It Could Happen Here - Community Self-Defense with The John Brown Gun Club

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

A roundtable discussion on armed community self-defense. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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also legally the only podcaster that people are allowed to enjoy on the internet. Here to introduce a really exciting episode of It Could Happen Here. So for the last bit of time, I've been in and out of touch with a number of members of the Puget Sound John Brown Club. They have provided armed self-defense groups for a couple of different protests in the Washington area over the last year and change.

And we wanted to sit down and talk to them about the ideas behind community self-defense, how to do it responsibly, how to do it irresponsibly. We also had some discussions with them about the disasters that happened at the CHOP slash CHAZ last year. They were not involved with that as an organization, but they have some insights on the matter. That's going to be coming at you in a separate episode or maybe even a couple of episodes in the near future. Today, we're just kind of talking about the concepts of armed community self-defense, you know, what's responsible, what's irresponsible, how people should think about it. I think you'll enjoy the conversation. Here it is. A decent chunk of the folks listening, especially the Portlanders, will have experience with and that Garrison and I have

certainly had experience with it, is people at protests declaring themselves security, sometimes even wearing shirts that say security, and picking up a variety of weapons, often paintball guns and mace, and using them often irresponsibly on other protesters, on bystanders, in the name of keeping things safe. And I think we're pretty clear, and I think most reasonable people can see that that's not community self-defense. But often those people certainly claim that what they're doing is community self-defense. And I'm specifically wanting to start by getting a kind of a range of definitions from folks, as you are all people who have engaged in community self-defense, and particularly armed community self-defense,

what do you see as the actual role of community self-defense? And how should it look as opposed to, you know, a guy with a paintball gun yelling at kids for tagging a window. Ray, you want to kick us off with an answer there? I do. Community defense should be part of a broad health and safety infrastructure set up for a protest movement or community. I'm being deliberately vague here, but specifically armed community defense deals with mitigating lethal and egregious harm to members of a community. The goal is forced and foremost prevention, mitigation, and control of those threats.

In my mind, ideally, community defense would involve no one doing anything, carrying around a bunch of really heavy shit and nothing happening, but deterring those from harming others. And in the absolute worst case, it means you have to actually do something that can get messy pretty quickly. I want to circle back to a couple of things. Actually, I do have one quick follow up question for you before we move on to the next people, Ray. When you say like carrying heavy things and whatnot, I'm wondering, like, what do you think? I'm interested in you, and I'll probably ask other people this follow up when it when it comes to carrying, bringing a firearm to either a protest situation or some other community self-defense situation, what is going through your head when you determine what to bring? Because I've seen people carry a variety of different guns from,

like, shotguns and, in one case, it's a Mosin-Nagant to ARs or handguns. What do you think is kind of the logic train, I guess, that you would take? And like, what is the appropriate tool to bring like in this situation? So that depends entirely on what the anticipated threat is and how one plans to mitigate the anticipated threat.

There's no correct answer for that. Sometimes the answer to mitigate lethal or egregious bodily harm is not a firearm at all. Indeed, firearms are applicable in an extraordinarily narrow range of scenarios, but those range of scenarios are catastrophic and need extreme measures to be mitigated. So it depends on what, if you are considering bringing a firearm, what is the firearm good at? And then you get into the minutiae of what firearms good for what thing, which depends on your legal context and particular threat. But I think one has to start with the question is, is the thing I'm bringing able to

mitigate the type of harm I might see happen to my community? And to get a little bit less vague, there are people who think that bringing a shotgun is a good way to stop a car speeding into a crowd when it clearly isn't right so one has to make sure that the tool whatever they have is you is appropriate for the task at hand and the threat you anticipate yeah that was great thank you ray um kd you want to you want to give us your answer next i agree with everything that ray said and the only addition that i'd make is that um it specifically in our in our cases generally doesn't mean standing between protesters and police but more guiding protesters you know

or activists or participants away from potential situations of harm. It's like, we can't stand in front of police and stop cops from doing their job. Like that just gets you arrested and, or worse or worse. And that's not what we're here for. So, yeah,

that's all I want to add. Could you, cause I have chatted with a couple of your number about this, about kind of the role that an armed contingent at a protest can play in kind of allowing an avenue of retreat, you know, especially during confrontations with non-state actors. what you, you know, you're not, you're not to kind of, as you did kind of clarify a misconception, you don't see your role as standing in front of the protesters between them and the cops and like presenting a threat to the cops. What is the utility and kind of an active protest situation that you've seen of what y'all do? So that's a good question. And if we're doing our job well, Good question. And if we're doing our job well, then most people think we don't do anything at all. A lot of what we do is we're watching external potential threats who might try to come in. The most common factor these days is a car.

