Personal Protection, Self Defense Products, Stun Guns, Pepper Sprays

The Self Defense Guy had the honor of a recent communication from Shamoomoo, the older cousin of the famous Sea World thespian, Shamu. The Self Defense Guy doesn’t know how he did it, but somehow Shamoomoo found a way to Skype him, and Shamoomoo even included the added courtesy of a Whale/English translator.

Turns out the whales really are smarter than us humans, just like the libs have been saying all along. And the whales have figured out that with their growing populations coupled with the dwindling resources of the Earth’s oceans, they needed to find a way to thin the herd so the rest of them can survive.

Death Panels is the method they chose to use, and all those whale beachings that send the libs into a tizzy whenever they see one is merely the whale’s enlightened way to provide for the future of their culture.

Shamoomoo went to great lengths to explain to The Self Defense Guy that the whales are starting to get ticked off with human interference with their culture, and the whales want us to cease and desist. They also want us to know that they have taken great pains to make sure that the best and brightest among them are never “subjected to the judgment,” as Shamoomoo put it.

They’ve devised a complex formula that only the smartest of them can understand, but the smartest of them have assured all the others that it’s the best way to go, so they said, “Yeah, sure,” in their best Frankie Pantageli imitation from The Godfather, Part 2, which is #1 on the whales list of all-time great movies, and went a long way in soothing the ruffled feathers, so to speak, that erupted from the species-insensitive “Luca Brazzi sleeps with the fishes” line from The Godfather.

Shamoomoo says we top-siders, as they call us, don’t know how close we came to an all out war over that “sleeps with the fishes” line, and truth be told, he must be serious about this, cause The Self Defense Guy noticed that the Whale/English translator rendered the line this way, “sleeps with the f—–”. Shamoomoo explained that any whale foolish enough to say or write the entire phrase is immediately subjected to the judgment.

Shamoomoo asked The Self Defense Guy if he would pass this information along so that we could put an end to this patronizing attitude we humans have for whales. “If they only knew how much smarter we are than they are,” Shamoomoo said, “they’d stop trying to shove those death paneled slobs back into the sea. They’d let us get rid of those boobs in the best way we know how.”

The Self Defense Guy’s gotta say that he agrees wholeheartedly with Shamoomoo on this one. If only we top-siders could find a way to implement as kind and compassionate a way to provide for our future as the whales have found for theirs.

Maybe someday.

But until that day comes, better have you some pepper spray at the ready the next time some top-sider wants to interfere with whatever it is you’d rather do. After all, it’s better to fill his eyes with pepper spray than to take the risk of him sending you to sleep with the fishes.

If you ever find yourself face to face with a meth addict who wants your wallet, you’ll be glad if you have some pepper spray handy, and you know how to use it.

You won’t want Binaca. You won’t want a safer, more diluted mixture that’s more friendly to your attacker. You won’t want something that makes you equal to your attacker. And you certainly won’t want to “engage” him in some sort of “there but for the grace of God go I” bullshid counseling session.

You’ll want something that let’s him know, let’s any bystander know, that there’s a difference between the 2 of you. That you’re the good guy, that he’s the bad guy, and that you put him on the ground writhing in pain, blinded, coughing and choking because he deserved it.

That’s what you would want.

Unless the democrats are the meth addicts, and the Republican National Committee is the
intended victim. Then the victim would do his best to bend over backwards and take it in the shorts, which is what they did when they passed on Phoenix and awarded the 2012 National Convention to Tampa.

Now let me say right off that The Self
Defense Guy likes Tampa. He’s made a dozen or so round trips to there over the past 4 years and always enjoyed himself. And his missus, The Fairy Godmother of Fashion, likes Tampa a lot, too.

Tampa is a great place to have a convention — but NOT in 2012, NOT if you’re trying to send the message that the Republican candidate is the good guy and Barack the Terrible is the bad guy.

Why NOT Phoenix? Why NOT Salt Lake City? And for that matter, why NOT Boston, or Newark or Richmond or Milwaukee? All of these cities are in states that have taken CONCRETE, discernible action that tells the rest of the country that we want our country back — back from Barack the Terrible, and the rest of his unAmerican party.

To be fair to Florida, a possible Marco Rubio victory in the fall would make all of this moot, but that hasn’t happened yet. Right now, at decision time, it’s only those cities, those states listed above whose citizens have taken the lead to let the rest of us know that there’s still hope.

Right now, at decision time, is when the Republican National Committee could have fanned the flames of our revolt, could have gotten lots of appreciation for itself and for the work that it does, if they had chosen one of the cities listed above.

They could have said Yes, America, we’re with you, we support you, we believe what you believe.

But what did they do? They ran away and hid, afraid to show that sometimes there IS such a thing as righteous anger. But no, NOT the RNC. Instead, they contacted the democrats, invited them over, bent over backwards and said please sirs, let us have some more. What a bunch of morons. What a bunch of gutless wonders.

Doesn’t mean that The Self Defense Guy will desert them in the general election, but it does mean that he’ll be much more selective with his contributions, and he’ll be much more intent on making sure that he holds Republicans to conservative principles. And if he don’t see none, come the next Republican primary, he’ll do whatever he can to defeat any rino’s still in public office.    

If you order a Runt stun gun from The Self Defense Guy, you don’t have to worry about getting some Wildfire Pepper Spray when you open the box. Same goes for a Self-Contained hidden camera that does its own recording.

With The Self Defense Guy, you get exactly what you expect — every time. With Jonny McCain, not so much.

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Let’s talk definitions for a second. RINO is short for “Republican in NAME only.” To be more specific, “there may be an R as his party affiliation, but he votes like a democrat just when the party needs him the most.”

These days, there’s lots of RINO’s floating around Congress, and I used to think that Jonny McCain was one of em. Come to find out he ain’t no RINO atall, he’s worse than that — he’s a phony republican, a NERINO — Not Even Republican In Name Only.

The most important part of the RINO moniker is the “INO” — in NAME only — meaning that the politician “calls” himself a Republican. But Jonny ain’t even be doin that no more.

You drive around Arizona and see his campaign signs, and guess what?? Jonny be callin hisself nuttin these days. That’s right. On his campaign signs, there’s no “Republican” there, there ain’t no R there — hell, there ain’t even no r there.

All’s that’s there is John McCain
                                      2010 — that’s it.
The man’s a wordsmith of the first order, alright.

The conventional wisdom from the mainstream media is that Jonny’s challenger in the primary, J.D. Hayworth, is a serious threat to win, so Jonny need to be sewing up support from the conservative base of the Republican Party in Arizona.

But Jonny’s smarter than the rest of us, doncha know. He don’t need to be affecting a false conservative attitude. Why, he don’t even need to actually BE a Republican. He can win the party nomination with that lovely smile of his, with that winning personality he’s got.

So Jonny don’t have to be no RINO, not anymore.

Jonny’s just a phony, and his campaign signs prove it. With any luck, we be sending him home to Sedona real soon.     

The Self Defense Guy was doing inventory the other day, checking his supply of stun guns and pepper sprays, when he got an email from Tim in California, with a link to Dennis Prager’s column. What better time to take a break than to read something from Prager, who never disappoints. Thanks, Tim.

The gist of the column is that democrats no longer look at the world with the view of discerning what’s right, what’s wrong. Instead they decide issues on the basis of what’s white and what’s black, what’s male and what’s female, and what’s rich and what’s poor. In democrat speak, white, male, rich = bad; black, female, poor = good.

And Prager gave plenty of examples to prove his point, not that it would make any difference to any intellectually challenged democrat who might have stumbled on his column completely by accident. Here’s the link, if you’d like to read it.

What Prager didn’t say, but what’s an obvious conclusion from his column,
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is that if Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, the “big tent” democrats would force him out of their party. That’s right, the modern-day founder of the civil rights movement would be persona non grata in the party of Barry Aboma, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Billary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and every last one of the NAACP.

Now, one doesn’t make a statement like that without proof, unless of course one’s a democrat. Then proof would not be required. All that would be necessary would be a listing of the approved slurs and epithets, and the main stream media would take one’s blog post and splash it cross-country.

But The Self Defense Guy ain’t no freaking democrat, and if he has some disagreements with St. Peter at the pearly gates, that’s gonna be his last line, his final appeal for admittance, “Yeah, well…at least I weren’t no freaking democrat.”

