Assess Your Readiness For Today

It costs you nothing except time to consider how you’d handle a dangerous situation.

Daniel Penny. Source

I came across a great preparedness article last week concerning the death of Jordan Neely aboard a New York City Subway train exactly two months ago today. If you haven’t heard, Daniel Penny, the man charged with his death, has entered a plea of not guilty to second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide this past week.

It’s tough to underscore the gravity of these charges - we’re talking up to 20 years in prison. Whether he actually serves all that time if convicted is insignificant. Manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide charges mean Penny is being held responsible for the death of someone who was threatening and terrorizing others. In many ways, the message has already been sent - whether Penny is convicted or not, the fact he was charged lets everyone know: don’t try to protect yourself or anyone.

Unless, if course, you get attacked first. In an incident drawing immediate comparisons, a self-defense stabbing occurred on a New York City Subway on the night of Tuesday, June 13 which had all the elements present in the Penny incident:

The ex-con who was stabbed to death on the subway in Brooklyn after allegedly punching a woman in the face was “acting obnoxious” and bizarrely yelled he “was going to erase someone” before the fatal altercation, a witness told The Post.

Devictor Ouedraogo, 36, was killed after he started arguing with another rider, 20-year-old Jordan Williams, and his girlfriend on a northbound J train on Tuesday night, police and sources said.

Before the confrontation with Williams, Ouedraogo and his pal started “acting obnoxious” after they boarded the train at either the Fulton or Chambers Street station, according to a witness, who identified himself only as Eric.

“He was getting in the face of somebody on the other end of the train. At one point he took his shirt off and I heard him say he was going to erase someone” Eric, 28, said of Ouedraogo.

The one big difference, of course, is that the aggressor in this case did assault someone:

The video was shown to grand jurors, who refused to indict Williams, 20, of manslaughter on Wednesday.

The footage was taken by several unnamed passengers — at least one of whom testified before the grand jury — and appears to have been compiled from multiple videos of the same event.

The 1-minute, 27-second clip opens with a shirtless Ouedraogo, 36, getting in the face of a seated woman riding the Brooklyn J train near Marcy Avenue.

He appears to touch her wrist.

“Stop it,” the woman says pushing him away.

Ouedraogo, undeterred, begins gyrating his hips and leers at the woman.

“You understand what I’m saying to you,” he says — smacking his lips.

The woman says again, “Stop it,” as Ouedraogo is joined by an unnamed sidekick wearing a denim vest and camouflage pants.

The other man mumbles something unintelligible before picking up Ouedraogo’s striped shirt.

Ouedraogo served time in state prison in 2009 for an attempted robbery in Queens.

Train passengers reported that Ouedraogo said he was “going to erase someone” and had asked Williams’ girlfriend, “Want to f–k?” before the stabbing.

These comments are not seen in the video clip.

After about 20 seconds, the video cuts to a brawl.

As passengers scramble to get away from the melee, Ouedraogo seems to strike at a woman in a tan sundress with fur-topped sandals — later identified as Williams’ girlfriend.

“Don’t f–king touch her you piece of s–t,” an unnamed woman screams off camera.

Williams — wearing a navy-blue high school basketball shirt with his name on it —  then grapples with Ouedraogo while pressed against the subway bench.

Ouedraogo seems to put his hands around Williams’s neck and Williams appears to reach for a folding knife.

“Get your f–king hands off of him,” the same unnamed woman shouts.

The video pans to the floor for several seconds amid the confusion.

When the view moves up again Ouedraogo is already stabbed — blood pouring from his abdomen, his shirt stained a deep red.

A legal professional explained why Williams and Penny were treated differently. The argument makes perfect sense from a legal perspective, but as you’ll see, there’s a serious problem with it from a practical sense [bold mine]:

“Williams is a lot different. The deceased in [his] case was actually physical with other passengers,” said Imran Ansari, a New York defense attorney. Ansari previously represented Jose Alba — a bodega worker who was briefly facing murder charges after dispatching an attacker in self-defense.

Unlike the Williams and Alba cases — Neely didn’t assault anyone on the train.

“With Penny, Neely . . . is maybe exclaiming these sort of things indicative of a mental health crisis, but he didn’t get physical with anyone on the train — and he didn’t get physical with Penny,” Ansari said.