But generally, we're looking for folks that might cause trouble and ensuring that we're not putting ourselves in a position where we're going to get cornered or trapped and and really you know just trying to help facilitate and work with the facilitators and organizers to keep things you know progressing in a safe way so as far as what we're protecting against threat wise that that ranges from everything from like angry people who are just angry and trying to go home and getting blocked by a protest to people who are actively looking to do harm to a movement that happens to be involved in the protest. Or maybe it's something as specific as a person who's looking to specifically do harm to organizers. So most of the time, we're focused outward and just making sure that our exits are covered and

that we have ways to get people away from potential bad situations. That was great. Thank you, Katie. Shannon, you want to give your answer next? Absolutely. Thanks. I would add there's a really critical element to community defense that begins and ends with the word community. Obviously, there's a big difference between proclaiming yourself security and showing up someplace and being there as an intentional community support where the community plays a role in you being there and also has some influence on that question of what are you carrying and what is the response. I think it's just really

important that you keep the community aspect at the forefront and that's a huge part of our collective work is making sure that when we're providing community defense, we're aligning ourselves with the desires of the community group that has asked us to be there, also filtering it through our judgment as to what's safe and appropriate under the circumstances, using some of those filters that Ray mentioned when they were answering. And what do you see as, like, this is something that I kind of gets to both what is an issue with me and kind of the folks who declare themselves as security, which is that they're often kind of separating themselves from the rest of the movement, specifically in a cop-like way to say like, well, it's my job to keep you safe,

even if that means, or it's my job to keep things orderly, even if that means attacking some other people at this protest. One of the things that Scott Crowe in his, in Setting Sights, which is a really good book on community self-defense does is set out that um a key aspect of community self-defense as you said is that you're like a member of the community and i think i guess the question i have is because guns are what they are and have the kind of cultural weight that they have it's you you people are always people who accept being armed as an aspect of their personality are always going to be kind of fighting having that dominate their personality. And it wouldn't it's clearly something that a lot of people have an issue with. The thing that is important is to be a member of the community who happens to be armed as opposed to an armed activist whose role is being armed, right?

Like, I mean, do you agree with what I'm saying or kind of like, I'm wondering how you think about it because this is something that I'm kind of going right in my head about as well because it's clearly where a lot of the problems happen, right? That the gun becomes central to the identity of the people who bring it, which is something that happens to the cops. Yes. And also the mentality of separating yourself from the community and not being part of the purpose of being there. And so I'll defer to my comrades here to go a little bit further with it. But I would just say that there's a significant difference

between armed community defense and having an intentional presence of armed community defense at an event or a protest and being a person who shows up with a gun. Those are two really different things. And so I think that's one of the benefits of being part of an organization that does this collectively with accountability, with training, with a known role in the community so that there is consistency among what we do and why we do it. And a history of folks understanding that if we're present somewhere, it's because we've been asked to be there and that what we're doing there is aligned with and approved of by the people who are organizing the event. And then I'll let somebody else who's more eloquent than I am answer that further if they feel like they can. Yeah, I think Nova is up now,

if you wanted to give your answer and kind of also comment on what we've been chatting about, what Shannon and I were just chatting about, Nova. Hi, thank you so much. I would say that folks like Ray and Katie, and of course, Shannon really put it very succinctly, very well together. And it answered a lot of the things that I was going to already provided things that I was going to add to it. But the specifically the part about the gun becoming the driving factor in somebody's presence at a protest or the gun being a part of the personality of somebody who's going to appoint themselves as a guardian towards a bunch of

people. I would say that with any responsible community defense role within a protest context, that the act of being a body in between a threat and your community has to come first and that the firearm has to be secondary. There was an incident on the 300th night of protest where many of us were at risk of being harmed by a vehicle attack. And in retrospect, a firearm would not have mitigated that threat terribly well, but the idea of being in between a threat such as that and somebody else who is possibly more vulnerable than you are bore a lot more of a significance on that. bore a lot more of a significance on that. So the firearm being there to respond to a threat and perhaps mitigate an active, ongoing, deadly threat to your community is one thing. But I think the primary thing is going to be just putting yourself in harm's way so that you can spare that responsibility from somebody possibly more vulnerable than you, if that makes sense.

