My Freeze: Boundaries

Over the last couple of days there's been a little spike in the conversation about "the freeze." This in part due to the questions that were born out of my post: Abuse, Abduction, Self Defense. Questions like, "Why didn't she call for help?" "Why didn't anyone help?"

Kathy Jackson over at Cornered Cat did a fantastic job covering the topic so I won't try to reinvent her words. Her blog, Fear And The Freeze Response is a must read. So, go.. read.

A Girl And Her Gun also talks about the aftermath of the freeze and how it can have an effect on self perception.

The sad fact of the matter is, many (dare I say, most) people don't even know that the freeze response exists. If they are aware of it they somehow think it will not happen to them. Or, they may have experienced it but in such a low-stress-level environment that consequences of the freeze were negligible or at most, embarrassing (freezing up at a business meeting). If they experience it on a tragic level it is in a non-violent environment: a car accident, natural disaster or major injury. In these environments it seems understandable that one would freeze. Often times there is nothing that could have been done even if there were no freeze so the freeze is rather inconsequential to how events unfolded.

People who do experience the freeze response when faced with violent crime, however, are suspect. If not outwardly questions as to why they froze they often find themselves looking inward and questioning their own sense of preparedness and worth. If they survive, the looming question can often be, "What was wrong with me? Why didn't I do something?"


I could watch surveillance videos of violent crimes almost all day. I have a strong stomach for it. I find analyzing them to be fascinating and as long as I can slow things down I can catch things that some people miss. It's a lot different than watching a movie where you are shown exactly what you are supposed to see and understand. In a surveillance video you are often questioning everything and discovering what you are supposed to see and what investigating what is important.

What can I learn about how the attack started? Where did the attack come from? Were there pre-attack indicators that were missed? When was the weapon presented (if at all)? Was there a freeze? How/when was the freeze broken? What for knowledge isn't in the video such as relationship between victim and attacker? How does that play into the dynamic?

One thing I have universally noted is that in almost every single video, if you know what you are looking for, is a freeze. A moment of disbelief, a moment of hesitation while the brain wraps itself around the reality of the situation, even moments of paralysis where victims or bystanders stand stock still throughout the entirety of the crime.

The freeze is there. It is hard wired in us. It can and will happen to you. It's nothing to be ashamed of or to question. It happens! It's time to stop beating ourselves up about it and learn to embrace it and/or minimize it when necessary.

I'm in the middle of reading Rory Miller's Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected. In it he dedicates an entire chapter to the freeze and ways you can eliminate some types of freezes and minimize others and even tactically use other types. But he makes it very clear that you will never do away with the freeze 100%.

But, you may be like me and think, "Okay, I'll admit. The freeze will be there. How do I find out where my freeze is and how do I train it out of me or at least minimize it?" 

Some freezes you may never find until the time comes. Some freezes you may be able to find in training. Sometimes those freezes are nothing more than a training issue. You're in a shoot out and your firearm jams. Because you've never practiced clearance drills you stand there staring at a non functioning gun because you haven't trained yourself what to do in that scenario. Establishing a trained and regular response (tap, rack, bang) to that particular scenario (an jammed gun) can eliminate that freeze.

But other freezes are not so easy to identify.

Just recently I discovered a big one in myself and if you want to see if, watch this video:

 

Watch between :04 and :11 seconds in the video. There is a threatening presence. He has cornered me. He is within my striking distance. At one point he even threatens me by saying, "I'm not letting you leave." And I still don't act. I'm stuck in a frozen loop of repeating the same command that he's clearly demonstrated he's not going to obey.

You would think I learned my lesson. This video was taken almost three years ago. I can't make the same mistake twice, can I?

Enter last week:

Due to weather we had a very small turn out in Krav class and it was just my husband, myself and our instructor. Because it was just the three of us our instructor let us decide what we wanted to work on and my husband volunteered some of my issues. Such as my freeze.

It can be easy to know you need to attack when you are being attacked, but the fact of the matter is that is far too late in many scenarios--including the scenario above. Recognizing this, our instructor set up my husband as my attacker and started working some drills to get me to attack him when he got within striking distance.

And then he messed everything up.

After resetting the scenario my instructor walked up to me and asked if I had any ID. I looked at him, confused. Why did he need my ID? I've been in his class for months. He knows who I am.

"Hey, let me see your ID!" he said and it hit me that this might be a set up to distract me from an attack from the side by my husband.

While trying to keep my husband in my peripheral my instructor got closer. I began to feel myself getting overwhelmed by his closeness and demanded he get away from me, EXACTLY as I did in the video from almost three years ago.

He got closer and closer and eventually my husband did rush in and attack me and I fought him off as I'd been taught. But once the scenario ended both my instructor and my husband pointed out that I let my instructor break the boundary we'd been working on all night and get FAR too close and I failed to act as I'd been trained. The newness of the attack with the change in attacker and him presenting with a seemingly innocuous question completely froze my trained response until I could identify a clear threat: my husband rushing me out of the corner of my eye.

