I do my day job in hitches, which requires me to live with roommates for two weeks at a time. This means that even though I spend little time watching the news at home my roommates have it on at work. As I am sure you know there recently was a terrorist attack in France and the organization behind it is calling out publicly to have "lone wolf attacks" in America. There is no "head of the snake" with this, these people are somehow inspired to do these violent things.
What scares me about it is, it could happen any where and at any time, just as long as it turns public it will aid the intentions if these groups. They want it online, facebooked, tweeted etc... They are like a bully in that they need people to see the things they do. They are not bullies, they feel it is right, that they are fighting a noble cause. If they were a private group or a simple rebel force you could take out the leader and the moral of the group would go down and the fight would die out or at least die down.
I deal that I at one point had something in common with that. In my teen years and early twenty's I wanted to feel conviction about something. I wanted to fight for something, this lead to some delusions but I grew out of those and I don't feel that they were abnormal or unhealthy. As young boys we see our hero's and want to be like them so we strive for that.
So what sets me aside from these people? I learned one simple truth, unprovoked violence is despicable. In order for me to really learn this it was important that I already understood the value of life. I grew up helping people just cause they needed it.
These forms of violence are not new to our culture. I will tell you a story of when I decided to live a warrior lifestyle.
My grandparents were part owners of a mining property in the Mojave desert. When I was eleven they had been evicted due to court rulings. This was a place i felt truly at home, my grandfather taught my cousins and I everything from hunting small game, survival, fishing, boxing to how to build things and solve problems when you are away from the city. I continued to learn these thing from him after the eviction.
When I was sixteen we were allowed back, but we had to share the property with people that were violent. We never carried firearms, we wanted to make a statement that we were peaceful people and didn't need them. We had them, a Ruger Mark1 in a sock drawer and a Mossberg 500 propped in the outhouse. We did not carry them on our person, we trained for violence but did not look for it. We were tested more than a few times against these people but we always remained peaceful in our intentions. We even went on food runs and bought food and beer for them more than once.
The drive from Boulder city to there was forty miles and people were regularly stuck on the side of the road for one reason or another. We helped them when we could, and sometimes when we couldn't. Had allot of interesting stories from it. People looking for ghost towns and found our mine on the map was one, most people were good. The news started reporting more and more stories of people being found dead out there, stories of gang initiations that involved killing someone who stopped to help.
One day we were driving in Eldorado valley and saw a dark plume of smoke coming from nelson road. When we made the turn on that road we witnessed a red hatchback hauling ass in the oncoming lane. When we approached the cloud of smoke we saw it was a late model sedan on fire with the four ways on. Up the was was a dead prostitute with numerous bullet holes. We drove the rest of the way to Nelson NV, borrowed a phone and called it in to the police.
After that and with all the other crime activity going on it was hard to stop to help people for fear of the worst. It was a few years later when I was on my way to the lake for a party when I passed up a family who was trying to flag me down to help pull them out. I realized the world I lived in had bad people and violence everywhere. But there are people that need help to make it through. If I would stop and help people who would?
I had been raised in the warrior lifestyle but at that moment I realized how important it was. I realized that in the name of "peace" I started leaving people stranded when they needed help. I didn't think it could happen to me, but it did. I started carrying a .38 revolver anywhere I could and have never passed up helping someone since.
Now it is a .45 but my intentions will always be to improve the quality of life for those around me. It is important that we raise our children understanding the importance of life, helping people, and to protect themselves and innocent people around them.
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