That should be the primary responsibility and um how do you avoid letting that turn people doing that into feeling like a separate and even elevated chunk of of the community because that again that's what happens with police you know this, this idea that it starts as like, well, we're here to serve and protect. And that, through a variety of toxic alchemies, turns into this idea of the thin blue line. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What is the way you push back on that? what is the way you push back on that how do you actually stop it from going from i'm someone who is accepting personal responsibility for the well-being of the people around me and putting my body in between them on harm's way if necessary uh to i it's my job to protect

people too it's my job to you know from turning that into kind of this idea of i think stewardship in some ways that like some people in law enforcement have where like you're there they they get to tell you what to do because that's their responsibility to keep you safe like how do you how do you stop that attitude from evolving because i i've seen it happen to people fairly quickly when they put themselves in some of these situations sometimes and it's certainly not like most people but it is it doesn't take a long time for somebody to like especially if they're vulnerable to get in that position so how do you especially if you're approaching it from an organizational standpoint right you're an organization

uh made up of people who come to do this? How do you fight back against that? Like, what is the active kind of counter programming, if you will? Uh, I'd say, uh, I don't have an easy answer for that question, uh, to be completely honest with you, but I'd say that the closest thing, uh, to an answer to that would be that in almost, you know, monastic devotion to the task that was asked of you, uh, by the group that asked you there. Um, so if somebody, uh, asked us to be a part of a march and to simply look outward for external threats and, uh, to be willing to respond to those threats of need be again, putting our bodies in harm's way, but also be willing to respond to those threats if need be, again, putting our bodies

in harm's way, but also be willing to respond to lethal force and kind should the worst case scenario arise. I'd say that the ultimate accountability rests with the people who asked you to be there. And there's no easy answer as to what that mechanism of accountability looks like. But, you know, in several layers, that would start with your teammates, the people who are part of your organization that is asked to be there. So other members of JBGC are, you know, of JBGC are, you know, definitely going to try and keep each other accountable. But it's also the larger, the larger contingent of the action that you're a part of, to be ultimately willing to back down from whatever you're doing, if a concern is voiced by that community.

And I wish I had a better way to word that, but just the constant vigilance within oneself against overstepping the boundaries that were clearly set by people who invited you into a space. That's really the best answer I can give for that at the moment without further percolating. Well, I mean, yeah, for one thing, I think this is the reason we're having this conversation, and I'm getting ahead of us a little, is because this is still very much a developing thing on the left,

and I don't think anybody has all the answers on how to do it well, although I think an increasing number of folks accept the necessity. So I think that's part of the reason for of a community as opposed to you are there to to police or to maintain order like the idea of approaching it as if you're a guest strikes me as a really good idea um in order to to keep yourself on a certain behavioral um standpoint like i'm i'm i'm here at the request of this community as their guest, as opposed to I am here to protect this community, you know? Absolutely. That's a perfect way to summarize what I was trying to go for with that one.

I think that ultimately to be averse to being put in a position of power or authority is the best way to check against that. And to simply be a servant to the community that is, again, inviting you into that space and putting yourself in a... Servile is not the right word. I'm looking for a different word for that, but a position of service, a true position. Yes, what community defense should be is ultimately a service and a burden rather than a reward of responsibility and power over your fellow community members. Okay, yeah, great. I think next was Ray again. You had something to say there? Yeah, to finish that thought, in my notes, I did a section of what happens when things go right. I think one thing that can go right is normalizing that firearms are just a thing that can be around and

