Gun Blog Variety Podcast #128 - L'audace de Non

Audacity, audacity, always audacity; we even record our segments with Audacity.

• Surprise! Men and women ARE different. Beth gives us her thoughts on why that's a good thing.
• It's another police chase, but this time it's also interstate kidnapping. Sean tells us who they caught.
• Barron is on assignment and will return soon.
• In the Main Topic, Sean and Erin talk about how we are programming people to feel bad about defending themselves.
• Tiffany is also on assignment and will return next week.
• How do you say no to hungry people? It's hard, but Erin will tell you how and why.
• There's another episode of the anti-gun "Loaded Conversations" podcast! Weer'd puts her guest, David Hemenway, through a Patented Weer'd Audio Fisk™.
• And our plug of the week is Covington Vodka. 

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Listen to the podcast here.

Read the show notes here.

Thanks to LuckyGunner and Remington for their sponsorship, and a special thanks to Firearms Policy Coalition for their support.

Blue Collar Prepping Transcript:

The Audacity of Nope

Throughout the course of doing these Blue Collar Prepping segments, I have constantly preached that preppers need to maintain secrecy about the extent of their preps -- and perhaps even hiding the fact that they are preppers at all. 

The reason for this is simple: If it is known that you prep, and your friends and neighbors do not, then those people will likely show up on your doorstep wanting some of your supplies after a disaster.
And I have said, multiple times, that it is between you and your conscience whether or not you send them away. My point has always been that it needs to be YOUR choice to share with others. If an entire neighborhood of hungry people shows up on your front yard demanding food, the only choice you have boils down to “Do I let them break in and take the food my family needs, or do I have to threaten to shoot them to make them go away?” 

 
However you choose, your secret is out and you have to deal with the consequences. I say that it’s far better to stay deep within the Prepping Pantry because if people don’t know, they can’t threaten you with violence if you don’t give up the resources you’ve carefully stored. 

But this approach is invariably met with the question “But if I see someone in need, and I can help them, shouldn’t I?” And while I cannot answer for you, my response is almost always “No.”

Preppers need to learn to say “no”, because that can be a potentially lifesaving skill. I call this “The Audacity of Nope.” And it does take audacity, because the natural human response is to help someone in need.

Now let me ble clear about this: I absolutely encourage preppers helping other people when possible. That’s just common decency. However, if you’ve ever taken a first aid class, or a rescue swimming class, or anything else like that, recall that you are always taught that you should never, ever endanger yourself to help another, because if you put yourself in danger and fail, there are now TWO people who need rescue and you’ve just made the situation worse.

Prepping is like that, only with potentially higher stakes. If you have a family, it is your duty to protect them before you protect other people, and if you allow other people to partake of your supplies then you are in fact depriving your family of those supplies which might be needed later.

Worse, imagine if you give food to someone who needs it, and they tell other people where they go it. What’s to keep them from walking up and asking for the same thing?

It is not your responsibility to feed the neighborhood. 

This is why I believe that preppers need to learn to say “no”. Internalize this lesson now, because you do not need to be learning it when it’s life or death.

So here are the steps I recommend prepper take to learn how to “nope” out of situations:

First, learn to live the phrase “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” In other words, if something doesn’t immediately affect you, stay out of it! This is desirable on several levels:

• It breaks you of a habit of getting involved in other people’s business and cleaning up other people’s messes.
• It prevents you from looking like a busybody.
• It gives you more time and energy to devote to more important tasks.

Next, embrace the notion that it isn’t your job to save everyone. In fact, it is physically impossible to save everyone! Your only job in this world is to take care of yourself and those who you love or who depend on you. Everything after that is of secondary concern. Some may call that being selfish; I call it self-love. You don’t want your family homeless or starving because you decided feeling better about yourself for doing something nice was more important than security. To me, THAT is the height of selfishness.

Finally, take the time NOW to teach other people how to prep. This will not only ease your conscience later on -- “They had every opportunity to look after themselves, and I tried to show them how. It is not my fault if they didn’t listen.” -- but this also looking after yourself in the long term.

If everyone around you is prepared, then not only do you not need to worry about them using your supplies or equipment, but you have taken the first step in forming a prepping community that can depend on each other.

Do these three things now, so that if you ever need to harden your heart and say “No” later, it won’t hurt as much.