This is what I and others who routinely speak on personal safety have been going on about - the anarcho-tyrannical state sets such a high bar in using violence for the purposes of self-defense, you need to become a victim first before you can respond with any level of force. In practice, the threat triangle - capability, intent, opportunity, all three of which were present with respect to Jordan Neely - doesn’t matter. Until someone makes physical contact with you, no threat exists as far as the state is concerned.

You can see how such a standard can be driven to the absurdist of heights. If a person is in your face, threatening to kill you, and you have limited to no means of safely removing yourself from the situation, you’re screwed: until physically assaulted, any use of force on your part is illegal or can be used against you. Since the state regards you and your attacker on equal legal and moral ground, the roles of “aggressor” and “victim” have no meaning - you are both aggressor and victim all at once. It doesn’t make any common sense, but it makes perfect sense when you’re in power, trying to impose total control over the lives of your subjects.

Others have pointed out the racial disparity - Daniel Penny was a White man who had a Black man die at his hands, while Jordan Williams was a Black man who stabbed another Black man - suggesting the outcomes thus far are the result thereof. It’s true that Williams has a stronger leg to stand on since he was physically attacked, but I also have a hard time believing a White man in the same exact time, place, and context would fail to be charged. We’ve seen the role race plays in these sorts of situations and we know the actions of a White man in Williams’ place would be more heavily-scrutinized than even the actions of his assailant. Unfortunately, the lack of a racial difference in Williams’ case made it easier to adjudicate the incident with greater sobriety and judiciousness. I say “unfortunately,” because it shouldn’t be this way - as equals, are we not to be regarded as such?

Then again, even if Williams were a White man, he may have been charged, only to be ultimately acquitted. But as we’ve also learned, the process is the punishment. Forcing someone to walk the gauntlet that’s the legal system is as costly and torturous an affair as any. In either case, the ultimate outcome matters less than the assumptions and priors that guide the case from the outset. On second thought, maybe a White person wouldn’t have attempted to defend themselves at all. They would’ve preferred to have been victimized, knowing the system sets them up for failure every step of the way.

Back to the article that’s the real subject of this post. The author, Brian Duff, has a lot to say about a wide-range of related matters, but his best argument is that citizens should never be put in a position where they need to decide between being victimized or prosecuted:

Citizens such as Daniel Penny shouldn’t feel that they have no other option than to defend themselves and others. After all, as I just showed, the headlines are full of reports of violent crime happening in the New York subways. Everybody knows it’s happening, and yet, none of the so-called leaders in N.Y.C. are doing anything about it. 

Yes, it may be difficult, but with the level of crime in N.Y.C., there should be a cop or cops on every subway train and platform. With the level of subway crime being reported, there is NO GOOD REASON that a police officer wasn’t on that train and intervening within the eight+ minutes that Daniel Penny spent subduing Jordan Neely. The city of New York has the resources and should have the mandate to figure it out. 

In my opinion, New York City is making excuses for not doing its best to keep the people of its city safe. As a result, its citizens are being forced to defend themselves or suffer harm. And when that happens, which it is, we are on the road to a non-functional society. Instead, we are living in some degree of civil disorder, with civil disorder being a step down the path to mayhem and anarchy.

Some of you may notice I’ve been rather quiet concerning events in France. But you also know I’m not someone who likes to talk about things while they’re still unfolding. There’s more to come on that topic, but for now, it suffices to say that France is the logical outcome of a society in a state of civil disorder which eventually devolves into mayhem and anarchy, as the author puts it. No, it’s not the literal end for France. But it’s the beginning of something new, dark, and ugly. If it wasn’t clear before that those who bring mayhem and violence into our lives are the ones in charge, it’ll become more obvious after the fact.

But back to the topic at hand. After criticizing authorities and the mental healthcare system in this country, Duff concludes:

Then, that same system, which repeatedly failed to do something about Jordan Neely, was unable to have the police officers in place to protect people from the person Neely became. Now, that same system is using its force not to help other Jordan Neeleys but rather to bear down on Daniel Penny. Rather than using its time, effort, and resources to help those in need, the system is going after the good samaritan, who, along with other good samaritans, stepped up and did what the system failed to do, protected one another. 

In effect, by working on incarcerating former US Marine Sergeant Daniel Penny, the system is working to turn Sgt. Penny into another Jordan Neely. If it weren’t, it would be working to resolve the problems of unsafe subways and the mental health crisis that is contributing to those dangerous subways.

Penny is a scapegoat. He’s someone the state and subversive elements of society are concentrating all their rage on to distract from their failures and justify their continued upending of the social order. People like Penny are the biggest obstacle to anarcho-tyranny and the Woke Revolution - because they refuse to go along with it. They don’t believe that tolerating crazed, violent individuals on the subway is the price of living in a free society.

