Thin line between paranoid and prepared

[UH1-D Rotorhead]

....when it comes to home/self defense, unless, of course, you are taking psychotropic Rx's for such a condition...I'll take hypervigilance over complacency any day of the week. (attach wink here)

[skeeter1]

I don't consider myself paranoid, but I like to be prepared. A few thousand rounds of ammo (I buy them when I find them on sale) doesn't sound unreasonable to me. One handgun by the bed, the rest in the safe. A few MREs, 10gals of water, some firewood for the woodstove (heat the house, and I've cooked on it before), lots of batteries for my flashlights and a couple of UPS's in case the power goes out.

OK, maybe I am paranoid, I don't know, but I like to think that I'm well prepared.

[wilson133]

A couple of weeks ago I was visiting a girlfriend. We were sitting on her couch watching a dvd when 2 guys came through the door. It was warm and she lives in a suburban neighborhood and the main door was open and they opened the screen door and came on in.
Fortunately I was carrying, as I always do, fortunately I train regularly. Even though I am fat and in my 50s, I came up off the couch with my Sig P220 and they went out faster than they came in. I think they were expecting a lady alone.
I haven't had to pull a gun for almost 30 years, but I carry all the time and I train, mentally and at the range. Paranoid? Well something did happen and my preparation prevented A bad ending. If nothing like this ever happens again, I feel that all the time effort and money was all worth it. Being unarmed in this situation, could have resulted in the ruination or ending of 2 lives. If my being prepared is paranoid, I wear the label proudly.
IT ONLY TAKES ONCE

[cheygriz]

Imagine a headstone in the cemetery with the following epitaph.

"He dint carry no gunz, cuz he dint want his buddies and everbodys to think ha wuz some kinda paranoid!"

[Thunderhawk88]

most of the time we can't know if we are killing Ted Bundy or someone who may in fact straighten out and sin no more!

If you shoot and kill him he WILL straighten out and sin no more!

[JohnKSa]

When you kill someone, it's hard to know that their future would have been.

Since the object of self-defense is not to kill, but rather to stop the attack, one needn't get into all the philosophical issues of "killing".

In fact, the criminal does all the decision making--the defender only reacts to the criminal attacker. If the criminal does not wish to be shot (and possibly killed) he can break off the attack immediately as the attackers in wilson133's post did. If, instead, he chooses to press the attack then he bears the responsibility for the outcome.

[Donovan655]

How many of you also feel there is a thin line between paranoid and prepared. While a freind of mine was visiting we started talking about guns and CCW. I told him that while me and the wife are asleep we each have a pistol on our night stands. While we are just sitting around the house I tend to keep a pistol with me in which ever room I am in. If I plan on being in the office on the computer I have a pistol on the shelf of my computer desk. If we are going to be watching TV in the living room I have a pistol on the end table next to me. I told him I do this because the way our house is layed out if some one was to kick in the front door and try to come in and harm me or my wife we would have to meet them in the hall way or entry way to get to the gun if it was in the bed room. He said I am paranoid but I feel I am just prepared to defend my castle so to speak. What are your opinions? am I paranoid or prepared? and do you guys/gals do anything similar?

I'd call this a reasonable amount of preparedness.

I live in a small enough apt that, if someone or some people were to assault my front door, I could be in my bedroom with a 12 ga. and a loaded Ruger P94 and Beretta M9 within a second. My fiancee shoots the beretta better than me so she knows her role.

When I hear any rukus going on I get both pistols out and keep them handy.

[seeker_two]

After reading the "pacifist" arguement, my views can definitely be classified as the polar opposite of "pacifism".....

...I don't believe that there is too much killing in the world. I believe that we (as individuals and as a society) just aren't killing the right people....

[Mike P. Wagner]

In fact, the criminal does all the decision making--the defender only reacts to the criminal attacker.

Aside from the pacafist issue, I can't buy this line of reasoning, ethically, morally, or legally.

