Daily Dispatch #12

What a self defense class can teach you about politics and activism

I had a really great time this past weekend at John Murphy’s ‘Concealed Carry: Street Encounter Skills and Tactics.’

It is a solid self defense and personal protection course that, while it has a 250-round shooting portion, is so much more than a ‘shooting class’. It’s a holistic, contextual course on self defense that focuses less on pure shooting mechanics (although there was some coaching when needed) and more on various ways to spot a potential self defense situation before it develops, ways to possibly avoid it, and if you somehow can’t avoid it, different non-lethal tactics to potentially deescalate the situation before it becomes a deadly force incident. Lastly, if all previous options are unsuccessful, he demonstrates various tactics that help you stack the deadly force part in your favor.

There’s also a basic ‘stop the bleed’ medical portion, which is something that you’ll likely put to use well before you ever see yourself discharge a firearm in self defense.

I cover the course in some detail in the podcast, but me being me I also scaled up the implicit self defense principle of ‘have options and capabilities between a hard word and a gun’ and talked about the necessity for political options between ‘voting’ and ‘civil war’.

There’s actually quite a bit to cover here (and I will do more on it in the future) but I also touch on how so many of the skillsets we need on the right already exist, we just need to train ourselves to see them in a different context. Tune in for more!

Pre-class video playlist on pre-assault indicators and various defensive issues: