To whet everyone’s appetite for my upcoming posts and pics of my family’s emergency kits, here’s another fellow’s take on the subject. He’s a police officer, so some of his needs are of course a bit different. Still, his kits seem well-thought-out and pretty comprehensive.
One thing he emphasizes is OC spray. That’s one thing I’ve never used. Any recommendations? In a slightly different vein the new Kimber Guardian Angel looks interesting.
I do like his idea of wrapping his armor around his “Battle bag.” That’s rather elegant.
Why would you have ANY emphasis on less-than-lethal weapons in your plan, David?
I can see why the cop would, the “force continuum” is THE major part of his professional life, and might continue that way for him even after S.H.T.F.
None of us can afford less-than-lethal force projection. When we are faced with people trying to rob us of survival supplies, that’s a matter of, well, SURVIVAL.
In matters of survival, one doesn’t give the enemy a chance to come back and try again. One suppresses the enemy completely, with lethal force.
From a legal point of view, YOU may try to consider whether the disorder situation rises to the level of an actual war against you, and then YOU may try to assess whether the rule of law is capable of re-sestablishing itself so that the normal rules of combatting criminals still apply, but I won’t be looking that far beyond the end of my gun barrel.
When I have reliable information that disorder is widespread, and of a sufficient threat that I would consider Bugging Out, then I will make the PERFECTLY REASONABLE assumption that all the normal laws of society have been suspended. At that point, ANY offense perpetrated against my survival is attempted murder, if you want to put a felonious name on it.
BTW, most cops nowadays consider OC spray an impotent weapon, since it has a very high resistance curve. About the second or third time you use it on a chump, he will fight through it and keep coming at you.
If you HAVE to have less-than-lethal, non-lethal ammo for a shotgun would be a better choice, since you can change to lethal ammo with a couple of racks of the pump-gun action. The chump will know that also.
That was one thing I hadn’t quite nailed down for myself — would it actually be a useful tool for me. The scenario the cop illustrates — waking at night to noises in the street, then deciding he has to go out there to do something — wouldn’t apply to me. In such a situation I’d arm myself and wait behind closed doors for the cops to arrive. In contrast, an officer, even off-duty, has some responsibility to respond to lethal and non-lethal threats alike.
On the other hand, here I am in a state in which, unless I move to a distant county, I cannot obtain a license to carry a concealed firearm off of my property. I can keep one somewhat handy (locked and within arm’s reach, but unloaded), so I’m thinking there might be a situation in which an application of OC might gain me the time to arm myself.
I should point out that the cop included OC spray in his “keep by the bedside” kit, rather than in his BOB or Battle Bag. Indeed, OC would be somewhat silly in a battle.
I’d argue that regardless of status, you’d have a responsibility to try to prevent a felonious assault on another. The use of force in that situation is a responsibility we’ve delegated to the police, but as citizens we retain the ultimate responsibility for our society, and in the event the police cannot respond quickly enough (likely) we should make the attempt.
Ah, well, here we go. While certainly I agree that we have a moral responsiblity to intervene as you suggest, there are practical and legal concerns that make me very cautious in such situations. That’s not to say I won’t do it, but I’m going to think really really hard first.
Practically, one issue is that what looks to me like a “felonious assault on another” may in fact be vigorous self-defense. If you misconstrue a situation badly enough, you could actually invalidate any legal defense you have to your own actions, which puts you up shit creek, etc. You really need to be pretty sure what’s going on before stepping in.
In addition, legally, there’s the old law-school bromide that if you are walking down the sidewalk and see a baby drowning face-down in a puddle, you’re better off to keep on walkin’– because the moment you intervene, any damage or injury can be attributed to you, whether you caused it or not. Say you pick up the baby and find its neck’s broken. What’s to prevent the distraught mother from claiming you broke it in your haste to yank the kid from the puddle? Some states have “Good Samaritan” statutes that are supposed to prevent this, but in many cases they only apply to trained health-care professionals. See for example: http://www.overlawyered.com/2007/03/california_good_samaritan_out.html
(I’d bet most attorneys in the US can tell you exactly when they first heard the baby-in-the-puddle hypothetical — and also how sick they were when they realized that the legal system is set up to encourage citizens to leave the baby alone.)
There’s a horrible side-effect to this: my Mom is a first-grade teacher, and over the last decade all the teachers at her school have refused to be re-certified in CPR. Mom was the last to give it up. None of them wanted to be pressured, as “the CPR lady,” into providing CPR for one of the kids. The threat of lawsuit was (and is) too great.
With that in mind, my wife and I are going to get CPR refresher training, but not through our respective employers — and we won’t be talking about it very much.
Much as we rail against the immunity that protects ninjas from being personally sued for shooting Fluffy during a raid, the whole point of that immunity is to allow first responders to be the ones who can pick the baby up out of the puddle without risk of being sued — or at least, not so much risk as is faced by the average citizen who does the same.
That being said, some things are just obvious. For example, I certainly haven’t hesitated to pull a kid out of the way of oncoming cars.
Contrast, for example, France (and a minority of American states) which criminalizes a bystander’s failure to rescue.
http://www.agulnicklaw.com/articles/duty.html