So here’s the proof that Martin Luther King, Jr. would be ridiculed and laughed at and forced out of the democrat party:

August 28, 1963, Washington, D.C.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

“And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops… And when this happens,…we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

“Content of their character?”
“God?”
“Sweet land of liberty?”
“Freedom?”
“America is to be a great nation?”
No pejoratives attached to “Jews and Gentiles,
            Protestants and Catholics?”
“Thank God Almighty?”

All of those above are deliberate and outright violations of page 1 of the democrat playbook, and Martin Luther King, Jr? He be gone, baby, he be gone.

Oh, just for the record, at that August 1963 speech? The late gun loving, former president of the NRA, no good sob Charlton Heston?  He be there.       

If you’re heading out to New Yawk City anytime
soon, The Self Defense Guy thinks you’d better
take along some Mace Canine Repellent for protection. Because of the strange laws that
New Yawkers impose on themselves, you can legally carry
pepper spray to ward off a dog, but the more criminal
animals, the humans that can assault you there?

Forgedaboutit.

Be honest. On Sept 10th you had nothing
but contempt for New Yawk City and it’s people,
right? They were rude and obnoxious and
arrogant folks, and they had been that way
for a long, long time.

John Adams, our 2nd president, is even on
record, noting how discourteous all New Yawkers
seemed to be. That’s more than 200 years ago!

They’re the worst sports fans in the whole country,
and tv ratings always prove this. If a New Yawk
team isn’t in the championship game, New Yawkers
don’t watch it.

They’re Yankee fans and Mets fans and Knicks fans
and Giants fans, but they’re not sports fans. New
Yawkers may have loved the 2000 World Series, tween
the Yankees and the Mets, but the rest of us only
amember that series as the first one we never
cared about, the first one we never watched.

The rest of the country had no use for them atall
on Sept 10th. On Sept 10th we all knew that New
Yawk City was the biggest hick town in the world.
Don’t believe me? What’s it mean to be a hick?

A hick is someone who doesn’t know anything about
the world that’s outside of his own narrow confines.
That’s a perfect description of a New Yawker. He knows
nothing about the world, and even less about the rest of
his country. All he knows is New Yawk.

Want more proof of New Yawkers king of hickdom?
Any carpetbagger can move there, and New Yawkers will
welcome her with open arms and make her their senator,
even though she never lived there in her whole life.

You’ve got to feel bad for all the good folks that live
upstate and have to put up with the huge numbers of
boneheaded liberals who live in New Yawk and control the
entire state from there.

And then Sept 11th happened, and we all had to start
thinking and saying good things about them. But coming
up on 9 years now of choking back the contempt that
New Yawkers earned all for themselves, I’d like to suggest
that ENOUGH ALREADY!

New Yawkers want the rest of us to respect them again?
We’ll respect them when they re-build the Twin Towers
EXACTLY like they used to be, only 1 floor higher.

Almost 9 years now, their city starving for tax revenue,
but New Yawkers are letting some of the most valuable
real estate in the world lie fallow. And they’re telling the
rest of the world that the U.S. is a country of sissies, that
taking down the Twin Towers was a blow we can’t overcome.

Hey, New Yawk! You want to be respected again?

Not only do you re-build the Twin Towers and make them
1 floor higher, but that antenna that used to be on one
of them? You turn that antenna into a finger and you
have it flipping in Mecca’s face.

Don’t wanna do that? Then the rest of us got your
respect right here!      

UPDATE:  At about 4 PM Mountain time today,
Idaho became the very first state to pass legislation that
will require the state’s Attorney General to sue the Federal
government if Congress passes any law attempting to
require citizens to buy health insurance.  The Self
Defense Guy says ATTABOY, IDAHO, ATTABOY!!!
End of update.

“commies, whether they know it or not”

I’m not talking gangbangers here, but I could be.
There’s definitely a commune-type atmosphere
that surrounds all gangs. Too bad that that
communal feeling doesn’t allow for communal
application of self defense products.

How great would it be if every time someone used
a discounted, $5.00 pepper spray OR stun gun
that’s available from The Self Defense Guy, then everyone
in the gang got a dose of discipline? That really would be
Utopia, in my book.

