FRANK SHARPE: ‘You don’t get to opt out’

by Frank Sharpe
Fortress Defense Consultants
via Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network.

“We don’t get to opt out of someone else’s reality because it doesn’t make sense to us.”

– Dr. William Aprill

When I began Instructing 20 years ago there were existing videos of gun and knife attacks, as well as beatings and brawls, but the material worth studying was limited.

With the advent of affordable surveillance systems, phones with video capabilities and body cams, video of almost every engagement worth considering is available.

Access to such resources has allowed me to study thousands of fights, and one thing I’ve noticed over the last 10 years is a massive shift in the levels of violence being inflicted on victims. Instances that would have once been a trade of a few blows between combatants have progressed into maiming and murders, often through mob action.

How a fight is fought is no longer bound by the traditional rules of western civilization like – 

• You don’t kick a man when he’s down.
• You don’t hit girls.
• Sucker punching is a cowardly act.
• It’s man against man, not group against man.

Those tactics have lost the stigma of socially unacceptable to a vast swath of the population.

Practices once considered dishonorable and reserved only for prison inmates and gang members are now commonplace in grade schools. And it’s not just a single rogue “bad student,” it is regularly occurring with groups of five to 50 youths and often directed towards teachers and other adults.

On the streets, the pattern appears to be:

Step 1 – Sucker punch (often from behind by a third party).
Step 2 – Group jumps on stunned victim and beats them to the ground.
Step 3 – Once victim is down, turns are taken kicking them in the head.
Step 4 – Someone adds literal insult to injury by rifling the victim’s pockets and robbing them.

While I was typing this, a video just showed up in my inbox of a man in Minneapolis, MN, last Friday evening being stomped on by five men in an unprovoked attack. One of the criminals was leaping in the air and landing on the prone victim with both feet, as an accomplice emptied his pockets.

Last week I watched a video of a female assistant principle at Westfield High in North Houston, Texas, being attacked by a mob of ninth grade students, mostly boys, in the school hallway. As she was beaten to the ground, kicks and blows were delivered to her head. This occurred while dozens of other students cheered it on and shot video. She was hospitalized with serious injuries.

Dozens of events like this are happening every day, teeming with violent acts most of us over 35 simply can’t wrap our brains around. We couldn’t imagine engaging in such behaviors when we were kids. The thought of kicking anyone in the head, let alone an authority figure, was simply not on our list of possibilities. It wasn’t done. It was deemed by society as attempted murder.

A thread from last night chaotic scene at the Tinley Park Carnival:

A place where families supposed to have fun with their kids!! pic.twitter.com/S1wTKTldem

— Arab chicago (@ArabChicago) May 21, 2023

We also didn’t entertain flash mobbing a retail store, stealing thousands in merchandise, and never being apprehended or prosecuted. We couldn’t in our wildest fantasies envision a world where carjackers and armed robbers would be released without bail, or where you could take over multiple city blocks in a major city like Seattle, declare a “Law Enforcement-Free Autonomous Zone,” and the police would actually comply.

Yet here we are.

Few are processing what this means for their personal security, or for the nation. Reality is about to collide with detachment. It’s going to get messy for more than just a few Zimmerman-like outliers as we’ve witnessed in the past. Any of us could be next.

When we scan over the horizon, we can easily predict that cut-and-dry cases of self defense are going to be charged by Soros-placed prosecutors (and the like) at a much higher rate. We just saw such a case in Texas with Daniel Perry.

We may be seeing a political prosecution soon in NYC with Daniel Penny, who recently subdued the violent actor on the subway resulting in the attacker’s death. [Note: After this article was submitted, Penny was arraigned on second degree manslaughter charges.] Of course, the news is covering the deceased as an “innocent, black subway performer who impersonated Michel Jackson and was distraught over the passing of his mother” rather than the mentally ill career criminal with over 40 arrests, who routinely threatened violence and death while battering train passengers that he was.

The same can be expected in our future self-defense events.

Warning: Disturbing video.

This footage is included in a sort of “mix tape” of social media posts floating purporting to be from the “large group” incident in the Loop on Saturday night.

The woman is being attacked in the doorway of 129 North Wabash. #Chicagopic.twitter.com/1WugjCMfMT

— CWBChicago (@CWBChicago) April 17, 2023

When the mob attacks and one of us is forced to use our firearm while facing certain grave bodily injury or death, we can expect the media narrative to focus on “poor, innocent, peaceful protesters who were the victims of vigilante murder at the hands of” whatever demographic labels they assign. Homophobic, racist, trans-phobic, religious, sexist, Nazi, gun nut, etc. It doesn’t matter what lie they tell, as long as the reversal of the actual victims and criminals creates a nullification in the minds of their voters of any claim of legal justification by the defender. That’s the goal. 

What will not be discussed on the major news outlets is disparity of force, the pounds per square inch of force delivered by a 175 pound, 17-year-old male’s shoe-encased foot, mob action, felony murder, or any of the basic tenets of self-defense law.

Soon, there is going to be a plethora of absolutely outrageous prosecutions of a blatantly legal uses of force that contain no precedent for charges, let alone anything like them ever being prosecuted before.

Don’t think for a second that if a former president can have his home raided for literally no legal reason, or that same president can be charged, arrested, and processed for an alleged accounting error occurring in a business at a time when he was no longer running it, that any of us can’t be thrown into the judicial system meat grinder on a whim. We can, and we will.

The rules have changed for criminals, and they have changed for us.

Gone are the days of common behavioral expectations, self-discipline, self-control, restraint, shame, or simply saying “pardon me” and moving on. The rule book for settling conflict among civilized individuals was burned in the riots of 2020.

However, the legal rule book still remains – and its full force is being weaponized against the righteous.

When the power of an agenda-driven media (instigating a politically motivated mob) is coupled with Soros-funded prosecutors in jurisdictions that care more about the support of criminals than the lives of the law abiding, the legal quagmire will not be something any of us will successfully navigate alone. We’re going to need LOTS of help!

The beating you survive on the street will only be the beginning. The monetary, health, emotional, vocational, reputational, and relationship beating the legal system is about to inflict will be just as destructive, and equally as criminal!

As they say, life comes at you fast. Well, so does death. That’s why we take appropriate steps to defend our lives. However, sometimes death can be slow…like, life in prison slow.

So, I say this with true concern and caring to all good people reading: This day in age, only a fool would waive the opportunity to have the Armed Citizen’s Legal Defense Network in their corner! Then, get proper training – you’re going to need it.

__________

Editor’s Note: Network member Frank Sharpe contributed these thoughts for publication, for which we are grateful . He operates Fortress Defense Consultants, a mobile training school based in Indiana offering public and private courses nationally in defensive firearms and medical/wound treatment, as well as security consulting. Don’t miss the blog posts on his website at https://fortressdefense.com/. He can be reached at frank@fortressdefense.com and by phone at 708-522-8060.