Feelings of Safety

It’s now over a week since a madman killed 31 people and himself at Virginia Tech. Much has been written about the failures that allowed this to happen, especially the fact that the gun which might have ended the rampage was prohibited on the campus by policy. The stated reason for this policy was so that the students could feel safe.

If there’s one thing every adult in the post-9/11 world ought to have figured out, it’s that there is no such thing as safety. When I leave my house to go to work, there’s no guarantee that I’ll survive the day. I could die of an undiagnosed medical problem, I could be murdered, I could be hit by a car, I could have a ten-pound chunk of cement fall from the ceiling and hit me in the head (this last one actually happened at an old job, thankfully it happened over the weekend when no one was around, someone came in on Monday and found a chunk of cement on his desk and a hole in the suspended ceiling). Since there’s no such thing as safety, any “feeling” of safety you may have is an illusion.

Since the feeling of safety is an illusion, what does that say about anyone who says he’s trying to make you feel safe? They’re doing at least one, and most likely two, things to you that you shouldn’t let anyone do.

First, they’re lying to you. They’re pretending that they can make you safe, when all they’re doing is feeding an illusion (an attractive illusion to be sure, but still an illusion). No one has the power to make you safe. The Supreme Court has ruled that even the police don’t have the responsibility to keep you safe, not even someone who’s under police protection at the time of their murder.

Second, they’re probably asking you to turn over some control over yourself in the interests of safety. It’s usually phrased as “I can keep you safe if …” followed by a requirement that you refrain from doing something. So we have gun-free zones in the interests of safety, where people give up their right to self-defense under the assumption that a would-be murderer will be deterred by the fact that guns are prohibited. We’re told we’ll be healthy if only we’re forced to eat properly. We’re told we’ll survive a car crash if only the government forces us to wear seatbelts and pay for safety equipment like airbags in our cars.

To make this deal, to give up a measure of control over yourself for the illusion of safety, is to make a deal with the Devil. You’re giving up something and getting absolutely nothing in return. In the case of gun-free zones, I believe you’re actually making yourself less safe because the criminal knows that he’s the only one there with the ability to apply deadly force. There’s a reason why these things happen in schools and not at, say, gun shows, police functions and Texas rodeos.

When we were children we needed to feel safe and secure, and most of us were safe with our families. Now that we’re adults we need to put aside childish things, childish fantasies, and see the world as it is. It’s a dangerous place, and wishing it was otherwise won’t make it so.

So what do we do? Suppose you knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there would be a fire in your kitchen today, and that nothing you could do would prevent it. What would you do? Would you declare your kitchen to be a flame-free zone? Probably not. You’d check your fire extinguisher or buy one if you don’t have one. You’d make sure there were fresh batteries in your smoke alarm. You’d stay home, and at the first sound of the smoke alarm you’d spring into action to put out the fire while it’s still small. There’s no guarantee that your house still wouldn’t burn down, but you’d do everything in your power to keep that from happening. You wouldn’t just make sure 911 was on speed dial and hit the button when you noticed flames, knowing that a great deal of damage would be done before the fire department could arrive.

We need to do the same thing regarding self defense. We need to put aside the notion that we are ever totally safe. We need to believe, deep inside, that it COULD happen to us. We need to equip ourselves to deal with such a situation. We need to develop a mindset for self defense (as Jeff Cooper said, you’re no more armed because you own a gun than you are a musician because you own a guitar). We need to develop the mindset that WE, and no one else, are our own first line of defense.

Lastly, we need to eliminate those silly laws that provide nothing but a feeling of safety while enabling people with no respect for the law to commit atrocities like we saw last week. We need to stop pretending that someone who will commit the worst crime it’s possible to commit will be stopped by a law against a lesser crime. We need to act like adults and demand that we be treated as such.