Ethically, you are not a robot - you have free choice. Are you really saying that your are willing to surrender your freedom of choice to a criminal? It seems to me like that would be the last person I would allow to have control over my actions. I am supposed to turn over the responsibility for one of the most important decisions in my life to a scumbag? Never!

Morally, "Only reacts to" also sounds very much like "victim speak" to me. I take responsibility for all my actions, good or bad. I have made some bad decisions in my life, and some occasional good ones. I absolutely refuse to blame anyone else for my actions.

Legally, I don't think it washes. Maybe I am wrong there. Every perp argues "it was just a reflex, I didn't think", but i don't think that works.

Mike

[Mike P. Wagner]

After reading the "pacifist" arguement, my views can definitely be classified as the polar opposite of "pacifism".....

I agree - well maybe not the "polar" opposite, but I do reject that line of thinking. I think that we have a duty to resist evil, even to the point of killing the evil doer.

Mike

[kiov]

I think MikeW's point is well taken. We always have choices, even if they are poor ones. Nobody forces us to shoot them. I would shoot if attacked, but I'd also take responsiblity for it. "I made a choice to shoot someone trying to hurt me." If people don't like that choice, fine.

Plutarch was a great student of war and the virtues of fighters and citizens. He studied and compared Greek heroes of old to his contemporary Roman audience--an audience of citizen soldiers and unmatched warriors. He often repeted the point that the only thing an enemy could not take from you was your dignity. A superior force can take your home and life, but they can't force you to do anything you don't choose to. Yes, they can kill you, but they cannot make you betray your principles; that will be your choice.

[Edward429451]

You guys have it wrong. It's not about not letting the criminal control you like a robot, it's about mutual assured destruction. deterrance. Tired of being victimized, time to draw a line in the sand. No I will not let a perp come rape my wife, steal my livelyhood, or commit grave bodily harm to me. There's my line in the sand, don't force me to take action that may end your life etc..I do not want to shoot anyone, but dangit, I have my limits.

Just don't you guys go into law enforcement or the military. We wouldn't want the enemy forcing you to choose flight rather than fight. You're choice to flight could mean certain death for your countrymen. Don't start saying that the military would be different somehow. On an emotional/psychological level, it's the same dang thing.

I don't like it and didn't say that you have to like it. But when the chips are down, and innocent life is in danger...my god, you can't stand there saying I wont fight and you cant make me, that's absurd. Reality fellahs, this is planet Earth and like it or not there's bullies out there who would do unspeakable things to you & yours. You don't have to like it, you don't have to understand it. You do have to act. What you guys are saying is that you have no line in the sand? You can't be forced to action? But they're abducting your 9 yr old daughter...You wouldn't defend her? Could they force you to dial 911 and wait 20 minutes until some real men showed up to (take the report). I don't understand that mindset. JohnSka is right. The criminal makes the decisions by his actions. No, I don't want to but I have a line and if he crosses it, he can force me to shoot him. Force me means No other option left. I'd rather live with the PTSS of shooting the BG than the PTSS of watching my little girl be hauled away by unconscienable people. You play the cards you're dealt. You cannot morally or ethically fold the hand because you don't like the cards you're dealt. You raise the stakes and do what you have to do. Sorry if this sounds too harsh for your limited sensibilities, but hey, it's a harsh world. Sometimes you gotta do things you may not like to do.

[jakeswensonmt]

Ethically, you are not a robot - you have free choice. Are you really saying that your are willing to surrender your freedom of choice to a criminal?

You will always have a choice.
Choose not to be a victim.

[Mike P. Wagner]

Originally Posted by Edward429451

What you guys are saying is that you have no line in the sand? You can't be forced to action? But they're abducting your 9 yr old daughter...

I am not advocating the pacifist solution. I am presenting the notion that it's rational.

WRT the daughter being abducted - If you read my earlier post, the professor whose pacifism I respected had not watched his daughter be abducted - he had watched his whole family be abducted and killed at Auschwitz. Note that for him, this was not hypothetical situation. He had come to (nearly as I could tell) absolute pacifism in the face of almost unimaginable personal loss.

