you make for speed, efficiency and convenience shave away the things that make you an undesirable target. 

Maybe you can shop around and find a non-big-city source of the care you need. Some small town hospitals have "roving specialists" who show up on a regular, scheduled basis.

I am spit-balling here. I would love to have comments from the readers who live and breathe this topic. Don't hold back. If I am spewing BS, then say so.

*A tip of the hat to Coyote Ken for sending me the link to that article.