Threat and Threat Assessment

Didn’t post this weekend because the wife wanted to take a bit of a trip. She overruled me when it comes to safety, calling me paranoid. She wanted to see Kevin Hart at Amway Arena in Orlando, and wasn’t taking no for an answer.

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The area between the separators is an edit to add: Because there was a comment of “my wife can’t override me” I am adding this. She was going to see Kevin Hart whether I wanted to or not. If I didn’t want to go, I could stay home. She isn’t my slave or my property. We are a partnership.

As far as it goes, she can make you feel like a pussy. Whenever I balk about having to go unarmed, she points out that before we met, she drove from Orlando to LA by herself with no problems. “Surely a manly guy like yourself can make do with pepper spray and a knife for one evening without being more scared than a woman traveling alone across the country for a week. Or perhaps remember the time I drove by myself from New York to Detroit, then down to Atlanta by myself.” She says that we can’t be so afraid to live our lives that we spend them living in a prison of our own making. Understand the risk and mitigate it as much as you can, but take a few risks and live life.

She is, of course, correct. What is the point of freedom if you are afraid to use it. So I figure out ways to make it work. End of Edit.

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The entire trip had me on the verge of a panic attack. Let me explain:

She booked a hotel for us in Orlando for the weekend. Now I normally hate going to Orlando, especially since it has become the woke left wing hive of scum and villainy that it has morphed into over the past three years. Even worse, we would be spending the weekend directly across the street from Universal Studios. You know, the site of recent gang shootings.

In fact, the Double Tree where we were staying was less than 1,000 feet from a Walgreens where I missed an armed robbery by less than a minute back in 2013. The neighborhood is even less safe than it was then.

On top of this, we went to Amway Arena. To enter this locale, all weapons are prohibited. We periodically do this, and I don’t like it every time we go. Being that the building is owned by the city, I don’t event think it’s legal for them to ban weapons and search those entering, but Florida Carry doesn’t seem to care as long as fishing isn’t involved. One of the reasons why I dropped my membership in that particular group. At any rate, I still bring pepper spray and a small dagger into the venue, as they don’t trip magnetometers, and are better than nothing. I left my firearm locked in a vehicle safe (you DO have one, don’t you?)

To make matters worse, the venue confiscates your cell phone and watch, puts them in a locked bag, then returns them to you in the bag. You have to stop on the way out to retrieve your phone and watch. I’m sure that it’s to keep you from recording the show, but would deny you the ability to call 911 if needed. It’s OK, my plan was to cut the bag open if I needed the phone.

On Saturday night, she wanted to dine at Mama Della’s, which is a restaurant located in one of Universal’s Resort Hotels. Now I am going to tell you that the food was superb. We had Calamari and Pasta Fajioli as appetizers. My main course was Chicken Parmesan, and Dessert was Lemon and Raspberry Sorbetto. It was outstanding. There were singers who were singing in Italian, and the food was great. She wanted to go to Universal’s City Walk after dinner, but in order to do that you have to submit to a search, so I was again disarmed for the evening. That meant pepper spray and a dagger was again the rule of the night. My firearm had to remain in the hotel room’s safe.

Look, I recognize that the odds of being a victim of violent crime on any given night are very long odds indeed. It still makes me nervous to be in rough neighborhoods without being armed.

Find ways to be armed that can make it through security. If you DO need to use them, remember that being armed against a company’s policy isn’t a crime in Florida, unless they specifically tell you to leave and you refuse. A sign saying “weapons prohibited” doesn’t count for a thing in Florida. So the important thing here is to avoid being told to leave. That means making sure that they don’t know you are armed.

In the case of this weekend, the people within the perimeter were unlikely to have firearms, meaning that the largest threats were:

• Being attacked by more than one person, or
• Being attacked while in transit between their ad hoc security zone and your cache of firearms.

You limit the first by carrying something to slow down one or more of the group. This allows you to incapacitate one attacker at a time, rather than having to face all of them at once. Pepper spray is useful for that. The dagger then allows you do rapidly incapacitate the one you are facing.

You limit the second by shortening the distance between the perimeter and your cache. Leave your cache securely locked in the vehicle, and then park the vehicle as close as possible to the security perimeter. Even if it costs more, pay to park in the garage right next to the checkpoint.

I know that the chances of being attacked and needing a weapon are slim indeed. It isn’t the chances, it is the stakes.