No, what I’m talking about is a group of “nuns” who only
2 hours ago, came out in support of Abomicare, in
defiance of the USCCB, the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops. The Self Defense Guy has plenty of standing
to comment on what these “nuns” did, being a Catholic
himself and a regular mass attendee every Sunday.

What these “nuns” did is a perfect example of what
happens when people let emotion rule them. They
end up commies. To be sure, these “nuns” don’t think
of themselves that way, but I just spent 15 minutes
at their website, and trust me, they ARE commies.

They talk a good line, and they appear to be genuinely
sincere, but facts is facts. Their website is loaded with
terms like “social justice,” “the common good,” and
“a right to…food, housing, work, health care, freedom
of communication and expression.”

Those are all commie code words.

And don’t miss that last part about “rights.” It’s complete
and total commie crap, and shows how ill-educated
these “nuns” are, or else it shows how deeply they are
committed to complete and total government take over
of our country.

A “right” to food? A “right” to housing? A “right” to
communication?

The ONLY possible way to achieve those things is for
a huge government with massive bureaucracy that
holds a gun to the head of each productive citizen
and makes them an offer they don’t refuse —
pay for the “rights” of these privileged folks, or prepare
to meet your maker.

What’s especially galling to this Catholic is how these
“nuns” use Catholic teaching, the words of Catholic
teaching, but twist its meaning beyond its original
intent.

Just to give you 1 example, to keep this post as short
as possible, 1 Catholic teaching is called “subsidiarity,”
and it refers to the best way to organize any society,
any economy, whether it be a republic like the U.S. or
a monarchy or even a dictatorship — the Church
doesn’t choose sides when it comes to how a country
wants to organize itself.

What “subsidiarity” means is that services that people
need should be provided at the lowest possible level of
government. So for instance, garbage collection and
snow removal should not be provided at the national
level, or even the state level, but at the local level.

I’m sure you’ll agree with that reasoning. And the purpose
for the principle of subsidiarity is for services to be
available in such a way that they do the most good for
the most people.

Health care, by its very nature, makes it even more
important to be provided at the local level, because it
deals primarily, even exclusively, with individuals.
Anyone who likes the idea of making health care a province of
the national government is someone who is ignoring
Catholic teaching, even though on their website these
“nuns” claim to be applying it faithfully.

I could go on and on, but there’s really no need. I posted
earlier, on March 10, 2010, how abortions will be paid for
with government money, something that’s never been
done before and something that makes the U.S. into a
society of baby killers.

And baby-killing societies are not a new occurrence.
There were the worshipers of Molech in the Old Testament,
and there was Carthage. That North African society’s
practices were so appalling that Rome was determined
to burn it to the ground — and that was pre-Christian
Rome, too.  Even pagan Rome was reviled by the
infanticide in Carthage.

These “nuns” should know better.
These “nuns” are really “CINO’s”, Catholic IN NAME
ONLY, and they make perfect companions for all the
“Catholic” democrats and “Catholic” RINO’s who are
working hard to make us slaves.

Still, these “nuns” don’t deserve to be marked like
John Wayne said of Lee Marvin in “The Man Who Shot
Liberty Valance,” they don’t “just need killin.” But I
can’t see the harm in treating them to a jolt of
pepper spray or a stun gun if one shows
up at your door, looking for support for what they believe in,
looking for your help and consent to make you a slave.

A commie is a commie is a commie, and if they truly are
“Catholic” and don’t truly deserve to be jolted that way,
then they’ll have no trouble forgiving you as you help
them to recover, but still send them on their way
without any financial contribution.    

Imagine breaking into someone’s house, and the
owner is there at the ready. As soon as you’re
inside, you get a squirt of the hottest pepper spray on the market, and it slams your eyes
shut so quick that you don’t even notice the owner as
he puts a half a million volts stun baton to your neck that makes your knees buckle.

You want to get away, but you can’t move. You try to move, but
you’re more or less reduced to a quivering mass of uncoordinated
arms and legs, moving every which way but the right way.
You want to try and wipe the burn from your eyes, but the stun
baton has ruined your hand/eye coordination.

Anyone who was watching you would
think you’re just checking yourself for blindness, the way you’ve
seen others wave their hands in front of a blind man.