We reset the scenario a few more times and I no longer froze, having recognized my error and trained past it.... at least for that day and in that environment.

Boundaries are my freeze. I need to set clearer boundaries that I do not allow people to cross.

Does that mean I'm going to hit anyone who gets within three feet of me? No, but my intuition told me something was off about that scenario and I wasted time questioning myself and trying to figure it out instead of acting on my training. And, again, I gave him a command to get away from me and instead of complying he continued to move in. As before, I froze myself in a loop of wasted commands. Such an act should have been an immediate trigger that told me it was time to act. Instead, I froze, just like I did three years ago.

Greg Ellifritz (incidentally, the man I was fighting in the linked video) wrote a very nice, short article about boundaries. Rory Miller also talks about boundaries (though he uses a different word) that should be triggers for you to act. If this happens, I respond with this! You won't think of everything, of course, but it can and will help minimize some of those moments of freeze.

Set boundaries!

Why Aren't More Women In Advanced Classes

Kathy Jackson asked a question on her Cornered Cat Facebook Page. The conversation and subsequent question went like this:

"Sitting at dinner last night with several other well-known defensive firearm instructors, the conversation came around to women & firearms training. ... The instructors each had their own theories about why more gun-owning, gun-carrying women don't want to learn more about how to use a gun more effectively. After all, having better skills would be safer for them, their families, and any bystanders.

If you had been sitting there, what would you have told these guys? Why do you think more women don't sign up for the intermediate to advanced handgun classes?"

That's a pretty hard question and she got a lot of possible answers. Some suspected that it was because the classes weren't feminine enough or didn't cater to women enough or that there weren't pairs of women to make the other women feel more accepted in class, that it was a matter of finances, etc.

There certainly could be validity to those claims and many more. Just because I am a woman doesn't mean I have special insight into what motivates every woman out there (as I said in my blog I Can't Help Your Wife.)

I strongly believe that what might stop one women from attending an advanced class might not be what stops another. One might find money her tether to hold her back while for another it is lack female friendly (whatever that means) instructors or not having a girl friend to go with her.

Personally, I love advanced training and I keep going back for more. And, to share my dirty little secret, I don't mind that I'm the only woman in class. In fact, I avoid women-only classes and do not generally invite other women to come with me to trainings unless they feel they are ready.

Kathy asking this question made me ask myself, "Why?"

Starting a Shoot from Surrender

I had to think back to my own experiences. What has made me willing to do advanced classes? What makes me okay with being the only woman? Why don't I actively encourage women to come to classes with me?

After weeding through a few theories that didn't seem to logically pan out I fell on one experience that I think was a pivotal key to my breaking out in both my training and my mindset: my first time going to the range by myself. One of the most nerve-racking things I'd done to that date. It was the day I not only decided but actually took the step to take an individual responsibility for my training and to not let anything (including my fear, lack of confidence, appearance or lack of support or sexism) stand in the way of my training goals. 

I would ask other women with mindsets like my own to confirm if they felt the same way, but, unfortunately, there seems to be relatively few of us around (as evidenced by our numbers in advanced trainings).

I believe the problem may be confidence or the lack thereof.

1) Some women lack the confidence to step out on their own and try and even fail. 

Men and women can both have this same hangup but it seems to be more prevalent in women. We can tend to take it pretty personally when we make a mistake. When we take that shot and miss it's not just that we took a shot and missed it's that we are failures. We aren't good at this. It was a mistake to come here. He's looking at me like I'm a total idiot. He's probably wondering why I even bothered coming to this class. I'll never get this right. I shouldn't have even gotten out of bed this morning. My life is over!

Brushing off the small stuff and carrying on can be very hard, especially if you feel you are being scrutinized to a greater degree. It's very easy to feel an added scrutiny if you are an anomaly in the class--the only woman, perhaps? Being in a class of all women can make women feel like they can blend in and mistakes won't be so closely scrutinized because the woman does not feel singled out. Sometimes having only one other woman there can lessen that feeling of a spotlight being on your back.

2) They lack the confidence to be okay in an all male environment and let any perceived sexism go.

Another little secret: there isn't a single class I have attended where I am the only woman that I haven't felt that spotlight I talked about above. And it's not as though I can say it doesn't make me nervous or feel some kind of perceived added scrutiny. But the fact of the matter is that most of the time it's total bull crap. The guys don't care a VAST majority of the time and in a matter of minutes we're all laughing together and training together like there is no gender gap. Sometimes they even like having a woman because it gives them a chance to get used to sparring with or fighting a woman. Sometimes, when it comes to sparring I'm still treated like a little doll or I get the guy who says, "I can't hit a woman" or he's afraid he's going to hurt me because I'm so small. But when I start hitting him he eventually gets the clue or I just keep hitting him harder until he does. Yep.. I'm THAT mean.