Part of what he learned from the Holocaust was the sanctity of human life. For him, killing a human being was utterly and absolutely wrong, under any circumstances. That's what he learned from the ovens.

Originally Posted by Edward429451

Reality fellahs, this is planet Earth and like it or not there's bullies out there who would do unspeakable things to you & yours.

You can tell me that you disagree with him, but if you are trying to tell me that a Holocaust survivor is only a pacifist because he hasn't ecountered any "bullies out there", it's a little hard to figure out how to respond...

Originally Posted by Edward429451

... he can force me to shoot him. ... I'd rather live with the PTSS of shooting the BG than the PTSS of watching my little girl be hauled away by unconscienable people.

You say "he can force me", and then "I'd rather". That looks like a contradiction to me - "I'd rather" implies to me that your are making a choice. You have two possibkle courses of action: 1) shooting BG and 2) letting your daughter be abducted. When you select one, you have made a choice. He may force you to make the decision, but he doesn't have the power to force you to chose #1 or #2.

Let me be clear - I think that you are making the same choice that I would make. I'd shoot someone who I thought was trying to abduct my daughter, too. But he would not force me to shoot him - I would shoot him because that's what I chose as the right course of action.

Is PTSS "Post Truamatic Stress Syndome"?

Mike

[Edward429451]

Is PTSS "Post Truamatic Stress Syndome"?

Yes.

I wasn't responding to the professor story, just the last 3 posts before mine. I just pulled the 9 yr old abduction out of the air as a scenario. I've never had everything I hold dear lost to me, or shot anyone, so I can only speak from where I am now, and I can see no rationality behind any pacifism that would allow an innocent to be hurt/killed.

You say "he can force me", and then "I'd rather". That looks like a contradiction to me - "I'd rather" implies to me that your are making a choice. You have two possibkle courses of action: 1) shooting BG and 2) letting your daughter be abducted. When you select one, you have made a choice. He may force you to make the decision, but he doesn't have the power to force you to chose #1 or #2.

I can agree with this. My decision was the choice between either having to live with the fact that I killed someone or the fact that I allowed harm to come to one of my loved ones because I didn't want to shoot someone. I"d rather have the lesser (to me) ptss of shooting a BG, than the ptss of knowing I watched my loved one get drove away and I could have done something about it. Given a choice, I'd rather do neither but I have made the decision and the bg could force me to act on it based on his actions. I hope that makes sense.

Perhaps I misunderstood your statements because I failed to put them into context with your earlier posts? Sorry, apparently I'd not had enough coffee yet.

[cheygriz]

If you kill someone because they might be Ted Bundy, you may be killing someone who would have become a saint. If you don't kill someone because he might be a saint, he may in fact turn out to be Ted Bundy. Both are possible.

When you kill someone, it's hard to know that their future would have been.

Mike, your arguments are valid and logical, as always. But in a way, you have made my point for me.

No, I don't know what the future holds. But if I am confronted a rabid animal, even though I must consider that a miraculous cure is possible, logic, at least the way I understand it, dictates that I deal appropriately with the immediate situation, and in my decision making, to consider what is indeed appropriate, that I consider the most probable of those as yet unknown future probabilities. This, of course, assumes that I have time to reason at all, and not just respond to training.

As for the argument that I am allowing the scumbag to make my dceisions for me, that is illogical and totally incorrect.

We (the American people, acting through our elected representatives) set up a series of defensive measures and scenarios during the cold war.

During times of calm, of course, when no immediate threat or crisis was looming. We played the "what if" game almost continuously, to hone and refine our thinking and decision making.

We tried, and IMHO succeeded admirably, to make logical, rational decisions, based on the thoughts of our best minds, and then we set "tripwires." The tripwires were mostly visual, radar, and intelligence "points" which if crossed, would trigger an automatic response. These "automatic" responses assigned to our "tripwires" were well thought out positions arrived at by our very best logical, philosophical, theological, legal, ethical and military minds.