they don't have to be your entire ass personality nor do they have to be a differentiating factor indeed i think one of the successes there are not many but of a community defense in the chop was normalizing the idea that people can have firearms and they're not an inherent threat i'm thinking of people who were armed often and were pointed out routinely and it was like nah he's chill he's he's a cool dude you know just a guy just like i think it's like you know do you really think the black guy is gonna shoot up the top i don't know but he's he's totally fine i know him his jokes are great um again overhearing these kind of conversations, it helps, you know, firearms become like part of the tapestry of life, not this differentiating

factor, not a beauty item, not something to wrap your personality around. It's just like they're there. And they can be good, bad, right, wrong, or indifferent. And I think that normalizing effect is one of the successes community defense can have and I'm happy to talk about other things that community defense can normalize but I wanted to emphasize the you just have a firearm you're not talking about it you're not touching it you're not thinking about it you know people have that it's just around and it became pretty chill and there is kind of at the CHOP specifically there's an area where firearms just kind of were around and nothing happened really. And that was kind of wonderful in my mind. So from my experience with the club, it's basically, even though we are the John Brown Gun Club,

the guns are like the last thing that we even consider. Like it would technically, if we were to actually rename the club it would be the john brown de-escalation club um we would like most of the time uh any um any anything that's gone on even uh when i did visit the chop and there were some weird stuff going on uh like brother matthew uh being brother matthew um people were uh using their skills to um to to de-escalate the situation to calm that calm out calm down individuals to make sure that that whatever hostility they have would be abated through just verbal verbal communication talk about that in a little more detail because i don't know i mean i was at the chas briefly but i don't know who brother matthew was or like what incident you're talking

about so i'm curious is a guy who shows up up here uh all around the seattle area and also i think he's even set up in portland as well um preacher guy gets in everybody's faces usually not liked by everybody super afraid of snakes uh thanks jerry um but uh yeah he like like he he's he's a person who thrives off of confrontation and uses the bible as as his mode of of operation but um i remember distinctly at uh at the chop um he was getting it getting into it with people but everybody who was around tried to talk him down they tried to chill make him chill out even though he was continually screaming for attention and just being weird but um but in the end um that happens more often with protest situations or march situations or direct action situations where we're asked to be a part of it by the organizers. And as Ray had mentioned and Nova had mentioned, we're asked to be there.

And we're not just asked and then we suddenly show up. We get involved with the people who are organizing any of the partners that they bring into it. We try to learn as much about what's going on with them, who are the threats, where the event is, how the event is going to be thought of. We ask a lot of questions about it. We plan and plan and plan and plan to make sure that everything is super safe or as safe as possible based on all known variables. And then the stuff

that's unknown, we do our best to mitigate that somehow. Yes, we are armed, but that's like the last thing that we ever even think of. And that's even in our planning. Like we say flat out, deescalate first. If things start to ratchet up, respond in kind. So like if someone, you know, like tries to like, I don't know, like starts to fist fight, we're not going to pull out a gun on someone who wants to box somebody on the street we're going to do our best to stop so uh stop them um through other means like uh whether if it's just to block a punch or whatever but the first things and foremost is de-escalation. Calm that person down and tell them to go away or just to chill out or whatever is necessary. I mean, de-escalation, all of the best community self-defense that I've personally watched has been de-escalation.

You know, they're not the only situations I've seen. I've seen force used a couple of times in situations that were necessary. But by far, de-escalation is the thing I've seen actually protect people in dicey situations the most. And generally, that's going to be the case. Yeah, I know for myself, like, my attitude is we all go home. Everybody who shows up there goes home not to the hospital not to jail ever or not to the morgue we all go home yeah i think that's definitely seems like the best way to look at it welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors

that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So into the specific question of uh how not to become a cop in this position and become the gun the only way i've been able to do anything in that regard has been to not have that be my primary thing that i fulfill. I'm part of a community and I'm a mechanical person in this community. I try to have my mission be not that other skill set or that other access to being of an aid to a community.

Be my actual purpose in the community, if that makes any sense. Yeah, that makes any sense yeah that makes complete sense um and yeah i think is the healthiest way to to deal with it so something i've been wondering about as so i'm like not armed at all so i guess i'm on like the other the other side of the fence of the sort of community self defense thing when people show up to protests um and so something i was wondering about is is the relationship between this stuff and you know between the sort of cop mentality development and the difficulty of sort of integrating the community of having organizations that are basically independent security groups and not for example example, like taking like, I don't know, take like an historical example. Like there was a thing in China you'd see a lot in like the 1900s where, you know, you'd have armed pickets.