Sometimes there's some sexism though. I've been in classes where men have made it very clear that they are upset that a woman is there. I've had men tell me some very sexist things that have made me very angry or embarrassed. Most of the time, if the instructor is worth his salt, he or she will put a stop to that before it even starts. But, unfortunately I've even had instructors say some very sexist things and it certainly has made me doubt myself. But what has kept me moving forward and going back is the fact that I am not doing this to get any kind of approval from men or any given instructor. I am doing this to learn how to fight. Period. Instead of letting my feelings get hurt I take what I can learn and I run with it. I leave the crap and am better for it.

3) They lack the confidence to be okay with getting dirty, ugly and having messy hair.

I bet there will be a few people who will scoff at that. Does it really matter to some women that they might get their makeup smudged while in an advanced class?

Girly going out the window

Absolutely!

Without going into a lengthy explanation of why, the truth of the matter is there are women who care more about their hair than their training and no amount of discounts or female support or accommodation by the instructors is going to get them to risk smudged mascara and a broken nail. Sure, you can get these women into basic classes where there is little risk of getting roughed up, but until they are willing to smudge some makeup for sake of training you won't have much success in getting them to turn out.

Does that mean a lady shouldn't care about her appearance? Of course not. I do my hair and makeup before almost every class I attend. That being said, of late, there hasn't been a class I have come out of where my hair hadn't gone through 100 different renditions after being tossed, pulled, rained on or stepped on. I lose most of my makeup on the shirts of people I am sparring with, sweat it off or, yes, get it rained off. I like going into the class feeling pretty because, yep, I am that girl. But I'm not there to look pretty. I'm there to learn and train and once the class starts pretty goes out the door. And I actually get a big kick out of how alerted my appearance can be at the end of a particularly good training. If I don't have a black eye, it's a good day!

And what happens when a woman (or man) who lacks confidence attends a class? She needs more time and attention. People and instructors spend more time trying to build her confidence than training.

Shooting along side the guys

There's nothing wrong with this. Anyone who has taught any kind of class from Yoga to firearms to basket weaving knows that there are those who need more attention and support. There are students who are genuinely frightened of a firearm who need to literally have you there and talking them through every single step of the firing process.

Men seem to get over that fear a little faster than women and can leave a basic class feeling pretty confident in their ability and ready to go try something new and a little more challenging. A woman, on the other hand, may not feel ready. She may feel better but she might never describe herself as being confident in her new skill. The idea of going on to more advanced training makes her protest that she's not ready for it. She's afraid she's going to hold back the rest of the class and be looked at negatively because she's going to be the one who's going to take time and attention away from other students. Especially if she was that student (or felt like she was that student) in a basic class. What she may not realize is that most instructors (if they are good) are prepared for all types of students and will help push them forward in a safe manner.

A woman who determines that she is confident in her ability to handle herself and her firearm is unstoppable. If she's determined to learn there should be nothing that can keep her back.

So, how do we get women to attend more advanced trainings? I don't know. I don't know what it takes to convince a woman she can do something she may not feel confident in doing. I know it wasn't easy for me to take that first step either but the first step was the hardest and they keep getting easier the more confidence I build.

There's nothing quite like the feeling of walking through a door and facing a group of men made primarily of police officers or military personnel and thinking, "I belong here. Me, the housewife and mother, I belong RIGHT HERE! Kicking the shit out of and out-shooting these guys." I may not always out-shoot or out-fight the guys, but one thing is always true... I belong there.

And, ladies, you do too!

Join Me

Yes, My Son, It Is Okay To Hit People

A couple of months ago, while attending a play group with my four-year-old son and one-year-old daughter, another little two-year-old girl lashed out and hit another child. Her mother, ripe with indignation, swept the girl into her arms and scolded, "No! It is NEVER okay to hit people."

My skin crawled. The scenarios flowed through my head and I couldn't restrain myself.

"Would you tell her that if she was being abducted?" I asked.

The mother stopped and blinked a few times and then stuttered, "Well... that's different."

"Yes, it is," I said. "But you just told her that it was never okay to hit people. That's not entirely true. There are times it's okay to hit people and to hit them hard." And then I dropped it. I already felt I was stepping way over my bounds.

The mother seemed to be lost in thought for a few moments but shortly everything went back to normal.

I do not tell my son he cannot hit. In fact, I encourage him to hit and hit well. I get down on my knees and let him hit my hands or hold up a pillow and let him hit that. I work on proper hitting techniques, using the whole body instead of just his hands. We work on kicking and ground fighting. We don't do it every day, but a few times a week or whenever he tells me that he wants to. He's turning into a good little fighting and I'm proud of him.

I'll be doing the same thing with my daughter when she gets old enough to take interest in such things.

