Security Reality

Yesterday’s unthinkable tragedy inflicted against innocent victims in an environment where learning, love, and laughter were supposed to prevail has shaken the confidence and core of the American psyche.  This is the essence of terrorism and all of its companion effects.  Undoubtedly the public discourse and debate regarding school security and gun control will rise again to the surface of our preoccupation, with many an expert spouting facts, figures, recommendations, and remedies to free this nation from the grip of homegrown criminal terror.  Unfortunately, with all of the opinion and expertise circling about, only a few will focus the narrative on some basic realities of our time.

Americans are weak.  We abdicate our individual responsibility as free, self-reliant people to live by a code of humble and confident preparedness.  We expect others to assume the obligation for our security and that of our families and loved ones.  We roll through life with our heads buried in our technology while the sick and evil among us watch with anticipation, knowing full well their day of infamy will come.  We are oblivious to this reality because our sense of perpetual entitlement extends to one of our most fundamental individual mandates, self-protection.

The most common misperception with regard to security confidence is that physical and procedural security will either prevent or mitigate all unwanted events.  While they have their place, they cannot and should not be considered as completely sufficient countermeasures.  The best locks, cameras, access controls, physical deterrents, policies, and procedures are no match for a determined adversary.  Keep in mind one truth; what can be seen can be defeated.  The mistake we make is assuming that because we see or know these measures exist we are now entitled to some guarantee of safety.  A bad-guy sees these things as speed bumps along the pathway to the desired end-state.  A few minor adjustments and minimal planning and all of the time, money, and resources expended can be made to look insufficient in a minute.

What truly is needed are a major mindset shift and the corresponding assumption of personal responsibility.  If physical and procedural security efforts can be detected and ascertained by an adversary, then we individually and collectively need to beef up the more important countermeasures that are not visible to the naked eye.  Imagine a nation of prepared and capable citizens who refuse to allow perpetrators to ever have any victims.  In a sense, it’s time to start victimizing the perps with heightened intellect and physical capability.  If every man and woman with the physical and mental capacity to learn and develop basic skills would step up to the plate and embrace self-reliant personal security expertise, then the collective result will be communities of powerful and legitimate deterrents to terror.  Think back to the cold war theme of mutual assured destruction and the deterring power of placing adversaries in check by forcing them to consider their own potential demise as a result of their intent to create yours.  Planting even a minor seed of doubt in the mind of a bad-guy yields huge dividends as they explore options for carrying out their plan. 

And even this approach is insufficient.  Additionally, each individual must have the hard conversation as to their personal threshold or redline that would cause them to be willing to take homicidal action against another while knowing their own mortality would be forfeited.  What about your life is worth fighting and dying for?  What has to happen for you to get prepared and/or be engaged?  Would you take a life to protect another?  Are you willing to die or watch your loved ones die at the hands of a madman?  Having this self-inquiry during an event is the wrong time and will result in hesitation leading to failure.  Consider yourself now and then do something about it.

As long as individuals are willing to be victims there will be victims.  As long as we don’t prepare ourselves to protect the innocent among us there will be victims.  Evil exists and will continue to do so.  It will manifest itself in various forms and continue to evolve in its effects and outcomes.  Fundamental to our individual and collective existence is the requirement for the reality that safety and security affords us.  It is not the mandate of another; it is your mandate, it is my mandate.  Get your head right and then take specific and deliberate action.  Let’s work diligently to create a country that plants collective seeds of doubt in the minds of would-be adversaries.  Let’s take comfort and derive quiet confidence in the reality that we are prepared for the worst they desire to inflict upon us.  Let’s not settle for forfeiting our God-given right to live and live free from evil.  Prayer is an effective opportunity to receive guidance, comfort, and intervention but only after we have demonstrated a willingness to do all within our capacity to do without it.  Make the choice/commitment and make it soon.

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