More:

So, what does all of that mean for us as preppers? All of that demands that we, as preppers, are very thoughtful and deliberate in how we go about our lives. The fact is that today’s world is drastically different than that of twenty years ago. Does that mean we need to live in fear? No, we don’t live in fear. Instead, we need to live in a proactive mindset that acknowledges the issues that are happening without dwelling on them.

I think this is so important to underscore: no matter how bad things get, you cannot live in fear. As I said in my last post, living in general entails risks and most of us will have the luxury of not being victimized by violent crime. However, as I’ve also said before, there’s a big difference between not living in fear because you’re aware and prepared, versus living without worry because you choose to be oblivious and rest your fortunes that others will simply make life safe and livable for you.

Some people pride themselves on their ability to live their lives on the fly, but I don’t think anyone really does. Humans are, by nature, creatures of habits. Our habits are just different and some of us are just more organized than others. My mother, for example, is far more organized than I when it comes to going out and about, whereas I stick to known routes and focus more on just getting to my destination in one piece. Then some people are completely disorganized. There may be some order to their chaos, but generally, disorganized people tend to be less in control of the situation, more rushed, and more prone to making inadvisable choices.

Learning to plan even short outings isn’t a bad idea. There’s nothing paranoid about it: you’re not planning an armed raid on a compound. We plans out outings more often than we think, it’s just that it’s become second nature:

Where Do You Plan to Go?

Start with running down your list of things you must do and places you must be. Maybe your day is as simple as needing to drive to work with a stop at the grocery store on your way home. Perhaps, when you think of the grocery store, you realize you forgot to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy. So, you remind yourself to pop into the CVS next to the grocery store to get that taken care of. Again, this is about more than just keeping yourself safe. It’s about making your life better! 

How Do You Plan to Get There?

Next, visualize how you’ll get to work, the grocery store, and wherever else. Are you driving? If so, what are you driving? You may be taking public transportation like the New York Subway or decide to walk or ride a bike. It could be a hybrid of different modes of transportation. When I worked in the Washington DC area, I often commuted to the Metro (D.C.s version of the subway) and then rode the train into the city.

If you’re taking the car, run down a quick mental checklist of the car. Is there something that needs to be done with the car—fill up on fuel, air a tire, etc? Maybe there was something that you wanted to remember but forgot, and this jogs your memory. As it does, you’ll be able to prioritize your day and decide how to approach it. Perhaps you tell yourself that you’re not going to have enough time after work, so picking up your prescription will have to wait, or maybe you use your lunch hour to knock it out. Perhaps you tell yourself that you’re tired of picking up your prescriptions, so you look to an online option to free up your day.

This part is relevant with regards to dealing with situations like Daniel Penny and Jordan Williams encountered:

If you’re taking public transportation, consider where you will stand while waiting on your ride. I always attempted to stand with my back against a pillar or wall to minimize the possibility of someone pushing me into traffic or onto the tracks. Likewise, moving towards one of the end cars on the train/subway helped reduce the number of people (aka, potential threats) I had to wait with. That’s because human’s being mostly lazy and following the path of least resistance, tended to congregate at the cars nearest the entry point. Standing near the ends of the pickup locations also helped me observe the other passengers to identify anyone I thought might be a problem.

Obviously, you may not have a whole lot of control over where you sit/stand on public transportation if it’s crowded. Sometimes, you just have to take what you’re given. But if you can help it, follow the guidelines above. The key is to take every opportunity to assure your well-being when they present themselves. Failing to do so even when the opportunities are there is folly.

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Speaking of problems, think about what you’d do if the next Jordan Neely shows up. How will you handle it? What will you do when someone confronts you? You don’t have to go deep into this but run through some scenarios so that you’re ahead of the game should you be the next Daniel Penny.

I can’t emphasize enough - you have to play out these scenarios in your head before you hit the streets. Far too many people don’t do it, thinking it’ll never happen to them or that they’re summoning demons in doing so. Both ways of thinking are foolish. It costs you nothing except time to consider how you’d handle a dangerous situation. More important, it could save your life. It’s not about thinking up ways to be the ultimate bad-ass, it’s about how you’re going to retain the initiative and get yourself out of a jam. Only by thinking ahead will you be able to behave proactively and, hopefully, avoid finding yourself in a spot where you have to choose whether employing physical force is warranted or not.