A messy-headed four-year-old

And now I will pause to acknowledge the horror of some parents who may read this blog and think that I'm turning my children into violent sociopaths. To them I would say that I am teaching my children how to hit when they need to hit and giving them a healthy outlet for their aggression instead of forcing them to bottle it up or suppress it to the point it's inaccessible in a time of need.

Frankly, it's easy to give a child a black and white set of rules such as "It's never okay to hit." That makes it easy for the parent. When the child hits he or she gets in trouble and that ends it right there. It's a heck of a lot harder to teach a child that there are certain times that hitting is appropriate and times it is not. It takes some trial and error. When my child hits I have to find out why he hit. I have to explain the difference between necessary hitting and unnecessary. Hitting someone because they took your toy is not acceptable. Hitting someone when they hurt you is only acceptable if you are defending yourself and can't go and get help from an authority figure. Yeah, try explaining that to a four-year-old.

Yes, we've had some instances of him hitting in day care. Who hasn't? If you have children you know that at some point in time you will find your child hitting another one. Hitting is a pretty natural response to feeling threatened or slighted and it takes social training to work that response out of children. I choose to channel it instead of eliminate it. He is disciplined when he hits for the wrong reasons and that will reenforce the ideals that there are times and places you can hit and times and places you can't hit. But I refuse to teach him that he can never hit another human being.

Why?

Because I want him to know that he not only CAN hit a human being if he needs to and that I EXPECT him to hit a human being if he is defending himself.

I refuse to allow my children to be raised to feel they have no options and are powerless against people who would hurt them. I would feel I failed as a parent if my child was victimized and said he thought he couldn't fight back when that was a justifiable--dare I say, necessary--option.

That being said, I know I have my work cut out for me. I have to train him and my daughter that with strength and power comes a responsibility to use it for good and for defense. Just because you know how to pound on someone doesn't mean you should and that there are consequences when you hurt the wrong people.

We talk about this every time we drop him off to day care. We encourage him to talk to the day care workers about problems he might have instead of dealing with them himself. We try to model proper conflict resolution. We teach him to protect those who are smaller and weaker than he is and to walk away from conflict when he can. We teach him to share and to not get angry or hit over toys or possessions. We reward him for restraint, compassion, sharing and patience. We discipline him for hitting when he doesn't need to or for being cruel and careless with his actions. We are actively trying to mold a child who knows that fighting--that fighting hard and dirty and ruthlessly--is an option in the right context but gentleness, compassion, care and graciousness should be his guiding principles.

I pray he never has to use violence in defense of himself or another but I feel a little better knowing that he will know its an option. When I catch him beating on our heavy bag or a pillow he hasn't been caught doing anything bad or wrong or naughty. He gets a smile and I help him work on his form and technique. He won't have that negative conditioning that says he can't or shouldn't hit under any circumstance. If, however, I were to catch him beating on his sister (which, by the way, I've never seen him do), there will be negative consequences. He's being trained to distinguish between what is acceptable to hit and what isn't and when. When play fighting with me or his dad we give him more lenience and he's doing well.

The road we've chosen as parents is not an easy one but I feel it is the right one. In the coming years he will be enrolled in martial arts. We will spend a lot of time and money teaching him to fight. It might save his life one day.

Or, maybe one day, when a young girl who's been taught it's never okay to hit is assaulted and frozen solid from a lifetime of conditioning she cannot fight back, my son will be the one who unleashes hell to save her.

A mother can dream, can't she?

The Anti Gun Crowd Is Winning

This year, only a month old, has proved to be exhausting if you are in the gun community. Without going into the specifics we are all too aware of we've been fighting a gun battle that has taken the foreground in almost every news outlet around the country and in every form of media. Whether its on the television or in the paper, in blogs or twitter or facebook, there is no escaping the debates as to whether we need more laws, less laws, the current laws enforced or an outright ban on anything that fires a projectile. And if you're tempted to read the comments to such press you will see that people are viciously defending their own opinions. No blows are too low and no punches are being pulled from either side.

I've been trying to stay away from the gun debate because I have a pretty strong opinion that the people who listen to me are already aligned to my way of thinking and don't need to be preached to and the people who don't listen to me won't start no matter what I say. So, other than passing on a few interesting articles and encouraging others to get involved I'm staying out of things.

Yet, since the latest Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 has been introduced there's been a lot of talk about who is "winning." Is there enough support for the legislation? Who is going to vote for it? Is there senate support? Will it be stopped before it gets out of the House?

A lot of speculation that, quite honestly, we're just going to have to wait and see how it turns out.

So, some might (and probably will) look at the title of this blog and balk.

"Lima!" they might say, "The antis aren't winning. We have ..." and they will start to list all sorts of reasons why we are going to win in legislation this year.