We were not allowing our potential enemies to dictate our actions, we had already chosen our actions and response to a wide range of possible provocations, and set automatic tripwires, to implment decisions that had been made far in advance. We chose we didn't allow our enemies to choose for us.

[JohnKSa]

Ethically, you are not a robot - you have free choice. Are you really saying that your are willing to surrender your freedom of choice to a criminal? It seems to me like that would be the last person I would allow to have control over my actions. I am supposed to turn over the responsibility for one of the most important decisions in my life to a scumbag? Never!

My choices have already been made based on careful thought, research and training.

My decisions are not about killing, they are about defending life.

My decisions are not controlled by the criminal although the combination of the criminal's actions , my assessment of the situation and my a priori decisions will control my actions during an attack.

But ultimately, I'm not going to shoot someone unless their actions pose a direct threat to innocent life and I'm going to immediately break off my response when the criminal no longer poses a threat. In that sense, yes, my actions are controlled by the criminal. However, it's really twisting reality to pretend that one surrenders freedom of choice to a criminal and becomes a robot by predefining limits, by thinking through responses ahead of time and by responding to a criminal attack.

The bottom line is that the responsibility for a criminal's death (should that be the outcome) in a self-defense situation falls upon the criminal himself. His actions caused his own death and that's why the law absolves the defender of responsibility.

Originally Posted by Mike P. Wagner

In general, pacifism seems to be derived from axiomatic values ("sanctity of all life", etc.). Logic is a useful tool for deriving ethics from values - but I am not sure that it's very useful for committing to those values.

If two people have adopted different axiomatic value, no amount of "logic" will bring agreement.

Nearly any system of "axiomatic values" includes the concept of the abrogation of certain privileges for acting in a manner that is strongly contradictory to said values. It's pretty easily to show logically that violent attack is contrary to the premise of the "sanctity of all life" and self-defense has its basis in the principle of preserving the sanctity of all life.

In effect, by placing himself outside the value system, a violent criminal gives up his right to demand the same benefits enjoyed by those who embrace the system. That reduction in "benefit" lasts for as long as he is demonstrating by his actions his determination to stay outside the value system and may also have lasting and permanent repercussions.

Saying that the "sanctity of all life" prevents one from exercising self-defense is as illogical as arguing that the principle of property possession prevents returning stolen property to the rightful owner once a thief is apprehended on the basis that the property is now in the thief's possession and therefore belongs to him.

There are, no doubt, people who espouse such beliefs, but they are a miniscule minority for a very good reason.

[piste]

Several folks who have posted on this thread need to sell their firearms immediately as they have not fully considered the use of a firearm in self defense and do not have an appropriate and responsible mindset. Sorry to be so harsh but it's for true.

There is NO thin line between paranoia and preparedness. In fact there is a very wide gap. It is all very simple and is about two words...POSSIBILITY and PROBABILITY. Preparedness has to do with possibility.....paranoia is more about probability. We do not have fire extinguishers in our homes because we think it's likely the house is PROBABLY gonna burn down tonight...we do it because a fire could POSSIBLY happen AT ANY POINT IN TIME. That's not paranoia it's preparedness. Otherwise you'd just wait til the fire breaks out and then run to Home Depot to get the fire extinguisher...NOT A GOOD IDEA. Same idea for life insurance, etc etc. We have them in place because of POSSIBILITIES, not PROBABILITIES.

A violent home invasion is POSSIBLE anywhere, anytime (though of course PROBABILITY varies by location but that's irrelevant)....so to carry a weapon on your body in your home is being prepared not paranoid. Many people carry like that and are in a very rationale state of mind. After all...as has been said...what good is it if you have to ask the meth-head to hold on a minute as you need to saunter over to the safe to get the firearm to shoot him with?

Now if you carry a handgun on your body every waking moment while thinking "tonight's the night" and it's highly PROBABLE that zombies are gonna come flying through your front door...that's paranoia. Big difference in mindset folks. That's it and that's that.

[Para Bellum]

There is no line. The un-prepared think of the prepared as paranoid.
Just stop bothering. It helps.

