First, Kee Whan Ha was prepared. He had his guns before the riots started. He wasn’t paranoid, he was prepared. And rightfully so. No one expected riots to ever break out in L.A., but they did. And his preparation paid off.
Second, you need to let go of the illusion that we’re some highly civilized society. The veneer of civilization is thin and fragile. It doesn’t take much for our primitive monkey brains to kick in, and for things to go south.
Look at the L.A. riots. Look at Hurricane Katrina. Heck, watch various cities after a sports team wins or loses. Heck, Axl Rose caused numerous riots because of his behavior at concerts.
Society breaks down pretty quickly. We get upset, we get scared, we panic, we feed off the energy of others, and shit gets ugly really fast.
I know you like to comment on how everything around you is so peaceful. And true, right now and in your past it may have been. Congratulations on making good and fortunate choices throughout life. Not everyone is as fortunate as you. And remember that past performance doesn’t guarantee future results: your luck may run out.
[Cpl. David Boyd with the Austin Police Department] says they normally have a special crowd management team to prepare for large and potentially unruly crowds.
“We weren’t expecting anything, so we didn’t have the team on standby ready to be deployed at any time.”
So, there wasn’t enough police presence. And they didn’t have a team on standby. And so, response took time. In fact, while the video in the original report did have footage from APD’s helicopter, so what? It’s not like the pilot could stop anything (nor was the presence of the helicopter nor police on the ground being any sort of deterrent). In fact, they had to wait for some cars to clear before they could go in.
Suppose you were caught in the middle of that (very possible, given it was happening outside a Halloween attraction), what would you do?
Obviously APD wasn’t set up to save you.
And for those that think we’re paranoid, it’s not that — it’s preparedness. APD, by their own admission, wasn’t prepared. Look at the result. Bad things can happen at any time any where. That doesn’t mean they always will, but that’s of little comfort when you happen to be caught in that rare moment when it does happen.
Have a plan beforehand. Have tools to manage your situation. And better yet? take Farnam’s advice on risk management.
Around 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, a crowd of more than 200 people became confrontational outside the House of Torment haunted attraction. Police say people were throwing rocks and ignoring officers’ commands to leave. They also reportedly refused to back away from police who were dealing with fights. Those brawls spanned from Highland Mall Boulevard around the parking lot to Airport Boulevard.
Assistance – Face Pulls (superset with the 5 warm-up bench sets)
30 x 15 x 11 5
Assistance – Close-grip bench press
120 x 10
120 x 10
120 x 10
120 x 10
120 x 8
Assistance – Lat pulldowns (superset with the close-grips)
110 x 10 x 3 sets — supine grip
110 x 10 x 2 sets — pronated grip
Assistance – Seated Cable Rows
100 x 10 x 3 sets
Foam Rolling
I’ve got some heavy personal stuff weighing on my head and heart. So today I just wasn’t into it.
If anything tho, I did some playing around with things to try to help figure out my shoulder and elbow issues. I just did very light face pulls and only superset with my warmup sets; basically, treat it all as one big warm-up for my shoulder area. Nothing during my work sets, to minimize any impact there.
I tried close-grips because why not. I kinda want to do them, but it was also a check to see about something. My pain seems to hit most when I have a pronated grip and my arm (elbow) comes to almost-full flexion. Maybe something with the “compression” pressure of the forearm and biceps coming together, pressure of them squeezed together coupled with kinda “leveraging” the elbow apart, y’know? I noticed pressing was painful, and the pull-ups are doing this… so I’m experimenting.
The close-grips were good for my shoulders of course, but certainly seemed to play more into my elbows. Doing supine-grip pulldowns helped my elbows, but funny was that it didn’t work well because of too my skin friction from my arms being too close to my upper body (too much skin rubbing). 🙂 So I did the last 2 sets pronated and yeah, I could feel the forearm pain.
Could it be that these muscles are also weak and getting pushed to the limit? I really dont’ know, but with my recent grip failure issues, I do wonder.
Anyways, I am going to keep playing around with this. I may not be doing “ideal” exercises, but if it helps to keep me progressing in some way while not contributing to problems, then great. I’ll just keep playing around here.
Oh… one other thing. All assistance work was striving for “heavy” reps with only about 1 minute of rest between sets. Yeah, trying to get a little more bodybuilder here, wanting to see about building more muscle mass with my assistance work.
It’s footage from the 1992 L.A. Riots (after the Rodney King verdict). It’s about the Korean shopkeepers arming themselves, standing on the roofs of their stores, defending them from the rioters and looters.
While searching for that footage, an NPR interview with Kee Whan Ha came up. He’s the store owner that organized and motivated the Koreatown shopkeepers to undertake their defensive action.
Why would he do such a thing? I mean, why didn’t he just give the looters what they wanted (because “just give them what they want” is the refrain we’re supposed to abide by):
MARTIN: I understand that, as the disturbance was beginning, you heard hosts on Radio Korea – which is L.A.’s major Korean-American radio station – tell people to leave their businesses and go home and pray. And you told one of our producers that that made you upset. Could you talk a little bit about that?
