"Room To Destroy…"

Here is the first and most important lesson from the Baltimore riots:

• YOU • ARE • ON • YOUR • OWN! •

Believe it. Internalize it. Make it part of your thinking and planning every day. Those elements of the State, especially those elected and appointed progressive bureaucrats, who are so good at taking things from you — your money, your property, your Constitutional rights, occasionally your life — are not so good after the first brick is thrown.

Would, a man wonders, the Mayor of Baltimore been so cavalier about that "room to destroy" if the destroyers were destroying her neighborhood? If it was her neighbors' houses going up in flames? If it was a business she had spent her life's work to build? If it was her children under threat? And those politicians, including the President and his outgoing Attorney General, who have spent the past 6 years fueling the fires of racial division and hatred, I ask the same question I did after Ferguson, after the New York riots...are you happy now?

"Because the finance man's gonna be at your house on Saturday, right? That's exactly what the company wants - to keep you on their line. They'll do anything to keep you on their line. They pit the lifers against the new boys, the old against the young, the black against the white - EVERYBODY to keep us in our place.

— Blue Collar, 1978

Do the politicians and the race hustlers look at the flames with the sense of satisfaction that comes with a job well done? Do they see the destruction of people's lives and livelihoods and think, "Yeah baby…the streets belong to the People!"

I'm not letting the police administrators off the hook, either. There is a fundamental cultural problem when we use the armed agents of State, the police, for literally nickel-and-dime tax collection (in NYC, Eric Garner was approached by police for selling "loosies," individual cigarettes from a pack, thus not letting the State get it's quarter per ciggie tax...two bits) or antiquated, literally ridiculous laws (in Baltimore, Freddie Gray apparently ran because he was carrying not a "switchblade," but a gravity-assited spring open knife like the one I carry every day). What does that tell us about the things we as a culture value? That a guy in Baltimore ended up dead because of  "West Side Story?" Those are issues we need to address, but not while we're in the middle of the soup.

To bring it back to our "doctrine" from THE BEST DEFENSE, what do you need to do? First, if you DVR'ed our episode on the couple trapped in a parking garage, watch it again. Here are the learning points:

• Be aware of the situation in your own community. Remember, violence is like the ebola virus...it spreads, not easily, but steadily. It is incumbent on you to be aware of what's going on around you. Ostrich, remove head from sand.

• Get beyond your and other's paradigms. The politics, the "narrative," the "optics" of the situation, none of those things matter once you step "through the gate" into a tactical responses. Clear your mind of the clutter and work through the steps you need to protect you and your family.

• Take responsibility for your own actions, including those actions that are part of your routine. What route do you use driving to and from work? To take the kids to the mall? To drive to Grand Ma's House? Do those routes take you into areas with which you're not familiar? See Point #1 above!

• If you find yourself in such a situation, remember the lessons from TDB — stay in the big steel box with the doors locked. Drive your way out quickly. Be prepared to respond with force, if there is an attempt to, say, launch a concrete block through your car window as I saw on TV last night.

• When in doubt, go to ground. Stay home. It's better to miss a day of work or a trip to the Gap than to end up in the middle of an urban riot. I say this as someone who made a journalistic career by being in the middle of urban riots. I have seen riots from the inside, and believe me, you don't want to!

• Don't do stupid stuff. I can't emphasize this enough. Riot tourism is not a good idea! Being in Condition White while your city experiences paroxysms of violence is a recipe for disaster. As we have said since the beginning of TBD, awareness and avoidance are your primary tools in situations like these.

Okay, enough for now. Pay attention, and stay safe out there.

UPDATE: With a Presidential run eminent, remember Martin O'Malley's vicious attack on the Second Amendment for the people in Baltimore:

After Baltimore descended into chaos, remember that Gov. Martin O’Malley was so proud of the anti-gun law he got enacted into 2013. We have seen that Baltimore police did not or could not defend people – and O’Malley’s law makes it far more difficult for citizens to acquire the means to defend themselves.