The Awful Price Of Not Being Prepared

By Tim Inwood

I know many of you reading this are CCW license
holders like me. If so, you probably have friends and family who think you are a little paranoid, if not
crazy, for carrying a firearm. Sometimes this is out
of ignorance and sometimes it is because they are
hoplophobes: those souls with an irrational fear of
firearms. Either way I am sure those with their license will at some point encounter these folks and have this conversation. You will find yourself up against the “sheep mindset”. They have a blind faith that all will be well, and if it is not the police will protect them. This wall built of obtuse bricks can be rather difficult to breach. The way to go about it is logic.

When asked to justify why I carry I always point out that, being an old Boy Scout, I try to live up to the motto “be prepared”. They will usually counter that you are so unlikely to be attacked it is not warranted to carry a firearm, or that if you are attacked you are better off submitting. At this point I say, “That might have been what Christopher Newsom and his girlfriend Channon Christian thought.” At this point they look at me with a puzzled expression. The Newsom-Christian murders did not get much, if any, news coverage nationally when it happened in January of this year, but it is a grisly example of what can happen to you if you are not prepared to defend yourself. This is, I must warn, a sad and horrible tale that only took place six months ago. The news media pretty much ignored this. There are many speculated reasons as to why, but I will leave it for you to decide why the networks did not wish to deal with this crime.

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The details are so horrible, so gruesome, that most
people do not wish to believe this could happen in the United States. Sadly we know it happens all to often. The brutality is on par with the Manson Murders in 1969
and the murders and rape committed by Willie Horton in
the 1980s.

Regrettably, there are too many other examples to
mention of such brutal slayings. Random atrocities are all too common in our country. No one with common sense knowingly walks into danger. We do not seek it out. Sadly the predatory miscreant seeks his victims everywhere, thus anyone of us could be attacked just about anywhere you can think of. There are no safe sanctuaries. Too few of us prepare for it.

Christopher Newsom, age 23, and his girlfriend, age 21, were both old enough to be able to purchase a handgun and obtain their CCW license in their home state of Tennessee. Sadly neither had done this. I don’t know why; perhaps they never gave it any thought. Young people usually have a belief they are invincible and immortal. They give little thought to their own security. Or perhaps they thought only the paranoid would carry a gun. On the night of January 6, 2007
they went out to dinner and were expected to go over and watch TV with friends. Instead they vanished. I will let you follow the link for the grisly details of their tragic fate. I warn you, it is terrible.

I will say that what happened to them is only
possible by adopting the “Sheep Mindset”. The “Sheep Mindset” is something I have written about before and has been a subject that needs more discussion. Like a disease, it needs to be eradicated. Luckily I am not the only one to be talking about this. Talk show hosts Neal Boortz and G. Gordon Liddy frequently speak of the subject and the horrors that result from it. Most people have not given any deep thought as to why they
have not prepared themselves in the event of an attack from a criminal. Sadly our culture indoctrinates us at an early age to be passive, much to our hazard. What befell them cannot happen with ease if one is trained and prepared for exactly the sort of thing that happened. The late Jeff Cooper taught us to be aware of what is going on around us. His color codes of mental awareness are something everyone should live by. If you are not familiar with this, Tom Givens has written a very nice piece on the subject.
But in a society that frowns on the concept of
defending one’s self, many are indoctrinated to be
“sheep”. Most do not even realize it. Thus they walk
about in Condition White, not paying attention to what is going on around them. Hence, when the predators attack they are completely oblivious to what is happening until it is too late. This is something I intend to continue to hammer until more people are more proactive in trying to awaken their friends and family from this dangerous lethargy.

This case also debunks the logic of liberals in
Congress who want to ban high capacity rifle and
pistol magazines. They keep telling us we don’t need more than ten rounds in a magazine. Obediently the national news media parrots this nonsense. Tell someone who is fending off a gang attack they don’t need a high capacity magazine. A gang attack is exactly what happened to Christopher and Channon. There is a growing trend of home invasions where large numbers of thugs break into a house all at once to overwhelm the home owners. There is no logical reason to deny the honest citizen these tools of self-defense. They are necessary to thwart criminals...and tyrants for that matter.

Leaving law abiding American citizens with only ten
round magazines is a disgusting symptom of politicians who fear an armed citizenry. Frankly if the politicians were not intent on doing things that they think would cause us to revolt, they would have nothing to fear. Yet many elected officials are intent on tyranny. But that is an issue for exploration another day.

The point I want you to take from this tragedy is
that “Sheep Mindset” can only get you killed in the
long run. It can result in a prolonged horrible death
with the days of torture and rape that poor Channon Christian endured. Please don’t let their deaths be in vain. Let it teach others to not be sheep to the slaughter of wolves.

The next time some buffoon tells you that you are
better off to submit to the whims of a criminal. You
recount what you read on the Snopes site about what happened to these poor young people, whose lives were taken from them callously by depraved monsters.

The Buckeye Firearms Association wish to express our condolences to the families and friends of Christopher Newsom and Channon
Christian. We are pained by their suffering and do not want this to happen to anyone else. I want to assure the family that in talking about what happened to their loved ones, I am not meaning to cause them any pain or further grief. I am however hoping that by bringing awareness of what happened to them, that others might escape a similar tragic fate by being better prepared for the dangerous world we live in.

Tim Inwood is the current Legislative Liaison and Past President of the Clinton County Farmers and Sportsmen Association, an Endowment Member of the NRA, Life Member of OGCA, and a volunteer for Buckeye Firearms Association.