I think far too few people place enough emphasis on being well-equipped for daily outings, mostly because civilization takes care of so many of our needs, we don’t see much need to “kit” ourselves out. But we should!

Everyday Carry

First off, let’s start with your everyday carry. When it comes to E.D.C., let’s start with what you need to get through the day. 

Do you have your wallet, purse, I.D., money, and plastic indebtedness cards? Are your keys set and ready to go? While I love the sun, my eyes hate it, so I make sure my sunglasses are ready. Likewise, if you wear glasses to read and see, do you have them ready as well? Do you have your bus or train pass if you’re using public transportation? If you’re married to your phone, do you have it ready? If so, is it charged, and do you have the ability to recharge it?

Then there’s the question of being armed. Or not.

Next, do you have what you need should the world go sideways? A small light or personal defensive item? At a minimum, and after checking your local and state laws, I recommend everyone consider becoming proficient in using and carrying a quality prepper spray—preferably a good spray such as POM pepper spray. I state spray because pepper spray is faster acting than its gel version. 

Check Your Mindset

With that, if you plan on carrying a firearm, are you in the right mindset to carry it? In other words, are you in a good mood or super ticked off and feel that going with pepper spray today is as far down the rabbit hole of a defensive item as you feel like going? 

I state that as someone who stopped carrying a firearm when my P.T.S. was terrible. In fact, at the time, I got rid of many of my guns because I didn’t feel I was in the right frame of mind to be armed back then. Of course, the right to own and carry firearms is absolute. It does come with responsibility. Part of that responsibility is knowing you’re limitations and using good sense.

I’m glad he said that last part, because, as absolute as I regard the Second Amendment, I also believe not everyone should own guns, nor should everyone who owns a gun carry in public. I feel American gun culture can be far too cavalier at times, concerned primarily with reacting to the gun control advocates and those who seek the complete disarmament of the population, and not enough about the attendant implications and risks of gun ownership. We do ourselves no favors by saying everyone should be armed and leaving it at that. Criminals and irresponsible citizens shouldn’t have guns and I’d hope we’d all agree on that.

Duff once again suggests pepper spray as a less-lethal alternative means of self-defense:

Prepper Spray

By carrying pepper spray, you give yourself a less-than-lethal escalation of force option. While some may scoff at that idea, NOT putting holes in someone can save you a lot of legal and personal trouble. Notice I said option. I’m in no way saying that you shouldn’t take whatever action you need to prevent serious and grave danger to yourself and others—when necessary. However, NOT putting yourself in the position to deal with the legal blowback that can come with taking a life, even when justified, is, in my opinion, a much better option.

Again, it’s easy to become cavalier about the prospect of taking the life of your assailant. There are people out there who deserve their fate and I’ve grown out of thinking all lives matter equally - someone who’s willing to kill over money or property is only worth what they were trying to take. I shed no tears for them.

However, taking a life is never a small deal. There’s no margin for error when it comes to killing; you’re either 100% right or 100% wrong when you do. More important, under anarcho-tyranny, the legal ramifications must, unfortunately, remain a foremost consideration. Even under a more righteous system, killing someone would be regarded even less casually. Simply not having to answer the question of whether it was necessary to take someone’s life or not is the best outcome overall. If you can get out of a tough situation without using violence, do so. If you need to resort to violence, use just enough to make your escape. If your assailant dies, don’t be around when they do. That ascribes to you a higher level of culpability.

Duff then gets into the concept of being the “Gray Man.” For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Gray Man is someone who simply doesn’t stand out. They blend into crowds and there’s nothing particularly remarkable about them. In other words, they’re “gray,” literally. Because they don’t stand out, neither the general public nor criminals are drawn to them, and they’re less likely to be targeted or even implicated in any incident. If you want to live your life without interruption, going gray is a great idea.

As such, being the gray man applies to how you dress and approach your interactions with others. That’s important because, while all bad guys choose their targets for different reasons, they never-the-less have a reason they choose their prey. With that, the goal of being the gray man and woman is to remove yourself from the gray man targetting lists. Here are some things that may help you avoid being a target.

Lose the Bling

Be conscious about what your style of dress broadcasts to the world. If you get dressed for work, think about how fashionable you decide. After all, fashion is often conflated with money, which means if you appear more stylish than those around you—you may increase your chances of being a target. Therefore, think about what you’re wearing. Are you putting on a shiny watch, high-end shoes, etc? At the end of the day, bad guys know what they’re looking for, and they see the value associated with what you’re wearing. After all, it’s what they do for a living!

