Setting Sights Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense

one of the things that scott crow in his uh 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 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 whose role is being armed right like i i 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 around in my head about as well because it's it's 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 my uh 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 a 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 the 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 i'll let somebody else who's more eloquent than i am uh answer that further if they feel like they can