Be Prepared
November 27th, 2007 by Syd
By Jim Higginbotham
We had a sad but interesting homicide in our county recently. A druggist who is somewhat of a local “angel of mercy”, donating his time and a lot of his inventory to folks who are disadvantaged, was murdered in the parking lot of his drug store when he took a purchase out to an old customer who was on oxygen.
The customer, 74 years of age, has quite a record of violence and is a convicted felon, and something in that transaction offended him so he pulled a handgun (I did not investigate this one so I don’t have the particulars yet as to caliber and load). The initial report is that he shot the druggist in the upper torso, then shot him again and when he finally went down (apparently this took a while) he got out of the vehicle and finished him off with a head shot.
Now I am not saying you can prevent all such things but there are a few steps you can take to improving your odds:
1. Stay alert. If you are not “paranoid” you may not be paying attention.
2. Be armed at all times. Being “Armed” means knowing how to reflexively use your weapon also. As Jeff Cooper says: “You are no more armed because you have a pistol than you are a musician because you own a piano.”
3. As my esteemed colleague, Tom Givens points out, there are no “safe” places. Murderers and social predators travel freely.
4. Don’t stereotype. All young males are not thugs and all old frail men are not harmless (nor women for that matter).
5. Don’t give up!!!!!! Handguns are not the “hammer of Thor”. If you get shot, then do something to keep from getting shot again! Then worry about getting the bullet hole fixed.
6. Make sure your bullets will go through car doors if possible.
7. Learn to shoot on the move!
Food for thought,
Jim Higginbotham
“Adventure is the result of poor preparation.” - Mark Twain
Another great piece of advice. Golden as always, but I would encourage everyone to also check my blog for some just as worthy advice. Something I don’t remember ever having seen mentioned anywhere.
[Editor] Including the link: I Want To Hit On This Again
I carry even when cutting grass. I stay alert because I KNOW letting your guard down can mean instant death.
Paranoid? Sure, if you wanna call it that. I call it ready.
As an aside…I think I may have shot KPDL with Jim at Knob Creek in the late seventies.
A local college professor in my town, Sherri Corbett, who was fixing up old beautiful houses in our town was murdered when a women she had befriended to help in the fix-ups walked up to her on the street and blasted her in the chest with a 40 caliber Glock.
Some people make the hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck stand-up. You know something isn’t right with them and you make adjustments to avoid and not turn your back on them. This isn’t a literal thing with me; it’s like having “gay-dar” when some people can ID the character of a person that somewhat hidden.