If you feel the need to stand out and draw attention, by all means, do whatever it takes. Just don’t pretend to be oblivious as to why everyone - including the bad guys - has their eyes on you.

Duff goes into more detail about carrying firearms as a standard practice. This advice, particularly for gun owners, is golden:

Think Twice About Open Carry

Yes, I believe in and support everyones right to open carry. However, in most cases, I feel that open carry is TACTICALLY dumb.

That being said, if you’re in an area where you’re not able to carry concealed because of your age or other local laws, open carrying may be right for you. If you’re a hunter and walking around in the woods, where you’re not concerned that a bear will notice you have a firearm, open carry is warranted. Likewise, if you are an armed security provider, law enforcement, military, etc., who people expect to be armed, then open carry is warranted.

And on a larger societal scale, I also feel that open carry is an excellent reminder to the public that armed people are walking around. Perhaps in some way, that may help promote Second Amendment Rights.

With all of that stated, I believe that, in most cases, open carrying puts you at a distinct, tactical disadvantage.

Open Carrying Makes You a Target

Yes, open carrying makes you a target. If I’m a bad guy looking to do bad things, the first person I will deal with is the person with a gun. After all, that obviously armed person is the most apparent threat to me doing my bad-guy stuff. The downside of this is that not only does open carrying increase the chances of you being a target, but it also increases the chances of those around you getting caught up in the mess.

Costs You the Element of Surprise

Having the luxury of taking action when you feel it’s best is a massive force multiplier. Therefore, having the element of surprise on your side gives you a better option for deciding when and if you need to take action with your firearm.

Makes You Anything Other Than the Gray Man

The reality is that you cannot both open-carry and consider yourself the gray man. As a non-bad guy, I am hyper-sensitive to notice if a person is carrying a firearm-open or concealed. In my mind, a person with an exposed pistol on their hip has a huge spotlight on them. The same is true for most people.

Like the author, I’m not opposed to open-carry in principle. However, I also regard it as a risky bluff. Most who open-carry aren’t looking forward to the day they have to discharge their weapon. Instead, they’re betting that the mere visible presence of a weapon alone is enough to deter criminals. When it fails to deter, you’d need to shoot anyway, but since you’ve already been “spotted,” you don’t even have the option of safe escape, since the bad guys have evaluated you as a threat and will prosecute you as such. If you’re not in law enforcement, I personally find open-carry to be both unnecessary and risk with low reward.

As he winds the piece down, Duff reminds readers their the key to personal safety comes down to what we all have already: our senses and intuition.

Now that you’ve mentally gone through your day and prepped yourself to face it, it’s time to get going. So, head into your day with a non-fear-based but practical nature. 

Do things like, before walking blindly out your door, do a quick outside to ensure everything is okay. As you approach your car, do a quick walk around to ensure you don’t have a flat or there aren’t other unforeseen surprises. 

As you’re heading to your destination, try to recognize the underlying energy of the world around you. Are people nervous or apprehensive, or do things feel off? Trust, don’t discount your instincts. 

When you arrive at work, do a drive through the parking lot. Does anything seem off or out of place? Being observant doesn’t mean you’re paranoid. It just means you’re doing what you can to be safe.

I think most people are in denial about just how unaware they really are as they go about their day. Again, it comes with knowing nothing else besides living in a civilization, where it simply isn’t necessary to have to constantly look over your shoulder to ensure someone or something isn’t creeping up on you to make you prey. But there’s no excuse, in my mind, for thinking that simply noticing things and making judgments based off of them is paranoia. There’s nothing unusual about it; we do it more often that we realize. But also do far less of it than we realize and, hence, we couldn’t even tell you what the person who walked right past you was wearing.

I hope you’ll read Brian Duff’s entire piece and draw the following conclusion: personal safety isn’t really about skills and tools (though they certainly help), but mentality. Even in an ideal society, we ought to be just as aware and prepared as we would be under anarcho-tyranny. That said, we live in the times we live in, so there’s no excuse for putting your well-being in the hands of an indifferent state or those who regard your life as cheap. I think the best we can all do is to cultivate that mentality so we can not only live safely, but also live free from worry. And when we can, pass that mentality onto the next generation. May they use it to create a society worth living in.

What are some practices you employ to make it through your day safely and free of drama? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Max Remington is a defense, military, and foreign policy writer. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentLoyalist.

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