That's all well and good but I'm not talking about legislation this year. I'm not even talking about legislation next year or the year after that. I'm talking about losing the battle but winning the war and the anti gun crowd is turning to an age-old system that has worked well for them in the past for both the better and worst. I'm talking about winning over our children and slaughtering any positive image of the gun culture.

After this whole gun control debate exploded I decided to educate myself on the history of British gun laws and how they ended up with an all out ban. Why wasn't it fought harder? How did such a thing happen without mass fighting and civil war and stand-offs between the police and citizens? The gun ban in England happened almost silently.

I found the answer hidden between the lines.

The British were successful in one area that American gun-control advocates have not been successful in but are waking up to: destroying the gun culture.

British gun control has a long and uncomplicated history. It was, as many suspect it may become here in the US, a slow and steady trickle of gun laws that simply made it harder and harder for citizens to own firearms to the point where it was too much trouble to keep a firearm. And along with the hardening of laws, lack of accessibility and a mounting financial and paperwork burden, there was also a vicious attack against those who might appreciate guns. They were demonized and attacked to the point where getting rid of the gun was a social solution as well as an economical one. By the time the last axe fell and people were told to turn in their firearms there was no desire to fight and it was considered a relief to some to get the evil stigma of "gun owner" off of their backs.

Many were very willing to get rid of the guns to be socially acceptable again.

And the social attack has begun in the states.

 

The above video is an old one but very relevant. In it, Eric Holder outlines a plan that has been working its was through the anti crowd and is now finding its way through the pro-gun crowd as well.

And it's happening fast. Faster than many will admit but slow enough where some people aren't noticing it or giving it due credit.

When I was a girl, just fifteen to twenty years ago, my brother had a hobby of making non-functional replica firearms--lever action rifles, machine guns, pistols, revolvers. He would craft them carefully out of wood and often take them with him to school to show his friends and teachers. He was praised for his craftsmanship and never once made to feel ashamed or that he had done something wrong because he enjoyed the look and mechanics of firearms. When he wasn't crafting firearms he was drawing pictures of them and learning about them and shooting them with his uncles and cousins on special days. He and our cousin would get realistic replicas as gifts and stage elaborate westerns and plays. Both my brother's handmade replicas and their store-bought ones were even used in school plays as props. The atmosphere was one of neutrality. It was understood that guns could and would do harm if misused but they were not bad in and of themselves and there was no need to fear the image of a firearm or make a boy feel badly because he liked them.

That boy grew up to join the military and make a long-standing career out of it. He still loves firearms and counts himself privileged to "play" with some of the most advanced weapon systems of our day. He teases me with reports of the thousands upon thousands of rounds he gets to fire through dozens of weapons over week or even month long trainings. His positive encounters and influence has impacted his sister (me) to the point where I have dedicated a large portion of my time to the positive influences and trainings or firearms and until recently I have never felt my status as a gun owner as a negative.

For me, it started with Columbine. I was still a girl and didn't know much about school violence. I went to a private school. I had never been bullied and never bullied (to my knowledge). It was not unusual for high school boys to have knives in their backpacks and talks of hunting and guns to go on during the lunch period. Some boys even took off time from school to go hunting and brought in pictures of themselves holding their rifles next to their downed deer. The atmosphere was a positive one. That all very suddenly changed.

There had been school shootings and violence in the past, there was a new level of fear and caution that had not been present before. Suddenly, the idea of bringing a hand-crafted toy gun to school was deeply frowned upon. A boy who had been expelled from a local public school and enrolled in ours brought a weapon to school and though no one was hurt or even threatened, with the new awareness to gun violence it was suddenly against the rules to bring any sort of weapon to school. It made sense, sure, but it also made a point of instilling a fear of firearms into a bunch of kids who had previously only seen them in that neutral light of machines of interest or of use in hunting or home protection. We weren't used to the negativity but we adapted quickly.

Firearms were not on the mind in college. There were rules against them, of course, but I was more concerned with my studies and my boyfriends than I was any type of firearms. When my boyfriend (now husband) told me he was getting his concealed carry permit I remember saying, "People can do that?" and asking him why he wanted one. He said that after four years of carrying a firearm in the military it seemed kind of weird not to have one and that response made sense to me. There was no fear. I didn't wonder if he was suffering from some mental illness or that he would go crazy. I didn't worry that he was going to get PTSD and go shoot someone. Guns were neutral. He wanted to carry one. It was within his legal rights to do that. Okay.

Then we got married and I got a job in the public school system. Guns suddenly became a big thing. Virginia Tech happened and the building I worked in got a shooting threat. I didn't know tensions could get so high for so many people all at once. By that time I was already a concealed carrier and there was no law against me carrying at work and so I did. While some coworkers were talking about escape routes and hiding under desks or even taking vacation time to get away from work I was planning offensive strategies and going to the range to make sure my aim was up to the task of potentially responding to an active shooter. I was finding places of cover and identifying fatal funnels. I was not afraid (even if I should have been). But I saw that many people were.


