[Buzz]

Originally Posted by Jamo

Ya done good, my man.

Another assample of why Glocks make me nervous.

Lol! Yes Buddy - the whole "trigger safety" thing is a bit of a silly joke that I just don't get. You really need to follow "the rules" with Glocks.

It's the Black & Decker tool of the gun world though - plain butt-ugly, but reliable and as dispassionately functional as a hammer. It'll eat anything you feed it and you just know it will go bang every time you pull the trigger.




I still get a bit of an adrenaline spike every time I think about the incident, and I've thought about it a lot in an attempt to do a more critical analysis of myself and the way I functioned.

In terms of my technical response to the actual physical attack and being threatened with a deadly weapon - assessing the threat, acting decisively, etc - all fine. But I have to admit that I end up giving myself a big "F" overall. While it's good that all the training and practice drills actually work in the real world, I had given up control of the situation from the getgo. From the very beginning, I was reacting to the words and actions of antagonists. They effectively had more actual control of the whole scenario than I did and had me reacting to their decisions.

My first mistake began when the girl bumped my car. I had already assessed the situation as a potentially volatile one, but like Pavlov's dog responding to the dinner bell, my conditioned response - even though I could tell that there was no meaningful damage to my battle scarred bush guard - was to do the same thing I would have done in a mall parking lot in the middle of the day: get out and confront the driver.

I made my second mistake when that action was met with defiance; Again, I defaulted to an automatic, conditioned response, became pissed off and expressed my anger verbally. I like to think of myself as a basically good, open-minded person who will help anyone if I can; but protective of my person and family and with little tolerance for dishonesty and unprovoked aggression. That may sound great and all, but in reality it's no more than a stupid, ego driven issue when it takes precedence over practical reasoning and eclipses the reality that no blanket "personality policy" can suffice in every unique situation.

From that point forward, yes - the conditioned responses paid off. Anticipate the attack. Hit hard, fast and more importantly,hit first. Quick, clean draw. Sight picture. Situational awareness. Weapon control. Blah blah blah. Remain calm, non-threatening, and cooperative with the SSU. I did everything as I had trained and conditioned myself to do except the biggest, most important thing of all: Exercise wisdom and sound judgement.

The vehicular contact was technically inconsequential to me. She was the one with the damaged car and I could have let her play her own hand, including driving away like it never happened. The downside to that is that she could have complained after the fact to the police that I had rear ended her, leaving me to explain why I didn't react to being hit. The probability and seriousness of that, however, weigh lightly against what went down when I chose to confront.

Having made the first blunder, I could have reacted to her hostility with a disarming smile and an offer to help her get her car turned around. It may have worked and it may have elicited the same response as before. Either way, I still could have ended up walking away without further escalation. The first guy might still have reacted to me just for talking to her, but having not crossed the line of being visibly angry, I would have had the opportunity to deescalate by saying "Sorry, I was just trying to help." That would have a far better chance of success than having to back down from an angered position which brings up the risk of triggering an instinctive aggressive reaction to a perception of fear or weakness on my part. My automated, unthinking reaction didn't allow me these options.

I ended up surviving the encounter from two important points of view.

One - I suffered no physical harm.

Two - I escaped the protracted consequences of killing a man.

True as it may be that life in the tropics renders the potential legal trauma theoretically less devastating than it would be if it happened in the US for example; there are other issues like retaliation from his peers or family so I was still spared a seriously life altering experience. Good in that regard, but bad in the sense that everything - from the start to the final outcome - was dictated and controlled by other people. I was like a puppet on a string and my life could have been drastically altered at the whim of of another person, all because I allowed myself to be manipulated into a position I should never have gotten into had I maintained control over my reactions.

I had a post-workout breakfast with a sage old friend for whom I have tremendous respect. He is one of these people who has seen and done things most people can't even imagine in military, civilian and "in between" capacities and he is a dedicated old disciple of life, philosophy, fitness and the fighting arts. I ran my thoughts by him and after listening quietly, he thoughtfully concurred with my conclusions.

He said that assessing me strictly from the point of view of my effectiveness as a "survivor of life" (his words, not mine - ); I am like a kid who just graduated from boot camp with decent marks. But because I am lacking in wisdom and spiritual development, however, all of my social conditioning and training have only made me into a sharpened stick - a tool that is capable of doing useful things, but without the tempering and refinement of wisdon and total conscious control, an instrument nonetheless that can be manipulated by others into mayhem and self destruction. He pointed out that given my reliance on a poorly analyzed sense of self righteousness and amateurishly applied "principles", a skillful manipulator bent on my destruction could easily make me destroy myself for him without lifting a finger against me physically, and until I graduate to a higher level of awareness and control, I remain woefully vulnerable to to the actions of others.

It was a humbling report, and possibly a bit on the heavy side, but he is basically right. He did also say that examining my actions and coming to the conclusions I did were a good sign and a huge step in the right direction though, and that it is up to me now to decide whether I should continue through life as before and possibly survive just fine; or to treat this as the lesson it was and retrain myself to make damn sure I survive just fine.

Sorry for the long winded introspective analysis, but this whole thing has been rather thought provoking to say the very least .