The other evening, my wife asked me, “Why do you wear your gun to process honey?” I suspect this question didn’t originate from her, but from her friend who came over to help us decap the frames of honey. My guess is that the other woman asked, and my wife didn’t have a good answer. Her friend is a little too liberal for my tastes, and while she has seen me repeatedly at social events, she has never seen me open carry, so she likely assumed I was unarmed. In truth, she has never seen me unarmed.
I’m happy to wear a cover garment and carry concealed when I am in public because I think there are good reasons to carry concealed. For example, it makes you less of a target and may give you the advantage of surprising a bad guy. But when you come to my house, I’m going to carry any way I damn well please. And besides, I think there are equally strong reasons for open carrying when I am on my property. It goes along well with the Beware of Dog sign in making people who are scouting the area think twice.
Consider Everyone Armed
I remember talking to a cop buddy years ago who said he just assumed everyone was armed, even if they didn’t have a concealed carry permit. I thought that was smart. It’s kind of like preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. If you assume they are armed, you are less likely to be surprised if they are. That can save you precious seconds or fractions of a second, which may save your life.
Many people are the opposite. They assume that because they are unarmed, everyone else is, too. That’s like assuming everyone will stop at the red light. Sure, most cars do most of the time, but if you are the first person in line at the light, you don’t want to pull into the intersection without looking both ways. That idiot texting while going the other direction might T-bone you.
Another family friend, who I know owns guns and used to carry, was shocked to see me open carrying when we stopped by their house to check on them after Hurricane Helene.
Are you kidding me? There were no phones, the cell towers were down, and if you wanted to call 911, you had to go to the nearest fire station where they could radio the sheriff’s department. That assumes you could get to the fire station and the sheriff could get to you, of course, which wasn’t always the case. We were on our own; no better time to be visibly armed as a deterrent.
At the time, she was dealing with the aftermath of having four feet of water in their house, so perhaps she can be forgiven.
Post SHTF
I own all the cool tactical gear. The Kevlar vest I got from my old job may be more than five years old and no longer under warranty, but I’d wear it if I thought the you-know-what was going to hit the fan. I have it in my car in a tactical carrier, just in case. I also own a plate carrier and plates, but you’ll notice I didn’t wander about town after Helene looking like I stepped out of a SWAT van.
Had there been reports of gangs of people driving up the mountain and looting stores, or if desperate people started doing home invasions in the area, I might have worn my vest under a loose shirt. I would also have positioned shotguns and rifles in even easier-to-reach locations, like on the dining room table. But as a local first responder told us, “No one is going to walk a mile uphill for resources.” To which I mentally added, “Not during the first week, in any case.”
If there is a serious global or national event in which no help is coming, and after a few days of no power and no food deliveries the “golden horde” starts pouring out of cities and causing problems out in the rural areas, then upgrading from a pistol is a viable option. But it’s a sliding scale. You don’t go from concealed carry to open carry to full-on tactical warrior unless there is a damn good reason. And hearing that a Walmart two hours away was looted is not good enough.
Preppers and Tactical Gear
It should be obvious that I am a proponent of being well-armed and capable of defending yourself, your family, and any other innocents who are under your purview. I prefer to achieve that by making the bad guy think twice when they evaluate us as a potential target. I also believe that every confrontation you avoid is a fight you’ve won. But if deterrence fails and avoidance isn’t possible, then I believe in an immediate, overwhelming response because when it is you or them, you can’t hesitate. In a dangerous scenario, thinking twice could get you killed and your womenfolk raped.
But that can be taken to an extreme. Too many preppers think having guns, ammo, and tactical gear is all they need. These folks have clearly never heard that an army travels on its stomach. There is a reason that food, water, and shelter come before self-defense. During Helene, I never needed my gun, but I needed to eat and drink every day. So my advice is to have both. But have more food than bullets, and more bullets than gold or silver.
We all have different priorities, live in different places, and plan for different disasters and scenarios. Maybe you believe you need that plate carrier to get out of the city. Out here, it isn’t going to help you kill a deer or trap a raccoon (which I understand is good eating). So you do you. But make thoughtful, deliberate decisions based on fact, not on what some YouTuber or blogger says.
Guns and Honey
So, how did I answer the question about why I carry a gun while processing honey in my own basement? Like this:
Every day when I get up, I put my keys, my wallet, my phone, my knife, and my spare magazine in my pockets. Then I put my gun in the holster. I carry my wallet even when I don’t plan to leave the house. I carry my keys when I don’t plan to unlock anything, and I carry my gun even when I don’t plan to shoot anything.
