Tactical Kindness
Imagine a prepared citizen, if you will. Let’s call him Marcus. Marcus goes to the gym twice a week, practices BJJ 3 nights a week and has recently become a blue belt. He competes in USPSA and has recently become a B-class shooter. He takes a stop the bleed or TCCC class every other year, along with a shooting course from a reputable instructor every 6 months. He religiously scans near and far before exiting his vehicle, is careful of letting people get too close in transitional spaces, and even monitors wind direction while managing unknown contacts in case he must deploy pepper spray! He is, truly, the most tactical of us. He lives in Oakley sunglasses, boots, Kuhl pants, and polo shirts that are tight through the chest and loose through the stomach, which is good, because he carries a striker-fired double stack 9mm pistol appendix, along with a fixed blade knife. He can recite the wisdom of firearms instructors going back to Jeff Cooper with the accuracy of a monk quoting scripture and has worked hard to achieve his goal of being hard to kill.
Our knee-jerk instinct as internet gun people is to celebrate Marcus- he’s done all of the things that we’ve talked about in our social media discussions, has spent a fortune, and has an enviable skillset to show for his efforts.
Despite all of that, there’s one major area of self defense he’s overlooked: The poor bastard cannot, under any circumstances, relate to normal earth humans. He can have long, animated discussions about the best self defense round, but he can’t have a simple conversation- and in that sense, he is an absolute liability.
I say this to say that when it comes to self defense, there is a skillset that has been overlooked by the majority of trainers: kindness. To paraphrase Varg Freeborn, there are fights after the fight. If you haven’t read his excellent books, please take a second to order them from Amazon, then come back to this article. While you wait for them to arrive, I’ll summarize the fights after the fight:
The legal fight – your experience with the judicial system. You can win the gunfight and lose here.
The social fight- Have you ever thought about how Kyle Rittenhouse feels about the aftermath of his shooting? He’s been acquitted, but I’m certain there are places he still can’t go. Same for George Zimmerman.
The emotional fight- let’s say the courts and people still approve of your use of force. You still took a life, and that’s not an easy thing to live with.
Integrating kindness into your self defense plan can mitigate each of these fights. There are three levels of kindness, and I recommend practicing all three. I will lay out a basic case for each here, but feel free to apply the framework to your own life however you see fit:
Local Kindness, or “Happy Neighbors, Happy Memories.”
This is the least convenient, but easiest kindness to practice. My wife and I live on the mean streets of Northern Virginia. Shockingly, none of our neighbors has stopped me while I’m loading my car to go to the range to say they feel safer because I go to the range. If it registers with them at all, it’s probably a neutral or negative association. On the other hand, the fact that my wife’s garden is a pop of color that all of the neighbors admire in the spring. In the fall, we normally give the neighbors small containers of baked goods with a generic holiday message of goodwill. When it snows, I shovel more than just my sidewalk- I make sure the elderly members of the neighborhood have a clear path to get to their vehicles. I don’t ask for anything or advertise any of this- I just try to make where I live a little nicer for everyone involved. If I see a neighbor loading or unloading something heavy, I offer to help. We’re active in buy nothing in our area. Why do any of this? It generally only costs time or labor or things we were going to throw away anyway, but the dividend is goodwill from the neighbors.
Should you find yourself in the legal system, what would you rather have your neighbors say? “He kept to himself, I didn’t really know him” or “Kirk? He shovels my walk when it snows, always lends a hand if I need- great guy!”
Community Kindness, or “Get known for being good.”
The next step is more time and resource intensive. If you can get involved in a local volunteer organization, even one night a month, you’re ahead of the majority of people. Go to a food bank, join your local service organization, raise money for a charity, anything of the like. Ideally, raise money for something with broad appeal- for example, nobody gets mad if you’re volunteering your time to a suicide prevention fundraiser. If you’re passionate about wedge issues, by all means support those as well, but understand that not everyone shares those views and that support won’t be as broadly advantageous as feeding the hungry. This is defensive in two ways: first, people with their needs closer to satisfied are less likely to engage in risky behavior (like violent crime), and second, it is again making you known as a productive member of the community. It’s also good for your mental health to know you’re having a positive impact on those around you- and good mental health should be part of the foundation of self defense.
Rapport Building
Talking to people is hard. Talking to strangers is harder. It’s also the most effective way to de-escalate a situation. Cultivate the ability to talk to complete strangers without making it feel forced, unnatural, or awkward. Will it dissuade a predator who has selected you as a victim? Of course not. However, one of the natural defenses to aggression is a second person in the encounter. If you’re having an amicable conversation with another person, it raises the possibility that you’re with that person- making you a less desirable target. If you’ve taken 5 shooting courses but can’t talk to a stranger in a bar- you’ve got an area in which you can have massive gains in capability with comparatively minimal effort. Remember when you first started shooting, and hitting the target at 5 yards was a major success? Talking to people is the same way. Build that capacity. One of the best ways to build that skillset is to take a standup comedy class, join a toastmasters group, or take a customer service job or volunteer opportunity for a few hours a week. Soft skills save lives!
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