I had not been super secretive about my appreciation for firearms and when the tensions were at their highest people started to target me. They didn't understand why I liked guns. They thought all guns should be banned except for law enforcement or military. For the first time in my life I saw how my fondness for firearms could negatively affect my life through my job.

And that conflict was only made greater when I took a second job at a gun store. I loved my new job. I had more fun than I could express and it was a joy to work behind a gun counter. I was shooting daily and enjoying being around people who did not think me strange or odd or question my mental health or stability because I had an appreciation for firearms. When there was a hint of a threat, instead of people worrying and fretting we got together and made tactical decisions based on who had the best shooting skills and most experience. At my job in education my circle of friends was getting smaller at the range it was getting bigger. How sad that something I enjoyed drew such a harsh line in the sand.

When some coworkers from my education job came in to the range one day to shoot they looked at me in horror and later begged me not to tell anyone at work that they were there. They didn't want it to get out that they liked shooting.

Eventually I left my job in education to work at the gun store and range full time. It was a great decision and one that I have never regretted.

Since those years I've seen the negativity grow and grow. I recently had a family member say that she is uncomfortable driving in a vehicle with me or would not come to my home because of my firearms.

I have acquaintances who will not allow their children over to our home because we are gun owners. And no matter how little that may affect my own personal outlook to gun ownership, in the eyes of my child, who loves his friends and only wants to play with them, he may one day come to a conclusion that says, "Well, if Mom and Dad didn't have those stupid guns I could have been able to have fun with so-and-so." The negativity has set in. And it is a bitch to get out.

While it's not necessarily a brand new occurrence, just yesterday I was sent a message by someone who said he wished someone would take my gun and shoot me with it.

Children are expelled from schools for drawing pictures of guns or even pointing their fingers in a way that could be misinterpreted as a gun. A deaf child was asked to change his sign language version of his name because it resembled a gun. A friend of mine who's little boy brought a Halo action figure with a gun to a play date was asked to the action figure's gun in the car. This is doing nothing but bathing the psyche of children in an over-all negativity to firearms that will not be easy to defeat if it can be defeated at all.

And the results are already starting to show.

I'm starting to see the negativity spewed from the supposed gun supporters!


The same baseless fears are catching on in the gun community to a frightening degree.

Parents who will not let their children play with toy guns because of the "negativity" or fear that they will not be able to learn the difference between toys and reality or that they won't be accepted in school. Parents who have guns but won't even tell their children they have them because of the fear that they will tell their friends and it will get out that they are gun owners (granted, I do understand this response if there is a child or child's friend who is questionable and you feel would attempt to steal or otherwise be dangerous with the gun). People who beg coworkers not to let it out that they were seen a gun range.

A few days ago I read an article saying that people in the medical, educational, political and entertainment fields are getting to the point where they fear speaking positively about guns for fear of losing work.

That is frightening.

And it goes to show you that the anti gunners are winning. They are winning a cultural war against the gun that will not be able to be reversed if it is left to progress much further. When our children are grown they will see a cultural disadvantage to gun ownership. They may even think us crazy or mislead or archaic. They may shrug when it's time to hand in their guns.

How do we fight it? I have my ideas but I want to hear yours. How do you think we can reverse the cultural fear of the gun?

Contusions of Krav #3

Enter Ground Fighting.

I am not a ground fighter. Which stinks because a vast majority of fights end up on the ground. Depending on which statistic you believe, between 60% and 90% of fights end up there. I know that's a wide percentage but the truth of the matter is it's over half of the street fights. So, if you aren't learning ground fighting then there is a pretty big gap in your hand to hand defensive training. And when you are me, weigh less than 100 lbs and are small on the small scale, getting me to the ground is almost laughable in its ease (at least that's what the other students in Krav tell me).

Of course, the goal of self defense is not to turn into some Brazilian Jujitsu ground fighter, get on the ground and submit someone out. Real life ground fighting kind of sucks. You usually have hard surfaces, not cushy mats to protect things like knees, backs and heads. There are usually things to run into like walls, tables, chairs, cars, curbs and other people. There are things to roll onto or in, such as water puddles, broken bottles, you get the point. So the goal of self-defense related ground fighting is to get off the ground as soon as possible and/or do a lot of damage in order to make that escape possible. Then you just want to get the heck out of there.

Since we are compartmentalizing things in Krav we are starting our ground fighting already on the ground. Apparently in the next week or two we are going to start on our feet and work in a combination of everything we've learned to date such as striking, kicks, take-downs and ground fighting.

But it's very clear I need more work on my ground fighting.

I have a tendency to abandon all technique and go a little crazy when I feel something isn't working. Panic? Yes, please!

I'll be honest here. Ground fighting scares the crap out of me. I'm tiny and a goodly sized individual (male or female) could do a significant amount of damage by merely applying full body weight into sitting on me, never mind actually attempting to harm me.

Yesterday we were practicing a technique of escaping from someone on top of you. Playing the attacker I was on top of young man who proceeded to twist and slam me on the ground on my side. The impact knocked the wind out of the right side of my body and had he been more aggressive in attacking I would be in a very bad way fighting against both the pain in my body and the feeling of suffocating.

Then our instructor played attacker and worked with me as the victim for a time. Try though I may, I could not get him off me. Though I attempted to protect my head from his blows while I tried to buy time to think I still got a pretty good hit to my eye. Even if I could land some good blows of my own, I simply couldn't get enough distance to either get up or enough damage to get the attack to stop.

I was trying to have a little more control last night and not let myself escalate. Because when I escalate, people end up bleeding. Not necessarily a bad thing when in the fray, but not so good in training. Last time I fought my husband he was bleeding in a few places.


Unlike other class members my husband does not cut me much slack... AT ALL. When I fight him things escalate fast and if there were any kid gloves to begin with they get torn off pretty quick.

Our last fight ended with claw marks in his arm and chest a nice imprint of my teeth in his forearm and a few kicks to his head, a bloody nose and a pulled muscle in my shoulder that is still giving me fits. He won when he was choking me and my face was turning blue. He tells me I should have tapped out but I wasn't done fighting. I was left shaking for a good half hour afterward from the adrenaline dump and pissed off that I couldn't get him off of me despite the damage I did.

I gave it next to everything I had and I still ended up almost chocked out.


I'm told my potential is in my ability to escalate quickly with an excess of ferocity. I guess if we can combine that with more refined technique and perhaps some strength training I might gain some confidence in my ground fighting.


For now I'm going to continue to pray I never get taken to the ground in a fight which would be a statistical anomaly.

Let's All Just Calm Down And Eat Some Fruit

In this age of information it's easier than ever to get whipped into a frenzy over something important. It's also just as easy to get worked into a frenzy over nothing at all. In fact, that's what the mass media is really good at these days. In an effort to keep people glued to their 24/7 television news casters and reading their articles they have to make everything sensational, breaking, outrageous, awful, scary, tragic or a combination of the same. If they don't have anything to make sensational they will start speculating about what MIGHT become sensational.

And the internet fans the flames.

The Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut had an impact on the US different than any other shooting in the last decade. I don't know if it was the fact that it was children or that it was right before Christmas. Perhaps it was the fatigue, frustration and anger of yet ANOTHER US shooting. Perhaps it was the fact that the election was newly over and conservative and libertarian voters were still licking their wounds while the gloating moderates and liberals were feeling more confident and powerful. Maybe it was a combination of it all but the rush for gun control measures to be taken was staggering in it's ferocity.

We responsible gun owners were (and are) just as hurt and shocked and devastated by the shooting as any one else. I shed many tears over the children of Sandy Hook and the pain of the families I could barely imagine. I was disgusted and angry and feeling the grief of my friends and families.

And then that grief was stolen from me. Instead of being given that time to grieve and assess and think, I was bombarded by the hyperbole. I and many like me were assaulted with not only the call for more gun control measures but also the offensive idea that anyone for individual gun rights was somehow in favor of the murder of children. Like never before myself and others were finding themselves being viciously attacked for owning inanimate objects. And the media has done nothing but thrown fuel on that fire.

Those on the other side of the fight went from being hurt to angry and pointing that anger at us. We responded by trying to defend ourselves and tensions began to mount.

And mount they did.

Soon the president was making speeches and assembling task forces. People were screaming on television and radio shows. Calls for deportation. Conspiracy theories. Name calling. Websites created. Groups were meeting. Bills were being drawn up. Politicians were scheming. Guns and ammo started flying off of shelves like the last loaves of bread on grocery shelves in an apocalypse. People were making YouTube videos about killing people. Talk of executive orders and bans electrified every computer in the US.

And it all came to a pseudo head yesterday with the President's speech and executive orders on gun control.

I was not at home to listen to his speech. I had a choice of taking my kids to a story hour featuring stories and crafts of snowmen or staying in front of the television. I wasn't going to let any presidential speech or hyped-up fear about guns take the place of making time and enjoying it with my children. They are and forever will be more important to me than any possession and presidential speech.

I fully expected to get home, log into my email or facebook and see the thousands of outraged posts about how he tried some sort of extreme executive ordered ban.

Nothing.

Even though his speech had been concluded for some time by the time I got home there was not a single post on either my Facebook or my email in regards to what he said. They weren't even playing it on television news. That told me one thing: It wasn't nearly as bad as everyone predicted.

I had to go searching for his speech and when I found it and then found a list of his proposed executive orders and read them carefully I felt quite a bit of relief. Memorandums, letters to this or that agency, incentives to increase background checks. There was not a single item on the list that made me grind my teeth.