This is my daily practices because I never know when I will walk out the door and need to unlock it to get back in, or to unlock a padlock, or open the locked contractor box on the back of my pickup truck. I never know when I might run into town to pick up the mail or drop off the trash. By keeping my keys and wallet on me at all times, I have never been locked out of the car or the house, and have never driven anywhere without my driver’s license, my concealed carry permit, or a method of payment.
Likewise, I carry my gun every day in case I run into a bear while walking the dog or working in the bee yard. Non-gun owners accept this explanation, probably thanks to Winnie the Pooh, who everyone knows loves honey. They don’t need to know that I also carry it in case some meth addict or other criminal shows up planning to break in. Or that I wear it so that when I tell someone they are trespassing, they are less likely to do so again. I think it shows them I mean business.
Practice
You probably had driver’s ed as a teen. If you play an instrument, chances are you had formal instruction. Even going to the gym or the golf course for the first few times requires lessons. So if you are new to shooting, don’t assume that you have a gene or video game experience that will make you a great shooter. Even if you have an eagle eye and can shoot the angels off the head of a pin at 25 yards, you still need to learn the basics of grip, stance, safe gun handling, clearing a jam, how to make tactical reloads, and how to transition from your pistol to your long gun and vice versa.
Only once you know the basics can you get out there and practice the good stuff, like shooting on the move, from behind cover, reloading when one arm is wounded, going prone, patrolling, bounding, making tactical withdrawals under fire, setting up ambushes, responding to an ambush, etc. None of that matters if you can’t hit the target and have to take your eyes off the target to reload.
I am constantly shocked at how many YouTube videos of police shootings show officers who cannot smoothly reload their weapons or seem surprised when the slide locks open. For example, look at the video below and see how much trouble this officer has reloading his pistol between 2:20 and 3:00. I hope the department did some analysis and used this as a training opportunity because there are some obvious lessons to be learned from it.
Prepper Lessons
While I hesitate to criticize officers who were in a difficult and dangerous situation, the video has lessons that can benefit preppers.
Muscle Memory
Under stress, people tend to do what they have been trained to do. I can only assume that the officer who had difficulty reloading showed up to his annual certification but didn’t shoot much at other times and was never on a tactical team. He didn’t train in tactical situations and wasn’t used to reloading under the pressure of a life-and-death situation. Training and competition are not the same thing as a gunfight, but they are closer to it than firing 50 rounds at a giant B-27 target that doesn’t move. Preppers should practice reloads and can do so with an empty gun as part of their dry-firing routine. And don’t be afraid to join a local shooting league. I prefer USPSA over IDPA, but either will do.
Carry More Ammo
At least two officers in the video had spare ammo in their vehicle, either in a bag or a truck door. That doesn’t do you much good when the bullets are flying and you run dry. Keep spare ammo in your vehicle for after the fight, but have plenty on your person for the fight.
Avoid Tactical Paralysis
I was also shocked at the hesitancy of the two officers who were more than happy to stand 800 or 1,000 feet away and had no desire to get any closer. They are paid to run toward gunfire—and many good cops do. If those two worked for me, I would be giving their performance a negative critique and a poor performance review. As you can see in the video, they let trouble come to them, and it forced them to respond to a situation. Had they headed toward the target, they would have been in control of the situation, and the shooter would have had to react to them instead of vice versa. They gave up—or never took—the initiative.
This is the kind of tactical paralysis (a polite term for a dangerous trait) that likely led to the deaths of kids in Uvalde, Texas, back in 2022.
Prepper lesson: Action beats reaction. Also, when you expect the police to save you, they might just set up a barricade to contain the problem rather than solving it. Too often, no one is coming to save you. You have to save yourself.
Seize the Initiative
The one officer at the end who had no comms was the best of the batch. He was calm, steady, and ready to go. It probably wasn’t his first rodeo. He didn’t freeze, and he wasn’t a passive observer. As a result, he became the de facto leader, and the whole unit moved forward. He and the driver who crept up did something while the others dithered. Again, we see the benefit of seizing the initiative.
With any luck, you will never be in this kind of situation. With any luck, a bear will never interrupt my dog walk or honey harvest. But I recommend being armed and getting training, just in case.