Your hands move right past your eyes, without being able to
locate them. This is not the best day of your life.

It won’t be that bad for the democrats if they pass this
health care bill, and it won’t be that bad for them if they
don’t pass this health care bill. But either way, it’s going
to be pretty darn close.

Right now the democrats are in the almost-never-seen-
before-position of having nowhere to look for safety,
nowhere to look for solace, no matter what they do. And
frankly, I’ve got a big Rhett Butler for them —I don’t
give a damn. They saddled this horse, and I’m just going
to sit back and watch them try to ride it.

I’ve been following politics since 1976. I was 20 then, and
it was the first time I had ever had a chance to vote for
president. I’ve never missed a vote, and don’t think I
ever will. But I have NEVER, EVER seen a political party
or a single politician manage to make everyone —
supporters and opponents alike — line up against
them.

If health care gets passed, more than half the country will
be furious with the democrats, and come November the
dems are most likely sure to lose control of at least one of
the Houses.

If health care doesn’t get passed, the democrat base will
be furious with the leadership, the base will stay home
for the November elections, and the result will be that the
dems are most likely sure to lose control of at least one
of the Houses.

Heads, republicans win, tails, democrats lose.

What’s most amazing to me is that just 4 years ago, I was
marveling at how Nancy Pelosi managed to orchestrate
such a huge democrat victory to retake control of the
House of Reps. I don’t like the woman, not one little bit, but
she did make mincemeat of the republicans.

And she had been hacking away at them for 2 solid years,
convincing a half-asleep electorate that the dems and
the messiah would kiss their booboo’s and make it
all better. I really don’t like that woman, not one
little bit, but I was thinking that she was
certainly a political genius.

This begs the question, was this not the most right I’ve ever
been, or was the messiah an even worse choice than we
could have imagined?

I’m willing to take one for the team on this issue, but I
don’t think I could get away with it. It looks like it’s all
over but the shouting. Barack Hussein Obama, hmmm,
hmmm, hmmm, is a worse president than even Jimmy
Carter was, and that presents the messiah with a rather
troubling problem for himself.

At least Jimmy could swing a hammer and use that skill
to manipulate Habitat for Humanity to partially rebuild
his doofus-like personality. But what’s Barry gonna do?

12 to 5 says he’ll try to set up a new traveling basketball
team, maybe call themselves The Chicago 7 — Barry
and 6 others play an all-star, but only 5 at a time wheelchair
team, 7 on 5, and still lose at the buzzer.

We be lovin’ Barry again in no time at all.   

The Self Defense Guy

I heard an interview with Robert Duvall who said that his favorite role was as
Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove. Tommy Lee Jones played Woodrow Call, his
partner. Just before taking Ricky Schroeder on his first south-of-the-border escapade
to steal horses from another horse thief, Jones gives Schroeder a six-shooter and says,
“Better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.”

Fast forward 120 years and come into the real world, too, and you just won’t find
a better reason to carry some pepper spray every time you leave the house. It’s the
logical thing to do, but it isn’t any fun to think about it. So DON’T THINK ABOUT IT, just
do it. Pretend you’re a liberal, and close your mind to all other possibilities.

In this one particular case, acting like a liberal may be the very best course of action.
Liberals have learned how to make themselves impervious to anything that threatens to
keep them from achieving their goal. Here’s an example.

For whatever reason, liberals seem to be immune to conservative arguments about
the fallacy, the sheer illogic that is the essence of liberalism. Sometimes it seems to me
that the problem is that liberals simply will not listen to anything a conservative says, and
so how can one reply sensibly to something they haven’t heard in the first place?

So conservatives take to the blogs to try to make their point. Some writers are good at
it, some so-so, and then some just knock you over with the power of their simplicity. If
only I could have written something that good, I say to myself whenever I find a good
example.

Here’s something that, if a liberal would take 30 seconds to read it, might do them a world
of good, might go a long way to opening their mind:

“The redwood deck is beloved, not the falling coast redwood tree; kitchen granite counters are de rigueur, not the blasting at the top of the granite mountain; the Prius is a badge of honor, not the chemical plant that makes its batteries; we now like stainless steel frigs, but hate steel’s coke, and iron ore, and electricity lines; arugula is tasty, not the canal that brings water 400 miles to irrigate it; I support teacher unions and ***-studies courses in the public schools, but not with my Ivy-League bound children.”

