Updated on 12/03/2018

On an e-mail list I’m on, there was a discussion about what your every day carry for self defense is. This is a topic of debate that you routinely find on the Internet. There are usually two camps:

• You can never carry enough weapons/ammo aka “Lock and load, boys! There’s no such thing as overkill!”
• Only carry a minimum for what you might need.

The funny thing on the list was this: a professional soldier, one who is active in a war zone and has seen the elephant, got his rant on about civilians who walk around trying to imitate an armory. I think he has a point. It’s fashionable these days to talk about carrying multiple knives and guns plus ammo because you might:

• Lose the knife so you can go for a back up. And when you lose that one you still have five more back ups to go to.
• You can throw the knife because you still have back ups.
• If your gun runs dry, you just grab another, no need to reload.
• If you do need to reload, you have tons of ammo on you.

As such, I don’t think these statements are wrong per se. They seem logical and have a ring of common sense to them. But that still doesn’t mean they are right. Let’s take a look.

Some basic assumptions.

Before I move on, I’ll make a couple of basic assumptions about you, dear reader. I admit up front, they will be off for some of you. If that’s the case, don’t get upset about what I’ll write next. But for the most of you, I’m willing to bet my Metallica vinyl record collection that I’m not too far off. Here goes: [Read more…]