HA: Yeah. I was so upset. So I know the owner of that Radio Korea, so I brought my handgun and I put it on the table. I told him that we established Koreatown. It’s been more than 20 years (unintelligible) riot, even to be able – insurance and everything, but I want to protect my business, as well as all other Koreatown business.
He was one of the founders of Koreatown. He wasn’t going to see his life’s work, what defines him, be put to ruin.
Oh it’s just property, oh it’s just stuff. That’s true to you, but not to him. It was more than his castle, and it was something that, to him, was well-worth defending. Are you telling me he’s wrong? he’s unjustified in trying to preserve his legacy? his positive contribution to society? That the world would be better off if he gave in to the criminals, the leeches, the destructive forces?
So why didn’t he just call the police? Because the police are supposed to defend and protect us, right?
HA: From Wednesday, I don’t see any police patrol car whatsoever. That’s a wide-open area, so it is like Wild West in old days, like there’s nothing there. We are the only one left, so we have to do our own (unintelligible).
[…]
HA: …I was standing a few feet away, so I see that [our security guard’s] body has fallen down on the ground, but I was so scared. I – we tried to call the fire department. Please help us. But nobody listen. Then maybe after five or six hours in the evening – it start around the afternoon, about 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. But actual – the fire truck coming about 7:00 o’clock, late evening. So five hours, of course, is sitting between us and them.
Five hours with no response. No one could come to save them.
Can you imagine the fear, the stress, tha anxiety felt during that time? One hour goes by and still nothing. Every minute watching the chaos unfolding, wondering when someone will come to save you. How scared would you be if you were in his shoes?
But at least they had guns.
But at least they were able to do something for themselves. To pluck up their courage and stand firm. They weren’t helpless victims.
How would you have fared that day? Would you have been a helpless victim?
I would have been.
In 1992 I was in undergrad. I never was anti-gun, but I sure didn’t understand it. I recall questioning my pro-gun friends as to why anyone needed an automatic rifle to hunt Bambi. Looking back, I can see the many facets of my ignorance.
MARTIN: Did you have to fire your weapon?
HA: Yes. Actually, we are not shooting people. We are shooting the – in the air, so make afraid that these people coming to us. You’re not actually targeting people, so…
MARTIN: Sure. You were trying to create a – sort of a protective barrier, and you did succeed in saving your store.
HA: Yes.
So without guns, Kee Whan Ha and the other families of Koreatown would have lost everything. Not just their stores, but their legacy and contribution towards a better society.
Could you look Kee Whan Ha in the eye and tell him you want to deny him his business? his contribution? his legacy? The banning of effective tools of self-defense is precisely looking into the eyes of people like Kee Whan Ha and saying you will deny him.
As I start my next “6 week cycle” (2 back-to-back cycles with no deload in between), my plan was to keep things mostly the same as last cycle. The main difference was going to be determining the source of my elbow pain. It’s something with the elbow and muscles around it, like the brachioradialis and brachialis. I am thinking it’s just inflammation, but I don’t know for sure at this point. But I know what seems to cause it to hurt, so I was going to change up my pressing days to have different back work in hopes of at least learning a little more about what my body is trying to tell me. We would see.
But today? It sucked. From how you have to grab the bar while squatting, it just put the same sorts of pressure on the arm and elbow. I wanted to do more squatting, but I figured I better err on the side of caution and try something that didn’t put so much pressure there. So, leg press. I really don’t WANT to leg press, but here we are. I think it’ll be good for me tho, so I’ll roll with it.
So on squats, I intentionally went for prescribed reps only. I actually felt kinda crappy mentally today and just wasn’t into things, but the squatting itself was good. I was great on depth on that last set, cranked out the 5 and felt like I could have done 1-2 more, but you know… leave it in the tank. Then I hit the leg press.
The machine at the gym is a 45-degree angle sled. I have no idea how much I can leg press (does it matter?), but I know I wanted to keep it strict. That is, my back stays flat on the backrest (no rounding the lower back as the weight comes down); my legs move through full range of motion — no half-reps so I can look like a big man pressing lots of 45 plates; take a stance on the foot rest akin to my squat stance, so just slightly more than shoulder-width apart, toes out about 30-degrees, and so on. Full range of motion. Oh, and I want this to be for reps. I have had thoughts about my future goals (more on this another time), and taking some more bodybuilder-like techniques in my assistance work is on my mind. So that’s things like higher reps, less rest between sets (I only did about a minute between sets), and so on.
And so, I cranked. Worked up. I probably will start at 135 next time…. oh shit! I just realized that I’m doing plate math! I’m assuming the bar! ha ha ha… 135 really is 90 (45 plate on each side). I have no idea what it really is with the sled and all.:-)
Anyways, there we go.
Did some leg curls to balance things out. Was too light, but meh… focus on the negative.
Crunches, and then no farmers walks. I must admit the leg presses trashed my quads. I foam rolled a LOT and I’m sure I’m going to feel this over the next day or two. 🙂
I’m just going to adjust my cycle to try to help my arms and elbows.
I got this from Chuck Rives. From the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2012, we have the Expanded Homicide Data Table 15 – Justifiable Homicide, by Weapon, Private Citizen (the killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen.) 2008-2012. Link here but the link is kinda weird so hopefully it works for you (it ends in .xls, but opens a web page…). Anyways, here’s a screenshot:
So basically, this is what good people used to defend themselves.
Now, you have to be very specific in taking what this table tells us. There are a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of deeper things that’d be interesting to know. For example, it’s only about the killing of a felon during the commission of a felony. What about the felons that didn’t die during the commission of a felony? That might provide a greater picture about what good people use to defend themselves in general. What was the nature of the crime? was it a drug deal that went bad (because I reckon some of those could wind up in this table, and then is that really a good statistic?)? was it muggings? how about rape? home invasion vs. “on the street”? There’s a lot of things that would be great to know. Alas, we can only take this table for what it’s worth.
You can look at the politics. Handguns are a primary tool in self-defense. Ban handguns, deny people (men, women, straight, gay, white, black, Christian, Jew, Muslim, whatever minority group you favor) the right and ability to keep themselves safe from harm.
I like to look at the practical.
One possible conclusion to draw from this is if you’re going to be attacked, a handgun is the more likely tool you’d use to defend yourself. Long guns (rifles, shotguns) tend to be a tool of the home-front; private citizens generally will not have them as they walk down the street. Long guns aren’t exclusive to the home; recall the Korean shopkeepers during the LA Riots in 1992 standing on the roofs of their buildings with long guns. But you get the point – long guns cannot be as ubiquitous as a handgun.
I know we prefer to have long guns for home and office defense. Why? Because we can, and they are a more effective tool. But if the one thing you can have all the time is your hand gun, doesn’t it make sense to be proficient with it? You carry it on your person all day. It’s in your bedside safe at night. It’s the one thing that’s always most accessible to you. If you have limited training and practice time, should you divide it amongst various tools? or focus on the one that has the most universal applicability?
Just having a gun isn’t enough. Just carrying it every day isn’t enough. To have passed some state-mandated test isn’t enough. There are issues of minimum competency. Is a handgun good enough for home defense? If it’s the tool you’re most proficient with, sure. It’s better to use a tool you know well and have confidence in using.
I didn’t do much today. Because we’re breaking Wife in, my deload didn’t follow my normal routine. So today I just did a little squatting, a little pressing, a little rowing, some crunches and that’s it. Just put on plates, move, change plates, move again, nothing much. Very quick gym session today.
One thing I did try were dips, but after a few reps my shoulders called me a dip for doing them without any warm-up, so I just switched to pressing.
The inventor of the AR-15 was Satan, though his patent has since expired.
Scientists have confirmed the deadly effects of an AR-15 by giving it to a chimpanzee who then murdered them.
Scientists agree that each year the AR-15 will grow more deadly until it kills everyone in the entire world.
Some believe that Hitler was in fact an AR-15 in a rubber mask.
In the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve access to every firearm out there except for the AR-15 which he told them not to touch because it was too evil. But then the NRA, in the guise of a serpent, told Eve that the AR-15 is really fun to shoot. So then Eve took the AR-15 and started shooting all the animals in the garden because she is one awesome chick.
The part that makes the AR-15 so extra deadly is the handle on top. The AR-15 would be used in less murders if it were more inconvenient to carry.
It was an AR-15 that told Miley Cyrus to dance like that.
Bullets that are normally harmless will kill instantly when fired out of the AR-15.
The reason AR-15s have that prominent handle on them is because the most requested feature for an assault rifle was to be able to carry it like a Hello Kitty lunch box.
If you find yourself surrounded by AR-15’s, know that they will fire automatically if they sense fear.
The AR-15 is easily concealable and can fit inside a matchbox.
The AR-15 is the leading cause of global warming from how its bullets shoot holes in the ozone.
A very small percentage of gun deaths are attributed to the AR-15 because it is very good at disguising itself as other guns to frame them.
What are the differences between an M16 and an AR-15? Scientists agree that it is something.
The AR-15 can be rendered harmless by giving it only a 10 round magazine as people always miss with the first ten rounds and an AR-15 takes an hour and a half to reload.
The AR-15 can shoot through schools.
In a battle between Aquaman and an AR-15, Aquaman would break down and buy it so people might think he’s more manly.
There were no shooting deaths until the invention of an AR-15. No one even considered using a gun to shoot another human being until someone saw an AR-15 and said, “I bet I could use this to kill a lot of people.”
There was an assault musket similar to the AR-15 used by the world’s most evil pirates, but it was pronounced “Arrr-15.”
The Assault Weapon ban was needed because it is well known that an AR-15 with both a pistol grip and a flash suppressor would be unstoppable by any modern military.
In Europe there is no such thing as an AR-15 and thus also no such thing as murders. Instead of being violent, people there just drink wine and smoke cigarettes all day.
If you are shot by an AR-15, you become one and kill others.
The AR-15 is responsible for 95% of all deaths each year. The rest of the deaths are from obesity and drone strikes.
I saw that on Claude Werner’s Facebook page. I have no idea who the original author is (I’ve seen it crop up in other places, no attributions).
Stuff From Hsoi 