What’s great about this paragraph is that it should make a lib stop and think, if only for a
second or 2, just where all their “sacred,” “green” products come from. Where DOES arugula come from? How DOES a battery power a Prius? Here’s the link for the rest of that post, from Victor Davis Hanson, which will open in a new window.

Of course the truth is that there are many, many libs who just don’t care anymore about
the whys and the wherefores. All those libs want is to stop the United States dead in its
tracks. They are so intent on accomplishing this that they have never even stopped to
consider what the impact of their own success would have on their own lives. They have
come to believe that somehow they have a protective cocoon around themselves that will
isolate them, prevent them, from experiencing the anguish and hardship that the country
will go through if the economy gets destroyed.

They never, ever see themselves as the accomplices in a crime who later, once their own
contributions are no longer needed, get eliminated by the higher-ups. No, not them. They see
themselves as being rewarded for their efforts. For all the lies and hatred and venom they
spewed on behalf of the cause, they just KNOW that they will receive their just rewards. And they
will, too.

It doesn’t ever dawn on them that for the culture of death they’ve worked all their lives
for, the ultimate reward that will be bestowed on them is death itself. It’s a perfectly logical
ending for them, it’s just that they can’t see that it’s coming. They’ve never stopped to
think about what they’re doing, what their goal is, and they will truly be surprised by it
when it happens, but it will be too late.

For proof of this, one need only check the history books and research what happened to
all the journalists, all the supporters, of every left-wing revolution that has occurred since
1900. Not that that proof will penetrate a liberal’s closed mind, but it IS our Christian
duty to at least try to save them.

I know that the odds are that not one single liberal will learn anything from what’s
posted here, but you can. You can be ready to defend yourself when the situation calls
for it.

And remember this above all else. The police only show up AFTER you’ve been
assaulted. Up to that point, you’re on your own.     

The Self Defense Guy

Saturday morning with my coffee and compooooter
used to be a good time, until our local Wild Oats
Grocery was bought out by a national chain. One
of their “improvements” was to discontinue Green
Mountain Brand Columbian Whole Coffee Beans, and
me and the missus ain’t had a decent cup a joe
since. It’s gettin so I don’t even want to get out
of bed in the am.

But this morning’s Arizona Republic, Phoenix’s
morning rag, had a story that brought back a good
memory for me, about Nathan, a 14 year old boy who
brought a pocketknife to school, amembered he
had it in his backpack, then turned it in to his
teacher. Poor kid got 5 days suspension for that.

Turns out the lowly pocketknife is now considered
a weapon, rather than an indispensable
accoutrement of manhood. I amember the first time I ever
saw one. Must have been about 8 or so. Had my
own when I was about Nathan’s age.

It was my granddad’s, and we were out in the
woods next to our home, scoping out for wild fruit
trees. We grew up in eastern Ohio, in one of the
first houses in a growing residential area. It
was a kid’s paradise, trees everywhere, and one or
two vacant areas we could play football or
baseball.

My Nonno and me, nonno is Italian for granddad,
came upon an apple tree that he knew was there.
We were just there to see if it was time to come
pick them or not. They were almost ripe, but not
quite.

That area had about a dozen or so wild apple
trees and wild pear trees, planted long ago courtesy
of the birds. Peaches also grew well there, but
there were no wild peach trees nor any birds big
enough to shoot out a peach pit, thank God.

Nonno picked an apple that looked good, took out
his pocketknife, opened it up, quartered the
apple, and gave me a piece. I watched him work with
that knife very matter of factly, nothing special
about it, just a man and his knife.

Next Saturday we’ll come and get some, he said,
in his broken English. Course he meant with most of
my 5 brothers and 4 sisters, too. We’d all bring back
plenty of apples.

We finished the apple, he wiped his knife, closed
it, and we headed for a pear tree. No need to
check any other apple trees, they would be more or
less like this one.

This all happened more than 40 years ago, and my
Nonno’s been gone for about 35 years or so. I
amember him and his pocketknife and the home he
helped build, and I see them now with an older man’s
eyes.