Right. And so you have an armed force there, but the armed force is like, you know, this is this is like a branch of the union. like you know this is this is like a branch of the union right and that's that's how they sort of like like that that was their sort of solution to how do you stop cop syndrome is that you know they're they're they're basically like a part of another community organization and so i'm curious what you all think about what the sort of i guess, the strengths and weaknesses of being an independent or having sort of independent security organizations versus having, I guess, subsections of other organizations that are armed? Yeah, I feel like I can offer a unique perspective here as someone who's been privy to multiple angles of this, including separate organizations,

ones integrated with others, and ones that are sort of just parts of the community. I don't think there's any like, inherent sort of best answer here. I do think being part of a separate organization makes it harder to be in the community versus of the community, meaning you came from the community and now you're sort of kind of separate, but not really. Like JB in particular has a perpetual problem with people saying, oh, you know, John Brown will do X. And this is something that has been discussed. And often this is to people's immense ire i don't want to speak for everyone here but it does seem to be that so seldom does one wish to be said oh hello it's kind of like saying oh the union will solve this and it's like turns out you're the union buddy um right and never refer to the union

in the first person so i do think being embedded into other groups or being sort of this loose diffuse group can make it easier to be part of the community because of the structural forces that make that, it is easier to get there. A separate organization can help focus and codify certain procedures, training, you know, make sure that people have some sort of unified goals and values at the expense of making it a bit harder to integrate into one's community. I think given the era we're in, I'm not surprised we see many,

many approaches to community defense with varying effectiveness at different times, including JB's perspective. Yeah. And I guess I'm interested as we uh as we move on here and like one of the one of the questions i see is how do you the difficulty and kind of you don't want to have a situation where there's absolutely no where the community self-defense contingent is anyone who shows up with a gun because then anyone can show up with a gun and you as someone else who's showing up with a weapon are potentially like if that person uh makes a bad decision that's going to i mean as it as it has in the past that has significant repercussions on everybody else and i i that is one of the thornier points because i i do one of the things I see is valuable.

Someone mentioned earlier, like the nice thing about it, just it not being firearms being normalized, not as a like gun culture thing, but as a this is just a thing that is present in the community. And I saw that a lot in Rojava, right? Everybody was armed or at least a significant chunk of the populace had access to arms, but nobody was showing off with them. They were not like anybody's piece of identity. They were just one of the tools, like a spade or a shovel that were present in the community. Okay, I think I've skipped over a couple of people. I wanted to give Thud a chance to talk. That's actually very much sort of in line with what the point I was going to make, which is for me,

a huge part of community defense is making sure that the aspect that is defending the community is not alienated from the community because it isn't concentrated in just a few people. Because I think one of the other things that we emphasize a lot sort of outside of direct protest actions is we try to teach people how to safely operate firearms, but also to give firearms the respect that they deserve. That firearms are not there so that you are badass. Firearms are not there because, you know, you're going to get into a gunfight.

And it's the first rule. I mean, one of the things that we stress sort of beyond the basic four rules of gun safety is the first rule of gunfight is don't get into a gunfight. That it's, you know, you want to exhaust every possible option that you have. And when the community at large is engaged and like pray was saying that it's sort of

it becomes normalized that oh we're not relying on these several people to keep us safe but that in fact as an entire collective we are keeping us safe and that gives recognition the fact that some people it's not it's not the right choice for them to carry a gun for one reason or another. And at the same time, the power that is present in that particular tool is dispersed to the point where it doesn't, you know, you don't have people getting self-aggrandizing thoughts because of the fact that they're possessing firearms. And I think that's something that we, you know, work really hard to instill in people in a variety of contexts. And I think it's really critical to this question. really critical to this question. So the question, I'm just trying to summarize what the question was earlier,

what the strengths or weaknesses of having an organized armed response are. One of the things that I wanted to bring up is the historical context of armed response, specifically community armed response in Seattle. I did some digging and found in a book called History of Seattle from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time, Volume 2, which I started pouring through and found that there was, in 1874, there was a group