Then I went to some of the gun websites I frequent to see what some of the other people were saying about it.

I was more shocked about what was going on in the gun community than outside of it. The hyperbole was alive and well and instead of taking a second to breathe people were escalating. I can't even begin to list the ways in which people have been distorting what happened to make it far more panic-inducing than what it really was. And it continues.

I decided days ago to not borrow trouble from tomorrow. What will be will be. Panicking about it will help no one. Nor will it help our cause.

I think it is exceptionally prudent to be proactive, alert, vigilant and perhaps a bit suspicious. I know there are politicians who won't be happy until the entire US population is disarmed and I intent to continue fighting them. I have no delusions that it is getting better. It's not. It's bad and we still need to work and fight.

But I'm pretty sure it's time for the raving and fear-mongering on our part to settle a bit.

• I have and will continue to write my representatives. 
• I will share any information I find that is based in fact and relevant. 
• I will join and donate money to groups that will fight the upcoming bills that are going to be introduced to Congress. 
• I will communicate with anyone who has questions and if I don't have the answers I will attempt to direct him or her to someone who does. 
• I will continue teaching firearms safety and attending firearms training. 
• I will support any legislator who votes to oppose any assault weapons ban. 
• I will watch the voting in Congress to help me better vote for representatives in the mid-term elections who are pro-second amendment. 
• I will also attend meetings and peaceful demonstrations like those arranged for Jan the 19th at noon and Feb the 8th at 10am. 
• I will continue to carry in accordance with my state's laws and encourage the cause of liberty, firearms and self defense.

• I will NOT pass on conspiracy theories. 
• I will not attempt to put words in any politician's mouth and presume he has said or done something that has not been said or done. 
• I will not allow fear to overrun my common sense and reason. 
• I will not encourage any kind of illegal action. I will not condone or partake in any talk of harming or wishing harm on any political figures, actors, actresses or public figures no matter how misguided they may be. 
• I will not try to read into things, assume, over think or otherwise borrow trouble from the unknown. 
• I will not attack those confused and misunderstanding individuals who come to me for information. 
• I will not partake in the insults and cyber bullying that has gone on on both sides of the agenda. 
• I will not flame, harass or "troll" any site or figure who I disagree with.

I am a responsible gun owner and a reasonable woman. I am a gun owner and a defender of the second amendment. I will not change my mind on that for many reasons. And I will fight for my right to keep and bear arms. But I will also not allow my priorities to be unduly skewed because of panic.

American History

In this time of political flux in the this country I've heard a lot of comments regarding our founding fathers and what they would do or think if they were here today. Both "sides of the aisle" (as it's popular to say) claim they would have the founding father's blessing in their actions.

I don't do politics. I am not a political person. I hate politics because they confuse me and because I can't get over the feeling that everyone in office is working far harder on deceiving me or at least hiding things from me than helping me. The inaccessibility of political figures makes it far worse. One cannot just go up to the white house, knock on the door and expect a sit down with the president or the vice president. The local level is not much better. Emails and letters are answered by impersonal form letters and aids if they are answered at all. The impersonal nature of politics breads distrust in me. And a relationship without trust is not successful.

There are also the scores of politicians who make no secret of the fact that they have an agenda despite what the people have expressed they want. Some have publicly said the Constitution stands in the way of things they would like to accomplish. That is alarming.

That is not to say that all politicians are bad. I know there are politicians out there who work tirelessly for the people and to defend their liberties. They are under-appreciated and deserve recognition for their effort in the fight to keep America true to itself. 

So when a politician says he believes he would have the backing of the founding fathers in their ideas for our country, how are you to know whether or not their claims are true?

I've chosen to start by finding out what the founding fathers had to say for themselves on issues.

In my recent quest to make up my own mind on certain topics I decided to start with the good, old-fashioned book, upgraded to the new e-reader addition.

I found myself on the Kindle Store downloading a dozen free books.

American Political Ideas Viewed from the Standpoint of Universal History by John Fiske

The Beginnings of New England Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty by John Fiske

Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its Origins by John Fiske

The Critical Period of American History by John Fiske

The American Revolution by John Fiske

The War of Independence by John Fiske

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Washington and His Comrades in Arms; a chronicle of the War of Independence by Wrong, George McKinnon

The Federalist Papers by Hamilton, Alexander, Jay, John, Madison, James

The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America by United States

United States Bill of Rights by United States

The United States Constitution by United States

Even if you aren't interested in politics. These are good pieces to read if only for the purpose of learning about your own history and what the founding fathers wanted for this country and the struggles leading up to our declaration of independence and in forming a new, globally recognizable government. 

You may not think you are of a political mind or want anything to do with politics (like me) but as Hickok45 said, if you own a gun or you want to own a gun, you are involved. The first step to being involved is to be informed.

And don't forget the Jan 19 and Feb 8 State Capitol meets: