Yesterday\nwas my father\u2019s birthday. If he\u2019d lived past 88, he\u2019d be 120 years old today.\nBorn in 1900, he lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. He and\nhis father, the first of our linear family to arrive in this country, both had\nto shoot criminals to survive. Not surprisingly, Dad brought his only son up\nwith a gun in his hand, and in the house and in the family jewelry store, where\nI carried a gun at the age of 12 when I started working there. (It was legal in\nthat time and place. Ayoob\u2019s Law #9: Never break the law, know the law better\nthan the other guy and you\u2019ll probably never feel a need to break it.) He told\nme that if it was just a robbery, offer to carry the cash register to the\ngetaway car for them, but if I thought the armed robbers were going to kill,\nput them down first and by surprise. His teaching was the genesis of what wound\nup being my life\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, during the pandemic crisis, it pains me to see that twits on Twitter and fools on the Internet are giving dystopic \u201ckill them all and let God sort them out\u201d advice.\u00a0 They seem to think \u201cWalking Dead<\/a>\u201d was a training film instead of fantasy entertainment. Got news for those folks: history shows us that after disasters that break down society, society comes back, and applies all the rules it had before. <\/em>I have an article on this very topic, with case studies, coming out in my Self-Defense and the Law column in Combat Handguns<\/em><\/a> <\/em>magazine, in the July-August 2020 issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know none\nof you<\/em> are gonna get all bloodthirsty\nand if society breaks down, put a sign up in front of your house saying \u201cWe\nhave toilet paper, food, and booze: come and get it if you dare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I do,\nhowever, have to share with you something I received from my old friend John\nBellah who, like me, is a retired cop in the senior citizen age bracket. He did his decades of police time in\nCalifornia. Speaking of the current crisis and fears of societal breakdown, he\nwrites:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI just read your\narticle on the home invasion in Jacksonville, Florida. Foster Coker\u2019s armament\nafter the incident reminds me when Richard Ramirez (aka The Nightstalker) was\nterrorizing Southern California. He picked yellow, single story residences,\nwith sliding glass doors, located within a mile of a freeway off-ramp, in a\ncul-de-sac. I was chatting with an LAPD buddy about how our house fit the\nprofile except it wasn\u2019t yellow. We kept the St. Bernard inside, Mossberg 500\nunder the bed and my Detective Special in the nightstand. (Back then my\ndepartment limited me to .38 Special). The LAPD Copper exclaimed; \u2018You\nson-of-a-bitch! I\u2019ll bet you\u2019re painting your house yellow, too!\u2019 I replied I\nwasn\u2019t repainting, but my next door neighbor\u2019s house IS yellow\u2014and he IS\nnervous.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the first victim(s)\nof The Nightstalker had been able to reach a six-shot .38 Detective Special and\/or\na 12-gauge pump shotgun, the murder spree would have likely been nipped in the\nbud. My retired friend in California, like me, now has somewhat more\nsophisticated protective hardware than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n