My Nonno never learned to read or write, but he
acquired for himself and his family a home with a
huge garden that provided high quality
vegetables, peach trees in the back yard, and a free supply
of apples, pears, and blackberries. Not bad for
growing up poor in Italy and immigrating,
legally, to the US in his early 20’s.

He was a regular attendee at Sunday Mass and all
the Holy Days of Obligation, and he didn’t carry
no weapon, he carried a pocketknife, a tool. I’m
sure he would be saddened to learn of Nathan and
the consequences of his pocketknife.

One thing my Nonno was was interested in new things.
How do I know this? He used to ask my mother to make
him pancakes every once in awhile. The tv ads for Aunt
Jemima Pancakes really got to him, and his wife, my
Nonna, wouldn’t make them for him. She claimed she
couldn’t make this American kind of food.

But my Nonno wanted some, and my Mom would make
them for him.

I’m certain that if he were with us today, he’d be totin not
just his pocket knife, but a stun gun
and probably some pepper spray.

I still carry a pocketknife, and I do it mainly
cause my Nonno did. It’s a tool, it ain’t no
weapon. For weapons, I carry a stun gun and some
pepper spray. You should too.     

If you ever want or need to have your crimes
forgiven and considered no big deal, all you gotta do
is die for your country. In that case, no
matter what you did in the past, you’re considered a
great American. Your crimes are treated as mere
character anomalies and talked about in a
humorous, even admiring tone.

Just take Jim for example. Jim was the biggest,
most notorious, fraudulent landowner of his time.
While he wasn’t the only one doing it, no one
did it on a grander scale. Jim “owned” 45,000
acres.

He “sold” some, collected rents on others, and he
used some as collateral for all kinds of
nefarious activities. But Jim was no dummy. He was
smart enough to destroy the evidence any time the
police got too close. After all, it’d be no trouble
to just get some new deeds printed up.

One writer described Jim’s activities as land
fraud “on an almost industrial scale.”

Jim defrauded and ruined many unsuspecting men,
but today he’s in the pantheon of Great American
Heroes. That’s what happens to you if your life
ends in a battle for your country. That’s what
happened when Jim Bowie died at the Alamo.

Jim’s also known as the designer of the Bowie
knife. What made his knife special was that it was
the first knife to be an effective tool for both
hunting/camping and for use as a weapon.

Before Jim’s design, a man needed 2 knives. Now
he could get buy with only 1. Jim’s design was
so good that it’s still in use today.

Using a knife for a weapon has its drawbacks,
however. Besides the knife, you’ve also got to have
some skill, and you also need a lot of nerve.
That’s why in today’s world, a knife is better
than having nothing, but it’s not the best self
defense tool for you to carry.

You’re much better off if you carry a stun gun and some pepper spray.

The pepper spray can stop your attacker while
he’s still some distance away from you and before he
can get his hands on you. One shot of the
pepper spray anywhere on his face, and he’s toast.
He’ll either go into a coughing fit for half an
hour, or he’ll be blinded for half an hour. And you
don’t really care which, right?

And don’t believe any movie that suggests that
you can develop an immunity to pepper spray.
That’s simply not true at all, not true in the
smallest degree. Pepper spray is 100% effective, 100%
of the time.

A stun gun is great to have because as long as
the batteries have some juice, you can defend
yourself from more than one attacker at the same time.
You can stun the first guy and use him as a
shield while you’re holding the gun to his body and
lighting him up, keeping the other attackers away
from you for 2 or 3 seconds until he falls to
the ground. When he’s on the ground, he’ll be
totally incapacitated for 15 to 20 minutes, maybe
longer.

When you’re ready for the next guy, odds are they
won’t want any part of you after seeing what you
did to their friend. Amember, most of the time,
your attackers are depending on bluff and
bravado, and as soon as they see you’re ready to kick
their heinies, they’ll turn and run and you won’t
be able to catch them. What you do in that case
is simply and calmly walk away.

If Jim were around today he might think that
pepper spray and stun guns take all the fun out of
self defense. Just you amember that self
defense–well, there just ain’t nothing fun about it.
It’s a serious matter and a high stress situation.
And the only way to come out on top is to be
ready aforehand. Get what you need, and get it NOW.