[kiov]

Edward,
If you were refering to my post I think you may have misunderstood my point. I think MikeW made the same point, and then clarified it better than I could have.

For the record, I would not hesitate to defend my loved ones. I would, however accept responsibility for my actions. I would not claim to have been "forced" to do anything. This is perhaps too fine a point for this discussion.

My point about the ancients and their preoccupation with virtue, citizen values, and a warrior spirit was also, perhaps, misunderstood. Sometimes warriors are injured, then captured. They are bound in chains and have no arms or means to fight. They are going to be executed, but first the enemy tries to make them renounce their values or ideals in public, usually in exchange for a quick death rather than torture. This was the point: that you may not have a choice to live, but you will always have the choice to die with dignity. Rather than showing a lack of strength, will, integrity, or fighting spirit, this is instead one of the highest expressions of character.

In regard to pacifists, I'm not sure about what to think. I can't help but respect the holocaust victim's moral choice to renounce all violence--that also, was Christ's message. I, however, have more of a fighting mentality.

kiov

[buck460XVR]

Paranoid was a great tune by Black Sabbath back in the early 70's.

I feel sorry for the folk who feel it necessary to carry 24/7/365. It's a sad world we live in when it has come down to this. It's also hard for me to imagine having to have that mindset. It would take a warped individual(other than a gun dealer) to be happy or nonchalant about this kind of situation. I know it's all about life choices, I guess that's why I have made the choice to live in a small Midwestern town, where I and my family are more at risk to be killed or physically harmed by a home invasion from woodticks (lymes...yep, had it) than by BGs. Now before you all jump my azz, I realize there is always a certain amount of risk for a home invasion, but I feel I have reduced it greatly by this life choice. Statistics here prove me out as there has not been a home invasion death or injury(other than between drug dealers and domestic abuse) here in the county for several years. I believe this is what some refer to as not being a victim. Even so, there is usually a loaded 12 ga. SxS beside the bed. Now as for the woodtick thing.............

That being said, I can't answer the paranoid/prepared question without knowing the facts or circumstances of everyones situation....none of us here can.......and if you think you can, you may just be paranoid.

[Rangefinder]

I can't call someone paranoid for carrying a weapon all the time any more than I'm call someone an overly zealous "mr. fix-it" for having a leatherman and mini-mag on their belt 24/7. It's all just different variety of tools--some you use often, others you have just because you might need tham, and others still you hope you'll never need--but it's there should you find yourself in a situation that you DO need it. I don't carry a handgun 24/7. But I do have 'something' on me at all times, and I'm not about to criticize anyone for a nano-second that does carry a handgun all the time. It's their right, their choice, and their reasons. It's a matter of "I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it." Same reason I keep a Bug-out-bag in the truck and another in the closet. I don't sit and worry about needing them, but I know they're there--so I don't worry so much about the reasons they're there and life goes on as normal.

[Doublestack]

You are not paranoid. Guns are like the above mentioned fire extinguishers (and condoms for that matter). It is better to have one and not need it, than to need it and not have it.


DS

[JohnKSa]

...renounce all violence--that also, was Christ's message.

There is no way a person who told his followers: "if you don't have a sword, go buy one" could be advocating that people "renounce all violence".

piste has hit the mark.

Paranoid is a label that is often improperly applied to the prepared by the unprepared to soothe their conscience and to allow them to dismiss their lack of preparation without having to resort to logical thought. That's not to say that all those who choose a different level of preparation (in terms of being armed) are remiss, in fact, they may have prepared beyond my level of preparation in other ways for eventualities that I haven't considered.

The difference between being prepared and being truly paranoid is in the attitude of the individual. While I choose to be armed nearly all the time, it's not out of fear of imminent attack nor out of belief that attack is imminent or unavoidable.

[Rangefinder]

"if you don't have a sword, go buy one"

Maybe I took that too literally? I'm up to about 30-something now... Maybe I'm paranoid about swashbuckling zombies... LOL