Don’t Be Too Prepared – Keeping Your Preparations Secret
By Richard Bogath
The news of yet another psychopath or psychopaths mowing down yet another crowd of soft targets is teetering on the razor-thin line of complacent; “Oh, another one? Where this time?” As with all things, in time, what was once horrific, outrageous, unthinkable and beyond accommodation, often becomes part of the steaming trash pile that is our societal attention span. In other words and more base terms… people stop giving a crap about anything…eventually.
Are We Becoming Numb?
Not that we should ever consciously accept a mass shooting as a part of daily life. How could we even suggest such a thing? When asked, we staunchly grip our fists and say things like; “never again”, “We’ll get to the bottom of this” and the ever popular; “We need more sensible gun laws”. I mean, right? We could never just accept mass killings as just another weekend event, could we?
Well if that’s the case – how may people were shot and killed last weekend in Chicago? How many were wounded? Why are these regular based killings not part of any media frenzy? Probably because they do not serve to push any political agenda, nor help the local party government make a stronger case for higher taxes or fewer legal guns being sold.
It’s Your Fault
In other words…it’s your fault. You. The person who would rather be prepared than caught with your proverbial waistband around your ankles.
I’m not preaching to you. I don’t sit back and spout off adjusted statistics or blanket facts—I wont even tell you how I see things—all I’m telling you is how the nation looks at you, especially in light of the, lets call them—“high profile shootings” as opposed to the gangbanger, drug dealer, petty criminal shootings that apparently don’t matter as much.
You see, most of you LOOK like the high profile mass shooters. I’m not talking about your skin color or ethnicity. Not about where you live or the job that you do. Simply the fact that as preppers, you’ve usually got access to guns, ammunition, tactical equipment and clothing… see where I’m going with this? Now not all of us have access to this kind of setup, but the perception that the general populace has of us is that we do. Being a prepper means that we live in a compound with “assault weapons” and “machine guns” and WE are the people who manage to buy guns without background checks, without going through the proper channels, who sell ammo on the black market – or even worse – “hoard hundreds of rounds of ammo in our houses” (gasp). I don’t know about you, but hundreds of rounds don’t last me an afternoon when I go out and train for a match.
Forget the fact that you might the kind of prepper who doesn’t own a gun. Maybe I’ll go as far as to say that you don’t believe in guns! Perhaps, it’s just possible, that you prep by growing most of your own food, collecting most of your own water and generating more natural forms of electricity through bio-fuels and the like. That’s a prepper too.
Keeping Your Preparations Secret
So what’s a prepper to do? If you go by the title of this article, you’ll think I’m telling you to be less prepared—which none of us will do—but what I will suggest is that you make your profile seem less like a prepper than you actually are. I’ve said it before in articles of the past – keeping your preparations secret is critical. Don’t broadcast info about your private home defense “tools”, why expound upon the fact that you own body armor? Now, personally, I don’t own body armor…but based on the last sentence, you thought I did…didn’t you? And that’s what I mean, if you’re making assumptions about another prepper, just imagine what the un-prepared think of us?
The sad reality is that most people like the bubble that they live in. The police will stop the bad guys. The government will make sure we have food and water. There’s always someone to carry the garbage away every Thursday and no one will ever, ever shoot us for no reason at all.
Frankly, I find that more scary than a gun pointed to my face. At least then I know where the danger is coming from.