called the Seattle Amateur Rifle Association, which leased land for a range on current present day Capitol Hill. Like right where the train station is, if you're familiar with the area. So like right where protests always happen these days. Yeah. Later on there's record record in 1877 of the Seattle rifle team organizing and shooting contests. And then later on in 1886, which is a number that probably rings a bell, the Chinese riots, as they called them at the time, happened, which was sort of the start of the labor movement where everyone decided that Chinese immigrants were the cause of all of our woes, that the low wages being paid to Chinese

immigrants were because of Chinese immigrants and not racism. So they decided to run every person who looked Chinese out of town, literally. They referred to this as the Tacoma method. I'm guessing because that's what they did in Tacoma. Exactly. It started there. And it was February 7th of 1886 this massive angry racist mob tried to push all of the the Chinese folks out of Seattle or anyone they thought might look like Chinese and they tried to push them onto a steamboat but there weren't there wasn't enough room for them all there um cops got involved a bunch of other stuff happened. They decided, no, give them time in court. But in the process of making this decision, you know, the racists got a mob together. And we're basically just going to try and put a stop to this before the legal proceedings could go forward.

before the legal proceedings could go forward. So they reached out to local allies in arms. They had the Home Guards, which I'm not exactly sure exactly what the Home Guards were, but I assume there's something related to National Guard later on, or maybe just an extension of military. But the Home Guards and the Seattle Rifles, as well as the University Cadets which I'm assuming are of course soldiers in training and pulled them all out and made a community self-defense group out of them. They put a rifle line and held the mob back and enabled those folks to get you know safely to have their day in court and then to protect them for a while afterward, they actually organized a sort of a watch because they didn't have enough police to manage the mob. They use folks from the Seattle Rifles and these other groups to sort of bolster the police forces and keep peace in the town. So the sort of thing that we do is long standing

historical presence, but I think there's a lot of things you can look at the history of and sort of take lessons from. So as Bray mentioned, a unified response is of course a huge benefit of having a huge strength of having an organized armed group. And it's literally if someone reaches out and says, we need help, help is available. But there are a lot of weaknesses. Businesses and clubs can be held liable legally. And this is an endemic problem within gun law as it stands. The laws are written such that they effectively, it comes down to situational context to determine how a gun law should be enforced.

And the law will never be on the side of a group trying to abolish parts of the law. So you have to be very careful about how you, especially an organized or formally organized armed group, has to be very careful about how they put their work in play with that in mind. Yeah, that was great. I was unaware, actually. I was aware of the riots. I was unaware of that part of the history, which is fascinating and I think very important. Yeah, Ray, did you want to explain the threat onion? Yeah, the integrated threat onion. So this is kind of a well-known meme in certain circles slash actual thing. And it's designed to help you understand how to like mitigate threat and sorry, integrated

survivability onion, mitigate threats, right? So the teal deer is, you you know do you want to try to preserve life by having body armor and hoping a bullet hits you in the body armor or do you want to preserve life by i don't know not showing the fuck up to something where you might get shot and the idea is it's a meme because so often you know people are like i want to get in there and get engaged with conflict and be the hero and the the answer is, you could just not go there. And it would probably be a lot easier to do that. often the most boring and mundane answer is probably the one that's going to actually result in the biggest impact. And the heroic answer is probably the absolute worst answer and only what you

rely on if everything else has gone to hell. So that's someone, I think it was Thud spoke to alluded to the threat onion and ways to mitigate harm to oneself and one's community. And I had to repeat it because it's this's this meme that's been coming up forever. Yeah, and it is like the basic idea of the Threat Onion is that you have like this, again, you think of it in layers. That's why they call it an onion of like things that protect you. And the things that provide the most protection are stuff like not being seen or

present when somebody wants to harm you um not or being behind cover when somebody wants to harm you and the thing that offers the least protection is having body armor you know it's this the idea that like um the things that people buy and and focus on because they look cool um are all things that offer less protection than situational awareness and good judgment is kind of the actual like lesson I think to take out of the threat onion that would be my opinion on the matter this has been it could happen here that's all for this week find us at happen here pod on instagram and twitter and find the rest of our shows at Cool Zone Media in the same places. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media,

visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow Broth. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.